[prof1515]

Originally Posted by Milawe ...a huge criticism of Wikipedia from academia and why they are NOT considered on par with an encyclopedia. (An encyclopedia is an accepted source for the beginning of research. At most schools, Wikipedia is not.)

An encyclopedia is not an accepted source for any research. You might look over an article to find references to actual source material but under no circumstances is the encyclopedic article itself a source for research because it is neither a primary nor a secondary source. It's an encyclopedia, a summary of the results from the research of others. Any student above the high school level should know that (hell, even high school students should know that).

Please keep in mind that this deletion based on notability is a pretty recent trend in Wikipedia. Originally, you only needed to have verifiability, and notability determined the length of your entry. It's pretty easy to verify that most of these muds exist.

Existance is irrelevant. I can prove the gas station down the road exists. Notability doesn't merely determine the length of an entry. Are you saying that Wikipedia believed that an article on the clay bowl I made in the first grade was acceptable so long as I could produce proof it existed? Somehow, I don't think Wikipedia EVER intended such an interpretation, even if their policies were "originally" worded poorly (assuming they were).

Whether they are notable or not is a very much up to debate but is not grounds for deletion at least not by the written policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. The current trends may be other than what is stated, but then the guidelines and policies should be updated.

There appeared to be several good reasons for deletion. A lack of documentation to prove assertions made in the articles would be grounds to question the suitability of the content of the article. The example given, Threshold's article, lacked any documented material and was filled with irrelevant and inappropriate material for an encyclopedic article. Take out the material that shouldn't be there and there was nothing left in the article. To call it a stub would have been too generous. That leads to the question of notability when so little valid information on the subject exists.

The lack of any documentation to prove notability would therfore be a perfectly acceptable reason for deleting. Encyclopedias, even a user-generated and edited one like Wikipedia, are not telephone directories or grocery lists. There are very few, if any MUDs in existance which constitute a notable subject. There aren't any which are innovative, cutting-edge technology which is transforming the world (even if MUDs themselves led to other developments, the individual games themselves don't). Their cultural impact is practically nil. There really are no legitimate third-party sources which support notability of any MUDs.

Being mentioned in a magazine or newspaper article itself isn't enough to really denote notability. If that was the case, every dip**** who gets a mentioned on the news for owning a two-headed turtle or having found a pretzel shaped like the profile of Elvis would be "notable". It's not however.

If Wikipedia didn't make that clear, then changes in their policy and deletion of articles is a perfectly acceptable way of doing that. Either way, the articles should be deleted because the subjects of them are not worthy of encyclopedic note. That's what Wikipedia is doing. So why are people complaining and crying conspiracy? There is no reason to protest or cry foul if Wikipedia is correcting a policy error (assuming it existed in the first place) in their oversight of content.

Take care,

Jason

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by prof1515 An encyclopedia is not an accepted source for any research. You might look over an article to find references to actual source material but under no circumstances is the encyclopedic article itself a source for research because it is neither a primary nor a secondary source. It's an encyclopedia, a summary of the results from the research of others. Any student above the high school level should know that (hell, even high school students should know that).

"Beginning research." Almost all research begins with a list of citations which CAN and often does include encyclopedic research. Encyclopedias (like Wikipedia, imo) is a great place to START your research, but Wikipedia is not acceptable as a citation in even initial research. Citations to encyclopedias are used for reference and often leads to PRIMARY sources, which is the crux of most research papers. (Scientific papers almost always go beyond just primary resources as well.) So, no need to get your panties in a bunch!

Originally Posted by prof1515 Existance is irrelevant. I can prove the gas station down the road exists. Notability doesn't merely determine the length of an entry. Are you saying that Wikipedia believed that an article on the clay bowl I made in the first grade was acceptable so long as I could produce proof it existed? Somehow, I don't think Wikipedia EVER intended such an interpretation, even if their policies were "originally" worded poorly (assuming they were).

WP:V deals with way more than just establishing existence. It actually goes far beyond that, so there are no worries that your version of Wikipedia ever existed. And as you can see by the arguments about notability on that AfD in discussion, notability itself is a very blurred concept. For example, the 1st man in space is extremely notable. The 2nd one is probably also very notable. What about the 3,239th one? I would say it was still notable, but others could easily say that it's not. Deletions based on notability can easily degenerate into exactly what this one did.

Originally Posted by prof1515 There appeared to be several good reasons for deletion. A lack of documentation to prove assertions made in the articles would be grounds to question the suitability of the content of the article. The example given, Threshold's article, lacked any documented material and was filled with irrelevant and inappropriate material for an encyclopedic article. Take out the material that shouldn't be there and there was nothing left in the article. To call it a stub would have been too generous. That leads to the question of notability when so little valid information on the subject exists.

I'd say that this argument would belong on Wikipedia's talk page for Threshold RPG's article, especially since what remains now has been gutted and multiple references removed. It's hard to even keep track of everything that occurred there. Documented material was more than once removed. Whether you think some of that material was notable or not is also a matter of opinion. On one hand, you could say it's not notable because in the grand scheme of things, most people don't know jack about mudding. On the other hand, you could say that perideridia americana is not notable because most people in America don't know jack about it. However, if you talk to a botanist or most any other scientist, they would probably say that that plant is notable. Though, no one really has an axe to grind against cute little perideridia americana, so its notability probably would never come into question. (Except me since I got poison ivy studying it.)

Originally Posted by prof1515 The lack of any documentation to prove notability would therfore be a perfectly acceptable reason for deleting. Encyclopedias, even a user-generated and edited one like Wikipedia, are not telephone directories or grocery lists.

That's obviously true, but in this case, there wasn't "lack of any documentation."

Originally Posted by prof1515 There are very few, if any MUDs in existance which constitute a notable subject. There aren't any which are innovative, cutting-edge technology which is transforming the world (even if MUDs themselves led to other developments, the individual games themselves don't). Their cultural impact is practically nil. There really are no legitimate third-party sources which support notability of any MUDs.

According to Wikipedia's rules, notability doesn't expire. Arguing that muds are no longer cutting edge is irrelevant because at one point they were cutting edge along with BBSes. When 3D virtual reality games make MMOs obsolete, that doesn't mean that World of Warcraft won't still be notable.

Originally Posted by prof1515 Being mentioned in a magazine or newspaper article itself isn't enough to really denote notability. If that was the case, every dip**** who gets a mentioned on the news for owning a two-headed turtle or having found a pretzel shaped like the profile of Elvis would be "notable". It's not however.

If that were the only citation, then probably not. If you're mentioned in multiple newspapers, more than one online magazine and several websites, maybe that'd be a different story. I'll bet you that some of the more popular phenomenons probably do have a Wikipedia entry, though. And you can probably find some extremely obscure ones, too. It was notable enough for SOMEONE to go make a Wikipedia entry about it. (That doesn't mean it will survive an AfD, though!)

Originally Posted by prof1515 If Wikipedia didn't make that clear, then changes in their policy and deletion of articles is a perfectly acceptable way of doing that. Either way, the articles should be deleted because the subjects of them are not worthy of encyclopedic note. That's what Wikipedia is doing. So why are people complaining and crying conspiracy? There is no reason to protest or cry foul if Wikipedia is correcting a policy error (assuming it existed in the first place) in their oversight of content.

The problem is that there's really no entity that is Wikipedia. The AfD was actually proposed by individuals, and Wikipedia is composed of many, many other individuals. Wikipedia is not "correcting a policy error". The outcry, apparent if you've looked at the topic at all, is because an inordinate number of people voting to KEEP the entry were getting banned, leaving no way to discuss the policy or improve the article. Further outcry resulted when all sources for MUDs were deemed irrelevant by some in order to support the deletion of one MUDs' entry. Wikipedia policy actually states that no article should be removed on notability issues alone and that improvements to the articles should be made if at all possible first. (An effort made extremely difficult with constant reversions and removals of links and sources and quick bans.)

Anyway, I have no interest in getting into another discussion about Wikipedia policy especially when it's not on Wikipedia and won't really do a bit of good. I might be misreading your post, but you seem kind of bent out of shape that MUDs exist on Wikipedia. I'm not sure why since Wikipedia has the ability to far outshine any encyclopedia since it has no limits based on physical space, and Wikipedia's guideline and policies as well as Jim Wales press release statements seem to indicate that that was the original goal for Wikipedia. In the end, though, Wikipedia, like muds, continues to evolve. There may well be a time when fancruft, fictional characters, books, movies, and games are removed from Wikipedia completely.

Whether Threshold's page stays or goes will not the affect the game in the slightest bit. Threshold has never received a single user from Wikipedia, but the issue has grown far beyond Threshold's entry.

In the end, you've always seen to be a proponent of MUDs coming together to form a third party review site. Perhaps this will be an impetus.

[MudMann]

For those who dont care about Threshold, but play muds do what I just did and click MU* Category and start taking links. I think you will find that almost every one can be deleted using the arguments laid down by the admin on wikipedia.

I am not as eloquent as some of the boffins getting involved in this debate.. I am just using common sense. For those not following the debate, this is what my take on the situation was

Comment I have just followed the MU* Games Category link and gone through almost every game listed (briefly). Most of them have even less references, sources than Threshold. If you delete this one entry, you may as well delete every entry in the MU* Category using the same precedence potentially laid down here (I saw maybe one possible exception, and most of the references there were on the same vein as Thresolds.. webbased writeups). If you delete the MU* Category, you are deleting a genre.. if you delete a genre, Wikipedia is incomplete and in essense a useless pile of crap and a failure. I would urge editors to look a little deeper than the Thresold entry, but the MU* category itself and the knock on effects of removing the Threshold entry. Oh, then you may as well move onto Video games, the majority of the 1996 games have nothing to make them notable.. get rid of that category as well.. same thing.. in fact by the time you have finished Wiki will look a lot thinner and deny the existance of anything computer based before 2000.

Summary - If you have categories such as MU* listing games (and there is nothing on the categoryt that says NOTABLE Mu* then list them, and likewise the games listed in the list should have entries even if it is just a stub. And if a game has been produced by a company, like ALL video games listed, so should the developer.. and LIKEWISE, the developer has an entry.

Lots of waffle.. but I hope my point got accross from a 'normal person using wiki' perspective

[Delerak]

Originally Posted by MudMann For those who dont care about Threshold, but play muds do what I just did and click MU* Category and start taking links. I think you will find that almost every one can be deleted using the arguments laid down by the admin on wikipedia. I am not as eloquent as some of the boffins getting involved in this debate.. I am just using common sense. For those not following the debate, this is what my take on the situation was Comment I have just followed the MU* Games Category link and gone through almost every game listed (briefly). Most of them have even less references, sources than Threshold. If you delete this one entry, you may as well delete every entry in the MU* Category using the same precedence potentially laid down here (I saw maybe one possible exception, and most of the references there were on the same vein as Thresolds.. webbased writeups). If you delete the MU* Category, you are deleting a genre.. if you delete a genre, Wikipedia is incomplete and in essense a useless pile of crap and a failure. I would urge editors to look a little deeper than the Thresold entry, but the MU* category itself and the knock on effects of removing the Threshold entry. Oh, then you may as well move onto Video games, the majority of the 1996 games have nothing to make them notable.. get rid of that category as well.. same thing.. in fact by the time you have finished Wiki will look a lot thinner and deny the existance of anything computer based before 2000. Summary - If you have categories such as MU* listing games (and there is nothing on the categoryt that says NOTABLE Mu* then list them, and likewise the games listed in the list should have entries even if it is just a stub. And if a game has been produced by a company, like ALL video games listed, so should the developer.. and LIKEWISE, the developer has an entry. Lots of waffle.. but I hope my point got accross from a 'normal person using wiki' perspective

That's ridiculous. The reason Threshold is getting deleted is for many reasons, not just one. To apply that to every game in a category is just plain ignorance. That's like saying they should delete every television series that is no longer running. However a lot of series have had impacts on society, so they remain. Threshold has had no impact on society whatsoever, so why should it remain?

[Milawe]

I feel that the base of the problem here is that random people are getting to determine notability in a field that is not their expertise. Notability becomes a personal opinion and sliding scale, which, ultimately, is probably why it is prohibited to be used as the only determination for deleting an article.

I'll try to illustrate to you why the notability argument is such a problem. The average person on Wikipedia probably couldn't tell you what pedomorphism is without looking it up on the internet. It, in fact, only gets approximately 2400 hits on google as opposed to the 167,000 hits for Threshold RPG or the 289,000 hits you receive for God Wars. (Yes, very aware of WP:GHIT. Irrelevent to the point.) However, if you talked to a geneticist or an ecologist, they would most likely say that pedomorphism is a very notable concept in biology and is key to many theories involving evolution. Now, should a random editor get to determine whether or its entry is notable and its sources are notable, especially since most of the primary sources for pedomorphism does not exist online? Should a random editor get to vote on the notability of pedomorphism? In addition, should a random editor get to fly in the face of people who are recognized experts in the field?

Is notability simply a popularity vote? If so, where does that leave things like concepts in quantum physics that most of us couldn't even begin to understand but are key to the field? Is notability objective, subjective or semi-objective? Does someone get to come by and say, "Not notable" simply because he doesn't want it to be or simply doesn't understand it? That is a very dangerous precedent to set.

Now, obviously, then we come to the question how big can a relevant field be before it gets "experts"? 100 people? 1,000 people? 10,000 people? I'm not really sure. Over 250,000 characters have been created on Threshold alone, and I'm sure the numbers are much higher for some of the older and bigger muds who have never been to Threshold. (We're still counting and are fully aware that some of these are spammers and multis.) That does not seem to be an insignificant number of people and can surely establish us as a genre.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Delerak That's ridiculous. The reason Threshold is getting deleted is for many reasons, not just one. To apply that to every game in a category is just plain ignorance. That's like saying they should delete every television series that is no longer running. However a lot of series have had impacts on society, so they remain. Threshold has had no impact on society whatsoever, so why should it remain?

It's actually just one reason: notability. You can easily see this in the discussion on Wikipedia.

MudMann's logic is actually a very easy one to follow. Take this entry:

Fast Times at Ridgemont High - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now, go to the references. Peer review, peer review, expert review (Egbert's), popularity list, another list, blog. Apply the standards set to the Thresold entry. Bye, bye entry.

How about this one?

Dragonlance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

References are from Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns the Dragonlance copyright. Articles cited are written by the authors of Dragonlance or from the official Dragonlance forum. Apply the standards being set to Threshold's entry. So long, Dragonlance! Actually, Dragonlance would get deleted far before Threshold would with those references.

Yet, Dragonlance spawned more than 50 novels by various authors. Untold numbers of people have played DnD with Dragonlance modules. Who knows how many people have read the books. Yet mainstream media hasn't really written about Dragonlance.

So, tell me exactly how you know for a fact that Threshold has had no impact on society, and then tell me how that even matters based on Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. There is no WP:NOIMPACTONSOCIETY.

Don't let your disinterest and biases against Threshold blind you on the issues here. I know you don't have a whole lot of love in your heart for Threshold, but as I said before, this has moved beyond the scope of Threshold. The entry itself now is irrelevant. No one's being allowed to improve it. The people who could improve it aren't interested in doing so. Whether it lives or dies matters not at all to the actual game, but the precedent it sets matters to our genre.

Try applying it to something more dear and near to your heart:

Dark Sun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

References: All from TSR or Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns the copyright to Dark Sun. There's actually no references there that determines notability at all, just verifiability. It has not been written about in a third-party, reliable source according to the standards set to the Threshold entry. I think you start to see how the problem perpetuates itself.

[Zivilyn]

Lol Milawe, I actually went through and did the same look on Dragonlance (as well as looking through the other Mud's listed). I didn't want to bring it up for fear the wikinazi's would vape those entries as well.

I find it largely humorous that while my Mud's webpage is considered a valid source of information on the genre, the entry on the game itself wasn't. With what's going on now, I wouldn't even bother trying to create another entry as it would most likely end up 'Not notable' and me banging my head on the keys. My game has continued on since 1996, spawned a slew of other Dragonlance Muds, but... niche genre in a niche genre heh.

[Aeran]

Originally Posted by Milawe References: All from TSR or Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns the copyright to Dark Sun. There's actually no references there that determines notability at all, just verifiability. It has not been written about in a third-party, reliable source according to the standards set to the Threshold entry. I think you start to see how the problem perpetuates itself.

You are not allowed to reason like this according to WP:ALLORNOTHING .

[MudMann]

Originally Posted by Milawe It's actually just one reason: notability. You can easily see this in the discussion on Wikipedia. MudMann's logic is actually a very easy one to follow. .

Thanks you saved me a job there.. I think a certain poster either woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, or just likes being beligerent :-)

My post was nothing to do with defending Threshold.. but an observation of the rules of Wiki as a whole. Look at the justification posted by those that want to delete the Threshhold entry, then start taking random links in the MU* (or even the Video game 1996) and APPLY THE SAME REASONING.

Bye bye entry(s)

I am serious. Good of Milawe to give examples of some "well known" names, and save me the bother

All of the WIKI:<xxx> or whatever policies / guidlines they use that are thrown around are ALL based on / and refer to examples of previous arguments to delete an entry. If Threshold is deleted then wikipedi.. amongst others dismisses

1) TMC (I still think of this as THE MUD site / directory.. no offense TMS :-)
2) TMS
3) various other MMO sites, and most article effectivly written about MUD's by anyone
4) Any publication no longer in print
5) The words of people who have to be classified as Experts (pioneering the MUD genre, and winning awards is pretty bloody defining as an expert to me regardless of whether you agree with him or not.. or whether he plays MMORPG's anymore)

and so on.. in otherwords pretty much refereneces / sources . notes for every other MU*. Even Acheae (as big as it was? dunno) would possiblty fail, though to be blunt I was never overly enamoured with it. BUT thats a personal opinion.

The only MUD's I have seen mentioned in modern press (and I read most mags, including retro.. hence why I got into this whole debate) are Achea, Diskworld and Wheel of Time.. but they were only paragraphs.

What next.... spectrum games? Because all reviews are from unreliable sources? All fan sites / remakes are not worthy of note. Well crap, there are no spectrum publications anymore, and WoS is fan run. Get rid. Yet these games are in my memory... are they in the memory of a 20 year old admin? not likely. They defined my youth and where a staple of my generation, but are not notable to anyone else.

To be honest, google is my friend.. and I know that is all I will need for a search on there. Overall who gives a toss whether its in Wikipedia at the end of the day. Its not the first place I go to search for new muds or whats happeneing in the world of muds. What this whole thing has told me is "Wikipedia is flawed". The fact that such a huge percentage of information is controlled by a tiny number of people is wrong.

Waffling again.. sorry

and as a gossipy aside... did the player who posted the deletion, who says openly on his user page he used to play threshold (and the name was the name of his character) get kicked out, and if so how the HELL is a clear violation of the Wiki pillars being ignored. Also when you agree to the terms and conditions of Threshold.. didnt the character name become the property of Frogdice ;-).. please take this last paragraph in the manner it was posted.. far FAR from serious

[MudMann]

Deleting due to duplication

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Aeran You are not allowed to reason like this according to WP:ALLORNOTHING .

One of the big reasons I'm not discussing this on Wikipedia.

Also, what you quoted is in an essay. Apparently, those don't count for anything! (At least according to the standards being set for the AfD discussion on Threshold's entry.)

[Jazuela]

Originally Posted by J.delanoy Hi. Originally Posted by J.delanoy View Post To draw an analogy, imagine a local election for mayor of a small town, small enough that pretty much everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows who they are.

I just have to say - I'm a regular wikipedia user, I go there several times a day to check on things...and..
I've never heard of you.

Does that mean you should be discounted as an unreliable source?

Just asking

[Lasher]

The wikipedia discussion was just closed with the result of delete.

Coincidence that it was closed within seconds of this last comment?:

Question on Wiki policies. The header here says to assume good faith. Regardless of the outcome of this particular AfD, I do not believe good faith has been followed. The original recommendation for AfD came from a former Threshold player who was removed from Threshold for being in conflict with their rules and policies. The particular challenges Threshold is having with verifiable references applies to many MUD listings on Wikipedia. The header says we should "assume" that is coincidence. What if we flat out don't believe it? If this were a genuine effort to improve the relevancy of Wikipedia coverage of the MUD genre, you would expect good faith to involve a little self reflection along the lines of "I have a history with this MUD, perhaps I should start elsewhere to make it very clear this isn't targeted at Threshold". Is there any Wikipedia oversight of this kind of thing? If this discussion is to continue along the lines of "it doesn't matter how the afd got started, now the discussion is the listing itself" then so be it. However, when this is all over and done with, senior Wikipedia admins who do act in good faith and sincerely want that to be the public perception of Wikipedia may want to take a closer look into this particular AfD.

Assuming good faith, I suppose it must have been. Hope nobody needs a favor from me this week, online or offline. This continued assumption of good faith in the face of so much conflicting evidence has just about used up all my goodwill for the week.

If anyone knows the actual answer to the question in the last comment, please post. Thanks.

[Samson]

Shut up!! Christ! SharkD (talk) 23:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Well that was sure a lovely way to end things, wasn't it?

[scandum]

Originally Posted by Lasher The wikipedia discussion was just closed with the result of delete. Coincidence that it was closed within seconds of this last comment?:

No, with the canvassing it was pretty much a given that this would happen. Wikipedia isn't the platform for these kinds of articles anyways.

Perhaps someone should set up a mud wiki - there's WikiMU* but it's littered with ads.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by scandum No, with the canvassing it was pretty much a given that this would happen.

Yes, I agree. With the canvassing the admins did to rally support it was certainly a given.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by MudMann and as a gossipy aside... did the player who posted the deletion, who says openly on his user page he used to play threshold (and the name was the name of his character) get kicked out, and if so how the HELL is a clear violation of the Wiki pillars being ignored. Also when you agree to the terms and conditions of Threshold.. didnt the character name become the property of Frogdice ;-).. please take this last paragraph in the manner it was posted.. far FAR from serious

Hehe. This actually leads into something very interesting to examine. (Wikipedia's become my temporary hobby.)

Let's assume that the guy who started this and the AfD didn't play underaged, didn't have a conflict of interest, and was never deleted off Threshold, so we're going to assume complete good faith here. (Even if we choke on it!)

Let's assume his ultimate goal is to become an administrator of Wikipedia, which I've discovered, is a voting process of existing administrators. (A little side note, once you're given administrative powers, Wikipedia doesn't have any policies in place to remove them if you become an abusive administrator. The reasoning is pretty sound here because the removal process itself could be extremely abusive.) Let's assume that all he wants to do is become an administrator to make Wikipedia a better place for all. In order to do this, he has to have a ton of contributions. What's easier? Create useful, notable articles with a ton of research and excellent writing behind it, or... go out and delete or re-work what other people have done? Is it easier to work on improving an article and digging up citations for it, or is it easier to say, "Hey, someone else didn't do the work here, we better put it up for an AfD?" before you put in a request for adminship? The goal here is to have a lot of contributions, hopefully in a short amount of time.

How long has Wikipedia been running? I think it was created in 2004. So basically all the "easy" articles have long been established as well as created. A really good option for someone trying to get enough on his/her "resume" to make a successful request for adminship is to have tons of AfDs to display how you've been "cleaning up" Wikipedia.

Why are MUDs such weak targets? Let's face it. Most MUD players and administrators invest all their creative time and effort in their games. It would be extremely difficult to have the time to be an avid player of a mud and a Wiki-warrior. So, you're not going to know the terms, the culture, or the tricks to defend yourself. Very few muds have been written up in mainstream media, and even if your mud has, it's probably not been more than two or three times. Most of the people who have had their muds deleted off Wikipedia just say, "Oh well," just like we will. Fighting it takes too much time. It's only a matter of time before the next Wiki-warrior comes by to try to rock it in order to tuck another AfD under their belt.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Samson Yes, I agree. With the canvassing the admins did to rally support it was certainly a given.

I think this played a huge part of justifying the final deletion, yes, but here's the problem with "punishing" someone for canvasing rather than judging on the merits of the issues involving the actual article. (Remember, an AfD is supposed to fail if there is no concensus, and there was plenty of canvassing for DELETE as well.) The reason that there was canvassing in the first place is that the people who were trying to deal with it on Wikipedia were getting banned left and right even without provocation. Anyone who was trying to actually better the article was getting banned for being a sockpuppet or a meat puppet, and all their changes were being reverted. Even while the AfD was going, attempts at improvement were being reverted. So, if you now have absolutely no voice on Wikipedia and no recourse on Wikipedia, what do you do? You can sit down and watch an entry that you have interest in die a slow death, or you go to people who might be able to give you suggestions on what to do and maybe have some hope of saving it. Once the entry was targeted, it was placed in a lose/lose situation immediately in the current culture of Wikipedia.

The administrators of Threshold did not create the Threshold Wikipedia entry. I don't actually know who created it, but once it was created, we were happy to help support it along with the players working on it. Heck, I went and tried to improve it a few times myself.

Again, the deletion of Threshold's Wikipedia entry will not affect the game one bit except that some of the admins will re-allocate their time back into the game rather than in this issue which was going to have to happen anyway. I do think that this issue served to heavily expose the flaws in Wikipedia's system, and with this AfD there's heavy precedence to remove comic book characters, fictional characters, fantasy worlds, and basically the fancruft that many, many, many people use Wikipedia for. (For example, one of my most recent uses of Wikipedia was to look up Dr. Doom after seeing the Fantastic Four. Whenever I want to look up serious things, I go to far more reliable sources.) I'm speaking only for myself here, but after this, I'll never contribute another word or correction to Wikipedia. It's far too easy for one person to come by and rock whatever work you've done. Sure, you can say, "Well, Milawe never contributed much, so Wikipedia won't really care." But I'm hardly an unreasonable person, and it's extremely doubtful that I'm the only one who feels this way. (Well, actually, I know I'm not since there's a ton of information out there about the exact phenomena that hit Threshold's entry and people protesting it.) What's more, the people who began this will continue to do more of the same, so it's doubtful that I'll be the last person to feel this way.

[Delerak]

So let me get this straight. The Mud threshold puts their mud into wikipedia, and it got deleted. Not that it matters, but who cares? Even if you play the game, it's just wikipedia. They can do whatever they want to your articles, it's not that hard to understand. If they delete the Darksun entry I could care less. That's the nature of the wikipedia website, even if you don't agree with it. You're the ones who went to wikipedia to put your mud in there in the first place.

[Delerak]

What's worse, you guys came to TMS and posted a thread trying to rally all other MUDders against wikipedia, which is pretty low. I still use wikipedia and will continue to use it, it's a pool of knowledge. Now that the pointless entry of Threshold is no longer taking up some KB on one of it's servers, I'm happier to be honest. I don't think wikipedia should be abused the way small-time gamers like us mudders seemed to be abusing it.

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by Samson Yes, I agree. With the canvassing the admins did to rally support it was certainly a given.

Yup. It is a walled garden where the hardcore lifers protect each other from "outsiders." As I said earlier, it is like the worst, most newbie-unfriendly mud you ever played. The editors and their admin buddies bully and abuse everyone else, and make sure they get their way regardless of actual policies and rules of the site.

This decision was a COMPLETE violation of WP:DP#Deletion_discussion. "If there is no rough consensus and the page is not a BLP describing a relatively unknown person, the page is kept and is again subject to normal editing, merging or redirecting as appropriate." The closing admin does not have the right to substitute his own personal opinion for the policies and rules of Wikipedia. What is the point of an AfD is a closing admin can just swoop in and decide whatever he personally feels?

[Samson]

What's even worse is now that the article is deleted, there's no record of the reversion wars by the admins that led to it. So they can now run around claiming it was always just a tiny little stub of an article and there's no proof unless someone screen cap'd the pages ( I didn't ).

The only record remaining is a mess of an AfD discussion which as far as I could see didn't even run it's entire course.

[Aelitan]

I think the AfD was also closed two (2) days before it should have been, as well.

In related news, Colin Brennan wrote an article about the situation, entitled MUD history dissolving into the waters of time - Massively

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Delerak What's worse, you guys came to TMS and posted a thread trying to rally all other MUDders against wikipedia, which is pretty low. I still use wikipedia and will continue to use it, it's a pool of knowledge. Now that the pointless entry of Threshold is no longer taking up some KB on one of it's servers, I'm happier to be honest. I don't think wikipedia should be abused the way small-time gamers like us mudders seemed to be abusing it.

There is no "against Wikipedia". It's not a an entity. The entity of Wikipedia did not create this issue. Its guidelines and policies being used as a corporal sword +15 by a few was the problem. I absolutely don't regret asking MUDders for help, though I definitely didn't ask anyone to go participate in the AfD discussion. We did ask for them to look at it and suggest to us what we could do. This resulted in Wikipedia administrators who were acting in good faith coming to actually telling us what to do, how to do it, and started me down the path of learning the ins and outs of Wikipedia.

If it's a pool of knowledge, then it doesn't hurt to have more knowledge. Whereas it does hurt to have less knowledge.

You're making me giggle with the KB comment. You DO realize how cheap memory is now, right? You can get a terabyte of storage for $99. That's 1,073,741,824 KBs, so it's $0.000000092 for 1 KB of space. That's the whole reason that one of Wikipedia's policy is this

"Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia; there is no practical limit to the number of topics it can cover, or the total amount of content, other than verifiability and the other points presented on this page. However, there is an important distinction between what technically can be done, and what reasonably should be done, which is covered in the Content section below.

This policy is not a free pass for inclusion: articles must still abide by the appropriate content policies, particularly those covered in the five pillars." (From WP:NOTPAPER)

Please also note that WP:NOTABILITY, the thing that was used to bludgeon Threshold's entry and likely many other mud's entries is a GUIDELINE rather than policy.

So, I find it amusing that a few people are declaring that Wikipedia is "not the place for MUDs" and that MUDders are abusing Wikipedia. A MUD entry is hardly different than a movie entry, an entry about some video game, or an entry about a fictional character such as Frodo Baggins (I gave up on trying to link it).

Lastly, if MUDs were not allowed, I don't see why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped..._about_fiction) would even exist. Lastly, if MUDs were not allowed, then wouldn't Wikipedia have a policy against it? They have a policy for everything else. WP:MUDSNOTALLOWED would have made this much easier on all of us.

(On a side note, Wiki-lingo is kind of fun. You can find all sorts of things to back up your arguments! WP:WTFPWN!)

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Zivilyn Lol Milawe, I actually went through and did the same look on Dragonlance (as well as looking through the other Mud's listed). I didn't want to bring it up for fear the wikinazi's would vape those entries as well.

Oi. I didn't think about that. Sorry! I guess I keep assuming the things I've listed are objectively notable. Hopefully, Threshold's deletion was actually a result of personal agendas, so they'll leave these other things alone. If not, then I guess Wikipedia will continue to eat itself.

Originally Posted by Zivilyn I find it largely humorous that while my Mud's webpage is considered a valid source of information on the genre, the entry on the game itself wasn't. With what's going on now, I wouldn't even bother trying to create another entry as it would most likely end up 'Not notable' and me banging my head on the keys. My game has continued on since 1996, spawned a slew of other Dragonlance Muds, but... niche genre in a niche genre heh.

Well, if you do decide to try, I've met some very thoughtful and helpful editors/admins on Wikipedia through this. They could give you some good guidelines. Don't blame you for not wanting to try, though. A shame, though, since Ansalon Mud is a nice haven for fans of Dragonlance and a piece of Dragonlance history. Ansalon Mud, though, has references and mentions on Dragonlance pages apart from the game itself. Didn't that count for something?

[Zivilyn]

Originally Posted by Milawe Oi. I didn't think about that. Sorry! I guess I keep assuming the things I've listed are objectively notable. Hopefully, Threshold's deletion was actually a result of personal agendas, so they'll leave these other things alone. If not, then I guess Wikipedia will continue to eat itself.

Heh, I hear you. I just noticed some were really small on outside sources, heck some had 20 references... from their own pages.

Originally Posted by Milawe Well, if you do decide to try, I've met some very thoughtful and helpful editors/admins on Wikipedia through this. They could give you some good guidelines. Don't blame you for not wanting to try, though. A shame, though, since Ansalon Mud is a nice haven for fans of Dragonlance. Ansalon Mud, though, has references and mentions on Dragonlance pages apart from the game itself. Didn't that count for something?

One might think it would count but honestly I doubt it would at the moment with the sharks circling in the water . I might consider writing one up, but I'd want to run it by an editor on there before ever attempting to post it. If all else fails I suppose it could end up as an extended 'about' page on the game's website.
As it is, I'm just glad that people in the community enjoy the story pages and use the building/mprog guides.

[MudMann]

*chuckle*

You get policies and rules rammed down your throat till your head hurts, then they break one of their own -fundamental rules- and what a stupid, immature summation :-)

Bad luck Threshold, but lets be honest, look at the AMAZING press you got from notable experts / webpages. All I take from this is that Wikipedia is a flawed resource.. yeah yeah, I cant find an entry for a mud.. but how many other unrelated entries are modified / editted by people who dont actually have a clue.

Overall. If this was an agenda by people determined to do damage to Threshold, they had the complete opposite effect. You lucky bastards... people pay £1000's for that kind of recognition for SEO purposes!!!!!

:-D

and to those sour, wretched people on this forum who made it SO clear they have a problem with Threshold, and missed the bigger picture here.. you really are a sad, sad pathetic bunch. I wont name names, its not required, but those people who take offense at this paragraph will know who they are.

Thing to take from this for people who give a damn

- We need an independant MUD resource
- We need plenty of coverage of MUD's, independant reviews
- Drum up support and ask Magazines or official press to do reviews. Loads of them have Retro sections, and clearly there are MUD players at magazines such as TOTAL PC GAMING

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by MudMann Bad luck Threshold, but lets be honest, look at the AMAZING press you got from notable experts / webpages. All I take from this is that Wikipedia is a flawed resource.. yeah yeah, I cant find an entry for a mud.. but how many other unrelated entries are modified / editted by people who dont actually have a clue.

Yeah, I'm definitely not going to cry over that. I'm not even going to cry over the fact that the article was deleted, especially if it'll keep a few other muds from going down the tubes the way we did. (And seriously, if another mud gets attacked, we all know much better how to fight it off now.) My hope, also, is with the outcry that came from this, the Wiki-warriors will back off muds, at least for a while. Threshold's entry is a pretty small price to pay to galvanize the counter movement, and honestly, it's nice to expose some of the more ignorant and corrupt editors/administrators. (Seriously, claiming that Richard Bartle and Raph Koster posted about Threshold because of canvassing is just the height of disrespect and stupidity. If Threshold has the kind of power of manipulate these learned men, maybe we're notable and shouldn't have been deleted! Can't have it both ways.)

Originally Posted by MudMann Overall. If this was an agenda by people determined to do damage to Threshold, they had the complete opposite effect. You lucky bastards... people pay £1000's for that kind of recognition for SEO purposes!!!!!

Thanks for making me smile. I hadn't gotten around to thinking about it that way yet.

Originally Posted by MudMann Thing to take from this for people who give a damn - We need an independant MUD resource - We need plenty of coverage of MUD's, independant reviews - Drum up support and ask Magazines or official press to do reviews. Loads of them have Retro sections, and clearly there are MUD players at magazines such as TOTAL PC GAMING

Threshold and I have been discussing a project of this sort from the moment the AfD came into effect. (It's very unlikely we're going to go down the independent review path, though. That opens a whole can of worms that I'm not sure would actually be good for the community.) [deleted a bunch of stuff when I realized it's irrelevant to this particular discussion]. It's probably a good topic for a different discussion.

My favorite quote that has come from all this:

I think Wikipedia is now an MMOG, populated by rival editing guilds.

[MudMann]

Trying not going to get too much into the discussion here, but if MUD's still want to be treated as viable, modern day products, they must open themselves up to independant review like every other product in the world.

If Gamespot / IGN choose to review a mud.. you going to say no? If TOTAL PC GAMING, or PC GAMER (an International magazine) pick up on this and offer to write a review / article.. you going to try to lay down terms :-)

However this is off the beaten track. Threshold lost the Wiki battle, but my god.. did they win the war! I just hope other MUD's dont start to suffer the same stupid fate.

[scandum]

Originally Posted by Samson Yes, I agree. With the canvassing the admins did to rally support it was certainly a given.

It would have been smarter to ask at the MUD article's talk page for help with the Threshold article, but as it is there was little that could be done given the problems with notability and the verifiability of sources.

The only way to restore the article would be to find pseudo-reliable sources on Usenet and other message archives to piece together a somewhat coherent historical entry, but that's hours of work and might still not result in a viable article.