Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Thanks to the Admin's from Wikipedia who're contributing to this discussion. Your input has been rather helpful in trying to understand everything that's been going on.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I wasnt originally intending to comment on this thread as someone who has not at any time played Threshold, or referred to the Wikipedia for anything MUD related. I have been reading this thread for the last two days. I guess there are two undoubtedly related, but distinct issues- the actual entry and the reasons being given for the deletion. I had started by reading the comments first (and followed up with juicy stories which everyone had put up about how wikipedia operates), and only then moved to the raw wiki page.

1. About the Page. I agree with the comment made earlier about the fact that the article isnt very informative to someone who hasnt played the game and has very little interest. Nor is it written in an encyclopedic format. Perhaps its been deleted into meaninglessness, but as it stands right now, it makes little sense. (actually, went back to the version before the edits, and it still not very informative, albeit somewhat better)
2. The way that much of the discussion has shaped up on the Talk pages with every dissenting voice being systematically silenced without debate is what is what is raising the hackles of people here. Personally, I couldnt care less as to what happens to the article in question, but I DID find my hackles rise reading some of the comments being posted on the deletion discussion page. The discussion from both sides of the debate is no longer about the article (which wasnt particularly informative to begin with even before the vandalism) but about disregarding every single reference to anything MUD related as being not notable or reliable. In a setting where one cannot site a single notable reference to the game (because any references to its EXISTANCE and notability is disregarded), it becomes hard to find references to support anything about the game at all. If the discussion had stuck to the actual value of the article instead of questioning every single reference to anything MUD related and disregarding all the answers (dragging in TMS and TMC and their historical value to the MUD community), it would not have generated the kind of debate that it has and lmay have resulted in a silent rewrite, instead of an edit war (that has drifted here and been blown out of all proportion).

The tone of the discussion is what makes casual wikipedia editors like me begin to lose faith in the way that the wikipedia operates. I thought the comments (and the decision to keep or delete) would be about the value of the article, not about whether MUDs are sufficiently mainstream to be mentioned in one of the American mainstream papers/journals/magazines or not. If this is the treatment a niche (but still fairly popular) by and large western hobby receives, I shudder about the probability of anything based on traditional cultures of the oh east to be kept in the wiki. I ended up remembering all the shady and biased articles related to my country I had read in the wikipedia that I have been tweaking slowly (how they often continue to be slanted to a particular POV despite being questioned for bias repeatedly) and found myself losing faith in the Wiki. Most of us simply dont have time to keep editing and editing and editing every time we see something that looks weird, just wince and move on (maybe change it if it reaches the level of being ridiculous). I think after this exchange, I am less likely to do that (not being one of those whom "everyone knows").

Anyway, apart from the overall disenchantment, as someone said earlier, this discussion is beginning to sound like one of those cliche "evil imms"-vs-"freedom loving players" debates one has every now and then on many MUDs. Except that its the game admins who are the ones now opposing the evil dark "powers". As Tezcatlipoca said, sounds like some of the games I played.

And this turned into a really long and rambling post!

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Wikipedia editor here.

In mid Dec there was a comment on the discussion page of the article with the title "Consider for deletion?". Since that was made, there were not many attempts to improve the article (aside from the people who AfD'd this page). I think this is the root of the problem, not all this "Wikipedia is biased about so and so" stuff (although Wikipedia does have its problems).

If the article had been fixed up to include non-dead sources and the like, it probably would not be AfD'd as it is right now.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Well, that's the thing. Black Kite and Mendaliv were systematically banning the people working on IMPROVING the entry, and tracking down citations. So by the time they recommended it for deletion, there was nobody left to work on the entry or even oppose the AfD. If we hadn't posted about it here, I'm not sure ANYONE with an opposing viewpoint would ever have had a chance to share their opinion.

Also, during the time when people familiar with Threshold were adding to the entry, they were dealing with having their improvements constantly removed and undone. There were a few times that I worked on it myself, and would track down some improved citations and add them. Then I'd go look for more, come back 30 minutes later, and Mendaliv or Black Kite would have 10+ edits in a row removing every improvement I had just made, removing citations, removing references, etc. for a variety of reasons. They created an environment where it was utterly impossible for a normal person (and by normal I mean someone for whom Wikipedia is not their primary hobby) could not contribute. They were extremely hostile to anyone trying to make the entry BETTER, rather than smaller and less detailed.

If anyone got frustrated and dared to simple go back to an older version that they could actually WORK FROM, they'd get banned.

Once they got most of the contributors banned, and had the article hacked down to a tiny looking stub of barely any information, that is when they moved in with the AfD.

As long as you're here, I'd also like to mention that these charming individuals have also been engaging in "retaliatory editing." Soon after Aardlasher voted KEEP on the Threshold entry, the link to this site (TMS) was removed from the general MUD page by "Themfromspace". It wasn't until the person doing it found out about this thread, and saw that Wikipedia admins were reading it (and thus learning about the retaliatory editing) did the person cut it out and revert the link.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Also, upon further research, it turns out Mendaliv is someone who was apparently kicked off Threshold for playing underage. Considering how often he cried "COI" when someone connected to Threshold made an edit, perhaps he should have applied the same standard to himself. It certainly explains why from the very beginning his goal was not to improve the entry, but gut the heck out of it and then get it deleted.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

One more thing Zeno (and by the way, thank for visiting this site, signing up, and posting):

Can you tell me what your take is on the fact that Mendaliv and a few other members of his "crew" either completely ignore or dismissively discard all arguments for the other side?

And every single citation or reference is just too minor in their eyes to be relevant. Isn't there a point where a giant pile of "minor" (in their opinion) references add up to something notable? Isn't there a point where maybe they need to acknowledge that MUDs, and MUD related web sites/sources are not quite as irrelevant as they want to declare them to be?

The mental gynmastics they engage in to dismiss every possible source or reference is amazing. Earlier this morning, Dr. Richard Bartle, the creator of the first MUD, took the time to . With the title, "", he goes on to attest to the notability of the Mud Connector, Threshold, The Mud Journal, and others. Yet these folks have the unmitigated gall to say "Well, his article is really more about Wikipedia than Threshold or TMC, so it simply adds to Wikipedia's notability, not theirs."

Wha.. wha... WHAT?!?!?!?!

At what point do they simply have to admit that a subject matter that generates this much attention, with this many external sources, and verification from the world's most respected opinion on the subject is at a bare minimum notable enough for Wikipedia.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

A thousand blog entries don't even add up to one news source. Notability isn't merely a matter of quantity.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Wow.. Threshold certainly gets proffessional haters doesnt it. The amount of work going into getting one entry deleted is astounding. Wasnt there a whole website of disgruntled ex-threshers once? Never understood it.. found the games to be incredibly friendly.. if a bit over Zelous with IC stuff.

I digress.

Wikipedia to me, amongst other things, is a listing of everything that is out there, and there are numerous entries for computers games. I first played Threshold over a decade ago after finding the link in MUDCONNECTOR. and in my mind it is a part of MUD history. It has the right to have an entry in Wikipedia, alongside other parts of gaming history, and also CURRENT GAMES. The article to me seemed perfectly fine compared to other computer games.

The argument for deletion where overly verbose, but the biggest example of hair splitting I have ever seen. You get rid of Threshold from the wikipedia, you may as well get rid of 50000 other entries. The entry is sufficiently neutral and what I would expect in an encyclopia entry.

The only issues I found with the entry where the notes / external references which all pointed at the homes domain or articles possibly written by Threshold admin

I did a search for the most obscure games of yesteryear.. not all famous or ground breaking, and found most of them (Ranarama was one that jumped into my head.. and there it is).

Why not create create a Thresh wiki, and forget Wikipedia.

However, I am sorry to say, I do NOT see this as an attack on MUD's in general. if this was the case I would expect to see Acheae and other high profile games marked for deletion as well.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Just because other stuff exists doesn't mean it is a reason for retaining.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I'm not talking about blog posts. I am talking about references from the most significant MUD related resources that we've ever had. Unless you want to argue MUDs are inherently not notable, and never were, you simply cannot declare TMC, TMS, TMJ, GameCommandos, etc. to be unrealiable. Those are the only sources that exist or existed in a significant form for information about MUDs. To whatever extent they are "inferior" to IGN, Gamespot, etc. is simply the result of the Web's evolution, commercialization, and technical polish.

But regarding blog posts: How can you dismiss them out of hand when they are the fastest growing source of journalism? Every argument you can make to disregard them could have been used 5-10 years ago to completely disregard the reliability/notability of all web sites - including the IGNs, Gamespots, etc.

And here's a fact that might be disturbing to Wikipedia: professors and members of academia are far likely to accept a BLOG as a legitimate source than a citation to Wikipedia. If academia considers blogs more notable and reliable than Wikipedia, then what business does Wikipedia have declaring them inherently unreliable and not-notable?

And there is no denying that a blog post from Dr. Richard Bartle is not just some 'ole blog post. He is far and away the most recognized and respected authority on online games. If an expert authority, who is paid by huge companies for his opinion on such matters, says a certain site or a certain game is notable in the context of online games, that pretty much guarantees it. Does it only count if he publishes the opinion in a book or academic review journal? That's not how the world works these days. People, including professionals, experts, and journalists, are conveying more information through blogs than they are through traditional published works.

I read the discussion there and it seems many of the people voting to delete think their personal opinions and (mis)interpretations of Wikipedia policy are more valid and carry more weight than the statements of ACTUAL EXPERTS in the field related to the article in question. That is arrogance and ignorance.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

The thing is, everyone here (including those who created the AfD) seems to be biased. You need to step back at look at the situation as if from a third party.

Is this part of the blind bias? I've been on TMS for 4 years, so I don't know why you're thanking me and the like. I said I was a Wikipedia editor (and I am; first edit on Wikipedia was in 2005), but I never said I'm not part of the MUD community.

Haven't looked at that. If those who they did ban were sockpuppets, that is a valid reason to be banned.

Reverting without discussing it first can cause that. Revert wars are unwanted.

The response to my argument (which was to keep the article) was completely valid and logical.

Most of the refs seem to be dead links. The one physical article ref is apparently a sentence or two. It helps, but it won't keep the article from being deleted.

Honestly I think Wikipedia's notability guidelines is way too harsh. I had my MUD as a Wikipedia page at one time, and it eventually got deleted. But my MUD isn't notable, and that's the truth.

Threshold seems to be notable, but it seems like you're having a hard time finding a number of valid third party references or sources.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Stating it that way is a little bit misleading. According to the actual policy: .

This is the problem with a lot of the policies that are being bandied about in the discussion. The pro-delete folks are frequently just quoting the name of a policy, and then stating their view of it as if they are quoting it. But if you actually click on the link and read it, a lot of the time the policy is nothing like the way they state it.

Their Holy Hand Grenade of Deletion being lobbed by the pro-delete crowd is the . But more htan HALF of that page is made up of "."

And while we are at it, don't forget:

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

OK. Lets put the question this way, Neurolysis (or one of the other wikipedia people reading this), what WOULD be a reference that actually covers MUDs and MUDing in general that you would accept?

This is keeping in mind that most MUDs are NOT reviewed commercially, do not have books written about them and do not get mentioned in the "mainstream" media, but still obviously exist and very clearly generate a lot of passion. This discussion seems to have boiled down to finding a single reference that Wikipedia finds to be up to its standard to prove that Threshold is noteworthy. Therefore, if all the references produced do not meet the standard of proof for the wikipedia (fair enough) what WOULD be a definitive authoritative notable EXISTING source related to MUDing that you would accept?

Threshold exists. It attracts thousands of players. It has been clearly recognized as important (if not noteworthy) by experts in the profession. Its the elephant in the room. Since you have been helpful and have posted several times during the day, could you help the MUD community to NOT turn this debate over a single article of average (or below) quality into a crusade over the noteworthiness of all MUDs in general, which is exactly what is happening when one reads all the reasons for rejection of all the bits of evidence presented. I know the burden of proof is on the game, but it would sure as hell help us bystanders not get all worked up if it went back to being what it is- a debate over a single article, not a question of the reliability and validity of all MUD references.

So what WOULD be a hypothetical MUD reference that the Wikipedia would find acceptable? That way the people from Theshold can perhaps go back to editing the article and we can all go back to our own MUDs.

As stated previously, I have no affiliation with Threshold- past, present or future.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

By the way, considering how virulent the pro-delete folks have been about "canvassing", it was pretty disturbing to be made aware of this little nugget on Mendaliv's user page:

Is that really appropriate?

You guys have full posting rights, unlike the rest of us that the pro-delete folks got banned. Why would you need to discuss it off-wiki, when you can share your arguments right there for everyone?

Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions and there is nothing untoward going on there. But it certainly looks bad to me.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

That was my point.

--matt

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

If we're seeking a suitable source to prove notarity for the game, can we use this thread? Recent history and activity (all logically preserved in web-accessable media I might add) has shown that this is such a big deal that not only have users belonging to this site found it pertainant to participate, but a number of authorities on Wikipedia have also blessed the subject as important enough (i.e. notable) to personally take time out of their important schedules to decend upon us and show us the way to prudence.

And if that's not enough, and thus those individuals from wikipedia along with the rest of us are thus not really important at all, then perhaps this would be an acceptable alternative: a fullly documented entry with valid *first hand* references to the historical event surounding the deletion of the Threshold Wikipedia entry, which obviously would need some link or reference to--not to mention background information on--Threshold itself in order to make sure the reader fully understands the situation and circumstances. It might be required to provide the original and modified entries of Threshold's entry to help further fully explain the situation. I think the only wrinkle to this would be finding an independant non-baised source to create and maintain the entry... no one here qualifies, and certainly no one on wikipedia for the same reasons.
We can then link this entry as an antithesis to the ones concerning the wikipedia/Colbert scandle, as well as wikipedia/Ryan Jordan, as a good example of when wikipedia stands in the justified light.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

You know, I have to disagree here. TMS and TMC are not the IGNs of the Mud world. Mudconnector also has never had full-time staff dedicated to reviewing MUDs. I believe they've always been hobbyist volunteers doing the reviewing. That's not to say the reviews don't matter but I can see Wikipedia's point here. Nothing on TMS or TMC is authoritative in any way. The voting is a game, not a meaningful measure of much (note that the two most popular text MUDs don't even appear in the top 20 here). The reviews are largely solicited, and the rest is largely forum traffic, which I don't believe should count as a reference source.


But that really speaks to TMC's notability, not whether it should be used as a reference for other sites/games or not. There's nothing about TMC's content that's authoritative in any way except to affirm the existence or not of a particular MUD.

As an analogy: MUD I was notable, but discussions within MUD I, even if archived, shouldn't be used as a reference source.

Now come on, that's a bit of hyperbole don't you think? MUDs as a whole never even came close to the ubiquity that Wikipedia has achieved. I'd be willing to lay a lot of money that more people will use Wikipedia this month (close to 60 million people just on the English language version) than have collectively played all text MUDs ever. It's a scale thing as much as anything else. The internet is simply more important and far more widely used now than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Remember that Wikipedia is, rightly, not concerned with relative notability but overall notability (ie as an extreme case: just because someone is really well-known in a hobby shared by only a dozen other people doesn't make them notable at all by Wikipedia's standards, as nothing that only a dozen people are interested in can possibly produce notability).


It's pretty rare, but it does happen. Total PC Gaming magazine recently did a (very) small bit on MUDs, though they literally mentioned only three of them, which is kind of weird given how many MUDs there are, but I suppose most of their readership just doesn't care.

I totally sympathize with your efforts regarding Threshold, and it's very clear that in this particular case the reason it was delisted and is staying delisted has a lot more to do with the biases of a couple of Wikipedia editors than anything else, but I think the Wikipedia guys do have a point once you strip out the bullsh*t antics going on over there.

--matt

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Not really, no. What percentage of internet users currently use or know about wikipedia?

10-15 years ago, what percentage of internet users played or knew about muds?

There was a time when MUDs were one of the biggest things on the internet. So no, I don't think it is hyperbole.

Wikipedia's policies specifically say it is worthwhile to have articles on things as obscure as long forgotten 70s TV shows, out of print comic book heroes that never got more than an issue or two, and all sorts of other non-mainstream topics. If that is the case, then MUDs and major sites about MUDs certainly qualify. And if MUDs qualify, I believe Threshold is one such MUD that would be notable.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

If this was a print encyclopedia and the internet had 5 people, would it matter that all five of them played a MUD? Would that make the MUD notable? No. The context is the whole world, not just the internet, and far far fewer people played MUDs than use Wikipedia. The internet itself was a lot less notable 15 years ago than it is now. Wikipedia doesn't exist to chronicle that which is big on the internet, regardless of the internet's size. It exists to chronicle that which is notable, period. (Of course, it falls down a lot on that mission, but that is its ostensible mission.)

I do find it endlessly amusing (and quite silly) how much coverage on Wikipedia is given to fictional personalities (like comic book superheroes).

--matt

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

If the "" guy and other have valid pages on Wikipedia, then clearly something being big on the internet (like MUDs were at one time) is more than enough for a subject to be notable.

How many people owned a ? A lot less people that have played MUDs. But Timex Sinclair has a page, and it is certainly a significant enough piece of computer history to deserve one.

There is absolutely no denying the historical significance MUDs have played for the internet and for online gaming. As such, when evaluating the notability of a MUD, one must look to the sources of information that are pertinent within that subject matter. That points to TMC, TMS, TMJ, GameCommandos, and perhaps a handful of other sites.

And furthermore, if Dr. Bartle says TMC is a significant and notable source of information, I'm inclined to believe him.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Just in case folks here are not aware, the issue is now starting to get picked up by major gaming blogs.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Dr. Bartle is one dude. I disagree with him in this case (and in numerous others).

I don't see what information is presented on TMC that makes it authoritative in any way. The entries about the MUDs are basically advertisements written by the MUD admins. The voting is a game and isn't reflective of anything beyond that the MUD is good at playing that game, etc. TMC itself as a site might be notable but that doesn't make the information within it something that should be used as a reference.

After all, if that's the case, why shouldn't every MUD on TMC, no matter how insignificant, no matter how few players, have an entry, since they're all "covered" by TMC? I think if you're making the case that Threshold is notable because it's on TMC, you're making a very weak case. Pick the things that make it notable. Being on TMC isn't one of them.

--matt

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Matt, the argument has been made on the basis of a lot more than just TMC. That is one of like 10 different things. If you would like to know the full argument, I would highly recommend you read the AfD itself, the AfD's talk page (yes, a discussion page for a discussion page), and the other detailed posts in this thread.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

The Threshold article on Wikipedia is rubbish and should be deleted in its current form. I had a quick peek at google's usenet archive, but the only notable thing I found was some 1998 posts about a non profit (medievia style) copyright violation (apparently Threshold is a lpmud illegally charging money) - I lost interest in making a positive contribution after that, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

As it is 90% of the mud related articles should be deleted since they're unsourced, biased, and unencyclopedic.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

You've hit the jackpot.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Nod, I did. I'm just pointing out that being on TMC lends absolutely no notability in my opinion (or, it seems, in the opinion of Wikipedia). Being on TMC is, after all, simply a matter of choosing to be there. Anyone can do it without any barrier. It doesn't signify anything except that the MUD exists.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

That, while gratifying, with all due respect doesnt answer the question.

What do niche hobbies DO to find references that are sufficiently mainstream to be considered acceptable?

And, The_Logos, what TMC can do is prove that the MUD exists and has been receiving fairly good reviews over a consistent period of time and clocking a high vote which indicates popularity in the niche community of MUD players. It doesnt say anything about the game features (Unless there is an independent TMC review of it) or anything of the game's history. The MUD vote does not provide evidence of it being THE best MUD or the most well liked one or most original or most anything. However, the consistent vote count DOES indicate an active playerbase which in turn indicates its better off than most. Its not definitive proof, but its indicative of something.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

MUDs will never die. The roots cannot die. From time to time they may be less or more played but they will stay. There are always people who find the magic from muds. Today there is no graphical game that could give you the same feelings and adrenaline that a good mud does. That is why books never die even if there are recorded tapes or movies. The roots cannot die.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I've found well written Usenet posts archived by google groups particularly useful for sourcing early mud history on Wikipedia given they're dated and cannot be altered.

Some MUDs will be screwed though since there is no reliable proof whatsoever of their existence.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

But that's kind of the point: It's not about being notable WITHIN a hobby. It's about being notable, period (or at least that seems to be the intent. I think we all know the intent isn't exactly reflected in reality in many cases). Being a big fish in a very tiny pond isn't very notable generally speaking. It's why small-town mayors don't tend to get Wikipedia pages, for instance, I'd imagine, whereas the mayor of New York City will.

And remember that it's not about the hobby finding references. It's about individual games within the hobby finding references to prove notability. That is possible, and there are text MUDs that can meet Wikipedia's notability standards (again, regardless of whether we consider those standards fair or not, they're what we're dealing with).

Wikipedia's legitimate point here is that the player reviews on something like TMC are meaningless. It's just random people submitting reviews, and those reviews can be solicited.


Yeah, but again, it's not enough to be a big fish in a tiny pond. If there was a niche community of 3 people and 2 of them voted for one of the three, should that person have a Wikipedia page as a result? After all, 2/3rds of the community voted for him. The size of the community matters a lot in terms of overall notability. (A three person community isn't able to lend its members much notability.)

I don't think that just having active players makes you notable. If that was the case, then virtually every MUD is notable, every publication on earth read by a few hundred people is notable, etc.

Judged by online games in general, there are no text MUDs that are notable for the size of their populations.

I don't mean to sound so negative in these few posts I've made in this thread. I just think you guys are barking up the wrong tree. Putting aside the petty biases that one particular Wikipedia editor seems to have, I think I'd probably make the same decision in Wikipedia's shoes, with the information that Wikipedia has available to it.
--matt

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Do Usenet posts count for notability on Wikipedia? If they do, then it's absurd that TMS and TMC forum posts don't (although I personally don't think either should count).

--matt

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

MUDs can very well vanish, and can vanish as well. As a recent example take a look at the MudMagic/MudRage community. All of a sudden the website was closed down. It had a large code repository and discussion forums. The code repository was luckily made available for download but it is nothing that was guaranteed to happen. The forum discussions are lost. If the code repository had been gone forever, then many codebases and documents could have been lost with it.

Another example is the MudDev mailing list. The mailing list was closed down all of a sudden, and the discussion archive got lost. Someone did happen to have a backup of it though.

Then you have all those MUDs that simply close down, without making any of their work available after the closure. When such a MUD closes down then all of that "world"'s history is pretty much gone with it.

If the history of MUDs aren't written down then the mistakes done in the past will without doubt be done again in the future.

Edit: I kinda doubt writing down individual MUDs' history is Wikipedia's mission though. There's though.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

The Usenet archive is maintained by Google while the owners of TMC and TMS are less reliable entities.

A link to a 1998 post on TMC (though I believe TMC only goes back to 2001) announcing the official opening of Achaea (or whenever it was) would arguably be a valid reference if it was relevant and signed or pseudo anonymous. It would help if TMC had its own Wikipedia article and better content.

But if you use a good source, even if it's flimsy, and try to create a neutral article instead of something you pulled out of your nose on a whim, it'll show and your article will be left alone - unless it's about eugenics or something.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

It seems to me that the problem that the outraged members in the community have is that they aren't familiar with scholarly or encyclopedic writing. I'm certain I'll be called "elitist" or something, but if you've ever had training in research and scholarly writing it's not very hard to understand the concepts of notability and usefulness of verifiable sources and why Wikipedia is considering articles for deletion. My suggestion is that people from the MU* community writing Wikipedia articles ask themselves if they're really qualified to be attempting something they have little or no understanding of how to do. Yes, anyone can write and edit on Wikipedia but anyone can try to perform brain surgery too. Doesn't mean it's a good idea to slice grandma open on the kitchen table and start poking around with a fork. User-editing without verifiable credentials is one reason I'd flunk anyone that used Wikipedia as a source. Kudos to them at least for trying to maintain a level of reasonable legitimacy in their content though. It may not be useable material for writing scholarly research, but at least they're trying to keep it from being just some blog.

Jason

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I don't normally spend a lot of time on stuff outside my own little corner of the internet, but this hits close enough to my own involvement in the community that I can't leave it be.

Aristotle, I think you're getting a really bad rap from these WP admins. There's very clearly an agenda on Mendaliv's part and I find it quite disturbing that the justifications he's giving about TMC, TMS, Game Commandos, Bartle, and Koster all being unreliable sources is something they all find valid. I don't think it's at all paranoid or conspiratorial to think that they'll begin engaging in a wider campaign to purge MUDs in general from Wikipedia and nothing the admins who posted here have said has convinced me they won't.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I have scientific research published and presented in my name on perideridia americana among other things. Threshold has tons of scholarly writings as well as legal briefs written by him. I would venture to guess that I've probably had more scholarly papers published than several people who contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis. It doesn't really matter, though, since Wikipedia doesn't require you to have jack squat in order to edit on their site. That's, in fact, 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.)

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. 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.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Sweet Raptor Jesus! I find it shocking that a Wikipedia editor would even THINK about using an analogy like this. Lern2internets, good sir. This is not a fenced sandbox you are playing in. Perhaps a little humility is due your editors and administrators, with the reminder that they are but a minuscule fraction of the total number of people who actively use the internet. The excuse 'well we don't know them' is laughable considering this fact.

Quoted For Truth. Wikipedia is viewed as a curio and a fanbois pseudo-reference in the eyes of most professional academics I have encountered. Sort of brings up the whole humility thing again, doesn't it?

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

I'm saying that for MUDs to vanish it needs a whole certain type of people to vanish too. I don't know what it is that is given to a small percentage of people so that they will start playing a MUD but where's one there are anothers. Based on my own experience I only had to see one of my friends playing it and I already knew that I will learn it too. What's wrong with me then? It's quite simple - I was bored of 3D and the new coolest graphical games. There are always people who for some reason want to try something completely different. In my research people who play muds are either programmers, d&d or LARP fans, computer gamers, nerds, metalheads or some pretty random guys. Is one of these types vanishing? Certainly no.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

An encylopedia is not appropriate for sourcing. You are comparing two completely irrelevant and separate entities.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Or super cool chicks. Right? :D

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

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).

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).

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

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

"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!

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.

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.)

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

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.

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!)

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. :)

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

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

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

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?

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

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.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

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:



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?



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:



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.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

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.

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

You are not allowed to reason like this according to :).

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

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

Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.
 

Deleting due to duplication