05 Jan, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 1st comment:
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Another interesting blog entry by Richard Bartle:
http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2009...
05 Jan, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 2nd comment:
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How about that.
05 Jan, 2009, Mabus wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Thanks for posting that. I have been following this little drama for the last few days.
05 Jan, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 4th comment:
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Bartle is such a whiner. There are more than enough sources out there if you're creative and willing to do some digging.

Even then it doesn't mean some nerd with no life can't go out there and make your life miserable on Wikipedia, but the chance is small. Given the current references used for the Threshold article it should indeed be deleted.

The only useful usenet posts on Threshold are that the owner violates the lpmud copyright. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games...
05 Jan, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 5th comment:
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Scandum said:
The only useful usenet posts on Threshold are that the owner violates the lpmud copyright. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games...


lolololol good times, good times.

That George was a pip!

I think there are muds with plenty of notability. I don't think Threshold's current
nomination for deletion actually threatens all of mudding, as appears to be claimed.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
05 Jan, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 6th comment:
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http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/05/los...

(Attempting to get this controversy noticed by mainstream media)
05 Jan, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 7th comment:
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Don't underestimate a Wikipedia nerd with an ax to grind. The MUD article is pretty well referenced (mostly thanks to me) but if you go to the MUD Client article you'll see it's pretty much pieced together by historical usenet entries, and things go downhill fast from there.

As it is 90% of the mud articles could be deleted without much trouble.
05 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 8th comment:
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It's Wikipedia. What did you expect? A site controlled by a select few individuals with the power to override any edits made can reek havok if you manage to piss one of them off. Their whole "no canvassing" crap is hypocrisy incarnate since there's pretty clear evidence they did the same with their internal elites to rally support to get the Threshold entry deleted. The sad part is, it seems obvious at least to me that Medeliv is one of those elites and Aristotle just managed to piss him off by banning him from the game at some point. And how sick is it that they systematically ban everyone trying to improve the article, gut it afterwards, and then use the gutted version as justification to AfD the thing because there's nothing of substance and no reliable sourcing. It's just plain stupid.
06 Jan, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 9th comment:
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Samson said:
t's Wikipedia. What did you expect? A site controlled by a select few individuals with the power to override any edits made can reek havok if you manage to piss one of them off.


I personally have tangled with WP administration and came
out the other end no worse for wear. Indeed, the misbehaving
admin was himself admonished by his fellows.

It's an interesting feature of WP that it tends to correct itself
even despite the ill or good will of those involved. My guess is
that after all the hollering is done with, the deletion will or
will not occur, based on the article's merits, and not on the
vitriol of hot air tossed around.

Samson said:
it seems obvious at least to me that Medeliv is one of


It's really kind of irrelevant what the motives are. That's
the nice thing about WP. The consensus, whether it's personally
convenient or not, tends to be Lawful Neutral in the long run.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
06 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 10th comment:
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So because you wrangled with them and won means there's no problem? I find that logic weak at best. There are numerous examples out there of people who have gone up against this sort of thing in one form or another and been blacklisted and later had their submissions deleted because "The Cabal" as Aristotle puts it worked in concert with one another to lock out anyone with an actual interest in improving the articles. A Google search on it turns up dozens of prominent hits right off the bat.

This particular case is extremely uncool. That you had several admins circle their wagons, ban actual editors who were attempting to cite the article according to Wikipedia's impossible standards, and then rush to AfD the thing before the banned people had a chance to fight back is rather scary. It's also not just the Threshold article in play here. The arguments being made on the AfD page are questioning the notability of the entire hobby as being unworthy of inclusion in their elitest "encyclopedia". If none of the hobby oriented sources count as valid references, then what does? Surely NBC News isn't going to pay a lick of attention to a bunch of hobbyist text gamers. Hell they only pay attention to computer gaming in general when some senator wants to enact draconian legislation to regulate the entire industry because of one bad game. If getting covered by Time Magazine or Newsweek is what it takes, there's a hell of a lot of crap on the site that needs to be deleted immediately.
06 Jan, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 11th comment:
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I don't think this situation merits the histrionics demonstrated thus far.

It's a run of the mill notability dispute.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
06 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 12th comment:
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Then if that's the case the dispute shouldn't exist since Wikipedia's own policies bend and break to mention that notability shouldn't be used as a sole reason for AfD. The AfD discussion seems to be entirely focused on issues of notability.
06 Jan, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 13th comment:
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If it's a spurious nomination, it'll probably fail.

I've seen 'em come and go. My guess is that the consensus will
decide in Threshold's favor, *despite* all the silliness.

All this business about all-of-mudding-being-in-wiki-peril is
quite overblown. Aristotle's conflation of his mud with all mudding
is a bit silly imo. Share your analysis on the AfD page, if you like,
and let's see what happens without all the weeping and rending of clothes.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
06 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 14th comment:
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Aristotle wasn't the one who called into question the validity of sources of MUD information. That was Mendaliv and his cronies. I think in this particular case, despite his past, Aristotle has called this one correctly. Mendaliv has a personal agenda and the power to back it up. There's very strong indication in the argument that there will in fact be a mass review of anything relating to MUDs and an effort made to remove most if not all of it due to the lack of notability. Which, again, Wikipedia's own policies repeat over and over is not a consideration for deletion. Something here smells, it's as simple as that.

I'm under no delusions that the world at large gives a rat's ass about MUDs either. If it comes to pass that they're all expunged, then so be it. That's why we have other sites.

I'm not going to waste my time commenting there when it's obvious they don't care what we think anyway. The elite want it purged. Guess what? It probably will be. That place has a nasty habit of sweeping these kinds of things under the rug once they're done.
06 Jan, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 15th comment:
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"we'll get to deleting those other MUD articles in due time" - Mendaliv

Heh.

[Edited to repair URL]
06 Jan, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 16th comment:
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One of his buddies actually came over to the MUD article to remove the link to TMS, which apparently doesn't meet Wikipedia's quality standards for external links. I wonder if he'll admit defeat or get one of his editing buddies to jump in.
06 Jan, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 17th comment:
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Samson said:
Aristotle wasn't the one who called into question the validity of sources of MUD information.


I don't think you grokked my objection to Aristotle's claims.
I am saying he is confusing all-muds with his-mud. Just because
a web site's page, for example, gets deleted from WP doesn't
mean OMG all web pages are in the crosshairs. It means that
page failed to meet WP criteria. If Threshold's page is deleted,
then it means that page failed to meet WP criteria.

I sympathize with Aristotle, but this wouldn't be the first
case where a project that is very very important to its
participants can't keep its footing on WP.

I would in fact suggest that web page notability policy is
quite germane in this regard. MudBytes and LPmuds.net are
great sites and useful and frequented by many people, but
as much as we love them, they're not WP notable. So what?
BFD. If 99.9% of muds can't stay on WP, so what? Maybe they
really don't belong there. Personally I think WP should be
more like Hitchhiker's Guide, and include any and all
verifiable true information, but I don't run things. And the
consensus is that this is not what WP is. And so, useful
things sometimes get obliterated. Oh well.


Samson said:
That was Mendaliv and his cronies. I think in this particular case, despite his past, Aristotle has called this one correctly. Mendaliv has a personal agenda and


You're really caught up in the palace intrigue here, and
that's your choice, but I don't see what use it is.
There is real, legitimate cause for differences of opinion
on Threshold's suitability for a WP page. That's the issue.
All this conspiracy stuff would be out the window if there
was an unambiguously solid case one way or another. It's
irrelevant what lurks in the heart of evil men. The page
will be deleted or kept on its merits.


Samson said:
There's very strong indication in the argument that there will in fact be a mass review of anything relating to MUDs and an effort made to remove most if not all of it due to the lack of notability.


If that happens, the effort will fail.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
06 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
You're really caught up in the palace intrigue here, and that's your choice, but I don't see what use it is.


I dunno dude. I've taken quite a bit of flak from people here and elsewhere about how I supposedly care too little for a hobby I'm still involved in. The moment I take a fleeting interest in defending it this is what I get for it? Ugh. Fine then, I'll let Bartle and Koster deal with it and leave the "palace intrigue" to them. They clearly both thought it worthy of mentioning, so should it be a big surprise I thought it worth mentioning as well?

Quote
The page will be deleted or kept on its merits.


Sorry, but I'm not quite naive enough to think that the arguments going back and forth have anything to do with the merits. The whole think reeks of a personal vendetta on Mendaliv's part and it's patently obvious to enough people that it's going on.

At this point the only reason it won't get deleted is because enough of a fuss got created by everyone involved and no consensus could be reached one way or the other. But that doesn't preclude someone 6 months from now quietly deleting it and not going through the "proper process".

Also you seem to be ignoring the fact that people trying to clean up the article to improve its standards were systematically locked out on the basis of unfounded sockpuppet accusations. Once that got done the article was sabotaged, placed into protected status, and THEN nominated for deletion by an obviously biased admin. If they're handling this case that way, I'm not prepared to accept they'd suddenly become reasonable people when the larger articles become targets.
06 Jan, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 19th comment:
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I think what's most saddening is that there is almost no proper documentation of the history of mudding. The best site out there is probably the living internet. Might be a cool idea to interview some people who were around in the 80s and early 90s. Especially the 80s is a time period that virtually nothing is known about.
06 Jan, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
I think what's most saddening is that there is almost no proper documentation of the history of mudding. The best site out there is probably the living internet. Might be a cool idea to interview some people who were around in the 80s and early 90s. Especially the 80s is a time period that virtually nothing is known about.


We know plenty enough about the '80's.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
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