[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by KaVir When you get people stripping out paragraphs of text from Wikipedia with comments like "Why are we still talking about MUDs in the 2000's?", it can certainly give a negative impression about the attitute towards our hobby.

No kidding. I think Kylotan is still under some impression that Wikipedia has an upstanding editing staff which is entirely bs when you see the obvious anti MUD sentiment. It is obvious to me that someone on that wiki panel is either against MUDs or has their own MUD and is against any other MUD competition. Let's not be naive, this has been going on for awhile now.

[scandum]

Originally Posted by Newworlds No kidding. I think Kylotan is still under some impression that Wikipedia has an upstanding editing staff which is entirely bs when you see the obvious anti MUD sentiment. It is obvious to me that someone on that wiki panel is either against MUDs or has their own MUD and is against any other MUD competition. Let's not be naive, this has been going on for awhile now.

If people had been smarter and diplomatically posted on the MUD article's talk page if interested individuals would mind finding proper sources, instead of calling out on TMS and MudBytes for a bunch of meat puppets to get involved the Arctic article would probably have survived the AfD.

On the bright side, new sources were added, so in that light the article can be re-created, though for good form an additional source should be added first.

[Lasher]

Originally Posted by Newworlds No kidding. I think Kylotan is still under some impression that Wikipedia has an upstanding editing staff which is entirely bs when you see the obvious anti MUD sentiment. It is obvious to me that someone on that wiki panel is either against MUDs or has their own MUD and is against any other MUD competition. Let's not be naive, this has been going on for awhile now.

This is what bothered me about this most when we went through the same thing with the Aardwolf listing then the Threshold listing. If you alert people interested in MUDs that the discussion is taking place, you are written off as "soliciting" or "campaigning" (I don't remember the exact term they used). So basically, if you're not in the discussion when it started, your opinion doesn't count because you were "solicited".

So you have a discussion about MUDs vs Wikipedia Policies, where 90% of the people sticking up for the MUDs don't count while these high school kids who live and breathe Wikipedia policies throw them back at you all day long. Anyone showing up to speak on behalf of MUDs is written off even though they are the people who know the most about MUDs.

It's like having a discussion here about Wikipedia and telling the Wikipedia admins their opinions of Wikipedia don't count because they're new and they only joined TMS to take part in the discussion of Wikipedia. Even though they know how Wikpedia works better than anyone else, if they don't know the inner workings of TMS and the entire history of the MUD genre then their opinion on Wikipedia clearly shouldn't count either, particularly if one of their friends pointed out this discussion to them and became guilty of "soliciting".

Looking back the only thing I really regret about that whole thing is how much time I put into trying to fight the delistings. It wasn't worth it, and wouldn't have been worth it even if it had been successful.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Kylotan Why drag this fallacy out yet again? They (which could be you or me) fix things as and when they find them. By definition that means some will get fixed before others. If you had a rule that stated you couldn't possibly fix one page if there existed another page equally bad or worse, then you'd never get anything done. You can't use other bad pages as an excuse to keep your own bad page.

It's hardly a fallacy. It's fact. Wikipedia is filled with junk that shouldn't even have been allowed to stand for an hour, let alone years. The only reason it does is because the admins create the articles.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Starblind/DeletionWars The efforts of inclusionists has largely kept "notability" out of any official policy, with the exception of CSD-A7. It's only fair to note, however, that notability has long been a de facto policy anyway, even if it never becomes official.

One of the admins arguing in the AfD even wrote that, where he openly says notability isn't even an official policy, yet that's the main argument that was being made. It wasn't notable enough. The closing admin must have been blind to this though because he seems to be laboring under the delusion that the AfD was justified due to a lack of verifiability - which was already well established with existing sources.

Seems awfully clear to me what really happened here. The same systematic purging of this information from a site that can't even make the claim of being encyclopedic with a straight face that's been going on for years now.

Originally Posted by KaVir When you get people stripping out paragraphs of text from Wikipedia with comments like "Why are we still talking about MUDs in the 2000's?", it can certainly give a negative impression about the attitute towards our hobby.

This. It explains the mindset there as well as anything.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Lasher If you alert people interested in MUDs that the discussion is taking place, you are written off as "soliciting" or "campaigning" (I don't remember the exact term they used).

Canvassing. They accuse you of canvassing. Which is what they did when the Threshold article went up for AfD, and during the course of that debate evidence came to light that the wiki admins themselves were using a secret IRC channel to canvass for people to respond to the debate, and those logs were deemed off limits while posts here were being shoved in everyone's face as clear evidence that we were violating the rules.

The whole place is about as corrupt as a corrupt website can get.

[KaVir]

I noticed the Video games/MUD task force has a list of commonly cited MUD-related sources along with their reliability.

In the Top Mud Sites section it states that the reviews, forum posts, database listings and vote rankings are unreliable, but that the articles "have some level of editorial vetting and may be reliable, but likely require consideration on a case-by-case basis".

If we could establish exactly what is required to make an article reliable, it might be possible to create sources that are deemed acceptable. This doesn't necessarily mean writing an article about a specific mud - it could be an article about a particular feature, with a few names dropped here and there as notable examples of said feature.

I think most of us accept that Wikipedia is a metagame. But like all games, it has rules, and even the high-level players can only bend those rules so far.

[MudMann]

Ever since the Threshold incident and Wikipedia's rather dubious editorial admin were revealed in all their petty glory, I have just never used it since (Wikipedia). All that incident showed me was how utterly crap the whole concept was and how broken the process for determining if content is worthy. The whole site boils down to power hungry individuals who approach Wikipedia like their own MMO, with guilds and partnerships who squash anyone who dares defend an article with long words and interpretations of rules that suit their own arguments.

The whole incident was in a major article in a UK magazine who basically highlighted just how bad the situation was. However, fortuntly a large chunk of that was dedicated to Threshold itself, which gave them all the notable they needed.

Personally, I dont think its worth the hassle anymore, if someone searches for Artic Mud, they will find it using google, who gives a fig if Wikipedia has it or not. Also, to dismiss sources such as TMS and TMC which predate Wikipedia by huge time factors is laughable.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by MudMann Personally, I dont think its worth the hassle anymore, if someone searches for Artic Mud, they will find it using google, who gives a fig if Wikipedia has it or not. Also, to dismiss sources such as TMS and TMC which predate Wikipedia by huge time factors is laughable.

I've actually had a number of players discover my mud through Wikipedia - often first-time mudders, who have none of the preconceptions that usually discourage the veteran players.

I would assume that the same is true for other muds, in which case Wikipedia is actually introducing new players to our hobby. This is a "Good Thing", and worth fighting for, IMO.

[MudMann]

Originally Posted by KaVir I've actually had a number of players discover my mud through Wikipedia - often first-time mudders, who have none of the preconceptions that usually discourage the veteran players. I would assume that the same is true for other muds, in which case Wikipedia is actually introducing new players to our hobby. This is a "Good Thing", and worth fighting for, IMO.

In that case, I retract my opinion as it is bogus! Not hosting my own game, I dont have statistics to draw on.

[Aeran]

Originally Posted by KaVir I would assume that the same is true for other muds, in which case Wikipedia is actually introducing new players to our hobby. This is a "Good Thing", and worth fighting for, IMO.

Maybe start collect references that are about MUDs into a thread? I think looking into WP:NOT might also be interesting. E.g what would be required to make TMS/TMC notable?

It might also be a good idea to link MUDs to MMOs. A lot of people know what a MMO is. How many know what a MUD is?

[MudMann]

Originally Posted by Aeran It might also be a good idea to link MUDs to MMOs. A lot of people know what a MMO is. How many know what a MUD is?

Thats a fair point, it is basically two terms that mean the same thing.. its not a link between that is required. MUD's just retains a legacy acronym. Yeah Its catchy, but it is breaking off from the popular whole.

Maybe MUD's need to coin the phrase TMMO, TMORPG etc.

I often refer to my new MUD in forums during discussions as a Text based MORPG, doesnt scare people as much, and youngsters who may have no idea what a MUD is know exactly what I am talking about.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by MudMann In that case, I retract my opinion as it is bogus! Not hosting my own game, I dont have statistics to draw on.

Don't retract it. I don't use them either. Wiki blows like a 2 bit ho. Until they change their administration to professionals instead of these snot nosed punk kids it will always remain a junk site.

[Parhelion]

Originally Posted by Newworlds Don't retract it. I don't use them either. Wiki blows like a 2 bit ho. Until they change their administration to professionals instead of these snot nosed punk kids it will always remain a junk site.

Regardless of what you, or anyone else here feels, Wikipedia is still a very commonly used "source" for breaking into a topic quickly and semi-reliably: while you can use Google, search engines do not provide a good introduction to ambiguous material (for instance, "MUD" is also dirty water, a mispelling of Mudd, and some sort of art institution). I use it when I need very quick and organized information, such as tables of comparable software, and I have noticed that instructors and teachers have begun linking to particular articles that they link in classrooms because it's a good place to find support material. While you cannot CITE Wikipedia, the articles are often well-cited enough that you can track back their sources to something that can be.

Case in point, you can sit here and boo-hoo all you want about how mean Wikipedia is, but it still draws an enormous amount of traffic that we could use to our benefit, as a community.

The unfortunate thing is that many games attempt to use Wikipedia as an advertising platform, at least on some level, and that is not what it is intended to be. Gasp and be indignant if you want, but at least some of you are posting MUDs up not because of their noteworthiness but because you just want your work to have it's own proverbial front page in the news. In the grand scheme, this hurts us because it makes arguing for games that ARE noteworthy all the more difficult.

As for verifiable sources, I know I am working with at least one group that is attempting to publish a website with researched, interview-based, and peer-reviewed articles that would be safe to cite. While the subject matter is a bit concentrated, I invite anyone who's interested in writing to contact me (*cough* ok, plug).

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Parhelion As for verifiable sources, I know I am working with at least one group that is attempting to publish a website with researched, interview-based, and peer-reviewed articles that would be safe to cite. While the subject matter is a bit concentrated, I invite anyone who's interested in writing to contact me.

This is very commendable and I hope this goes very well with you. I hope that you will keep us updated on new information or developments here. It sounds very promising!

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Parhelion Case in point, you can sit here and boo-hoo all you want about how mean Wikipedia is, but it still draws an enormous amount of traffic that we could use to our benefit, as a community.

An enormous benefit we can't draw on at all if the Wikiscum continue their march toward expunging all information relating to MUDs. It doesn't do a lot of good for them to exist and for us to use it if we aren't even in there at all, yes? Evidence certainly suggests that they're actively trying to remove as much as they can.

Wikiscum actually think the only reliable sources for anything comes from "mainstream" print or television media. Their policies are rittled with digs against all forms of web publishing, which is about as ironic as it gets.

[DonathinFrye]

This is to everyone here, but mostly Lasher and Threshold. It seems obvious to me that TMS is in a unique position (as is TMC) to become a reliable source through articles, as per the MUD Task Team on Wiki. KaVir asked what would need to happen to establish articles as a reliable source.

I would imagine that field experts would need to objectively review games via articles and that the articles would need to be featured on TMS in a non-forum area. How difficult would it be to select a cabal of reviewers to write good, in-depth expert articles on not only MUDs, but other genre-specific material - and then feature them here on the site under a tabbed section that is easily accessed?

I know that I would certainly be willing to write consistent articles for the site and community, in an effort to not only create a reliable resource (which would strengthen the purpose of this site, beyond it being a forum community with an ad-banner/vote system), but to use as an anchor to try to draw attention from other media sites.

Additionally, what of sending press releases to BrightHub to see if any of their paid article writers would be willing to review genre-specific material. Certainly that would also contribute to notability and reach out to new potential users in an effort to expand the size of the community.

[Kylotan]

Originally Posted by Samson It's hardly a fallacy. It's fact. Wikipedia is filled with junk that shouldn't even have been allowed to stand for an hour, let alone years. The only reason it does is because the admins create the articles.

No, it stands because there is nobody systematically checking every single article. You seem to think there's some sort of overarching grand plan to eradicate certain things. I'm sure there are many individual editors on there who have vested interests and so on but you're completely deluded if you think that the existence of many bad articles alongside the deletion of several others means some sort of organised attempt to shut you out. It just means that some manage to fly below the radar for a long time.

I know a guy who had a page up on there for over a year which cited him as the author of a book that didn't exist. It didn't survive for that long because an admin created the article, because one did not. He created it himself as a laugh. It survived solely because nobody noticed that it needed taking down. That's how it goes.

There's no conspiracy. Just a bunch of opinionated editors on one side who only care about their idea of what constitutes 'improving' the wiki and a bunch of mudders on the other who want their largely irrelevant pages on individual games to survive in Wikipedia despite having little to no wider relevance.

We've had Kavir saying he's "actually had a number of players discover my mud through Wikipedia", which is all well and good, but not at all what Wikipedia is there for. Yet I can't help but think that is why several of you are all so angry about it - you want it to be a source of traffic to muds in general, and who cares if there's virtually no useful information on those pages?

Scandum and Parhelion have it exactly right. Wikipedia is a great site on the whole when used for its intended purpose - getting an overview of a subject and finding further sources to be able to dig deeper. You can say what you like about the editors but on the whole it's no less accurate than a normal encyclopaedia for the most commonly read articles. However, like a normal encyclopaedia, it's not there to provide poorly-sourced pages about fairly trivial things, like individual instances of a forked game code base. What might be more appropriate is a summary page with links to external entries on mud-specific Wikis. But there's little point everybody on here whining about the admins or the rules. Wikipedia is what it is, like it or not, and you have the choices of putting articles on there that are well-cited and which are useful information for everybody, or choosing not to and seeing them get deleted.

[DonathinFrye]

For me, the community's presence on Wikipedia is about two things:

1) Maintaining a record of an extremely unique and important phenomenon in gaming (and the internet's) history.

2) Increasing the relevance of of MUDs despite the ever-increasing shift to advanced graphics for MMOs. Why is this important? Because I think that most of us in the community feel that there are features and gameplay elements that exist on MUDs that other online games would do well to strive for achieving. Because I think that when the time comes for MMOs to be some form of virtual reality interface, they will play more like MUDs and less like the graphical MMOs of today. Because I think that there are a lot of gamers out there who would be drawn to this genre, if they just knew more about it.

MUDs aren't irrelevant. They are over-looked by the majority of gamers out of a lack of media and lack of understanding what they are. When someone asks why we are still talking about MUDs in the 2000s, it burns me up. Why do we have articles on Mancala and Go? Because sometimes, older games get something right, and there is both enjoyment and a lesson to be learned from them.

I'm ranting a bit, but I think that arguing against the notability of individual games that have achieved a level of notoriety within their own genre is a straw-man argument, and I think that arguing against the notability of MUDs is only possible because they are an ancient (by today's standards) form of internet game that has never been well-documented outside of the internet (as opposed to ancient board games, or other comparable genres).

The obvious answer to me, as opposed to starting a new site, is to take the best resource sites that exist for MUDs and to incorporate documentation in the way of source articles; this isn't just for Wikipedia, but the continued survival of the genre on Wikipedia will help to make sure that this niche in gaming history won't be forgotten in one-hundred years. Perhaps in the distant future, game enthusiasts will still have lessons to learn from MUDs. If nothing else, they are an interesting chink in the history of online games.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Kylotan Wikipedia is a great site on the whole when used for its intended purpose - getting an overview of a subject and finding further sources to be able to dig deeper.

Therein lies the problem. Wikipedia ceased being about the intended purpose very shortly after it went online and people started flooding it with all manner of junk. And I mean junk. Not just some 15 year old kid's narrowminded viewpoint of gaming.

Anymore when doing Google searches if I see a Wikipedia hit (and they come up for literally anything these days) I don't even waste my time. They long ago forgot what their purpose was and it's really just the meta-game to them now.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by DonathinFrye The obvious answer to me, as opposed to starting a new site, is to take the best resource sites that exist for MUDs and to incorporate documentation in the way of source articles;

I like this idea even though I am unsure how it would affectively help in the case of Wiki.

[Parhelion]

Originally Posted by Newworlds I like this idea even though I am unsure how it would affectively help in the case of Wiki.

I think it would help, in the long term, by creating a source pool for citing materials AND it would send the first olive branch to the wiki mods that our community writers are more serious about playing by their rules. HOWEVER, I strongly disagree that TMC or TMS should be the sites to do this. Why? The short answer is public relations and background.

Most people who are familiar with our overall little MUDverse is likely going to be familiar with these sites - and that includes the Wikipedia people who have been deleting articles. Let's be honest: neither TMS nor TMC have been well-known as bastions of unbiased, non-solicitous information. The most used and most well-known features of these sites have been their forums, which are often kept alive by flaming arguments, and their MUD lists, which are unverified and self published and maintained by the MUDs themselves - lending to the problem of false advertisement, mis-categorization, and dead articles.

Of all of the live MUD-centric websites that I know of, I can only recommend mudlab.org as a starting point for potential growth, due to the fact that its forums have been more civil and adult in nature (attracting mainly only developers). That said, it is still a forum site, and I do not believe they publish articles.

Skotos may be a potential source as well -- some of their articles have a lot of value, but their content is more geared towards their company than to the community.

Originally Posted by Samson An enormous benefit we can't draw on at all if the Wikiscum continue their march toward expunging all information relating to MUDs. It doesn't do a lot of good for them to exist and for us to use it if we aren't even in there at all, yes? Evidence certainly suggests that they're actively trying to remove as much as they can.

First of all, if you plan to make any headway, you have got to stop calling them Wikiscum. Approaching them with any form of hostility is not going to get you anywhere - remember, you are playing their game, with their ball, in their court.

Secondly, I stand by my original assertion that most MUDs have no legitimate reason to have their own Wikipage. In fact, I could pop over onto Wiki right now and snatch a good handful of individual game pages that, rather than being informative and noting how they are particularly of worth, are filled with propagandistic material meant to ADVERTISE and PERSUADE. In some cases, the text out-right lies, much in the same way that some MUD listings out-right lie, and do not mention controversial topics which may adversely affect how the game is perceived by the reader.

A direct live example of this is the RPI MUD's site award that was given to Accursed Lands for holding the top place in voting for the year. This achievement is prominently featured on the game's Wikipage; however, there is no mention of the controversy surrounding the award that occurred between the game and the RPI MUD community site after the leadership of that site accused the game of ballot-stuffing. While I certainly do not speak for the people involved, I have a hunch that the event contributed, at least in part, to RPI MUD shutting down a year later.

I would go as far as to say that information such this is actually far more relevant than the fact that they have a playable race called "braman."

Bottom line is that most games list such information as race and class profiles, basic mechanic information, when they were opened/closed, and their overall world theme or religions. This is information that is NOT APPROPRIATE for a Wiki article -- at least not by themselves, and CERTAINLY not as FEATURE MATERIAL. Unless your theme spawned a revolution, a shift in MUD culture, or its own book/TV/AAA-title, then it's just not that special. If you can strip this information out of an article and have nothing left but a stub, then you probably shouldn't have a page.


My suggestion for MUDs who want to be included on Wikipedia:

Review and clean up the important umbrella articles: these articles include the one on MUDs in general, and the ones on various MAJOR engine varieties. What I mean by that is that a codebase and it's derivitives should appear ALL ON ONE PAGE, since forks rarely have anything of mentionable worth. Arrange by FAMILY and HYPERLINK THE CRAP out of all of the existing articles so that readers can navigate between them appropriately. Derivatives can be assembled and listed in dynamic tables much the same way that available engines are listed on the Game Engines page (which separates Open Source, Free for Use, and Commercial engines) - this way they are reachable and can even be cited. Those of particular worth might actually get a paragraph - but this is something that I would say the MUD community should decide on, not the individual developers themselves. An example of a family page would be the LPC family, which lists engines by driver and then mudlib, or the Diku family.

Wikipedia allows for LIST OF pages. This is where our games come in. FAMILY pages may link to LIST OF games pages. Again, we can use dynamically-sorted tables to list games that are OPEN and APPROPRIATELY CATEGORIZED. Games should NOT have their own spotlight (unless they actually are special, in which case, they would be hyperlinked off to another page).

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Parhelion HOWEVER, I strongly disagree that TMC or TMS should be the sites to do this. Why? The short answer is public relations and background.

I mentioned them because they were explicited listed on the Video games/MUD task force page on Wikipedia:

Official TMC Reviews: "These are editorially generated and reliable."

TMS Articles: "These have some level of editorial vetting and may be reliable, but likely require consideration on a case-by-case basis."

Sites like Imaginary Realities or Game Commandos would have been good candidates, and The Mud Companion would have been even better, but sadly they're no longer around. Mudlab has no articles, only forums, and those aren't accepted.

Originally Posted by Parhelion Derivatives can be assembled and listed in dynamic tables much the same way that available engines are listed on the Game Engines page (which separates Open Source, Free for Use, and Commercial engines) - this way they are reachable and can even be cited.

I already tried that. On the GodWars page I listed 21 of its publically released derivatives. Someone deleted the entire section, blurb and all, claiming it was a link farm.

[Parhelion]

Originally Posted by KaVir I already tried that. On the GodWars page I listed 21 of its publically released derivatives. Someone deleted the entire section, blurb and all, claiming it was a link farm.

Was it put up for deletion, or did someone just troll around and remove it directly?

It may have appeared like a linkfarm because of the similarities between the different versions, or you may have been linking to similar pages over and over again. I don't know, since I didn't see it.

You could try again, but only link the healthier derivatives, and instead leave the others unlinked with a notation of where to find them.

Most of the tables that I've seen do not link directly off of Wikipedia; with the example of the game engine page, most of the links go to the wikipage of the game engine in question OR the company that developed it. Could you try providing just one link somewhere in the article leading to a Godwars repository?

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Parhelion I think it would help, in the long term, by creating a source pool for citing materials AND it would send the first olive branch to the wiki mods that our community writers are more serious about playing by their rules. HOWEVER, I strongly disagree that TMC or TMS should be the sites to do this. Why? The short answer is public relations and background.

Okay, I'll back you on that.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by Kylotan Scandum and Parhelion have it exactly right. Wikipedia is a great site on the whole when used for its intended purpose - getting an overview of a subject and finding further sources to be able to dig deeper. You can say what you like about the editors but on the whole it's no less accurate than a normal encyclopaedia for the most commonly read articles. However, like a normal encyclopaedia, it's not there to provide poorly-sourced pages about fairly trivial things, like individual instances of a forked game code base. What might be more appropriate is a summary page with links to external entries on mud-specific Wikis. But there's little point everybody on here whining about the admins or the rules. Wikipedia is what it is, like it or not, and you have the choices of putting articles on there that are well-cited and which are useful information for everybody, or choosing not to and seeing them get deleted.

The problem with this is that things that are well-cited can still be pushed off of Wikipedia by a war of attrition. It only takes one editor who wants to another notch in his belt to begin edit-warring and whittling away at every source. You can actually do it on almost anything that isn't a current popular fad. For example, if you go to the Dragonlance page, you can knock out about 70% of the sources because they're published by TSR or WotC. (Conflict of interest and self-publishing are what was claimed when long-standing MUD sites were cited.) Most of the rest of the sources are either fan pages or articles written by the authors of the series. If the movie had not been released and the article finally improved in citation, Dragonlance could have easily been attacked in the same manner as individual MUDs are.

If you look up Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Settings, the article is barely scted. I happened on the page while looking to improve the Savage Coast campaign setting entry, and unfortunately, I discovered, instead, that I'd lost my entire Red Steel campaign books somewhere. I've been searching for a replacement, but it's been out of print for years and also incorporated into the Savage Coast. The campaign setting existed, was popular for about a year and a half, and now it's lost in the TSR/WoTC rumble in addition to the sheer amount of time that has passed.

Ultimately, it's the whining that keeps mud entries where they are, especially for bigger MUDs or the ones that hold historical significance. From what I've seen, it's the whining that gets things done on Wikipedia and a handful of editors that got their position from building up Wikipedia rather than knocking it down.

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by DonathinFrye Additionally, what of sending press releases to BrightHub to see if any of their paid article writers would be willing to review genre-specific material. Certainly that would also contribute to notability and reach out to new potential users in an effort to expand the size of the community.

Thanks, DF. We've worked on this and are waiting to hear back from a few administrators of MUD dedicated sites as well as a few games.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Milawe The problem with this is that things that are well-cited can still be pushed off of Wikipedia by a war of attrition. It only takes one editor who wants to another notch in his belt to begin edit-warring and whittling away at every source. You can actually do it on almost anything that isn't a current popular fad.

This is my problem as well. Some snot nosed uneducated high school drop out who plays Wiki day in and day out and happens to be an editor that could never get a job editing anything but his own neighborhood paper can control a listing.

Down with Wiki and its little dog Toto too!

[chaosprime]

What with how I've probably been the most active Wikipedia editor in MUD-related topics by a couple of orders of magnitude for the past year or so, I feel like I should comment on this.

There is no conspiracy. Seriously. Wikipedia has issues and Threshold got hit by some particularly nasty ones, but it's not that bad. The ongoing progress of Wikipedia, and the Threshold controversy's contribution to it, is part of that. It is presently better than it has been at times in the past. I've seen entries like "MU* inherently non-notable" in old deletion discussions; nobody would make that argument today, because if they did it would be ignored. That's because the evolving consensus of Wikipedia has moved past "I personally think it's stupid" being accepted as relevant. There are wikisnobs who think MUDs are a footnote to a footnote, and I've been known to get a little enraged by them, but these are individuals, not the system. They can be worked past.

Now, as many of the voices of reason have noted, it's all about the sources. By far the most importance sentence in the issue of whether a WP article will stay around is this: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." That is, Wikipedia's General Notability Guideline. And yeah, there really are books and magazine articles and newspaper articles about MUDs out there.

The previously noted infighting-oriented nature of the MUD "community" doesn't help anyone when brought to Wikipedia. If your whole mindset is about treating WP as another MUD listing site to get an entry on, your article is probably going to get deleted. If it would never occur to you to write or improve an article about a MUD other than your own, you're not thinking like a Wikipedia editor, which isn't going to work out for you any better than, say, somebody coming to your MUD, getting a staff position and proceeding to try to implement everything they like about WoW and remove the rest.

I've created or recreated a number of articles about MUDs that I have nothing to do with (and in some cases actively loathe), like:

1. Genocide (online game)
2. MOOSE Crossing
3. Shattered World
4. Holy Mission
5. NannyMUD
6. Sojourn (online game)
7. Xyllomer
8. Cheeseplant's House

Then there's articles that aren't about a particular MUD at all, like:

1. Chronology of MUDs
2. Imaginary Realities
3. Designing Virtual Worlds
4. Wizard (MUD)
5. Immortal (MUD)
6. God (MUD)
7. Consider (MUD)
8. Rent (MUD)
9. Dworkin's Game Driver
10. MUDDL (programming language)
11. SWLPC (programming language)

I've also added sourcing to a lot of existing MUD articles, and done my best to save several from deletion (I tried with Arctic MUD and failed).

There are a lot of good reasons to do this; one is because the actual nominal mission of Wikipedia is awesome, and helping it is a Good Thing; another is that every such article that meets Wikipedia's standards makes it more obvious that our field of endeavor here matters.

Point being, I've been successful at building out MUD-related content on Wikipedia because the content I'm writing contributes to the encyclopedia more than it contributes to getting traffic to my MUD, and because it cites sources and otherwise tries to follow Wikipedia's rules.

Honestly, while I don't feel that the "has been mentioned repeatedly in mainstream media" benchmark for notability is all that great (to my taste, it's a bit too much privileging of the viewpoint of soulless organizations that exist to make people like Rupert goddamned Murdoch richer), it's there for a reason, one that's about the entire project, not just MUDs, and nobody has come up with a better alternative. Trying to get things that anyone can see don't mean anything, like listings and forum posts on sites like TMC and TMS, to count toward notability will not, and should not, happen because, as plagued with nonsense as WP already is, it would become exponentially worse if there were no longer any rationale to remove the nonsense. Long story short, it's not all about you.

So, y'know, how about instead of telling ourselves drama-filled stories about how we're persecuted and they're out to get us, we do the damn work? (And part of what I mean by that is somebody other than me friggin' joining the WP MUD task force. What the hell.)

[Milawe]

You have lots of extremely valid points, CP, and I do agree with many of them. Most importantly, I think things have gotten a LOT better since the Threshold incident, and there's been a big movement away from such things. Unfortunately, Arctic Mud has a pretty important place in MUDding history, but finding sources has proven to be extremely difficult. Granted, I'm looking for several sources that I've never actually physically laid eyes on rather than remembering things that I've read in the past. It's much harder to find things when I'm trying to recall things in distant memory for a game I've never played, but that's part of the problem. I don't really feel like I have a lot of time to find the sources before an entry goes kaput. Many paper sources take weeks to be mailed to someone, and sometimes, they even come with a cost depending on where you find the source.

Yes, it's true that I came in during the AfD, but I honestly had no idea that Artic Mud needed sources until it was mentioned here. If the admins of Arctic Mud want to contact me, I'd be happy to write and publish an article about them, their history and their game. There's plenty of independent writers who would be glad to be in touch with any of the admins of established or historical muds.

As a side note, I was totally boggled to find this entry (not entirely work safe) on Wikipedia.

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by Lasher This is what bothered me about this most when we went through the same thing with the Aardwolf listing then the Threshold listing. If you alert people interested in MUDs that the discussion is taking place, you are written off as "soliciting" or "campaigning" (I don't remember the exact term they used). So basically, if you're not in the discussion when it started, your opinion doesn't count because you were "solicited".

They basically fix the system.

Obviously the majority of people on the internet, including Wikipedia readers, don't give a crap about Wikipedia policies or "how the sausage gets made."

So obviously when something crazy starts to happen with a listing, the people who care about THAT LISTING are going to look for help in explaining why it is a legitimate listing.

But they have set up the system so if you are not already an insider, your opinion doesn't matter. And by the time you actually care about a listing, it is too late to become an insider.

It reminds me of the ways lawyers work to make sure the legal system remains a game of insiders where their jobs are always guaranteed (Something I experienced first hand both as a lawyer and someone who worked in government for a time). Disgusting.