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Old 01-04-2009, 06:29 AM   #21
Aeran
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

The problem is that MUDs are simply not interesting to many people anymore. What value is it to have an article in an encyclopedia about some MUD X? Very little to most people outside the MUD community.

To have an article about the MUD field itself is probably more interesting to a wider audience though, and such article should reach notability because it is mentioned in many independent .

Edit: It is pretty weird in a way. If you look at the entry for MXP it probably isn't seen as notable, because the only reference come from the subject itself. To get it notable someone would have to write a book/article referencing it, which means that author would read about MXP on the official website anyway.

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Old 01-04-2009, 07:48 AM   #22
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Which appears to be absolutely none. With that level of critical review, it can justifably be said that there is no relevance to MU*s, since apparently even those in the field don't give a care about it enough to try.

No such implied thread in my post exists. I don't believe nor did I ever state or suggest that there should be a single source of reviews. However, it would help if there were at least one source of objective, critical and comparative reviews in the community. At present there is not one. Zero, nada, nil, zilch.
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Old 01-04-2009, 07:57 AM   #23
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

There are articles that have mentioned and talked about MUDs. They would constitute legitimate sources to validate some information on MUDs. As for individual MUDs, I would have to agree with Wikipedia that there aren't many if any with relevance worthy of encyclopedic note. The biggest ones tend to be some of the most lackluster creations and least noteworthy in regard to innovation and concept while the most cutting-edge and innovative ones are small and unnoticed by the community itself to say nothing of the larger world.

But that's not wikipedia or any encyclopedia's fault. That's the nature of an outdated system with marginal appeal which has done little or nothing within its own community to bring attention to itself or create any semblance of respectability as a medium. When I attempted to trace the exact origin of the term RPI I found that no one in the community had ever bothered to document anything regarding its development and very little about the development of the first RPIs. Those that knew have largely passed out of the community and disappeared without imparting their knowledge upon others. People in the community will write endless pages of drivel about what they RP'd last Friday but nothing about the nature of RP and MUDs themselves. Finding individuals within the community with an interest in the field of MU*s (beyond code) is like finding Jeopardy! contestants on the short bus.

One of these days I'll resume my article on the history of RPIs but the reason I've yet to finish it is because of the lack of source material that I as a historian can legitimately confirm for citation purposes. It'd be a horrible article, professionally, and more of a deduction than a historical analysis. But historical writing aside, there's nothing within the community to document or reference from either. Wikipedia questioned the legitimacy of sites like TMS and TMC as source material and rightly so. This site's been around for how long? In all that time, nothing here has been produced of any merit to legitimately document anything beside the names of some games (and because the site doesn't actually do the research but allows the games and players to do the postings, what is posted is unconfirmed and thus unreliable as a source).

Because he brought it up and for no other reason, I looked at the Wikipedia article on Threshold. As far as legitimate encyclopedic information, the article really doesn't contain any beyond the first sentence. Everything afterwards is not written in the form of an encyclopedic article. The entire "Gameplay" section is totally inappropriate, "Business Model" information is irrelevant to the article as are the documented sources in the context in which they're used. Asking the question of what significance warrants the inclusion of this subject, there's nothing that distinguishes it from millions of potential articles on mundane things ranging from the gas station on the local Main Street to the fourteenth John Smith in the local telephone directory. That's not meant as an insult to Threshold or any other MU*. It's simply a matter of encyclopedic relevance.

As for the legitimacy of TMS, like I said, there's nothing on this site of value as a documentable source. Player reviews are worthless since they don't constitute scholarly works and aren't really informed critiques as much as they are fanboys fawning and flamers bitching. A search engine does nothing for the purpose of encyclopedic information beyond what little is in the MU* profiles but even then the information is not researched or verified. The rankings are meaningless since they constitute no legitimate critical assessment nor do they represent anything beyond just how many drones clicked a button. The forums themselves are practically devoid of any referenceable material and even then the only time I found them suitable for reference was to point out the existance of disagreement within the community regarding the term RPI (but not a definition of the term itself, just evidence that there was disagreeement).

Like I said, maybe it's a wake-up call to the community that if they want their field taken seriously they should consider investing within the community and within the subject itself. That is, if it isn't already too late.

Take care,

Jason

Last edited by prof1515 : 01-04-2009 at 09:45 AM.
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Old 01-04-2009, 08:48 AM   #24
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

A few years ago, they deleted LegendMUD's wiki page as well. It was nowhere near an advertisement nor was it based on any information from TMS or TMC, but those were the reasons given. I gave up arguing about it, even after pointing out several references to LegendMUD on other wiki pages such as Raph Koster's, and The Story About a Tree.
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Old 01-04-2009, 11:32 AM   #25
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Hello,

As you may have noticed, we at Wikipedia have recently noticed your bid to not have this deleted (we traced it to this thread), and as always when something like this has occurred have taken measures to ensure that accounts that we assume to be coming from here are likely to be discounted in the final judgment on the fate of the article itself. You can still save the article to your userspace and work on it there, and then re-enter it into the mainspace (article space) when you feel it is ready.

If you feel comfortable discussing this on-Wiki with me then my username is the same as here, Neurolysis. Note that I understand your concern at the deletion of the article, but putting all of the blame on some sort of cabal or 'minions' of sorts is a little nonsensical and is a false conspiracy. Perhaps what you are saying about the nominator is correct, I am not one to judge, but usually when something comes up like this it turns out it is completely different to how it looks on the surface.

Anyway, I am here to answer any questions you may wish to ask about the discussion that you may be uncomfortable asking on Wiki. We do not want to alienate prospective editors, and nor do we want to delete good articles.

As a note, your genre's noteworthiness is not being questioned. We already have an article on it, and that is not up for deletion - and neither does it seem that it should be.

As it generally goes, canvassing like this only makes the article more likely to be deleted, as a lot of the keep votes have to be discounted, and false positives may therefore occur due to the suspicious behavior.

There are a lot of people leaning on the keep side of things - there is no conspiracy. I'd say the debate is somewhat balanced, if perhaps tipping a little on the delete side of things, but maybe not enough for deletion - anyway, I certainly won't be the one closing it. The matter of fact is that creating a new account just to vote will not work, and will have the adverse affect than you intend.

Any questions you want to ask about the deletion process, what people mean by their arguments or what you could do to improve the article can either be asked here or at my talk page, or you can find me with the same handle at #wikipedia-en and ##neurolysis on irc.freenode.net.

Thanks,

- Chris
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Old 01-04-2009, 01:34 PM   #26
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

As a member of this community (if you assume "lurking" for many years a member) this sort of thing does generally concern me.

I've found that outside the web the number of people that have knowledge on, or know about MUDs in general, specifically or just their present or past existance is fairly small (I only get about a 50% confirmation success rate from people I think would know of their existance). Knowledge of MUDs and what they can offer as an entertainment platform is definately undervalued in our respective societies. I attribute this mostly to the fact that it is hobbiest and that the commercial ventures are limited compared to the non-commercial ventures (this is important because in most industries and hobbies it is the commercial ventures that actually drive advertisement and thus recognition outside of the hobby's community). So I'm always looking for ways and interested in attempting to expose Mudding in general, both altruistically and because I know how low the chances of success (i.e. getting *any* players) will be eventually if I create and get to a playing point any game of my own.

However, I have to agree to some degree (although not the method, if this really is the method) with Wikipedia's decision. This is a common pattern in history, and about the only one that doesn't have the pattern's bais; those that have the power (or the victors for the more common phrase) write history. Wikipedia isn't any more a group of people that exist "for the common" good than anything else, but is probably more so than even this site. They do however hold a fairly substantial chunk of power in the "internet culture's" source of information, and thus can and will manipulate information to their own ends. This isn't "bad" or "evil", it's just how the world works. We aren't dealing with some emotionless automatons, we're dealing with a group of humans. And groups are almost always worse in this respect than individuals (although I also willingly field the idea that any automaton will still have at least a diluted sense of the goals an aims of it's creator). So in general Wikipedia is acting, as an abstract creature, the way it is supposed to even if we don't like it because we never seem to see it support our personal goals, ambitions or wishes.

More specifically though, I agree with their decision on the basis that I do not think that any specific MUD, commercial or otherwise should have it's own article on Wikipedia. An article or articles on MUDs in general or listing of historicaly significant MUDs (and that's dangerous enough as it is, and filled with its own problems) is enough. Once you get into the business of listing individual MUDs, you're simply turning it into an advertisement platform which isn't supposed to be its function. These events may not have actually conspired the deletion of any website or individual MUDs' page, but instead just brought it to the attention and spurred on it's eventual deletion. For a site like TMS, or a specific MUD, I don't think an article needs to exist; if someone wants to know about these sites they can actually *visit* them and find out. So having a note or link pointing to them in the "super" articles should be sufficient. If you want more specific information about individual MUDs, but you don't want to try and wade through a website that is there for promotion of the game (like most game websites), a *separate* source of information should be made available and policed accordingly by those who control it. We have this with the MU* Wiki, and its rules and goals will no doubt be "bad" for some individuals as well, which means those people should start something more specific to their own goals. Wikipedia, like an encyclopedia should be a starting point for information, and a place where you *leave* to follow up and verify the information presented (and I'm aware that this rarely happens for most visitors, but that shouldn't be a valid reason for any dilution of the information with more information that will make it no longer a good condensed "first look").

As for TMS and TMC. I love these sites. I visit TMS every day and try to visit TMC as often as I have time for (TMC used to be my go-to, but TMS took over that role when I discovered it shortly after its opening). They serve as my primary source for finding a game that I think I might like to play. But they have a critical flaw, mentioned by an earlier post but not as explored as I might have hoped. They serve one purpose, and are in the unfortunate (from this perspective) position of maintaining the majority traffic for those looking to educate or learn about MUDs. The purpose they serve is that they are primarilly a free advertising platform for MUDs and players to connect to other MUDs and players. Like a lot of early websites they are little proto-social-networking sites that haven't taken on the definition and efficiency (and thus would lose a lot of other values if they did, so I'm not suggesting they do) of newer, generalized, highly successful social-networking sites. They don't do much of anything else very well (something quickly apparent if you ever look at the "articles" section of this site), so if you're looking for information on MUDs in general, MUD concepts, how to play MUDs, looking for MUD resources/content/downloads, looking to find a MUD based on non-biased information (they try to but this is very difficult to achieve) resources for MUD development and creation (something any hobby definately needs), they are very much *not* set up for this purpose at all. I've seen sites attempt to fill these voids, but I don't know as they too well simply because of the lack of traffic (and are frequently set up yet another advertising scheme for a specific MUD, and thus become very agenda based--as I recall this was one of the major concerns when Lasher took over TMS, and so far he's done an admiral job of putting any and all fears of that to death); TMS and TMC hold the traffic market.

---Continued in next post because I'm a tard and write too much when I only intended a single paragraph. Good luck to me getting anyone to actually read all this crap--
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Old 01-04-2009, 01:35 PM   #27
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

So what is the community to do? First forget about Wikipedia as mentioned. It isn't and should not be used as an advertising platform or primary resource location for MUDs, specific MUDs, or the mudding community. Furthermore, you don't want it to be since it isn't under our control.

But what else? One of the earlier posts was flirting with it. It would take a social revolution which is hard, and usually next to impossible. But we have to change our state of action. Players and development/administration resources are so rare compared to the number of MUDs that advertising is paramount to the community, and that I think is very damaging (but unlikely to change). This advertising (I've tried it myself) is actually pretty useless as it has very poor results because of the conditions that created it in the first place. Ideally this would change, but it will not and shouldn't anyway (that would significantly decrease the traffic to these two sites). We basically need to--as a community--create a resource where all of those above items and more can be found quickly, easily, properly, unbiasedly (quite possibly a contradiction). This website needs to have a very good design who's purpose becomes immediately clear. While TMS and TMC have some of these elements that it would need, it is not their primary focus. The layout of the site makes it very clear what *is* their primary focus, and so those elements are not well developed at all in both a content sense or a site layout sense. I thought that the MU*Wiki might help in this regard, but Wikis just are *not* designed for that purpose, so it serves a role only as a catalog of information that is easy to use if you're looking for something specific; it doesn't have the website design and layout that it would need for this venture.

TMS I don't think should spearhead this effort, mostly because it doesn't need to. It does just fine doing what it does I think. The best chance might be actually having TMC upgrade it's purpose and existance (along with a much needed website reconstruction), as it has a good traffic flow, but is the "lesser" of the two sites attempting to do close to the same thing. Let TMS focus on forums, player and mud advertising, reviews and rankings. TMC can retain these features, but should not focus on them. Let the MU* Wiki focus on a general encyclopedic listing of MUDs and MUD terms, concepts and other information someone coming across a name or term would want quick basic information on. TMC can link back and forth between these items and information if the owners cooperated. I say that TMC should do so, simply because we know how a non-established venture would fair in this market as it currently is.

Finally, mentioned again and again and again on these forums is the attempt to advertise *outside* of the community. Adverts inside don't do much good. Generating traffic and attention outside is what we need. The commercial ventures will naturally spearhead this activity simply because they are the ones with the resources to do so, and the business plans that necessitate it. They obviously shouldn't be pressured or given special requests to do charity work for the rest of the community. We'll get enough kickback off of their efforts naturally that we should be happy with what they have done and continue to do naturally. It's the "non-commercial" (and I know this isn't true in it's strictest sense) community that should attempt to do more leg-work in this regard, including this site, TMC, MU* Wiki, individual MUDs and any commercial MUDs that feel it is in their best interest to do so that can budget for it. This doesn't necessarily mean spending money, although sometimes that is necessary. But hitting up local universities with a butt-load of fliers can go a long way. Learning how to work it into fun side-projects of class plans for those of you that are TAs or teachers of appropriately aged canidates (late-highschool and primarilly upper education). Involving friends and family; using it as a learning tool for our children, or a social opportunity alternative to going out and drinking again. Holding community gaming events, equviliant to LAN parties where you do a few games, lead up to it and introduce a specific MUD with a non-character developing event (like an instant setup PK environment, or other competition). I'm not saying these are necessarilly good ideas, but just that there are ways that can be explored for free.

I don't really have a good conclusion at this point so that's that, and sorry for partially redirecting the thread; I mean no disrespect to the original posters.

-Tezcatlipoca
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Old 01-04-2009, 01:45 PM   #28
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

I understand Wikipedia's position on this, but there is a fine line between "canvassing" and notifying MUD players on a MUD forum that they may be interested in the article, particularly with the Wikipedia trend of removing a number of MUDs over the past couple of years.

It seems somewhat of a no-win situation - "not enough MUD hobbyists are active here to verify 'authority' for MUD sites, but if you point out the issue on a forum where they will be, you are canvassing."

I am admittedly biased in this, so remove Topmudsites from the equation. My main concern is not the listing of any individual mud (my own long since removed from Wikipedia) but the notion that TMC (and similar) are not considered authorities on MUDs. They are authorities on MUDs.

Some MUD players may have discovered the genre by the occasional mainstream reference, but no active MUD player is going to Computer Game Weekly or Gamespot for information about MUDS, they are going to the Mud Connector, MudBytes, previously MudMagic and all the other niche MUD sites. The very fact that these are the sites MUD players go to are the same reason MUD owners have focused on their visibility on those sites rather than a mainstream press that doesn't care.

So now we're in the situation where, for example, Mudconnector which has been around for well over 15 years is not considered authoritative for MUD information and history but a game magazine that heard about MUDs last week and writes an overview on them this week, is. It also does not bode well for most other MUDs that will have to rely on their "references" on MUD sites as their own listings come up for review over time. Bottom line seems to be that "notability" comes down to chance and whether or not a mainstream publication noticed you while sites that have focused exclusively on MUDs for over a decade are discarded.

You have to at least understand why those involved with MUDs (and we're a passionate group) would be frustrated by this?

Either way, thanks for dropping by and giving us a look at this from the other side. It's appreciated.
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Old 01-04-2009, 01:50 PM   #29
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Here's a phrase that probably would have helped you; "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar".

What does it mean? Don't go accusing people of "breaking the rules" and being "vandals" just because they don't agree with you. Especially after several people make it clear that you are the one breaking the rules. If you had been polite and asked for help instead of being abusive, your article might not be in trouble now.

Plus, running home to your favorite forums and beating the war drum is a particularly lame response. If you'd taken the effort to read Wikipedia's policies as you require others to read Threshold's, you would not be in this situation.
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Old 01-04-2009, 02:02 PM   #30
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

And here was me starting to believe that whether or not the article stayed was about the content and notability.
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Old 01-04-2009, 02:38 PM   #31
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

And you probably shouldn't stick your hand in a hornet's nest to acquire hunny. Especially if you don't need it or care about it it all.

Take note blair that your post and account don't automatically get deleted here even if we do jump on you for a bit of trolling.

I agree with this part, if it is indeed true. Except for the article being in trouble part. I still feel that while its existance was terminal, its execution date was probably move way up by someone with a hard-on for its demise. Must feel pretty good.

Does it seem odd that some of Wikipedia's problems with notability and reliability can be applied to themselves? After all, anyone can create and edit information on their site, which is one of the key points about discounting TMC and TMS. I assume at this point that they have a sufficiently large staff of "offically accredited" editor(s) that police the millions of articles on their site to make sure all of this "free form" posting and constant changing of articles is legit. It probably is sufficient to prevent rampant authoring of important medical information by uneducated 24 year olds from kentucky, and definately not promote them to administrators or even editors.
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Old 01-04-2009, 02:58 PM   #32
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Thanks for proving my point about Wikipedia.

Don't tick off the people with power because they're allowed to ignore all the Wikipedia rules as being friendly to newbies- people who don't know every single rule about Wikipedia- and the multiple places where it says not to delete for personal reasons.

It's very apparent that Threshold is being removed because one editor ran to all his friends because he did not like how someone was speaking to him. Yet accounts are being banned left and right for sockpuppeting and meatpuppeting. Anyone speaking up for the entry to stay has been banned, ridiculed or outright dismissed. It's very clearly a personal vendetta now, and this meatpuppeting post clearly shows that this is so. We now have two posts from Wikipedia staff. One was actually very encouraging. The other one was nothing more than "Nyah, nyah, got you deleted because you tickeded me and my friends off!"

My only real disappointment in all this is that Wikipedia's detractors, such as Colbert and muiltple other blogs, are right. I had thought they were just rabble-rousing, but after being a victim of what other people have posted about, I see that Wikipedia really isn't what they claim to be. You can claim that it's not the fault of Wikipedia, but the system is flawed when the people with the power to ban others and campaign against small entries do not even have to follow Wikipedia's own rules and there's no one there to stop them.

Threshold's entry is doomed because one editor managed to anger the wrong person, not for notability reasons or anything based on guidelines and policies.

Last edited by Milawe : 01-04-2009 at 02:59 PM. Reason: Reworded
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Old 01-04-2009, 03:49 PM   #33
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Jeez... typical Wikipedia bull. You can't get an article without media coverage. And you can't get media coverage without spending a ton of money. Apply transitivity to it- you can't get an article without spending a lot of money. So Wikipedia is all about who has money.

I guess it's the same as anywhere else though. Money is everything.

We need to band together and get something published.
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Old 01-04-2009, 04:28 PM   #34
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

I agree with you partially on this. I think it's hard to make a firm and true ruling on this simply because then do all MMOs fall under just a general MMO entry and shouldn't have their own entries. If they should be able to keep it, do they get to keep it on the virtue of just being bigger even the ones that have gone out of business? It's very obvious that many, many hours have been put into EQ, WoW, WAR and even some of the defunct games. Darkness Falls even has a Wikipedia entry, and it was shut down by Mythic two years ago. I, however, would really like to be able to read more about it since it's pretty vital to Dark Age of Camelot, one of the more successful MMOs.

I guess I've never really thought of it as an advertisement for a game. It's doubtful that someone will find us on Wikipedia and then decide to play. It's much more likely that someone hears about us and tries to look us up on Wikipedia for more information. That's how Wikipedia used to work for me. I'd want to know about something I hear on TV or on the radio, and I'd type it in to see what I could find out about it. Sometimes I don't do anything with that information except to say, "Wow, cool." Other times, it leads me down to coding a new area or a new system.

We keep track of how people get to Threshold, and no one has ever entered Wikipedia as where they heard about it. There is so much on Wikipedia that I'm unsure how one would use it to advertise. (I'm sure there are ways. I just haven't come up with one yet.)

Anyway, it could very well be that I'm mistaken in what Wikipedia's all about. Maybe people use it very differently than I do. I had always been under the assumption that the more you can find out on Wikipedia, the more likely that it will keep growing. If, however, things that have faded out of the mainstream need to go, then so be it. It's less like an encyclopedia and more like something to keep track of modern and popular trends. (Though, I have to say that the guidelines and policies strongly suggest against this phenomenon.)

In the end, it's true that the people who work the hardest on Wikipedia get to shape what it is, so maybe it's just time to revise the guidelines and policies to reflect the current expectations and culture of Wikipedia.
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Old 01-04-2009, 04:33 PM   #35
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Another problem is that Wikipedia only accepts internet published articles, and many of those sites have been deemed "unreliable" or "self-published". (At least this is what's occurring in on the entry being discussed.) Newspaper articles and magazine articles don't count unless you can find them on the internet. Many, many academic papers are not published on the internet either. I know that Threshold's been in a few newspapers, and we've gotten at least 3 students who found us because they were researching online communities. These papers got published, but who knows where. They weren't uploaded since some of them were written back as far as 1997.

It does seem to be about money, but that kind of stinks!

(Yes, I realize I'm totally obsessing. I'll wrap my mind around it soon and move on.)
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Old 01-04-2009, 04:57 PM   #36
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Directly, you could be right. For a game like this it might not be useful advertising, but probably still advertising (then again, is anything that contains access information not advertising?). For other games or products it might be more useful. But one way it does help is in an indirect way. As someone mentioned Wikipedia is heavily traversed by google bots. If you can get your link in wikipedia, the more links the better, and the more associated with common related search terms, the better your SEO rating on google searches. Which will increase clickthroughs to your site by ranking you higher in google lists.
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Old 01-04-2009, 05:00 PM   #37
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Ah, true that. But people find Threshold by searching for roleplay-enforced or online games. They usually hit TMS or TMC long before they ever find our Wiki entry. The Wiki entry seems most popular with friends or families who can't figure out exactly what it is that we do with Threshold. They look at the entry and figure it out. (Please be aware that the current entry has been chopped down to basically nothing now, and most of the people who know anything about the game has been banned. Also, it's been put in a protected status so only certain people can edit certain parts. Don't know how we got put on protected status when we're supposed to be not noteworthy.)

Though, I have to say, I'm much happier to have this ultimately minor AfD problem than an anti-AfD problem:


Last edited by Milawe : 01-04-2009 at 05:28 PM. Reason: fixed a typo
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Old 01-04-2009, 05:35 PM   #38
blingblong
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

I once got a message for putting a link in a page that Wikipedia uses NOFOLLOW tags to keep their links from enhancing your pagerank.

The best ever plan I ever saw for advertising on Wikipedia was bribing an established editor or two; some of those hard-core wikinerds who do nothing else, so they're dirt poor.

It's kind of like hiring an attorney I suppose; they know the law and how to interpret it to argue their case.
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Old 01-04-2009, 05:41 PM   #39
Neurolysis
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Completely incorrect. Wikipedia accepts citations from books, newspapers, websites... all kinds of places, as long as the source is reliable.

I can understand that people are upset, so I will take some time explaining one thing at a time (which might take a while, I have a ton of coursework to do):

Do not be afraid to name names, or I cannot help in achieving transparency.

It isn't a matter of 'not being good enough', it is a matter of 'not being reliable'. If you are the administrator of a site dedicated to MUDs, your fans love them and you know they want to hear nothing more than you write about them, then you are likely to be going to write about them from a biased point of view. This is not reliable. This is therefore inappropriate.

Again, incorrect. I have never seen a published entry removed simply for being in a non-digital format. Actually, I have, but the editor was warned shortly after, and reverted.

Whilst I see your motive for saying such a thing, it is highly ignorant to say that a 'cabal' decides what is going on. Everyone on Wikipedia thinks there is a cabal too, so there more than likely isn't one at all. I am frequently a participant in deletion discussions, and help to decide the final outcome of the debate, but if there is a cabal I have certainly not recieved my honorary membership as of yet. (Lost in the post, maybe)

Not so. We have deletion reviews every day, and a lot of the time the community decides to overturn the final decision.

We have, actually, the problem is that we can't see what is going on behind an IP address - could be a whole school, and we do get that all the time. It's all a matter of perception.

The problem here is that notability and verifiability usually come hand in hand.

We have a policy on ownership, and that policy is this - it cannot and will not be tolerated on Wikipedia. If you see it happening, you should report it to an administrator.

That's exactly the antonym of what you should be thinking about. The question is are there multiple sources of reviews for these?
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Old 01-04-2009, 06:14 PM   #40
Lasher
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Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

Unless you have some hard proof this is possible, it probably isn't a good direction to take the thread in.

There seems to be enough overview and monitoring of edits on Wikipedia that this would be difficult unless an entire group of admins and higher were in on it. I'd be surprised if it hasn't happen ever, but I'd also be very surprised if it is common.

The challenge seems to be more when something is borderline and personalities come into it. It isn't reasonable to expect something the size of Wikipedia to understand the nuances of every niche on the internet so they have to rely on standard reference sources.

Unfortunately, that just doesn't work for MUDs. What we all know to be "authority" sites for MUDs are not classic sources of authority for Wikipedia in general and we're not going to change that.
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