Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tapestries MUCK

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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 was no consensus. --Coredesat 03:26, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tapestries MUCK

Tapestries MUCK (discussion|history|protect|delete|undelete|logs|links)

148 unique Googles outside Wikipedia and forums, not that many inside the forums either. No evidence of significance, pretty close to an A7 speedy. Advertorial in tone, no reliable sources, apparent original research, and appears to be of no significance outside the furry community (which is pretty small). Guy 00:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete per nom. Fails WP:WEB, no reliable sources. "Tapestries MUCK" Mitaphane talk 00:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment The results come out a little differently when a slightly differently-phrased search is employed. Tapestries +muck Shimeru 08:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
      • True, but a lot of those aren't it. On the other hand, like Albedo, it's often referred to just as "Tapestries" (or Tapes, or Taps). Probably a better search is Google Groups, where it garners a fair few more. GreenReaper 08:17, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Yeah, noticed that afterwards. Excluding Wikipedia and copied sites still gets 25,000, though, and even given the spurious ones, it's a better indication than the search for "Tapestries MUCK" is. Shimeru 08:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedy Delete fails to assert notability again on the furry fandom sites. scope_creep 01:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Yeah, it's not really significant. Not a big deal at all. Only like the second-largest furry MU* in existence, that's all. =) Raises an extremely tricky question though: It's a MUD. We don't exactly have solid notability criteria for MUDs. And the problem is, only the biggest of the biggest of the MUDs ever get big mainstream recognition. I can personally remember one. BatMUD. MUDs are, and stay, as esoteric topic, where they are rarely mentioned anywhere by name, and even if they are, they're mentioned trivially. We have precious few sites that rank MUDs according to activity and popularity - and even they can't really be trusted, because the MUD users themselves may not vote for them. The MUD Connector claims the game has been in operation since 1991 and has 100+ players online at any given time. MUD Magic claims 200. Telnet to tapestries.fur.com 2069 and type "WHO" - I get 650 players are connected. (Max was 847). Cool, huh? Wired mention, though it's pretty much trivial. I have no vote one way or another - this MUCK may not be a significant topic in the grander scheme of things. But heck, it's a big MUCK among the (significantly large) group of people who are its main target group. I'm just lamenting the fact that this is a good example of a case that's been around forever, has had its impact, is important within the community... yet within Wikipedia, this is probably merge / external link worthy material at best. I hate it. It makes Wikipedia feel like an ordinary encyclopaedia that only covers the richness of the culture with boring scholarly let's-look-at-the-big-picture-from-the-orbit-and-ignore-details way. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 01:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
    • *squint* these folks have been in a real print magazine, they have been around forever, no might in world could delete their article, I suppose, and their weekly user peak is around 300 users. And here we're condemning a MUD that has peaks of 500-800 to hell just because there's been precious few print mentions or other mentions outside of the furry community. We have a little bit funny policies, no? Okay, don't listen to me, I'm just a random idiot... --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 01:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
    • And lastly, apologies to everyone for going off like this. I'm sorry if someone finds this sort of outbursts disruptive. (I'm sometimes stupid this way. Now kick me. I've earned it.) For whatever it's worth, yes, I'm an user of the MUCK, yet when I pull on my Wikipedia Admin hat, I have no problem if the article is deleted if that's what the community thinks; it's just that there's definitely something funny in Wikipedia's policies what comes to situations like this. And to make things worse, it's hard to pin down exactly what is so funny in this. The world, it seems, is a complex and frequently illogical place. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 01:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Apparently it's actually the largest, bigger even than FurryMUCK. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:22, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Guys, I sympathise. Really. The fact is, we have to have good sources, and there are none for this, as far as I can tell. WikiFur can cover it in all its glory because they don't have verifiability and neutrality policies to worry about, but we do - the largest furry MU* is also not that much of a claim; the furry community is not that big to start with and the subset that plays MU* games is (as noted above) in the hundreds or low thousands at most. Every day we delete web forums and online games with mroe users than this, for the very same reason: no substantive coverage in secondary sources independent of the subject. Directory listings, fan forums and nothing else. Guy 09:48, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • First of all, I agree on principle; I just disagree slightly with your assessment of the numbers.
    One thing to consider: Above, I'm speaking of concurrent users at a specific time, not total number of user accounts, so these numbers are not exactly comparable. Gaia Online's front page they have 13,541 users online. Suddenly looks pretty small. Also says there's 5,026,922 users total. Not so small any more. There's no numbers on the total user count in Tapestries, which is pretty nasty.
    Secondly, as I tried to hint above, Tapestries is a very large MU* compared to all other MU*s, not just compared to other furry MU*s.
    Basically, we're sitting on top of the exact thought experiments that the policies use (or used, last I checked): Sure, we have a big MU* here, everyone knows it's a big and important MU* that has had tons of impact, but we can't prove it's big and important through sources, so apparently it's not fit to be included in Wikipedia. (And bees can't fly, either, if you believe the sources.) Using thought experiments is kind of flimsy, so I propose we change these policies to use this as a living example of what we can't do. We need a good example of "criteria for inclusion is verifiability, not truth". We need an example of truth that we can't include, enshrined forever in our policies. If we're to delete this, let's make an example out if it. It's entirely reasonable in my opinion.
    And again, sorry for going off like this. Yours truly, probably the single most troublesome editor in the past weeks, --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 12:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete very frivolous. --Duke of Duchess Street 02:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Neutral Oh, man, I dunno about this one. Part of me wants to just say "Strong Keep, Duh, of course it's notable!" and leave it at that. If only things were that simple. On one hand, this is extremely notable within the online furry community, both widely-known and widely-played. On the other hand we have the fundamental problem of reliable sources: even with the many gaming magazines out there, few of them ever bother to cover the comings-and-goings of the MUCK world, and if they did they'd still probably stay away from the adult-oriented Tapestries. Finally, there's the issue of precedent-setting: articles about MU*s tend to attract more articles about MU*s, which the creators then vigorously defend because if there's even one MU* article on all of Wikipedia then they have a constitutional right to theirs too. To sum it all up, I'm torn. I'd love it if somebody showed up with some realiable sources os we could keep this, but if not, well, there's always WikiFur. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Reluctant delete-it is significant within the MUD community, but the lack of reliable sources would really prevent anything much being written, and information about it is certainly not widespread enough to fall under the "common knowledge" exemption of WP:V. Change to keep as sources have been found. Seraphimblade 03:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep The largest, and among the oldest, mucks dedicated to its particular fandom. It's also one of the oldest and most populous adult-oriented mucks. It's apparently been featured in a Wired News article, a 1999 public radio international feature called Beyond Computers, a San Francisco Bay Guardian article from 1998. It was a link of the day at Sex & Games, published by the International Game Developers' Association -- and that's just from five minutes of searching. Its existence is quite verifiable, and the wealth of weblinks to it (about 25,000 Google hits for Tapestries +muck -wikipedia) should speak to its noteworthiness as an internet phenomenon. Shimeru 08:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • In which case it will be trivially easy to remedy the sourcing problems, and you should do so please. Guy 09:43, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Haven't got time to rewrite the article right now, but I've added those four potential sources to the page. Shimeru 10:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
        • I've done a little rewrite, added some material, and found a few more sources. Turns out it features prominently in The Original TinySex FAQ. Could doubtless use more work by someone more familiar with it, but that should address sources, even if some of them are somewhat trivial. Shimeru 21:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, reluctantly - I'm a deletionist, and I hate this kind of article...but Starblind has a point. We need to look, policy-wise, at WP:V and the idea of notability in cases like this. I don't like it, and I'm not 100% sure it's right, but keep for now. Maybe talk about it on the village pump?--Shrieking Harpy......Talk|Count 22:50, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
    I'd suggest bringing up Furcadia as well in that. Another long-running world with a dedicated following (heck, I remember when Second Life wasn't as busy as it), but which grew slowly, is deliberately specific to a certain genre and which has never gained significant news coverage. GreenReaper 23:45, 10 November 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.