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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

--matt

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

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

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

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

--matt

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

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

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

--matt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--matt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now I need to sleep!

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care,

Jason

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

If there is a real demand for this I could do it here, but would want to be personally "hands off" on it other than setting it up - would we end up with the same control issues over time?

Would probably use Twiki as that is the one I have the most personal experience with, unless others feel strongly there's a better option?

Incidentally, I own the domain 'mudwiki.com' which was redirected to mu.wikia.com but the domain itself was never used, so reassigning it to something else would do no harm.

We've never had a code repository here and twiki has good handling of attachments so that's another benefit - being able to attach the code to the article covering it.

In terms of data backup, for what it's worth TMS is backed up and ftped off-site nightly.

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

What would happen with the wiki if TMS for some unfortunate reason was closed?

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

I can't imagine a reason why TMS would close period. I can imagine scenarios in which I personally no longer want to run it, mostly related to the fact that I just haven't had the time to make TMS what it could be, but to just shut it down and not let someone else run with it would seem like an awful waste. I never understand MudMagic closing that way, but Kyndig must have had his reasons.

When I picked up TMS it was on a domain forum (namepros.com) implying that there was probably more value in farming the URL for traffic than there was in actually running the site. That implication is probably true, the domain has enough "authority" and backlinks that even if the actual MUDs removed their links to it, all those mentions on more general sites would provide traffic for a long time which could be valuable to many other sites. Think of it in the context of what they pay per click on adsense for similar traffic. That was the reason I picked it up at all, to make sure it pretty much stayed as it is - true to MUDs.

Redoing the forums and rewriting the voting was fun but way too time consuming. I like the way the forums turned out, but just never got to doing the same for the reviews and articles, adding graphs for voting history (I have it by day since the rewrite), etc.

I've considered selling it, but not a week goes by that I don't turn down ads from non-MUD sites, usually growing MMOs, gold/power leveling "services" (we actually ran ads for a couple of those for a brief while but I cancelled/refunded them) and arcade sites. It would not seem reasonable to try to sell it with any kind of restriction on that because that's where the money is and presumably anyone buying it would do so as a business opportunity, so options are limited. I've also considered going in the other direction - trying to make it more relevant to MMO players so they also get exposure to MUDs while here. Have also considered taking on a "partner" to develop it out further, but it's not a big money maker and never will be while it is MUDs only, so anyone talented enough to make it work can already either (a) start their own site or (b) focus on a more lucrative subject.

Not to make out that I'm being some kind of martyr in all this, it has been a good source of traffic for many MUDs, mine included. So, while people have an (understandable) concern about conflict of interest, hopefully there's also a little comfort from the flip side of that - vested interest in keeping it about MUDs.

Hmm, I just spent a whole lot of time answering a question you didn't ask :) As for a wiki itself, haven't really thought about it. Wikis tend to get mirrored all over the place by content scrapers whether you like it or not anyway. I haven't thought this through, but don't see a big problem with making the wiki part of the site available as a download, either as a public download or just to a few key members/editors. How do other wikis handle this?

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

I recall seeing those WoW gold farming adds on TMS a while ago, I personally think you made the right choice by removing them because adds like that make a site look cheap.

Once you have enough responsible editors with a vested interest and administrative powers a Wiki pretty much runs itself. It could grow out to become a valuable resource and bring in some revenue, and I doubt anyone will mind if it's 1 banner per page like on this forum. There might still be room for growth if MUDs manage to advertise themselves on text-based MMORPGs like Utopia.

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

I have no problems supporting any or all of the Wikis proposed. I've already started working heavily on Threshold's MU*Wiki entry (simply out of respect for Brody who's been advertising it for some time), and I had planned to copy it over to Mud Wiki (out of respect for Fred).

In the end, it'd be best if we could decide (or vote) on which one to support fully. That way, once I'm done with Threshold's I can slowly begin working through other muds, and I suspect others will help as well.

To be honest, I prefer an independent Media Wiki wiki. That is, someone hosts it, downloads a copy of Media Wiki, and it runs excactly like Wikipedia (no ads) except for the lack of all templates. Threshold and I had thought to volunteer to set this up for the community, but we wanted to make sure that we didn't step on any toes.

Our plan had been to create it, recruit experienced Wiki people to "police" it, and be the arbitrators. That way if someone sees something wrong (or inaccurate) about a mud listing, it could be investigated. I'll volunteer to set up the Wiki if we decide to go with any kind of Media Wiki type of software. (You can take a look at the Wiki I set up for our unreleased game at .)

Anyway, I guess this was kind of rambly, but we should kind of decide where we want this set up and which one we can support as a community. Hope that makes sense.

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

Somewhat off topic, but I found that might be interesting to find pieces of MUD history. It mirrors for example The Mud Journal.

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

The enormous media attention? What enormous media attention? I haven't seen a thing in my local paper, or in the NY Times, or on the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, People, The Post, Time, Newsweek, or the New Yorker. I see no mention at all on CBS, ABC, NBC, or HBO. If it ain't in at least ONE of those, then it ain't "enormous media attention." Sorry. You are blowing this WAY out of proportion.

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

The Wikia WikiMU* wiki appears to have a huge huge amount of roleplay logs and the like, which isn't really the area that I was picturing this Wiki focusing on. Given that another community seems to have adopted WikiMU*, it seems rude to take away their stuff for this purpose, hence the new WikiMUD.

Speaking just for myself, I DO want an encyclopedia-like resource, with facts and even analysis. There's other sites for mud ads and the like.

As far as moving it... it's there now. I wouldn't overthink it, personally. An advantage to Wikia is that articles from Wikipedia can be trivially copied over, they have a built in command for it.

Scandum, I am not editing Wikipedia, only WikiMUD. Frankly, I don't see any way for me to participate in editing Wikipedia on anything related to muds, virtual worlds, or even games in general, without a conflict of interest given my writings, profession, and presence on industry boards/etc.

So I can only help Wikipedia entries indrectly. I am, however, providing sources to people editing Wikipedia, if I happen to find them.

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

Wow, that is quite a find. It mirrors Imaginary Realities too.

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

Really? I don't watch or read any of those any more. They are a joke when it comes to news - only concerning themselves with sound bites and the next sex scandal. They chase each others' tails following the same sensational news stories I don't care about. There's a reason their news departments are either failing or in danger of failing financially.

When I speak about the media attention, I am talking about the attention for the general issue of Wikiepdia's "deletionism" - not just people talking about Threshold. Threshold got the story started, but the "main issue" is about gaming history in general, preservation of obscure topics, and Wikipedia's role in preserving non-mainstream information. 20+ gaming blogs. Multiple gaming news sties including Massively.com. I was interviewed by a radio station Monday. I have been contacted by a couple of print sources, but until they actually run a story I don't want to jinx it. That's massive media attention in my opinion.

Even the Wikipedia editors/admins noted the way they are deleting things like mad is getting a lot of negative media attention, and that they should be aware of it.

But hey, be a negative Nancy if you want. :) I'm just happy that a story starting out about a MUD can still generate interest and concern from news sources that usually wouldn't show us any interest. It means our shared hobby still matters to a lot of people out there. It also means if we work together as a community, we can still attract some positive media attention. Those are all good things.

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

That is great! Thank you for finding that. And whoever is responsible for that site: massive thanks!

Hopefully some other folks around here can take this opportunity to archive that information as well for an additional backup (should that site every go down).

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

Okay. That makes sense. I'll take a look at WikiMUD again, and maybe we should have some sort of statement/goals up.

Maybe very early on, then, we should have a system for fact checking. Just in case there's ever any contention. That would make it a bit different than just being a listing site that allows admins to pretty much put in anything they want. Or is that the goal? Do we allow admins to put in anything they want? Just something to think about.


Thanks for the help you HAVE given already.

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

That would be the work of Ntanel Stormblade. He used to run MudWorld and such. He's actually among the first people I met when I started learning to build for MUDs and such. Very nice guy. Sadly, I don't think he is active in the commuity much anymore.

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

I am pleased to see Threshold is now official, and someone managed to actually find the old article quoted as a resource. I was also amazed at how the Proffessional / Impartial editors who joined in dealt with this. The comparison between those who clearly had a vendetta and those who were just doing a job was so painfully apparent.

However, has anyone still got the link to the deletion discussion . final summary as I would love to read it.

and good grief, Mendaliv.. or whever he was called changed from Delete to Neutral so well done.

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

Yes, the difference was absolutely stunning. It just goes to show that Wikipedia has the POTENTIAL to be a great resource. It is the few self-serving jerks (Mendaliv, Crossmr, Cameron Scott and others) bucking for adminhood that screw it up.




I think his motives there are pretty transparent. He saw the writing on the wall and did everything he could to try and re-position himself as something other than a revenge seeking, deletionist, abusive editor.

Hopefully, if things stay like this, other MUDs can point to this 2nd AfD as a reference if they ever have to deal with the same problem. Things were also moving in a positive direction for the acceptance of TMC and TMS as reliable sources. So good news all around.

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

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

I was going to comment on this last night, but figured I'm too close to the subject. When I checked the page last night, there were 7 banners in total, 2 for a weight loss program, 2 for online brokers and the closest to anything MUD related was for WoW.

I'm not overly motivated to put work into content that will be financed by placing ads for WoW on MUD related pages. I do realize this is somewhat hypocritical too. After all, having a banner ad on a forum is just another way of making money from user generated content, but it's still how I feel.

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

Just as an unofficial announcement, the Operating Committee of The RPMUD Network has voted to eliminate the clicky-voting traffic device when we debut our revamped site. We'll be concentrating on providing articles, critical reviews, and an array of resources including a search engine, building school, and hosting a series of events with the intention of both recognizing games via methods other than popularity (bye-bye clicky votes) as well as providing outlets for informational discussion and education regarding a variety of topics relevant to and beyond the MU* community (hopefully we'll receive interest in assisting and participating in this).

In short, we'll be aiming at creating a third-party, critical resource regarding RPE(nforced) MU*s that is hopefully of citation-worthy quality. Questions regarding the site can be directed to staff (-at-) rpmud.net though feel free to email me personally at falco (-at-) rpmud.net or drop me a PM here as well. I've been a little distracted these past couple of days between the weather (my ankles get more and more sore with every degreethat the temperature drops; fortunately the arthritis I developed in my hip and knee as a result of my auto accident hasn't been too bad) and the issues with my server but I promise to get back to you as soon as I possibly can!

Jason

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

Yeah, wow. That's pretty horrible. I definitely don't think a MUD Wiki should be spewing WoW ads at people. And some of the other ads were pretty scummy as well. Is there any way to reduce the number of ads, or somehow focus the ads so they are of a different type? I know some ad-supported networks have alternate options, like if people donated via paypal or something. I don't know what the answer is there, but I can't see people getting excited about working on a site with so many ads - particularly ads of that type.

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

I mean that the efforts of the community are best spent giving themselves a more respectable, professional approach to the field than spent complaining about Wikipedia. There was some merit to Wikipedia's objections, regardless of how they went about it, and the MU* community has been terribly delinquent in holding itself to any standards. I can't speak for everyone besides myself but I have been appalled at just how little the community attempts to demonstrate responsibility. True, many MU*s are operating as hobbies but that's no excuse. Hobbyists of all types around the world find ways to hold themselves and their participants to some semblance of responsible, critical standards. That has not happened in the MU* community for whatever reason be it immaturity, self-interest, insecurity, irresponsibility or anything else. Sure, some games are run as hobbies and some as commercial ventures. That doesn't relinquish the community of any responsibility in regard to honesty, appreciation for quality, and peer-recognition to say nothing of critical review and accountability. There have been a few measures taken in this regard but even those have been half-hearted. That's just not acceptable and the lack of outrage from the community over such failure needs to stop. We need to hold ourselves and one another to a higher standard across the board.

I'll be posting some suggestions in the upcoming days on ways to recast the community not only in a more responsible but also a more dignified light (want to run more of them by the RPMUD Operating Committee to determine the degree of assistance we can provide as a group so I can append the degree of involvement that more than just I can contribute to this effort).

Jason