[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Threshold Threshold was deleted, when it had all of this in its favor:

Sorry to ask, but can't see the deletion thread.

[*] Two major gaming magazines (Computer Games Magazine, and Computer Gaming World). You can call them "throw away mentions" if you want, but that's unnecessarily dismissive. For a MUD to get mentioned in a major PC gaming magazine is pretty huge.

But the standard isn't "What's notable for a MUD" it's "What's notable." I doubt they're consistent about it, but I DO think that Wikipedia is at least in theory made better by considering what's notable rather than what's notable relative to the audience size of something. If you use the latter standard, then you're in a situation where the more obscure the subject matter, the easier it is to have a Wikipedia page. At the extreme, If I invent a new type of game with one friend, we could convincingly claim that it is the #1 game of that type of game in the world. So what though?

Scale that scenario up a lot and I can see where most MUDs are going to have a very hard time establishing themselves as having any notability to the wider world. I'm not trying to be unnecessarily dismissive of the mentions in CGM and CGW but weren't they basically throwaway mentions? (much like when Total PC Gaming recently ranked Achaea as the best MUD in the world. I'm proud of that and will certainly use it in marketing, but it was, frankly, a throwaway mention). Consider this: It is not a big deal to simply be included in a computer games magazine for a couple of sentences. It's really not. Multiple dozens of games get included in every single issue of pretty much every single games magazine. It's totally routine to simply be mentioned, in fact.

[*] Staff review from TMC.

Wasn't Wikipedia's thing here was that this was a volunteer with no established credibility as a journalist? I'd have to agree.

[*] Staff review from GameCommandos.

I was very fond of GameCommandos, and Ilya, its creator, was a full-time Iron Realms employee for four or five years (ending a few months ago). I wouldn't consider it more than a jumped up blog though. Also, can you even prove this happened (I'm not questioning you, but without evidence I think Wikipedia should be questioning it)? Gamecommandos seems to be completely gone.

[*] Praise and a recommendation from CNET Gamecenter.

I think there are two issues here. One is it doesn't appear to be on Cnet anymore and two is that if it's the blurb on Theshold's site, I think that squarely qualifies as a throwaway mention. It's basically a letter to the editor from a random Cnet user. Again, not trying to attack you here. I can just see the point of view that would disqualify this kind of thing from notability.

[*] Various awards and rankings from TMC, TMS, TMJ, etc.

I'd probably side with Wikipedia as to the authoritativeness of those sites for their purposes.

[*] Endorsement from the most recognized experts in the world as "notable."

I don't know what Wikipedia's rules are here so I can't really comment, but there's certainly room for Wikipedia to decide that what Bartle thinks of as notable isn't what Wikipedia thinks of as notable.

[*] Factual notability, like 12+ years of existence, over 300,000 characters created, and (correct me if I am wrong) the only commercial role play enforced game in existence, etc.

I don't think simply existing for 12 years makes most things notable. Sure, if you were to get a radioactive isotope with a half life of a millisecond to last for 12 years, you'd have done something pretty notable. Existing as MUD for 12 years is just a matter of having started it more than 12 years ago and paying the hosting bill every month.

Characters created doesn't mean anything. I could launch a MUD and do that in a few days with a script (or another user could, etc).

The problem with claiming that you're the only commercial roleplay enforced game in existence is that it's true or not true depending on what you mean, on a detail level, by roleplay enforced. For instance, on the lighter end, some big commercial MMOs have "roleplay enforced" servers. Their enforcement is pretty much limited to requiring a less-chaotic naming policy, but it's "enforced" in some sense. Threshold has a higher level of enforcement, but certainly isn't as roleplay enforced as another MUD could be. Plus, I don't know that being the only COMMERCIAL roleplay enforced game is enough of a distinguisher, particularly as I consider commercial to be just another game feature, like having PvP or not having orcs. Again, I'm not sure this is particularly notable. Almost every MUD could claim to be the only MUD in existence with a particular combination of game features.

Toward that end, I hope any MUD admin who has a problem like this will let us know about it. If they are worried about canvassing, just send me an email. Most of us don't live on Wikipedia like they do. We aren't checking the AFD alert pages and crap like that. I know I'll be quick to help with research and such if anyone needs it.

I share your wishes here that MUD admins bring this to people's attention on TMS or TMC when this happens. I think what I think of as notability is a lot closer to the Wikipedia line than yours, but please understand it's a legitimate difference of opinion, not an attempt to attack Threshold or you.

[Milawe]

Just realized that one of my comments could really be taken the wrong way. I was speaking specifically of Darkness Falls and Mythic, not IRE, when discussing companies that have dumped their text muds when their graphical one took off.

[Lasher]

The listing had it's day in court and was closed. The deletion review may or may not succeed. Apparently someone requested an "RFC" on Cambios the user which seems to lead to a big discussion where people have their say and then at the end of it someone officially tells him off?

I'd suspect that Cambios isn't going to be too active on Wikipedia either way after all this and any discussion on whether or not he should be told to stand in the corner for an hour has less value to Wikipedia than the last comment on the AfD itself which was completely brushed over:

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.

Maybe the answer is to open your own RFC or WP:SOMETHING - in that case I'm going to be extra self-important here and quote myself a second time:

Kind of like telling your neighborhood association yard monitor that they are mistaken and the height of your grass is just fine. You might be right, but it's quicker, easier and less likely to result in repeated banging of your head on the nearest wall to just mow the yard than it is to play in their world.

MUDs did just fine for years before Wikipedia existed and whether or not they are covered on Wikipedia itself is probably going to have zero affect on any of our futures. I'd have liked to see the listing stay but they did also add that one AfD does not set "precedence" for another so it might not have mattered either way.

The only real "bad taste" from all this is how the AfD got started in the first place and how a post on this forum somehow became "massive canvassing". Perhaps also a little disappointment in myself that at the end of it all I probably spent more time trying to "defend" Threshold's listing than I did Aardwolf's

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by the_logos I share your wishes here that MUD admins bring this to people's attention on TMS or TMC when this happens. I think what I think of as notability is a lot closer to the Wikipedia line than yours, but please understand it's a legitimate difference of opinion, not an attempt to attack Threshold or you.

I think the difference comes in because I extrapolate it much further than you might. In the field of science, there are many things that are extremely core and notable theories and terms that don't get written about much out of scientific journals and such. Even then, a single CONCEPT might not get more than a paragraph or two, which could easily qualify as "throw away". My examples before have been pedomorphism and perideridia americana. Is it really right for you or some random editor on Wikipedia who wouldn't begin to know the first things about how pedomorphism could relate to the formation of a spinal cord and thus all vertebrates get to determine what is or isn't notable about the topic?

I could apply this to many, many more scientific theories and phrases that the average person has never heard of, and I feel that has a serious tie-in here.

Our definitions of notability seem very diverse here just as it is on Wikipedia, and that's the problem with making WP:N (a guideline) the controlling factor rather than WP:V (a policy). Is notability objective? Is notability semi-objective? Or is notability completely subjective?

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Milawe You're stating this as if we don't all know that we're a niche hobby. That's kind of not the point. In the end, online gaming is not considered a mainstream hobby period, even if you include all the big-name MMOs and such.

Runescape was fifth most searched for term on Yahoo last year. WoW has 11 million players. They're not as mainstream as, say, baseball, but they're clearly having a major impact on a LOT of people. There's a difference of multiple magnitudes between them and even the biggest text MUDs.

Video games in general are considered for kids, so gets very little impact in general.

I'm not sure where you're getting this impression, but it's very outdated. Some of the biggest companies in the world have major gaming divisions. Sony, Microsoft, etc. The biggest publications in the world talk regularly about video games (NY Times, Newsweek, the Guardian, thousands more, etc). There's a tv channel in the US devoted to video games. There are a couple in Korea devoted just to WATCHING other people play videogames (Starcraft and such). Video game conferences draw over 100,000 people to them and attract billions of dollars of investment. Major retailers like Best Buy devote massive amounts of floor space to video games.

Incidentally, according to the 2008 annual ESA study on gamer demographics, the average US gamer is 35 years old, and 65% of heads of households play video games.

That's fine, but is it really right to tell people they shouldn't care either? If everyone took on that attitude, then there wouldn't be any attempt to preserve and better document mud history. Even if Threshold's article on Wikipedia becomes nothing more than a fossil in time, at the very least, other muds might be able to start snapping up what's out there now before other sites holding resources are lost.

I will someday write a 10 page or so history of Iron Realms. Wikipedia can choose to use it or not (I'd imagine not) but it'll be out there as the authoritative history of Iron Realms as far as people I care about are concerned. Whether the Wikipedia page reflects some, all, or none of that info doesn't make it less available. Just makes it less available on Wikipedia! Wikipedia isn't the only place to get info after all.

Threshold had a spike in usage this year as well. That's not going to keep our Wikipedia article, though. Looking at things in the long run, if Wikipedia's editors continue this kind of behavior, it won't be long until something bigger and brighter can come its way and make it obsolete. Editors who get sick of the inane system that governs Wikipedia will simply move on to other places, and if content continues to get removed, then it's not hard to imagine that they'll have very little left to work with.

We'll see! The only likely challenger was Google Knol, but it hasn't gotten very far.

As for your comments on TMS, I don't really see it as being any different than Rotten Tomatoes or a dozen other movie sites that are used as resources on Wikipedia all the time. TMS is a ranking site with forums and some articles. It doesn't really pretend to be more than that.

I don't know what Wikipedia's rules are regarding this, but I'd imagine it's a scale thing (multiple orders of magnitude between TMS/TMC and Rotten Tomatoes) and that pointing out what a movie's rating is on Rotten Tomatoes isn't used to establish notability (though I could be wrong...I don't think they should be used to establish notability but my opinion doesn't matter to Wikipedia) in any case, but as a fact about the movie/game/whatever.

--matt

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Milawe Just realized that one of my comments could really be taken the wrong way. I was speaking specifically of Darkness Falls and Mythic, not IRE, when discussing companies that have dumped their text muds when their graphical one took off.

Thanks for the clarification! Iron Realms has definitely not been dumped and isn't going to be. It's very much a going concern.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Milawe I think the difference comes in because I extrapolate it much further than you might. In the field of science, there are many things that are extremely core and notable theories and terms that don't get written about much out of scientific journals and such. Even then, a single CONCEPT might not get more than a paragraph or two, which could easily qualify as "throw away". My examples before have been pedomorphism and perideridia americana. Is it really right for you or some random editor on Wikipedia who wouldn't begin to know the first things about how pedomorphism could relate to the formation of a spinal cord and thus all vertebrates get to determine what is or isn't notable about the topic?

I personally think there's an objective difference between an entertainment product/fictional setting and hard science, though I don't know where one would draw the line in terms of what scientific minutiae gets included and doesn't get included. Luckily, it's not up to me.

--matt

[the_logos]

Sorry about the multiple posts in a row. I'm laid up after some minor foot surgery yesterday, and am not going to start my Fallout 3 adventures for the day until later.

Does anyone who knows more about Wikipedia's rules than me know if they'd accept screenshots of now-dead websites or scanned pictures of print articles as references? I can see where they might not, as the magic of Photoshop could produce pretty much anything. Just wondering.

--matt

[DonathinFrye]

Originally Posted by the_logos Sorry about the multiple posts in a row. I'm laid up after some minor foot surgery yesterday, and am not going to start my Fallout 3 adventures for the day until later. Does anyone who knows more about Wikipedia's rules than me know if they'd accept screenshots of now-dead websites or scanned pictures of print articles as references? I can see where they might not, as the magic of Photoshop could produce pretty much anything. Just wondering. --matt

No. There would be no evidence that the screen-shot might not be doctored. Unfortunately, this is the case for any online content, which is part of the problem in the first place.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by the_logos Sorry about the multiple posts in a row. I'm laid up after some minor foot surgery yesterday, and am not going to start my Fallout 3 adventures for the day until later.

No worries. I think you put up some very legitimate arguments, and it's interesting. I had to step away from the computer for a while to tend to some stuff, but I did found myself eager to come read more discussions on this.

While I agree with you that science and entertainment are very different, the arguments presented should someone decide to attack a science article could very much be the same. There are plenty of things that I think are objectively notable that wouldn't survive the test that was put on Threshold regardless of whether or not Threshold is objectively notable.

I just read an article on the video game perception in the media within the last two weeks. One of the main points is that it doesn't receive the coverage it should based on how many people are involved. I'll try to dig it up again for you to read as well.

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by the_logos don't see either TMS or TMC as establishing notability.

I do not think those two sites by themselves single, or double-handedly establish notability. But I am inclined to agree with Dr. Bartle and Raph Koster that they are notable and reliable sources for information about MUDs. As such, they are legitimate sources for moving towards establishing notability of a MUD. Furthermore, the whole obsession with notability is ridiculous in a non-paper encyclopedia. Verifiability is what should matter. Let readers and users worry about notability by choosing to search for the topic or not.

Originally Posted by the_logos That's kind of funny but I find it hard to care much.

You are obviously entitled to feel this way. There could be a lot of reasons why you don't care about situations like this whereas other people care passionately about it. I won't even begin to postulate.

Originally Posted by the_logos Anyway, just pointing out that it's easy for people in general to overestimate our own importance in the scheme of things since we are all the center of our own little universes.

I don't think anyone is overestimating anything. I believe MUDders are painfully aware that MUDs are a niche hobby that receives very little mainstream attention.

But I believe it is fact that MUDs played a significant role in the growth of the internet, and a tremendous, absolutely vital role in the growth of the MMORPG industry. For those two reasons alone, I believe MUDs are notable and it is important to preserve MUD history. Who knows where the gaming industry will go? In 20 years virtual worlds could be the dominant form of entertainment - dwarfing movies or television. That is not an absurd possibility. Science fiction has postulated as much for decades. If that happens, the importance of MUDs to entertainment in general would be enormous. What a shame it would be if that history was lost simply because 5-10 years after their heyday everyone just dismissed them as irrelevant.

Originally Posted by the_logos Well, everything's days are numbered in one sense, but I think that you're taking what is a VERY minor issue (seriously, whether a text MUD is included or not may be offensive to us but I don't think it matters very much to Wikipedia as a whole).

I'm not sure where you were going here, so forgive me if I misinterpret. If you meant this incident will not spell the demise of Wikipedia, I agree. I don't think Milawe or anyone else was arguing differently. This situation is a symptom of the much larger, deep-seated problem with Wikipedia. It is neither the cause nor the most significant example.

[Kleothera]

Hmms. At the risk of getting yelled at, why are we still discussing the pros and cons of the AfD of Threshold? Considering the decision has been taken (not the way we wanted it to go, but the way it HAS), I strongly feel that we should be discussing how we are going to ensure other larger MUDs (the ones that COULD theoretically be considered notable) can make a case for notability. What had to happen to Threshold has already happened. The title of the thread is after all about the notability of MUDs being questioned, not of the particular entry. Yes, the_Logos has a point about the notability of the genre as a whole in the larger global scale of things, but assuming someone IS interested in finding space for their entry on the wikipedia and accepting it works the way it does (and not the way one or the other of us wished it did), what are the learnings that we can take from this experience to help others. Just pointing it out since people have started repeating themselves again

[Milawe]

Yeah, you're right Kleothera. It's hard to get out of the habit after having to defend it on Wikipedia so much where it sometimes seem volume speaks more loudly than quality. (Btw, the DRV was invalidated by some neutral admins, and the article recreated... much earlier than I thought, but some things just can't be helped.)

Right now, muds should be making sure that they grab all the citations and mentions of their game from third party sites that they can off the web before it goes away. LegendMUD had actually let something slip from their own webpage about a pretty major award they won in 1995. Raph Koster was able to find it in an internet archive, but something like that probably shouldn't be removed even if it feels a bit outdated. (Even if it's moved to some attic page on the website, it should still be kept.)

With Threshold, players had to help dig up references from newspapers and magazines. Some of this involves going down to libraries and dragging through microfiche or calling other libraries for aid. This actually took a lot of time and some money, and ultimately, isn't worth it to just keep a Wikipedia article. It is worth it, however, to just keep all press on your mud. The easiest thing is to go ahead and put it in MLA citation style as well, in my opinion.

So, seriously, the first step is for all muds interested is to go out there and start tracking down press, awards, rankings, etc. Whatever you can, really, even if it seems minor. The second step is to put it in one resource that can easily be maintained and archived in an academic manner. The hows and whys need to be carefully considered.

If you do not have this on your mud yet, add it: Make sure you have a way of finding out where your players came from. That aided us greatly in finding sources and references including an international reference written in an Italian magazine.

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by Kleothera Hmms. At the risk of getting yelled at, why are we still discussing the pros and cons of the AfD of Threshold?

Yeah, I don't really know why that keeps happening either. Frankly, I'm pretty much fed up with defending its notability. Where there's smoke, there's fire. If a MUD has been noted in 20 or so magazines, newspapers, and web sites, and if its deletion sparks a gigantic news story on 20+ blogs, multiple gaming news sites, etc. the whole notability argument is absurd and moot. I certainly have no interest in rehashing it here for the umpteenth time.

Originally Posted by Kleothera what are the learnings that we can take from this experience to help others. Just pointing it out since people have started repeating themselves again

Here is what I mostly take from this, as far as what we need to do:

1) Claw, kick, and scratch to find a way to establish TMC and TMS as reliable sources. They don't have to be internet juggernauts for that to be the case. There are countless examples of acceptable, reliable sources in Wikipedia (or elsewhere) that are far less "significant" than TMC and TMS. I don't know the exact process for establishing this, but I believe it begins with finding noteworthy journalism about the two sites, and to somehow document the methods they use for writing reviews (in the case of TMC's staff reviews) or compiling data. For Wikipedia in particular, they have a process where you can pseudo-officially have a source declared reliable. If at some point we can really shore up these sources, with tons of information and citations, we should move forward on that and see if the Wikipedian powers that be will be amenable to that declaration.

2) Every MUD administrator needs to take it upon him or herself to RECORD every single mention their MUD gets in any type of newspaper, magazine, web site, etc. For off-site mentions, try to get a letter from the organization verifying the appearance of the article, and save that along with a screenshot of any online version. Find out if the site that mentions your MUD is blocking Archive.org from saving it (for some insane reason, TMJ created a robots.txt file to block the Internet Archive. Ugh).

3) Court mainstream media attention as much as you can. If you do something news worthy, contact any news agency, magazine, or web site you think might find it interesting or newsworthy. I have found that a lot of news organizations love to write about something in a game if it reflects a hot political issue in real life.

4) If you get a chance to give a speech, write an article, or do anything of that sort where you could specifically discuss either your favorite MUD, MUDs in general, TMC, or TMS, seize the opportunity. If you actually write for a newspaper, magazine, etc. then do whatever you can to get an article published. Try to get as much substantial information included as possible. A full paragraph or two is better than a single sentence.

All of these methods have two additional, very positive effects outside of any Wikipedia benefits:

1. They all increase the attention for MUDs in general, which is great.
   
2. They help preserve MUD history. This is good for its own posterity as well as for inclusion in whatever types of reference appear long after Wikipedia is gone.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Threshold But I believe it is fact that MUDs played a significant role in the growth of the internet, and a tremendous, absolutely vital role in the growth of the MMORPG industry. For those two reasons alone, I believe MUDs are notable and it is important to preserve MUD history.

But MUDs as a whole aren't being removed from Wikipedia. This was an issue with a particular MUD having a hard time meeting Wikipedia's rules for notability. I don't see any way MUDs in general are going off Wikipedia en masse, though I agree it's helpful to get MUD admins in general in the habit of documenting their history in ways that are more preservable. The really tough part seems to be that there's no acceptable way to preserve coverage on sites that are acceptable for notability purposes if the site itself goes away or takes the coverage down. Screenshots don't work, you can't just copy and paste text to your own site, etc.

--matt

[Aeran]

Originally Posted by the_logos But MUDs as a whole aren't being removed from Wikipedia. This was an issue with a particular MUD having a hard time meeting Wikipedia's rules for notability. I don't see any way MUDs in general are going off Wikipedia en masse, though I agree it's helpful to get MUD admins in general in the habit of documenting their history in ways that are more preservable. The really tough part seems to be that there's no acceptable way to preserve coverage on sites that are acceptable for notability purposes if the site itself goes away or takes the coverage down. Screenshots don't work, you can't just copy and paste text to your own site, etc.

How could you know if anything is true at all? In the end you can only have a certain belief that something is valid but you can rarely be certain. For example I assume most posters here are different persons, but everyone here could very well be "roleplayed" by some mysterious individual. If that would be the case I would have been fooled.

Sometimes when looking at old documents or even posts I have written, I am like "Have I written this?" though I assume noone has edited it as long as the text is not too far from my beliefs and way of writing.

It is really the same problem here, I think. Say Threshold was shutdown. What proof is there that it has ever existed? Absolutely none, and I think references are only valid as long as you trust the references.

The question then is if you can trust references at all. For example are news articles in newspapers always correct or are perhaps part of their content made up? Even if something is written and is factual true, it might be written in such a way to make you yet interpret it in a different manner by for example only pushing certain aspects of the facts while hiding others.

[Kleothera]

Originally Posted by Aeran How could you know if anything is true at all? In the end you can only have a certain belief that something is valid but you can rarely be certain. For example I assume most posters here are different persons, but everyone here could very well be "roleplayed" by some mysterious individual. If that would be the case I would have been fooled.

Hmms. All these posts have been generated by the Matrix. Nods sagely, barely concealing a grin.

Is there such a thing as absolute truth? I dont think the philosophers have sorted that one out yet. In the meantime, scientists have settled for peer reviewed journals with pages and pages of references.

My point being (post midnight sleep deprivation caused silliness apart) that I agree with the_Logos that the crux is the need to figure out a way to have these constantly disappearing sources preserved somehow in some sort of verifiable manner.

What WOULD a neutral source be for the wikipedia anyway? Something that they (and other serious sites) would consider authoritative?

Also why DID the older references disappear, like the Mud Journal for example? Was it readership? Was it people writing meaningful content? Both? Its going to help to avoid reinventing the wheel. Also I remember at one point seriously considering doing a research on leadership in MUDs but figured I was going to get almost nothing in terms of references and no place to publish it once completed. so it is one idea that in its serious form pretty much lasted only two weeks. However, a place where serious content related to MUDs is kept would still probably be usable to wannabe researchers and armchair MUD theorists like me. Thing is, even smaller MUDs get undergrad/post grad students coming to us when doing research on online communities which could be preserved some place third party and be used by the said students as well. Most game websites are principally made for advertisement, but there is still need for a sensible, serious MUD resource site that actually has a lot of content on it. Most MUD sites have a couple of introductory essays on MUD issues (with the possible exception of TMCs old articles), and pretty much nothing else.

And now I need to sleep!

[Threshold]

I recently got an article published with all the nitty gritty details from beginning to end.

Wikipedia's War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG

Later tonight I am going to add an update to the article with some recent news. The enormous media attention this story has received finally got some objective editors and administrators to look into the matter. Now that some objective people are involved, the question of Threshold's notability is no longer a problem.

If nothing else, this specific incident (and the ultimate survival of the Threshold entry and complete agreement it IS NOTABLE) should help other MUDs if they face the same situation.

Moving forward, as many people (including myself) have said, we really need to gather sources and references from our own history. Nobody is going to do it for us.

[jake]

Originally Posted by Threshold Here is what I mostly take from this, as far as what we need to do: 1) Claw, kick, and scratch to find a way to establish TMC and TMS as reliable sources.

This is exactly what I see needing to be done to help out MUDs on Wikipedia. I believe TMS /TMC could help a huge amount if they published "mud of the month, second place, etc" awards with the results at the end of every month before they cleared the voting on a static page, then did this again for "mud of the year" year. This would also IMO improve the websites. The major problem now is that is not verifiable that mud X has been in the top 10 for y years, if it were verifiable this is a criteria that could satisfy notability.

TMC should also clear up its about page and make it more professional, and clearly state that reviews are not self published (if this is the case).

These are a couple very simple items that I think would help out muds and the sites themselves for use by Wikipedia. Also, I believe it will improve the sites and make them more usable and interesting.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Threshold I recently got an article published with all the nitty gritty details from beginning to end. Wikipedia's War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG Later tonight I am going to add an update to the article with some recent news. The enormous media attention this story has received finally got some objective editors and administrators to look into the matter. Now that some objective people are involved, the question of Threshold's notability is no longer a problem. If nothing else, this specific incident (and the ultimate survival of the Threshold entry and complete agreement it IS NOTABLE) should help other MUDs if they face the same situation. Moving forward, as many people (including myself) have said, we really need to gather sources and references from our own history. Nobody is going to do it for us.

Nice work Threshold! I can't imagine the pain in the arse that must have been, to pull you away from admining your own MUD in order to deal with jackasses. But look at the bright side. You got some good media for you and all of us!

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Threshold If nothing else, this specific incident (and the ultimate survival of the Threshold entry and complete agreement it IS NOTABLE) should help other MUDs if they face the same situation.

Do you mean outside of Wikipedia? Because Cameron Scott just put up another AfD request on the Threshold article on Wikipedia. That's the third one it's been hit with since the DRV a little bit more than 24 hours ago.

[prof1515]

That article really doesn't do much of anything to establish notability. You were the author, right? You mentioned your game in an article about Wikipedia which is anything but an independent, third-person, and objective. It doesn't read like a professional article, it reads like a rant. That's really just another example of the lack of acceptable sources that continues to be the problem in the first place. Topping it off, many of your conclusions are in error in regard to professional publications and source material. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and no encyclopedia, paper or online, is an acceptable research source.

I'm also curious. Exactly how is the significance of MUDs in general threatened by the removal of articles about individual games which are not groundbreaking in the field of online gaming itself (such as the first MUD or those which have crossed over into mainstream and are thus within the wider range of public consciousness)? Or has effort been made to remove any reference to the existance of MUDs? The times I've looked at the Wikipedia article on MUDs, I didn't notice any note about being marked for deletion. Has it been? If so, that should be the community's focus. If not, that's a different story.

If only individual games' articles are threatened, I think it's time the crusade came to an end. Like all crusades, it's not particularly helpful when zealousness takes over and entitlement becomes the issue rather than justice. Even though He-Man might have an article on Wikipedia, I'd wager that ten times more people know what He-Man is or owned a He-Man action figure (I did) than have heard of MUDs collectively, much less individual MUDs. Pop culture has its place in the annals of history. But there's a difference between notability of some subjects of pop culture and elements within those subjects. The subject of MUDs would be notable. Threshold or pretty much any individual MU* would not.

Creating a professional environment should be the focus of the community. Once that's done, then and only then can we hope that notability is possible. Even then, most games won't likely be notable to a degree worth an entire article on them. Simply put, there isn't anything enough significant about them to fill an article on Wikipedia or anywhere else. If an effort is made to try and discredit the notability of the field of MUDs, then there's reason to fight it. But if the effort's being spent on the subject of individual games, all the community is doing is wasting its ammunition in the form of time, effort, and credibility.

Take care,

Jason

[scandum]

The article has been improved and a new deletion process has been started. So far it looks like the consensus is that the editors trying to get the article deleted are a bunch of dicks who make Wikipedia look bad.

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by scandum The article has been improved and a new deletion process has been started. So far it looks like the consensus is that the editors trying to get the article deleted are a bunch of dicks who make Wikipedia look bad.

Yes, they are a real piece of work. Amazing.

But I just got done with a radio interview about Threshold, and they didn't even bring up the Wikipedia thing. So that is encouraging.

[Sandra]

Originally Posted by Milawe Right now, muds should be making sure that they grab all the citations and mentions of their game from third party sites that they can off the web before it goes away. LegendMUD had actually let something slip from their own webpage about a pretty major award they won in 1995. Raph Koster was able to find it in an internet archive, but something like that probably shouldn't be removed even if it feels a bit outdated. (Even if it's moved to some attic page on the website, it should still be kept.)

It is kept in our archives along with the rest of the old website. We still have all of it. Legend's website was recently moved to a content management system and is not yet quite complete. I felt the need to clarify this as I don't want the wrong information out there.

[Milawe]

Thanks for the clarification, Sandra. No insult intended to LegendMud, which is by far an extremely notable one.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by prof1515 Creating a professional environment should be the focus of the community. Once that's done, then and only then can we hope that notability is possible. Even then, most games won't likely be notable to a degree worth an entire article on them. Simply put, there isn't anything enough significant about them to fill an article on Wikipedia or anywhere else. If an effort is made to try and discredit the notability of the field of MUDs, then there's reason to fight it. But if the effort's being spent on the subject of individual games, all the community is doing is wasting its ammunition in the form of time, effort, and credibility.

I don't disagree with your first statement here, Prof. The difficulty comes in because some MUDs ARE run as a hobby in that the mud exists for the entertainment of the admin as much as the players. And in the end, almost everyone in the mudding community is playing a mud, working on promoting a niche section of the community, or making a mud. It's difficult for anyone person to go and establish a professional mud site (though TMS, TMC, Mudbyte, Mud Portal, RPMUD, etc. seem to be trying their best) that has something more beyond what administrators and players can contribute in their spare time.

It's been a long, tough battle, but if you read the initial AfD, the mentality used to delete the Threshold article needed to fail and fail badly because it could be applied to nearly every hobby or sub-set of a hobby out there. And seriously, do you really think those same admins wouldn't have found something exactly like Threshold to target next? People like them had already taken out Aardwolf, which has a much larger playerbase than Threshold AND have had mentions by the same experts. They'd already taken out LegendMud and a ton of online comic strips that face the same problems as muds.

You may think that Wikipedia is trying to become some sort of reliable, source-able site. That will never happen with its current structure. Wikipedia isn't unreliable because there's a ton of random stuff on there. It's unreliable because anyone in the world can go edit most of the articles out there regardless of whether or not they know anything about it. It's also unreliable because you do not need ANY credentials to speak authoritatively on any given subject. Until the core operation of the site is changed, it's going to be unreliable. Getting rid of muds or amigurumi or rubber stamping isn't going to fix any of that.

On the bright side, deletionists will have to operate more carefully now. I'd given up since the most current AfD, but I went back to look tonight. I feel that it was worth the fight because what better way to get some legitimacy than for individual games to be listed on Wikipedia, the current best source for all things obscure. Now, I understand that you might not believe it's worth the fight, but do you really think it's fair to claim that it's a waste of time and resources for the people who decided to get involved? Maybe people just saw something there that you didn't.

You have to keep in mind that MOST people who got involved didn't do it for Threshold. I initially got involved because of Threshold (and no, none of the administrators wrote the original article that got deleted or the new one though I've tried my best to help), but like I said before, Wikipedia does absolutely nothing for the mud. It doesn't bring in traffic. It doesn't affect our gameplay. It doesn't affect our customers. If it was purely for what benefited Threshold, I would have just given up after the first AfD simply because it's ultimately not worth my time from a business perspective.

[RaphKoster]

FredBauder, Wikipedia administrator and longtime mudder, has helped to resolve this to some extent by creating a Wikia Wiki for preserving mud history. It has very different rules from Wikipedia.

MUD Wiki

I have issued a call on my website for everyone in mudding to jump in and contribute. If we do a good job of finding citations and the like (and we determine sourcing here!) then we can save mud history -- and who knows, maybe some things will migrate back to Wikipedia over time.

I started out with a long article on LegendMUD. Be nice to see more folks jump in.

[scandum]

Originally Posted by RaphKoster I started out with a long article on LegendMUD. Be nice to see more folks jump in.

You'd want to be careful not to get dragged personally into Wikipedia because that could damage your reputation as a credible source for future publications. Editing Wikipedia directly would certainly do that (conflict of interest) - though I'm not sure if that extends to Wikipedia-like wikis - I've only seen the mess caused when people edit their own Wikipedia articles and subject fields.


I'd work on MUD Wiki, but the overdose of banners makes me schizofrenic (the voices say so). It'd be nice if a reliable person would host a Wiki, maybe mudbytes is up for the job?

[Aeran]

Originally Posted by scandum I'd work on MUD Wiki, but the overdose of banners makes me schizofrenic (the voices say so). It'd be nice if a reliable person would host a Wiki, maybe mudbytes is up for the job?

A large benefit of Wikia is that you can download(link) the wiki databases from it. So you can take backups. If someone else hosted it, e.g Mudbytes they might not make download the database possible.