Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ActsMUD

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was DELETE. In this discussion I feel that the keep recommendations hold very little water in relation to our established policies; indeed many of these votes appear to vouch for the limited playerbase of this game. This discussion has convinced me that ActsMUD fails to meet our criteria regarding notability - as may some of our other articles on small MUDs. Rje 23:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ActsMUD

• This article is non-notable, and falls under WP:VAIN. It is a homemade game with unknown cultural impact. It also violates Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) as it contains self-published fiction. It is not encyclopedic in my opinion. There are several other MUD articles similar to this one, but I'd like to have a discussion on this one before rolling them all up for AfD. JRavn 17:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

self-published fiction are not all MUDs self-published? It is not common sense to apply that to MUDs as they are all self-published almost by definition. Well ActsMUD came out of a university so the homemade bit is not actually accurate, but are not most of MUDs 'homemade'? -- Zeth, 23 July 2006

The author of ActsMUD tries to establish that his mud falls under Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) which I'm disagreeing with here. Whether or not all MUDs are self-published is another issue (I would say that commercial MUDs are not). -- JRavn 21:15, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Strong delete Has just 14 unique Google hits (and that's even being generous and counting the Wikipedia ones). According to TopMUDSites, is has an average of 1-5 players online.

Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 19:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

14 unique Google hits - is a little misleading since the MUD only just settled on a single name (used to be a mix of Acts World, Acts MUD, ActsMUD and others). To see how meaningless the so called 'google test' is compare 5,180,00 hits for "Acts MUD". -- Zeth, 23 July 2006

The Google test can be a very valid notability test, as long as the search is done reasonably. The search query "Acts MUD" results in 29. Your example, 'acts mud', results in the 5+ million, but is not a good query as it is entirely too vague. 'acts mud zeth' (zeth for your telnet/www address) results in ~100, many of which have nothing at all to do with your MUD.

Your devotion to your MUD (I don't know if you're a player or an imm, but your nick combined with the places address suggests you are something) is most understandable, but the game is simply not notable, and Wikipedia is not a MU*-list.

--Phorteetoo 03:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per above. GassyGuy 11:09, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, nn. --Phorteetoo 17:47, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep

It is a very new and quite small MUD. It is however not quite as small as some of the other sites in the MU* games, some of which appear to be dead. The Google test is not really the best for MUDs as once you log in, there is very little need for the web any more, as all the relevant info will be there.

There are several other MUD articles similar to this one - similar in the sense that they define small MUDs? There are no other MUDs featured here that deal with the ancient historical world. Therefore the article is a bit more notable than some of the others since there are a lot of articles dealing with similar medieval fantasy themes.

A wider question is whether articles about individual MUDs should be included at all. However if you have bloodlust and want to delete the page then you would have to go through the rest of the articles too. -- Zeth, 23 July 2006

The other MUD articles are similar because they are also non-notable and not encyclopedic. Having unique content in your MUD does not make it notable. If you would like to make people aware of historical themes in MUDs, a section on themes could be added to the MUD article. -- JRavn 21:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep There are different types of MUD, some commercial with huge advertising budgets, some homegrown, many medieval, a few sci-fi, a few historical, some big, some small. It seems sensible that the Wikipedia should have at least one real example of all of them. I think that Wikipedia should have at least one example of a historical MUD (note they are all quite small), so is it not better that you save deleting this article until someone adds a better example? --Jimbo06 13:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

What example have you got that is better? -- Zeth, 23 July 2006

Well LegendMUD is kind of historically focused. I think there are two issues here. 1 is that the Wikipedia Mods do not like lots of articles about individual medium to small MUDs. 2. There is not a very wide range of coverage in the MUD treatment on Wikipedia. If we separate out these issues then a sensible way forward is to ditch the individual articles and focus attention on having an article about MUD themes and genres. --Jimbo06 13:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that Jimbo06 is the creator of ActsMUD and the initial author of the wikipedia article. Also, this comment has been discussed in Talk:ActsMUD. -- JRavn 21:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

And User:JRavn currently developing an active MUD based off of CircleMUD. --Jimbo06 09:34, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Come on boys (or girls) no need to make it personal, We all agree that the current situation needs a bit of thought. We all agree that Wikipedia needs to cover MUDs in some way, and that having a wikipedia page for every single MUD is possibly not maintainable. The question now is do we merge parts of this content into another article or lose the whole thing? We could merge all 5-6 articles dealing with CircleMUD MUDs into one article. Then the page could be maintained with half-a-dozen varied examples of how the CircleMUD has been and is being used. These examples could be replaced over time as required. -- Zeth 10:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo06, the WP:AfD clearly states to mention if you have a vested interest in the article in question. I merely pointed this out in the interest of fairness, there is no personal attack here. --JRavn 22:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• One option would be to Merge into a new article CircleMUD games, I am also arguing that the stub Necromium be merged in, and the rest if and when everyone is happy with the new article. --Zeth 10:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

So what I am proposing is that we make a new page about CircleMUD games, and then over there to carry on the debate about what half-a-dozen MUDs we choose to show the wide range of CircleMUD uses. There will then be no need for individual pages such as this.-- Zeth 10:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The original issue still remains. Wikipedia is not a collection of links or examples, neither is it a place for people to host their private MUD webpage. Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not and Wikipedia:Five_pillars are good references. If we want to create a page devoted to examples of CircleMUDs, there must be something notable to say about them that specifically relates to those examples. I don't see what there could be that wouldn't better be placed on the MUDs or CircleMUD page. --JRavn 22:47, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep I think this is worth an article, it quite clearly explains an actual game which may not have many players but does exist. There are much more obscure things on Wikipeda. The article doesn't make out to advertise and gives precise information which is straight to the point. (Neostinker 22:50, 24 July 2006 (UTC))

Wikipedia isn't an indiscrimate collection of information. An article needs more than existence and good writing to make it encyclopedic. --JRavn 02:22, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Before you have a conspiracy theory JRavn, I have never heard of Neostinker before. Has "notability" become an idol or a golden calf? Wikipedia is not a printed book. Is Wikipedia really that short of Server space? --Zeth 21:41, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that 'indiscriminate collection of information' is fair here. The MUDconnector is not a GDFL or other free content licenced site, so its existence does not necessarily demand that a good collection of MUDs are not covered here. Encyclopedia Britannica website exists so should we delete all the articles that are covered there? Plenty of technical lists exist on the Internet, should we then delete all the descriptions of small software packages on this wiki? By no means!! The Wikipedia can provide much that the MUDconnector can not. Firstly anyone can edit, secondly there is the NPOV and so on. --Zeth 22:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I know what you're saying Zeth, but again, Wikipedia isn't an indiscrimate collection of information. Just because anyone can add to it doesn't mean we should store any random knowledge we would like. You are more than free to create your own MUD listing wiki that anyone can edit - but that is not Wikipedia's purpose. It is commonly accepted that an article needs some notability to be on Wikipedia. It is also commonly accepted that Wikipedia articles shouldn't be listings (of websites, or MUDs) unless there is notability involved (such as a listing of America's richest people). ActsMUD, as cool as the MUD and its theme sounds, doesn't have any notability. Or if it does, it hasn't been shown yet - only examples of non-notability. --JRavn 14:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Delete as non-notable. Discount votes from sock/meat puppets. Ifnord 16:27, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.