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

Keep in mind that there are people who do not like to RP. MUDs are about more than that.

About the wiki thing. I use Adblock Plus so I do not really get the ads, and if people feel disturbed by flashing ads and annoying sounds they might be playing then I really recommend to use advertisement block software. When things are moving around in those ads you are very tempted to look at them. It can definitely make it difficult to read articles. It is a shame people have been allowed to spam the Internet like this. I started use it when ads began to fill entire pages. It just got too far.

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

There are also MUDs that try to combine RP and what may be described as hack and slash and where one can go from one mode into the other. These are the category of MUDs that are deliberately RP Encouraged, not Enforced. These are MUDs where people RP, but also spend a lot of time talking OOCly (getting to know people from across the world) or killing stuff for exp. It is possible to go from one mode into the other in game, and being able to stand out of character at times without having someone breathe down your neck has its advantages. I am sure RP purists would say its "inferior" to a deeply immersive IC situation, but its an option a lot of people actually LIKE. Pushing for a regulation of the MUD community by RP purists, would be exclusionary both for non RP MUDs and mixed content MUDs like ours.

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

Where did I say anything about "regulation of the MUD community by RP purists" anywhere in my post? Hmmm? I didn't. I said I would hold off making some suggestions I had until I could try to involve The RPMUD Network in the effort to "recast the community not only in a more responsible but also a more dignified light". Now, if you're suggesting that H&S games aren't capable or willing to try and work together with the community in a responsible or dignified manner, I think you'll find that's not the case because that's not very fair of a statement to make in regard to the H&S (or any other) members of the MU* community. If you want to say that you're incapable of such an effort, that's fine. If that's not what you're suggesting, I suggest you read posts more carefully next time.

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

How ultimately divided the community is became clear to me a few days ago when I created the Multi-User Dungeons category on Wikipedia as an umbrella category for all mud related articles. I promptly got reverted when I tried to include the MU* games category - being told that MUSHes in no way wish to be identified with MUDs (which is rather odd given most articles in the category were muds) - so I ended up creating a MUD games category and moving most of the MU* games content to it.

Apparently a long coming divorce in cyberspace.

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

I think I might have added to the confusion a bit. Both your posts above appeared to me as pushing RPMUD and how to get RPE(enforced) MUDs seen as citation worthy.

The reason I got confused was that to me it felt like yet another TMS/TMC website, and to tell the truth I had never heard of "RPMUD Network" before. Neither did a search on Google reveal it. Searching TMS I got a clue that might be its website?

Edit: Also who/what is the "RPMUD Committee"?

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

The unwillingness of some in the community to work together is one of those things that might just need to be ignored. Partial participation will continually cripple the community but if the community simply concedes to that, it's even worse. The real solution is not to give into those who would choose to exclude themselves from comparison, no matter what their reasons, especially when they fit the criteria shared by their peers.

Case in point, the RPMUD Operating Committee decided that critical reviews conducted by the site would not be subject to exemptions. Likewise, recognition would not be limited merely to those games who chose to participate in the community. In order to ascertain an informed comparison we can not exclude, whether by request or by absence of participation in the community, games which possess the similarities to their peers regardless of whether they might be above or below the average mark of the field. We realize this might upset some games, especially those who fail to measure up in comparison to their peers, but the basis of fairness is not to favor, either positively or negatively, any group either through its inclusion or exclusion from the whole. It is impossible to gain a comprehensive understanding of anything without examining every possible bit of available data.

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

I resent the unwarranted personal attack inherent in your statement. I think it may be better to listen to the person making a point before going on the offensive.

Now, my point was not about the the willingness of H&S MUDs to be mature (I have absolutely NO idea where the implication that they, and specially ours, arent). Lets go back to what you actually said initially, namely

...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).

Now there is no problem with the mission of making the MUD community dignified. However, you say you want more MUDs to be run by the RPMUD Operating Committee. It appears to be a group of RPI MUDS. According to you need to be a RPI MUD to join. What are the characteristics of such a MUD- they are listed on the same page- and rule out the participation of games that attempt to straddle both RP and normal game mechanics.

My argument was that while its GREAT to make MUDs more serious entities, it doesnt have to be an exercise lead by purely RPI MUDS alone.I was actually replying to Aeran and his comment about how there are other things to MUDs besides RP.

Yes, you may have meant that you want to do your bit with the resources available with you and maybe I didn't make my point clear enough from the start. It can be a badly worded post, without being a post based on not reading things or one written with bad intent. Next time, however, please assume good faith on forum entries as much as the Wikipedia and ASK what I meant instead of launching an attack.

I hope we go back to the original topic- without getting sidetracked into another RPI-RP-non RP MUD discussion. We have had another thread on this already.

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

The goal isn't to make them be seen as citation worthy. Our goal is to provide a verified, independent third-party site, not affiliated with nor dependant upon any game in particular, which will offer critical review of games and a professional-style approach.

The RPMUD Network was formerly known as the RPIMUD Network but we changed the name and focus of the site. While the existing webpage is outdated, we're working on a new one that will reflect the new approach we have taken to the goals and mission of the site (mentioned above in this post).

My point with my post earlier was that some of the groundwork we've already gone over in terms of defining the substance and goals of our site might prove useful to other niches of the community, be it pure H&S, PvP, or whatever in organizing for themselves critical review and resource sites providing more substantial content and functionality for their particular sub-genre of MU*s. If the Operating Committee approves, I'll elaborate more as to the discussions, concepts and conclusions we've reached in redesigning our site.

Jason

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

I did not say that. Let us break down what I said.

Please note the word "suggestions". Suggestions are not commands nor does that imply in any way that I or anyone else would "want more MUDs to be run by the RPMUD Operating Committee" or anyone else. The RPMUD Network will not be running games. It will be providing the community and not the games with verified, independent third-party data and critical review.

"Run by" means to present to, in this case for a decision from the Operating Committee regarding my suggestions and what degree of support the RPMUD Network may wish to offer as a group in helping the general MU* community in regard to those suggestions. I do not want to presuppose to know what the Operating Committee as a whole will decide. Until I speak with them and we approve as a group what degree, if any, of effort we would want to contribute to helping others beyond the scope of our focus, I will not post the suggestions.

I never said it had to be lead by "purely RPI MUDs alone". I said I will post some suggestions for making the community a more useful one, de-emphasizing the present failings which prevent it from attaining respectability. When I've cleared it with the rest of the Operating Committee, I may be able to suggest some ways in which we can help through participation in the overall MU* community (despite our emphasis being only on RP-Enforced MU*S).

Jason

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

Actually.. let's go back to exactly what he said instead of taking part of it out of context.

***
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).
***

He will be posting suggestions after running his suggestions by the RPMUD Network Committee. It's really not that hard to understand what was said, and that is a far cry from saying he wants the MUDs to be ran by the RPMud Committee. That'd just be plain dumb.

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

Hi folks,

I am personally proud of those people who are spending their time and effort in making MUD's (all of them) more well known and gaining notoreity.

Proph1515 has done a fantastic job of this with his RPMUD network. I don't always agree with him but I respect his groups efforts. Stop railing on him and thank him for his work. He is not trying to make all MUD's cater to his network. He is trying to build a community within the MUD community. There is way to much in fighting here and that needs to stop if we want to collectively gain more players

FredBauder is another one who started MUDWiki. Nice.

Someone did WikiMU*.

All of these people are working to bolster are community. Good work and carry on. Many of us back you up!

(Disclaimer: NW is not part of any of the above groups or communities, we just support the actions to build such things.)

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

The RPMud Committee is a group of people who are in charge of managing the RPMud network, making decisions on how we will manage our website and make policies of how to handle the various tasks we are setting out to do.

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

Thank you for the kind words of support but the RPMUD Network is not me alone. There are five of us (and a recently elected sixth member) who have ALL been working hard now for week after week, month after month. Every Monday night for the last 4-5 months has consisted of 4-5 hour long meetings refining and re-defining the site's purpose and trying to find the best way to accomplish the most good, then the coders in our group have worked through the week on the various aspects while the others have begun some of the other non-code aspects of the site design. If anything, my role has been more in terms of organization and management of the group itself than the actual nose-to-grindstone coding of the site (codetard that I am). But the Operating Committee as a whole has determined our course. ShadowsDawn and I are the two members who participate here on TMS but there are also three others who don't participate on the TMS forums. Together, we've got a variety of perspectives on the various types of RP-Enforced MU*s and every decision we've made has been the result of our combined determination, weighing everything as fully as we can before proceeding (in fact, we've discussed everything to such minute detail that with only a few exceptions the final results of our discussions have ended in 5-0 decisions).

I do thank you though and I'm sure the others do as well. Hopefully our efforts will yield a result which can fill a void in the community, at least so far as enforced RP MU*s are concerned.

Take care,

Jason

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

(Not directed at NewWorlds, just responding to his quote)


It's hard to do this without starting some kind of holy war, but in the interests of community building and bringing more people into MUDs, RPMuds could do with taking a serious look at how they treat people who obviously don't want to roleplay.

We often get a lot of people on Aardwolf asking about roleplay. We tell them that some clans do some roleplaying and there is a channel/forum for it, but roleplay is not an integral part of the MUD. We also tell them that there are many fine MUDs out there that do focus on roleplay and direct them here, TMC, etc. There is no implication of what is right or better, just differences in style.

It has been a while since I did this, but I used to hang out on RPMuds from time to time. Newbies who appeared new to MUDs and were probably looking for a more hack and slash environment were often derided and looked down on. Either that or they were told to learn to roleplay and they'd like it eventually. No idea what happened to those folks, but if they were new to MUDs they might not be aware of the huge range in styles of MUD, decided it wasn't what they wanted, and gone back to WoW or whatever. The same applies to "Hardcore PK" vs non-PK.

If we get a new player on our MUDs who is clearly not going to be a good fit for the style, instead of ridiculing them let's direct them to a place they can find a mud they do like. Nobody loses, it keeps them in the niche and as tastes change over time, they may just find your own MUD a better fit in the future.

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

Permit me to reiterate for the record once again-

a. No one is railing at Prof1515. No one is questioning the value and contribution of the group he is associated with to the MUD community. Disagreeing with a single post on a webforum (perhaps based on ambiguous syntax), does not constitute a question over personal worth, commitment or contribution. This, however, works both ways.

b. What I am saying is in the context of what Lasher has also just said, it would help to have THOSE games to be also professional and maturely run. I belong to the extreme end of the RP end of my MUD, there are new players we get to whom we have to explain the difference between IC and OOC. I have seen some of these same people (without any previous background of tabletop RPGs etc) move on (in a recent case of my clan) to join the local branch of the Historical Anachronism Society after 6 months of DE. New people need to try out RP before they begin to like it. This happens in non RPI MUDs. Some people eventually end up in RPI games. Some still don't want to play RPI games- preferring other forms of MUD gaming (anything from social MUDs to more engrossing hack and slash). Others stick to the same mix of OOC sociability, hack and slash and RP (but usually with a heavier tilt towards RP as they get used to the mechanics of the game). Its a matter of choice for the individual in the end.

However, as I said the last time, my intention is NOT to launch into a huge digression on the H&S-RP Encouraged- RP Enforced- RPI muds continuum (which is really outside the purview of this discussion). We were discussing valid and reliable sources of information on MUDs (of all stripes, including RPI) and ways to make the community more professional before it got side tracked (largely because of me I guess). Sorry for taking everyone off topic for almost half a screen.

In this context Lasher's point about pooling players and sending them along to the places they might like- be they sending budding RPers who have outgrown their context onwards to heavier RP MUDs or people who login into heavy RP Games and find themselves unhappy, to games with a less intensive RP, has a lot of value.

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

JIHAD!

(Laughs as he realizes the CIA probably just flagged this site and discussion)

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

I am jumping in on this thread a bit late, so please forgive me if I've missed something (which I probably have). It's also filled with a lot of my opinions and observations, so don't twist my words as me stating fact. They are merely observed trends.


I agree, to some level, that what your suggesting is a better alternative to simply rebating new players about roleplay; however, there are some problems with it that make it a little unfeasible to expect out of every (or even most) MUDs.

First off, more MUDs would need to cooperate, and that's just not going to happen. In my own personal experience, we've fought for so long against each other that we just don't give a damn about anyone but ourselves and our own interests. We are not willing to cooperate with other games of any genre, generally speaking. Administrators or PR staff would have to become more familiar with games outside of their own private little circle, to provide the best alternatives to new players, and we'd also have to actually start caring about what those players actually want.

The ignorant alternative to providing direct, personal insight is to direct a new player towards a directory website; however, there really aren't any out there that provide quality information and are easy to search. ((I am aware that there are plans out there for an objective, quality site, but the content will still be restricted to certain genres and its not yet up and running.)) TMS and the Mud Connector are not sufficient or appropriate, because these sites are mostly overrun by bigot fanaticals and hobbiests who just want to fight with someone or bend the truths about their own favorite games in the hopes of catching one more player. The search engines at these sites are both fairly weak, and the entries are out-of-date, easily falsified, or are misleading. In the long run, any newbie to MUDs who comes looking for a game is going to get tired very quickly of trying to find a game to play because of these weak interfaces. Some may even be put off by the community's overall 'aggressive' feel.

(( I am not trying to say that none of us puts forth the effort to be friendly -- I've seen a lot of helpful people here, but the bottom line is that it often gets lost in the immature trash that bubbles up on these forums. ))

Lastly, there is an issue with presentation; it's sometimes friendlier to suggest to a player that they should learn to RP -- if done correctly, its easier not to send the wrong message this way. By out-right suggesting other games, it tells a new player that we don't want them on our game (of course, we probably don't, especially if they are adamant about spoiling the environment), that we are elitist, and that other MUDs have smiliar environments. I'm not saying that everyone is going to treat their new misfit players this way, but because most games are staffed by volunteers and (let's face it) amateurs, very few games have any PR individuals who possess good tact or know how to handle a funky situation.

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

I've never really noticed a substantial difference between 'role playing allowed' and 'role playing encouraged' in TMC listings, they all seem hack and slash muds. I'd go as far as to say Godwars II makes a better roleplaying environment than 95% of the roleplaying encouraged muds out there.

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

Very well put. I try to do the same. The beauty of our MUD community is the variety. Different people have different ideas of what is fun. Some have several ideas and play several styles of MUDs.

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

That's too bad that you have this attitude. I can tell you that NW's staff make an effort to get to know different MUDs and we constantly will recommend and support other formats and games. Usually the one's we have played and enjoy and hopefully have something unique to offer.

On that same token, those that are negative and isolationists, we are happy to not recommend and/or warn against.

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

Don't forget the mud community also includes people who simply play muds and aren't coders, creators or admins.

Speaking as one such person, I can attest that I watch out for newcomers to whichever mud I happen to be currently playing and if they express discontent with that mud's style of play, and I know of another mud that would be a better fit, I send them there.

I've quietly done this over the years and I suspect I'm not the only one who does this. There is no one mud that is right for everyone and the more people who acknowledge this the better.

So whether you are a player, owner, admin or whatever. Do the right thing and help newcomers get placed in the right sort of mud for their tastes. It's really not too difficult to educate yourself to the different styles of muds out there and teach people how to find them.

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

In case anyone is interested, the Wikipedia people are at it again. This time they're targeting .

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

This says to me that someone needs to step up and make some sort of mud information site that isn't centred around forums and traffic-generation.

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

There's Mudpedia which has pretty good organization, making it usable as a primitive mud listing as well.

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

Thanks for the heads up.

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

As I understand it that won't help keep things on Wikipedia, because you have to reference a source which can't just be edited by a user as 'self-publishing'.

We need something with actual editorial oversight which covers the area a bit more critically.

To be honest I don't really see anything on the Arctic MUD Mudpedia page that tells me it's important enough to have a page of its own on Wikipedia, more like a mention on the Diku page under 'Notable examples' or something.

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

Frankly it is hard to define what is important on Wikipedia. I mean come on, the place is a haphazard rumor mill of very important things and things that have little or no importance so who is to say? Them? Exactly.

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

I see where you're going, but why waste time keeping 20 to 40 MUDs on Wikipedia that don't meet the notability requirements because they don't have reliable secondary sources if you can create articles based on primary sources on Mudpedia?

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

It's not all that hard to define what's important if you look at the rules they have in place. The danger is that people look at a lot of the smaller articles and assume they set some sort of precedent, but they don't. So eventually they and articles like them will get deleted. The vast majority of pages on Wikipedia have plenty of discussion over their content but no real question over whether they're notable or not, because most have decent sources and more than a mere handful who care about them.

I'm not saying Mudpedia is a bad thing, far from it. Just that it doesn't help with the Wikipedia issue. With regards to this thread's title, "our genre's worthiness" is not going to be increased outside the mud community just because we put together a wiki about it. That would be another example of us looking forever inward, really.

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

Oh come now, this is directly from Wikipedia's own disclaimer: Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information.

In other words, our entire site is suspect so use at your own demise.:p

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

I don't see how that changes anything. The fact that they give no guarantee doesn't mean the content is intrinsically worse, just like the fact that a manufacturer giving a guarantee doesn't mean the product is intrinsically better (merely that they'll offer to fix it). Comparisons of Wikipedia with peer-reviewed encyclopaedia show there is very little difference in quality.

The rules for what should be on Wikipedia are reasonably clear. The problem is that people use other pages as a point of comparison, and that's not good enough. (Just like you can't get off breaking the law by saying, "well I saw that guy do it and he wasn't arrested".) The solution is simply to provide an external source of information about muds that does have some sort of review process, and which includes all these references that imply notability.

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

It changes everything. It would be like a car manufacturer having a disclaimer: Nothing in this vehicle is guarateed to work. If it fails, we are sorry, but cannot be held liable. Afterall, this car is made by people that have no verifiable qualitifications or skills or knowledge of the vehicle they made.

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

It changes your perception of the car. It does not change the car.

Misleading analogy. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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

Not really, I did say, and I quote: no verifiable qualitifications...

The point is the same, the car has none neither does Wiki and both suck equally in terms of quantifiable quality.

Still we grow off topic. I read back to the beginning of this thread and the truth is spelled out more clearly in earlier posts by Lasher, Proph1515, and Threshold. I suggest going back and reading these posts as the argument is becoming circular.

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

I read it all the first time around. I have sympathy for people who feel their hard work is being wiped off the face of the internet but the only practical solution is to establish a decent reference for all this stuff. Posting barely-cited stuff on Wikipedia is just going to get deleted sooner or later.

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

The problem with Wikipedia is that they don't seem to consider anything other than "mainstream" media (network news, major print sources, etc) as a reliable source. So unless you're lucky enough to have some talking head on a network news program the people at Wikipedia actually watch, you aren't notable.

Which means that pretty much everything that was spawned on the internet, covered by the internet, and is reviewed and critiqued by the internet, means nothing to them. Even if a print source does manage to cover it.

Which is ironic, since nobody serious respects anything Wikipedia is doing academically. Schools even flat out warn you not to use it as a source.

Arctic MUD had coverage on a major internet gaming site back in the day. Even according to their own policy, if you establish notability then, it doesn't die off on you 15 years down the road. The guys pushing for AfD on Arctic are probably from the same crowd who tried to have Threshold purged.

This whole BS about notability is a farce anyway, troll random links and you'll find stupid stuff like old 70s TV shows nobody had ever heard of back then with tiny little stub articles that nobody tried to delete. Probably because an admin created them. I guarantee you most of the people targeting MUDs don't know jack about them.

As far as reliable sources, TMC and TMS are as good as that's going to get. It doesn't matter if they're just traffic aggregators, they are the two recognized sources in the field.

Nope. You'll find the sole reason any of these kids do this stuff is to score points and climb the ladder at Wikipedia. How else would they have time enough to throw policy at you left and right from the obscure corners of their website?

Their entire notion of consensus not meaning a majority opinion is also about as ludicrous as it comes. There can't be a consensus on anything without a majority opinion to guide it. What they mean is a majority opinion from only their chosen cabal.

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

Samson,

I can tell you never cut your hair for Delilah. Good show mate!

:p

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

But that's the whole point - Wikipedia don't want to be treated as a primary source, because they know they can't fulfill that role. Instead, they want you to go there, learn things on a general level, and find relevant sources attached to the article. That's why good citations and references need to be provided - not links to someone else's wiki, and not just a few Usenet posts.

People can bash Wikipedia all they like, but the fact is, if people didn't consider it important, this thread wouldn't even exist. It's one of the top 10 busiest sites on the web and the primary site that people go to to learn anything.

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

Then our field is pretty poor, to be honest. If we're so 'noteworthy' then we should have more than a couple of banner-clicking forum sites to show for it.

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

Muds predate the WWW, and magazines are more interested in screenshots of fancy graphics, so we don't have the same sort of sources as other games - and those we do have (usenet, mailing lists and forums) are not usually allowed. There are a few books that mention muds, but even those aren't always enough for Wikipedia (the Arctic MUD entry had three published sources, for example, yet it has just been deleted).

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

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

I hate to say it, but the article didn't meet the notability criteria, the book sources were non notable one liners, and their Diku patch was probably a one line patch as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe start collect that are about MUDs into a thread? I think looking into might also be interesting. E.g what would be required to make TMS/TMC notable?

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