Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/RuneScape cheats

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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 of the debate was no consensus. Default to keep. merge and transwiki. → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 04:21, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Uncle G already transwikied this to Wikibooks (at the location linked below). Interested parties can continue to work on this article there.

While the link is now a redlink, the history is preserved in the history of Rune-scape. The bulk of the general info has been merged into Cheating in online games. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 04:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RuneScape cheats

This article is composed of two halves. One half is a general summary of cheats present in all MMORPGs, with very occasional references to how the developer of Runescape has attempted to overcome them. The other half is some specific how-to advice (albeit not in imperative tone) on how to avoid being scammed and how to make money without scamming.

All that said, this belongs on Wikibooks WikiCity RuneScape, and should be transwikied and deleted. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 19:56, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Apparently Wikibooks doesn't want this, but the Wikicity does. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 07:39, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. Incidentally, there's been some discussion on the talk page about the appropriateness of this article, and apparently someone has been trying to remove sections of it. Please understand that I'm proposing moving this to a project whose mission includes how-to advice and original research (Wikibooks), not deleting it entirely. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 20:00, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. I'm definitely ameniable to making a Wikibook out of portions of the current article. I don't want to see the article removed entirely or 'offending links' consistently blanked (usually two or three times a week). When I link to the book from the article, I would like to have those links remain, even though self identified employees of the company that makes the game seem to be vehemently opposed to them. Jonathan888 (talk) 20:58, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Could you suggest how this article is specific to Runescape other than the unencyclopedic how-to advice? This seems to be a guide, which is not part of Wikipedia's mission. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 21:15, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Well, since you ask; it is a major area of interest for the RuneScape community. Whether a specific player participates in cheating or not, it affects play for all. Having an information page about it is very encyclopedic. As I just said, I'm quite willing to move the 'guide' parts to a wikibook, but Wikipedia deserves an entry... just look at the history of the topic, it has more entries in a day than an article like Cathode does in a month. The bots used for the game are game specific, the scams used are game specific: based on the mechanisms of the game not MMPOG in general as has been purported by some. The history of how JAGeX has countered this trend is VERY specific to this game. What more do you want?Jonathan888 (talk) 23:18, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
        • Clickbots and attacks on the communications protocols aren't specific to RuneScape, nor is any single one of these scams (all of which have reared their head in DikuMUDs, EQ, Diablo, WoW, and scores of lesser-known games). I think there's probably a couple of paragraphs on how Jagex has dealt with these specific problems endemic to online games could fit into the RuneScape article, but most of the content of this article is a description of cheating methods common to all games. I hate arguing by analogy, but this article smacks of having shuffling in poker, shuffling in bridge, shuffling in rummy, etc. The cheats are the same, even when the game is different. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 23:25, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
            • OK, here's a list of very game specific cheats:
            • Casting weaken on tree stump
            • Scar is RuneScape specific
            • Random events is very RuneScape specific - other games have yet to implement this workaround (google it if you don't trust me on this one)
            • Armour trimming - explicitly game specific
            • Alt-F4 scam (google it: it comes up with 3 runescape hits on the first page, and NO other games)
            • there are more but that's a quick list. Jonathan888 (talk) 01:00, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
              • These cheats are only for Runescape, but they represent more generic methods of cheating with applies to many MMORPGs. Scar, for example, is a macro program. While Scar itself will only work on RuneScape, Macros themselves are a method for cheating in any number of MMORPGs.
              • Also, please do not accuse editors here of not reading the article. This is akin to saying the votes are bad-faith. Please assume good faith. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 01:14, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
                • Apologies for my rash bad faith comment - I'll remove it from the sentence and put it here: I said it seemed the article was not being read and that's not a good thing for me to say about another editor. *sorry*
                • The alt-F4 scam isn't RuneScape specific; I've seen the same scam done in both Diablo (although most players aren't so dumb as to fall for it) and a similar control-C scam done in various DikuMUDs. Heck, it's just a variation on the old "Hey, alt-F4 does (various unbelievable thing)!" online chat gag. Likewise for the armor trimming con; it's a variation on the "give me that item and I'll dupe it for you" con. That leaves us with the name of a cheat program and the random events system (the latter better suited to the RuneScape article anyway). - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 07:19, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. While this article may be on the wordy side, it does not read like a how-to guide. The subject is clearly notable, and the article is reasonably well-written and organized, and summarizes valuable information gathered from many sources. I don't see any part of it needing to be transwikied. Owen× ☎ 21:11, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Some of the article content is better suited to Wikibooks, notably the "easy gold" section, but moving the entire article there is overkill. -- Saikiri 22:17, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge some information that isn't covered yet in to Cheating in online games; then Transwiki and Delete. My first thought was to keep, but as user:A Man In Black pointed out, a lot of this stuff could apply to any MMORPG. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 23:44, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep although it would be more encyclopedic if it were generalized into MMORPG cheats. Durova 23:50, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge, per JiFish,--Sean|Black 23:59, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Transwiki and Keep. Assuming that the how-to sections can be moved to wikibooks (per Saikiri, then the rest should probably be pruned further, but kept intact. It's true that many of the cheating methods mentioned are common to other MMORPGs (as A Man In Black mentioned), but this doesn't make them any less notable for mention in a "RuneScape cheats" article. --PeruvianLlama(spit) 01:32, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge and Transwiki as per Wikipedia is not a tutorial, HOWTO or FAQ. Alas, some other RuneScape articles could be transwikied as well. -- ReyBrujo 02:38, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. Also, I have a doubt. Since my legal background is next to nothing, I don't know if the Two person team trade scam, Clan trust test or loyalty test scam and [Alt + F4] scam, item duplication scam sections violate the RuneScape Terms of Service [1], where it states You must not encourage, or attempt to trick other players into breaking our rules. Is this safe, or it is fine print it could be gripped in the future? -- ReyBrujo 03:17, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, those are all basic confidence scams, and describing them is as much protection from them as enabling users to use them. I don't see any problems. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 07:19, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge & Transwiki per above ˉˉanetode╞┬╡ 03:41, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment - it seems Wikibooks is currently going an internal debate about removing it's gameshelf entirely. Wikibooks:Game manual guidelines I'm beginning to wonder if this whole topic may be an 'ugly stepchild' that no one really wants.Jonathan888 (talk) 16:32, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. The RuneScape cheats page does nothing to educate people about the game aside from deluding people into believing that they can get ahead by cheating instead of playing the game fairly.Mike 22:48, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. If nothing else, move to RuneScape Wikicities. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:24, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete I thought we were not a GameFAQ. This might set a dangerous precedent if allowed to stay. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 19:14, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete I'm sort of wishing I never created this page. When I originally created it, it was simply a history of RuneScape cheating. It was carefully researched and was purely factual with no opinions or discussion of if cheating was right or wrong. It avoided controversy by simply only detailing cheat info after it had been fixed, it wasn't meant to be an article on HOW to cheat, but a more academic article on the sorts of problems MMOGs face and how they solve them, with RuneScape as a case study. Unfortunately a lot of that over the months was gradually erroded, and now it seems to suffer repeat hijacks by malicious people who just see it as a handy place to advertise and try to scam players, which was not the intent! Even worse they seem to have managed to convince some people to support them in this by veiling their advertising as facts when clearly they really just want to promote their own site. Personally I'm not sure allowing Wikipedia to become a site which everyone just sees as a handy source of free advertising, or place to scam gulliable users is a good idea! I've sort of lost faith in wikipedia after seeing hours of work inevitable get destroyed through a million tiny edits which seem to add up to turn it into innacurate nonsense. I can't be bothered anymore, especially when people trying to undo the damage get accused of vandalism! So yes - delete it. Runefire 20:37, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep I don't mind if an exact tutorial hand-holding readers in a walkthrough of how to cheat is removed, but I would object to removing any details chronicling the pervasiveness and efficacy of cheats, the tactics or programs' names, the ease of use of the cheat, and other material that will help assess the weakness in the game's security, including specifics of whether the cheat employs macroing or packet-level modifications and whether the current servers are still vulnerable to the cheat. Especially considering the growing interest, albeit still very fledgling, financial firms have in placing GDP calculations on virtual worlds, as much information about cheating needs to be made available to help assess destability in the virtual markets. I'm looking at Runescape from an economist's lens and would like to evaluate the severity of the problem of cheating just as much as I would in the problem of counterfeiting trusted currencies in the real world. I think the established policies of what's permissible in Wiki articles about counterfeiting real currencies can be applied to this article. Analysis of online gaming is a serious topic: [2] Any information Wiki can provide in aiding analysis of Runescape should be kept. Other information such as the Alt-F4 or Ctl-W scams are just good to have mentioned to help identify the demerits of browser-based games like Runescape. Thoreaulylazy 03:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep!* This entry is informative AND encyclopedic, and can provide researchers valuable information not available elsewhere in such a nice package. By researcher I mean game developers looking for a way to overcome cheats and such. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.115.207.93 (talk • contribs)
  • Keep* I believe that this entry is good because it is loaded with useful information. Though Runescape cheating is unacceptable, I would like to say that this entry serves as a valuable resource that is very hard to find. The scams are not supposed to listed as to show readers how to do it - they are there for your own convenience so you can have the best gaming experience possible without scammers ruining it for you. Please keep this entry here, so that people who need to know this information will be informed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.83.138.59 (talk • contribs)


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.