Muckbeast

This is an abbreviated version of the story designed to get some discussion going. For the full story, with all the details, read my article here: Wikipedia’s War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG .

1) Wikipedia is full of people gunning for an administrator promotion. In the current climate, the easiest path is getting articles deleted and getting players banned. These acts somehow show you understand what is best for Wikipedia.

2) An editor and his admin buddy put Threshold in their sights, and rules and policies went by the way side. Innocent people got banned and their efforts to improve the article were systematically removed. Once everyone involved with the article was banned, they proposed the article be deleted (an AfD or Articles for Deletion recommendation).

3) People who participated on the KEEP side of the AfD were frequently banned for cooked up reasons and their arguments stricken. The AfD was possibly the longest in Wikipedia history. Most people voted KEEP. In order to delete, the rules state there must be a CONSENSUS TO DELETE. The closing admin deleted it anyway, for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual policy.

4) When possible, other retaliatory action was taken against KEEP voters. When the owner of Top Mud Sites showed up and argued for KEEP, links from other MUD articles to Top Mud Sites were deleted. He would re-add them, but they would get deleted again.

5) A Deletion Review happened. I have not checked the tally recently (I am banned again), but at my last check most votes and arguments were to overturn. I highly doubt that will happen. Once the wikipedian insiders are against you, you are done.

6) My first ban was for edit-warring. What was I doing? Researching citations and then adding back content that was removed because of a “lack of citations.” My second ban was for “sock puppeting.” The people who were supposedly my “sock puppets”? They included: my wife, who has a 4-5+ year old account with active edits in many varied topics, someone from Alabama, someone from California, and others. My third ban was for pointing out that people with confidence in their beliefs are not scared of arguments from the other side (and therefore, don’t delete them just because they have the power to do so).

So, what is wrong with Wikipedia and how can it be fixed?

1) Wikipedia has too many people desperate to become administrators for all the wrong reasons.

2) Many Wikipedia “editors” are horrendously full of themselves, and believe they possess skills they actually do not.

3) Many Wikipedia “editors” are perfect examples of the expression “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

4) Wikipedia has little or no respect for experts.

5) The obsession with deleting obscure topics is a slow suicide. Obscure topics is what Wikipedia does best, after all.

6) Too much of Wikipedia’s leadership is corrupt.

How Can Wikipedia Be Fixed?

1) Delete WP:N (notability).

2) Make all adminships temporary.

3) Stop deleting obscure or niche topics.

4) Hire a paid staff to be the “real administrators” who oversee the volunteer ones.

5) Get rid of the stuff titles. Administrators become editors, and editors become users. Stop pumping up the users’ egos with names that inflate their illusion of talent.

6) One method of reporting bad behavior is plenty. You don’t need 20.

What should fans and developers of MUDs/MMOs do now?

Again, I direct you specifically to the full article about Wikipedia’s war on gaming history and Threshold :

We need to start recording MUD and MMO history now. We need to do it in an organized fashion that will be respected not just by the hacks at Wikipedia, but by an academic or other legitimate researcher. MMOs seem huge and mainstream now, so it is hard to imagine people considering them insignificant. But that is how we felt about MUDs 10 years ago, and nowadays many gamers don’t even know what a MUD is (or they are dismissive of them in the extreme).

This is a cautionary tale for people with interest in any obscure or niche topic. Wikipedia cannot be relied on to preserve history or information about non-mainstream topics. The current culture actually discourages it. It is our responsibility to find better ways to preserve such information, lest it be lost to the vicissitudes of time.

The first step is establishing the Mud Connector and Top Mud Sites as reliable sources. We need to help the owners of those sites do what they need to clean up things, codify policies, and write a coherent history of their site. Ideally, the two sites will keep a history of the OTHER site, so the historical information is not “self published.

Once we have that, other things can start to fall into place. Staff reviews will count again (hopefully). Articles will count. Mud listings might even count.

Then MUD owners need to really crank it up a notch and work every connection they have. Get mentioned in every newspaper, magazine, or journal article possible. And when they get mentioned, SAVE IT.