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

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

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

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

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

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

Just asking :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In related news, Colin Brennan wrote an article about the situation, entitled

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

*chuckle*

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

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

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

:-D

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

Thing to take from this for people who give a damn

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

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

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

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

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

My favorite quote that has come from all this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you honestly believe that wikipedia would be the perfect online encyclopedia? So you're saying it's unfair that the site has admins that don't care about your mud or your article? Really?

Pointless knowledge that only matters to a select few people that I can count on both of my hands doesn't count.

Of course I realize how cheap memory is, it was sarcasm. My point was that having an article on Threshold in wikipedia is as pointless as having it anywhere else. Muds have a small cult following of players and that's all they have. This is why it shouldn't matter what wikipedia does to the little articles similar to MUDs or anything else similar to them.

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

- Won't happen because MUDs have too much of a cult following. People become biased to the MUDs they play.
- This won't happen either, the genre is too small and scattered. There are too many small time muds running and not enough people working together to do something like this.
- Good luck with this one.

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

Hmm. I think you may be arguing yourself in circles here. If they didn't care about our mud or our article, it would have very likely rested in its little corner of Wikipedia, left alone to rot along with things like polymorphism, Darkness Falls, and half a dozen muds I'm not going to name lest I help wiki-hatchet-warriors find them before their time. Also, if the admins didn't care, I somehow think it wouldn't have resulted in one of the longest AfDs in the history of Wikipedia, and the story has been picked up by people who have never once logged into Threshold. It seems like, perhaps, a lot of people care. Obviously, you don't care except to post about how much you don't care.

What big hands you have! You can't assume that other muds reflect your own user-base or generate the same interest that yours does. I definitely don't assume that our usage is the same as Aardwolf, Achaea, Medievia, Gemstone III, Discworld, or mushes and mucks that have userbases much bigger than ours.

I wonder if muds have a smaller cult following than say amigurumi, Long Shot, or Jem and the Misfits. Again, I don't think you should use the usage of your own mud to judge how big or small the genre is.

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

I think that it's more likely that the project would face extreme difficulty due to warring admins (much like Wikipedia's editors) than players being biased to the MUDs they play. I know that I recently refused to be a part of a project that would have probably benefited our MUD financially because I was really wary of the person who was spearheading the project. The guy doesn't even have his own mud, just a reputation. Let me say, also, that this incident has been a learning experience for me as well, and I doubt I would have refused to be a part of that project after having gone through this. It makes me review my opinion of the guy that I once had pretty good discussions with, and we fell out when both our tempers started to fray on a subject we ultimately agree on.

In the end, though, this incident actually gives me a lot of hope that a project, if run correctly, divorced from having ties to any one particular mud, and done with the intent of providing an academic site (thus, not really treading on TMS or TMC's toes), can succeed. There were people involved in the KEEP side of the AfD that I'm pretty sure strongly dislike the lead developer and owner of Threshold and wouldn't pee on the mud's server if it was on fire to put it out, yet they put aside personal dislikes to participate in the issue. (This is not to say that the people who didn't participate in the AfD couldn't see through their dislikes. I understand that people have very different ideas about what should be on Wikipedia.) So if a serious historical project was created that needed very little help from mud admins for maintaining it, I think it could very well succeed despite all the strong personalities in the community.

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

Greetings. This is Donathin, from the wikipedia discussion on Threshold's entry - some of you will remember me as a past TMS user. Whatever the result of this is, I'd encourage you to continue to work on getting Treshold's entry improved and properly resourced. However, be careful of your tone on the Wikipedia site. I know how passionate we can get about our games, but we have to give respect if we wish to receive respect; you know the inclination of administrators in charge of online communities to shut down and not hear newbies (respectively) who vocally attack their product. This is not to say that anger cannot be justified here, only that I doubt it will be effective. The wiki page is safe on a user page where it can be independently improved and eventually re-stated, even should the current review turn out to support the motion to delete.

I can understand the frustration, but significant MUDs -do- have a place on wikipedia; they are a large part of the history of gaming, and Wikipedia is ideally meant to accumulate knowledge of such niche topics. Wikipedia is not meant to be shallow, but they do desire it to be of high quality. I see no reason that Threshold cannot obtain that, if heads can be kept cool and continued work is done. Everything else is only an obstacle, something I've learned from being an editor on Wikipedia myself.

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

Thanks, Donathain. It's very obvious that certain things don't fit into the Wiki culture, and I think Threshold's already taking steps to adjust his writing style. Appreciate the help, though, because it is a culture that is steeped in some very interesting protocol. It's pretty hard to navigate around if you don't have help. (Or at least it is for me.)

Anyway, thanks again for the tips and the warning.

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

Other admins can see it. I guess you could say we have a permanent recycle bin.

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

Slightly tongue in cheek here, but I'm assuming with all of this there's no WP:COMMONBLOODYSENSE. :)

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

You'll excuse me while I proceed to laugh my ass off. [steps away]

OK, done. Thanks for brightening up my day with that bit of silliness.

Other admins being able to see it means nothing to the rest of us. It's the same as if I and the other admins on MudBytes depublished several high profile posts and then went around making claims about how they weren't appropriate to the forum because of the replies they got. People would rightly claim there's no proof of any of it unless the audit trail is visible to all.

You've done the same. Delisted an article. It's sitting in an admins-only bin somewhere. You guys can point to it and claim X is a sockputted of Y's meatpuppet for Z all day long and cite bogus edits as your reasoning but nobody can back that up now because of it all being swept under the rug and hidden from view.

I think it's even further ridiculous that when caught exercising improper action, the fallback is now WP:IAR ( Ignore all rules ) which seems like an awfully convenient get out of jail free card for the elitests in charge.

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

Oh how the irony and corruption continue to grow! Yes, explain to the world how to hide future canvassing by sitting in an IRC channel and invoke copyright on the conversation and deny permission for the logs to be used as evidence. Brilliant.

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

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

That's awesome.

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

IRC... private??? ROFL WOOOOW. That's funny. Now where was this stated?

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

Buried about 60% of the way down the page. Just hunt for stuff in the quoted text, it'll show. Apparently it's all based on some "incident" they had in 2007 about someone using IRC logs as evidence in some dispute. Naturally of course people objected. I mean, they need SOMEWHERE to hide, right?

And yes, the ridiculousness of IRC being private was why I laughed my ass off about it. Until I realized they're being dead serious about it being private and copyrighted and all that. Now I'm just dumbfoudned by it.

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

Do you have a hammer? I have a strong urge to bludgeon myself after reading such stupidity. IRC not available to public? Hmm try telling that to the channel I sit in that's on the same server as #wikipedia-en

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

Well, he's not saying it's private exactly, because that would make it even worse canvassing than it was. He's saying that we're not allowed to post logs on Wikipedia because IRC owns the copyright to all those logs. Technically, I guess TMS owns the copyrights to our posts (I'll be honest and say I don't remember the ToS of the site), but it's an open forum. I guess Lasher could technically ask those guys on Wikipedia to remove quotes from this forum seeing as they're "copyrighted" by TMS as well. Who knows!

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

We really cannot expect logic from those people.

The idea that an OPEN process viewable to all is more suspect that secret, closed door meetings is absurd. Nobody in their right mind would agree with that. I try to take comfort in knowing they have to be absolutely dishonest and violate their own policies and principles in order to get their way.

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

I should say MOST of those people. There have been a few that truly embodied the oft-quoted, rarely followed WP:GOODFAITH. Neurolysis, J.delanoy, Protonk, LinaMisha, and a few other of the "hard core" Wikipedia folks seem to legitimately want to do what is best.

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

I've just reviewed this thread and the original post and am baffled by the moronics. One reason why I hate Wikipedia. It's like a free for all and most information there is suspect. I really hate when people quote it as fact. It is turning more into a STAR or National Inquirer than a true site of information.

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

Hm, Threshold is pulled, but there's games not even released... with entries?


It's full of 'publicity' type wording 'a huge dynamic world' - whose huge are we talking about?
'The Alfar are the cruel, hate-spawned cousins of the Mirdain'... etc, it's a giant advertisement for an online game that hasn't even been released yet.

I like also how 'scrib' pages are considered a valid source... Um, I can post my own scrib pages as sources if I wish...

They do have lots of references from other sources, I'll give it that, just surprising that they're already considered 'noteworthy' vs a game that was/is around for ages.

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

But isn't that one reason Threshold's entry was removed? Among other things, they felt they couldn't trust the sources of info that Threshold's entry pointed to. In other words, they're trying to make the information on Wikipedia less suspect (at least the ones that mean well are).

--matt

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

That would be like pulling Microsoft's listing after Bill Gates personally wrote the discription. Classic idiocy.

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

If there weren't any other citations, then it wouldn't be idiocy. You can't complain about Wikipedia's accuracy on one hand and on the other hand say it's fine for people to write about their own companies and products without that then being backed up by cited sources.

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

Possibly if we didn't have other sources that were repeatedly removed as others were putting them up, which is why the admins of Threshold finally got involved. This also resulted in the removal of TMS on the MUDs entry in order to take more references away from the Threshold entry. (It was put back by others.)

It wasn't a matter of "trust" for at least two of the articles since they were published in magazines completely unrelated to muds. If the references for the Threshold article had been left alone, it would have been one of the better referenced muds on Wikipedia. The message seemed clear: Back off. You're not going to be allowed to better this entry, which would make the information on Wikipedia MORE suspect in my opinion.

Now, there could be an argument that MUDs shouldn't be on Wikipedia at all, but that wasn't the case here.

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

I can't see the deletion thread now, obviously, but weren't the articles on the order of kind of "throw-away" mentions? A paragraph or something? Didn't the Wikipedia editors claim those kind of in-passing references don't really matter? I'm not espousing one viewpoint or the other, just curious. I think either the Aetolia or Imperian pages on Wikipedia were deleted at one point and I never had any idea why. Lusternia and Achaea are still there, but frankly, judging by Lusternia's entry, I wouldn't be surprised to see it removed for the same reasons as Threshold.


That'd be a very tough argument to make as there are MUDs that even the Wikipedia editors acting in bad faith would have a tough time arguing don't meet Wikipedia's rules for inclusion.

--matt

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

I don't really know how to answer this. The people originally engaged in the edit warring were declaring them "throw-away" mentions, though some of the articles were newspaper articles that were full articles on Threshold. Granted, it was not the New York Times, but it's still a substantial article. A few of the ones removed were also ones that were lists, but I see those all over the place for movies and games. They also removed Threshold's TMC review, which was unsolicited and written by a TMC staff member. It was actually the second review that was written on Threshold from TMC. I'm not sure where the first one is anymore. TMS was not only thrown out as a source that Threshold was notable in the mudding community, but it was removed from the actual MUDs article to try to make this point.

I don't know what exactly is going on in Wikipedia except that some editors seem to think it's okay to do everything based on their own judgment and not research. For example, did you know that there was a discussion to remove mention of IRE on the MUDs article? You may not care about personally because, like Threshold, IRE probably gets very little out of being mentioned on Wikipedia, but looking at the entry objectively, how could IRE NOT be included in an article on MUDs and MUD history? I even went to look up a source for IRE and posted it so that it could be used. Even if it is a passing mention, the fact that IRE was mentioned along with Sony is a telling thing, in my opinion.

In the end, that may be the problem with the whole issue. Very much of this is opinion. Whose opinion counts more, then? And that may be the question. I think, though, the only reason that this issue HAS garnered this much attention is because Threshold might very possibly BE notable. You can't force people to pick up a story that doesn't mean anything to them, just as you can't force people to pick up a cause they don't have interest in. I know that I would pitch an absolute fit if someone tried to remove Achaea by claiming that muds in general aren't noticeable, but I might not be as moved to do act for Solace. (No offense to Solace.)

Ultimately, you might be seeing Wikipedia as one entity that is trying to do some "good", but in reality, two people, one of which just happened to be an admin, was making the decisions for the article before it was put up for an AfD by one of those two people.

I'd like to agree with you except that I saw TMS removed from the MUDs article in general. I think if enough administrations and editors got together, it's possible to remove just about anything from Wikipedia. I read about a case where one editor removed (and kept off) the reports of an author's death because it could not be "verified". I'm not sure if his death ever got back on there, but there sure a lot of jokes flying around about it. :)

I've already been assured that re-listing Threshold after it's written won't be a problem assuming the deletion doesn't get overturned. Maybe it'll face an AfD again, but at least they'll have to unlist us with about 10-15 citations this time, which will probably make it one of the best cited and researched mud articles on Wikipedia. I still think its days will be numbered, but then again, I think Wikipedia's days are numbered as well.

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

It was removed for notability. It passed WP:V (verifiability) with flying colors. Incidentally, WP:V used to be the controlling standard. But WP:N (notability) is now being used as a scythe to remove entries because there are so many editors bucking for adminhood, and the easiest way to score "contributions" is to delete articles in the name of "improving the project."

WP:V is a very legitimate concern. WP:N is subjective as heck and doesn't jibe with what Wikiepdia does best: cover obscure topics. WP:NOTPAPER (Wikipedia is not paper) is actually clear on that as well. There is tremendous benefit to covering and documenting obscure topics. But the current dominating force is on a deletion crusade for their own personal benefit, not the benefit of Wikipedia.


The one thing I have learned above all else about Wikipedia is this: never underestimate what Wikipedians acting in bad faith are capable of.

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

We are lucky that we even saved that much information. I imagine there are a lot of very notable MUDs that SHOULD have entries on Wikipedia that haven't saved that much about their own history. That's part of the problem. The even larger problem is the fact that right now we are unable to use TMC, TMS, etc. as stand alone sources of information to keeping a MUD entry on Wikipedia. Since those are 2 of the main sources of historical information on MUDs, that is a big problem.

On the plus side, the whole incident has helped us gather even more articles and references that we had lost track of. That will help in the future not only for a Wikipedia entry, but for our game and our company in general. Hopefully this has encouraged other MUD admins to start digging through their own files to gather up historical references about their games. But best of all, it seems to have galvanized us all a little bit. Maybe we can takes some steps as a community to preserve more of our history.

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

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

A few random musings, and one long thought.

1) Have you actually gotten a larger-than-typical influx of new players at Threshold since this fiasco began?

2) Would Achaea survive the notability scythe? If notability cannot be parented in through IRE, how would it be achieved in such a way to make it more notable than Threshold? An opinion would not be enough, as at the very least you would need to point to specific documented wiki law applicable to keeping Achaea that would distance it from Threshold. Anything less is speculation, and as I can attest to, when wiki admins set out to delete an article for reasons of notability, it can be very difficult to stop this process. Outside of Dragonrealms and the original MUD, I think current conditions could make proving notability for any MUD difficult if it is being attacked by such vigorous admins as those that attacked Threshold.

3) I would not be suprised to see an overturn ruling on the deletion review. Many unbias editors seem to think it appropriate, even more so than those that came out to support the KEEP votes (like me). At either rate, improving the editorial quality and referencing for the page would be a good thing to both preserve it, and to improve it to a level of quality sufficient for what wikipedia should be (and, admittedly, sometimes is).

4) As I've stated above, my only other advice would be to avoid flame wars on wikipedia, even if anger is justified -- their community does not respond to angry posts as well as the MUD community does. This is because most wikipedia communication comes from posts that can be edited, moved, and changed by just about anyone - whereas this community is used to virtual chatting and forum community. When you go to the courts to plead your case, even if the judge is bias and underhanded and the jury is bribed, your best bet is always to show yourself as a respectful and level-headed person. I know how difficult this can be, but it is always in your own best interest.


5) I see the entire ordeal as an opportunity to strengthen the community, instead of hurt it. The article can be improved and recovered, and now some often forgotten weaknesses of the MUD community have been exposed. Gone are the days of the innovation, largely, the popularity. Perhaps not co-incidentally, gone too are the days of online magazines dedicated to MUDs, professional magazines reviewing them, professorial articles written on them. Gone is the vibe, the underground excitement, the movement and word of mouth. Did all of the absentee, hard-working contributors to the community get too old? Get too tired? Get too comfortable? Probably. I know that I have narrowed my own personal vision of what I could contribute to the community to what I could contribute to a single (and incredible) game. For a time, this (rather historic, in terms of wikipedia length) debate and AfD have brought the community together. Didn't even need to canvass - many read it on the experts' blogs, I found it while surfing around randomly on wikipedia for information on MUD codebases. For those who are still in a position to do something for the community, who still have the energy - accept the challenge. For those of you who are newer MUDers and reading this post, take up the call.

Graphical MMORPGs are inferior games with inferior gameplay and content, but superior graphics/interface. This is what many of us believe. If you believe that, and you have the time and energy to do something about it - start a new wikipedia for just MUDs, band together with others to start writing expert-quality articles on MUDs and MUDing, find new and innovative ways to get our message out to potential new players, fight to get us represented in commercial gaming magazines. Underground music will continue to thrive, independent movies will continue to thrive, non-best-seller books will continue to captivate large audiences of readers. Don't let flash games be the next-gen of underground gaming. That crown was on our heads, and complacency has seen it slip in the past few years.

Do something about it. All I can say.

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

Not to leech off the suggestion or anything but one could also avail themselves of the already existing article section over at MudBytes. Articles on MUD history and things of that nature would be more than welcome there. It's not wiki-ware quality but that could change as time goes on assuming people are interested in using the resources we've made available.

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

Obviously my company is a big supporter of both TMS and by far the biggest supporter of TMC, but I agree with Wikipedia's decision here to be honest. I don't see either TMS or TMC as establishing notability.

That's kind of funny but I find it hard to care much. The thing IRE is most notable for in the wider games world (pioneering virtual goods sales and inventing the dual currency model) might be hard to prove as I don't think there are any sources that would be considered reliable by Wikipedia that "prove" it did those things.

You're right btw, Wikipedia sends virtually no traffic our way.


That's a little strange, although on the one hand it's "just" a set of MUD listings, an unauthoritative ranking system, and a set of forums. On the other hand, it's one of the two major text MUD sites, but it doesn't get much traffic. In the grand scheme of things, maybe it's not very notable. I think it's easy for us (like everyone) to get caught up in what we're doing and assume it's of world-shaking importance to everyone else. I forget who it was earlier in the thread, but the comparison to people who are really into knitting or <pick your niche> probably have similarly strong views about everything in their communities too, but a lot of people might kind of laugh at the idea that a knitting mailing list should be included on Wikipedia as being notable, for instance.

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



Well, everything's days are numbered in one sense, but I think that you're taking what is a VERY minor issue (seriously, whether a text MUD is included or not may be offensive to us but I don't think it matters very much to Wikipedia as a whole). Wikipedia looks to become more used by human beings, not less though. Quantcast and Compete both show an upwards trajectory. Alexa's is harder to read (and in my opinion Alexa is less reliable than Quantcast or Compete, though still has some use), it shows Wikipedia's traffic as being slightly higher than it was a year ago.

--matt

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

No offense, but I think you missed the main point of this thread if this is what you got out of it.

You're stating this as if we don't all know that we're a niche hobby. That's kind of not the point. In the end, online gaming is not considered a mainstream hobby period, even if you include all the big-name MMOs and such. Video games in general are considered for kids, so gets very little impact in general. Dungeons and Dragons is hardly mainstream at all, and if you look at Dragonlance's article, it has little to no sources outside of TSR/WoTC materials. It hasn't been in the press for a very long time.

Does that really matter? Wikipedia has a very specific set of rules to govern fictional material and games in order to aid them in being listed.

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

Funny you should say that since I was looking at the amigurumi article on Wikipedia last night. It's a gigantic movement in Asia that's recently made its way to the US. The problem they're having with sourcing is that most of the source materials are in Japanese, and Wikipedia heavily discourages sources that are not in English. Amigurumi is a sub-set of knitting and crocheting, much like a single mud is a sub-set of mudding in general. The article as it is now would be deleted in a heartbeat, but it'd probably be given a bit more chance to survive if sources could be located.

Threshold had a spike in usage this year as well. That's not going to keep our Wikipedia article, though. Looking at things in the long run, if Wikipedia's editors continue this kind of behavior, it won't be long until something bigger and brighter can come its way and make it obsolete. Editors who get sick of the inane system that governs Wikipedia will simply move on to other places, and if content continues to get removed, then it's not hard to imagine that they'll have very little left to work with. We've seen this happen in our own industry where companies have shut down their text muds and moved out of the community once they got their graphical ones up.

Lastly, it may not matter much to Wikipedia as a whole, but with something that (Wikipedia's) size, very little is going to matter much to Wikipedia as a whole. Who it does matter to is the editors who have been touched by this issue as well as people who care about the actual issue such as prominent names in our community who have actually moved beyond muds to other things as well.

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