Posted by Stropp on
January 14, 2009
There have been quite a few posts and articles over the last few days about a storm over at Wikipedia.
Apparently there are some editors who have taken it upon themselves to remove articles about famous MUD’s from Wikipedia, and targeted one of the more famous MUD’s, Threshold.
The reason given by the article authors? Well, apparently the way to get ahead at Wikipedia — and by getting ahead, I mean being promoted from editor to administrator — is by making lots of contributions to the directory. Of course the easiest contributions to make are article deletions.
It also appears that the editor responsible for attempting to delete the Threshold article (it was deleted, but there is a new one back) had a history with the Threshold game. He was banned from it a few years ago for being underage.
So what happened?
According to CEO of Frogdice, the creators of Threshold, in an article called Wikipedia’s War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG, the Wikipedia editor embarked on a systematic campaign to get the Threshold article deleted by:
- making mods to the article, and when the original article authors showed up and fixed the changes by making additions, citations, and references, the editors banned the original authors.
- when the original authors had been removed, the editors proposed an AfD (Article for Deletion.) When people in favor of keeping the article showed up and voted against the deletion, they were also banned.
- despite 57% voting to keep the article, the admin responsible concluded that there was a consensus to delete the article.
- In all of this, the editors and admins simply did not follow Wikipedia’s guidelines for handling edits, AfDs, and even bannings. The engaged in the behaviour they were accusing the pro-Threshold people of engaging in. They were a law unto themselves.
The justification for all this bad behavior by the deletionists at Wikipedia is that the articles are not notable. In fact, the arguments go one step further and claim the information presented by the Threshold article writers lacks authority, even when the sources are notable folks in the industry like Bartle and Koster. (Check the article’s discussion page for details, if it’s still there.)
The irony of this argument is that Wikipedia itself should not be used as an authoritative source of information. Sure, Wikipedia is a great place to start if you need information, articles generally provide links to source material, but the info there should never be used as an authoritative source. Especially if you’re trying to hang a school report or PhD dissertation on it.
So while it’s great, and necessary, for Wikipedia to require notable and accurate sources, it’s also disingenuous and hypocritical for the editors to be demanding these sources, and when provided (Bartle & Koster references) claiming they’re not notable enough.
The editors are even quibbling that the launch date of Threshold that is provided by Threshold’s very own website is not authoritative. Come on, please.
Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Action,1887
Okay. So we know that there are always two sides to each story. The article I referred to was written by the CEO of the company that owns Threshold after all. However, there’s enough corroboration that I’ve seen, Bartle and Koster come to mind, that shows that something dirty was going on at Wikipedia.
The fact is that people, when given power over others, have a tendency to misuse that power in order to further their own agendas. There’s several metric tons of reports of psychology experiments that absolutely prove that fact that cannot be ignored. It’s also true that in any large enough group of people, there’s going to be some who are going to do the wrong thing.
Again what strikes me as odd is the notability requirements. I can go to Wikipedia and find information on nearly any subject that I have an interest in. I’ve spent hours going through dozens of pages related to Doctor Who, and found entries for TV shows that never made it past the first season, or even first few episodes.
Sure, they’re not going to want an article on how my cat is a fussy eater because he doesn’t like fish and prefers poultry and red meat. There’s got to be some value in an article, and yes, that’s what the editors are there to ensure.
Yet a computer game that has been going for 13 years is not notable, but Century City a TV show about lawyers in 2030 and that was canceled after broadcasting only 4 episodes ( 9 were made ) is notable. Go figure.
I think there are a lot of people questioning the value of Wikipedia when it comes to popular culture since what isn’t popular amongst the editors and administrators has a tendency to disappear.
Perhaps it’s time to distribute these large collections of information, backing them up so to speak, so that over-zealous and self-important individuals have less control over the destiny of history.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
January 12, 2009
I was just reading Jason’s post, My Hopes and Dreams for 2009 and Beyond over on Channel Massive when one tiny little thing he said slapped me across the face and called me Susan.
Cease the Liberal use of “Epic Fail” When it Comes to Criticism
Since when has failure ever NOT been epic??? According to the MMO community, any perceived failure (no matter how trivial), is ALWAYS epic in scope.
One of the ways that we humans learn is by failure. We attempt something, perhaps getting a light bulb to work, many times without success before the big breakthrough. Other times we simply learn that what we are attempting isn’t possible. Both results are equally valid and valuable outcomes that show us where we’ve gone wrong, and where possibly not to focus on in the future. Edison wouldn’t have been successful if he hadn’t learned from his failures and insisted on using the same sort of strand each time ‘just in case.’
In fact one of the definitions of insanity is knowing an action doesn’t work, but repeating it anyway. Perhaps we can say that behavior provides a good definition of ‘Epic Fail’ too.
There’s been a whole bunch of failures in the MMOG space in the recent past. Some of them have even been called epic.
While these failures are disappointing to developers and players alike. I reckon that as long as the industry, and perhaps the players as well, learn from those failures it might actually be a good and valuable thing that they occurred.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
January 11, 2009
Well, I haven’t been terribly much inclined to do much blogging lately, as you might have noticed. Please say you’ve noticed!
But I have done a reasonable amount of gaming over the last two months. And, it’s been at a reasonable relaxed pace, when I’ve felt like it.
I guess that’s the curse of blogging about games, especially when they are fairly time consuming ones like MMORPGs. There’s a bit of a conflict. Do I take the time to write a blog entry, or spend more time questing for the Sword of a Dozen Truths. The bigger issue, at least for me is that to write about MMORPGs, I have to spend time immersed in the genre: The news, games, and other blogs.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the genre. It’s truly a passion for me, and if I could make a living around it I wouldn’t think twice — well maybe I would, but not three times. But sometimes it’s good to take a break, a step back, smell the coffee, get a breath of fresh air, and indulge in any number of other cliches. And that’s sort of what I did over the last months.
But I did do some gaming, and had a bit of low pressure fun too. I just played what I felt like playing.
Spore
While not really purchased in the last months, a little before actually, I gave Spore a bit of a go.
Honestly, really disappointed. It’s a terribly limited game, especially in the early stages. There’s only really one type of environment regardless of planet choice, and your environment has absolutely no bearing on how your creature evolves or even what evolutionary options are available.
The choice you make for your creature are only really upgrades to speed, combat, and social interaction.
The game is pretty, I’ll give you that, but unless you’re really into designing naughty, sexy critters, that’s all it has going for it.
Fallout 3
I ended up buying Fallout 3, despite the earlier news that it was being modified due to the interference of the Australian censors. I’m really glad I did too, because the game was absolutely brilliant. I thought that it captured the essence of Fallout 1 (I didn’t play 2 and TBoS), and it didn’t lose anything due to the perspective, style, and combat changes.
There were a couple of system freezes though, most specifically in the abandoned house in the VR vault scenario. I could barely spend a minute in that place without a almost complete system lockup.
The ending I thought was a little weak too, especially given the NPC options available. However, this is changing in a downloadable content ‘expansion’ due out on the XBox 360 version in March and hopefully the PC version later.
Fable 2
After FO3, I spent a bit of time playing Fable 2 on the 360. I’ll be honest, I got distracted somewhere in the middle and haven’t finished it yet. It’s a decent game, I think much better than the original game, but I haven’t really felt captured by the game. I reckon it will be one I go back to time to time, rather than being entranced to play for hours and hours.
Warhammer Online
After a good start, I started to get a little bored with it. I got my Witch Hunter up to around 16 or so, before Fallout came out and haven’t been back.
The reason for that might be that I really hammered it, and created a lot of alts early on to get an idea of gameplay, especially for the PvP aspects. Unfortunately, Mythic undercooked the PvP before release resulting in a bit of an imbalance. Only a few scenarios popped out of the many available, and World PvP was woefully undermanned.
That may have all changed in the last month or so, but I have a feeling it will be a few more months before I look at WAR again.
Then again, 2009 could be a year with a bumper crop of MMOGs. Jumpgate, Earthrise, Darkfall, Spellborn, just to name a few. Could be mighty distracting.
World of Warcraft
So I succumbed to the lure and created a Draeni Shammie on Rexxar and joined up with the Casualties there. Had a bit of fun just before Christmas getting my level up in the starting areas.
I haven’t done any of the Wrath content yet, I’m tempted to pay the 25 USD to transfer my Dwarf Pally to Rexxar so that I can created a Death Knight on that server. I’ll wait and see.
Then Christmas came.
Free To Play MMORPGs
I downloaded and created accounts with several of the free to play MMOGs that are available. I loaded up Wizard 101, Dream of Mirror Online, and Cronous.
Both Wizard 101 and DOMO are pretty good, and much to my surprise come pretty close to the quality standard we expect of a AAA title nowadays. Cronous not so much. Within, 20 minutes of creating my character, he got stuck in a gap between the walls and couldn’t get out. No stuck command, and no help of any kind from players or GMs. Stuff that.
DOMO on the other hand, pretty decent. It has a real anime feel and is designed (I think) for a much younger audience — as is Wizard 101 — I felt a little silly hunting Pu Pu’s. It just sounds wrong. And what’s with the quest to knock of Baby Bow Wows. I’m a cat person, but killing puppies… yoiks!
Wizard 101 is a card battle game. You build up a deck of cards and then go out and battle monsters, or duel other players. As I said it is designed for the young ones in mind, so there are limitations of chat, and naming. I found the quests engaging, but did reach one limitation where I needed to become a subscriber or purchase some ‘currency’ to allow me to get into an area. Good fun.
Everquest
I don’t really know why, but for some reason I got a little nostalgic — maybe it was something I read — so I loaded up the original Everquest once again. Man. It’s been years since I last spent any time there, early 2002 I think. It didn’t cost me anything, I have the Station Access subscription, so I guess you could call that free to play too.
The first thing I noticed, outside the tutorial in Gloomingdeep Mines, was that the game is much easier to level that it was when I left in ’02. It’s also much easier to solo for a wider range of classes too from what I read on the forums. Not all the players are happy about this of course, I think it’s great idea, nothing wrong with gameplay being accessible.
Anyway, I created about five characters and leveled them all to between 11 and 12 over a day or two each. There’s a Ranger (Punkarella), Necromancer (Stropp), Wizard (Struke), Shaman (HairyLeggs), and a Beastlord (Stroppcat). My favorite, definitely the Wizard, except for the damn slow mana regeneration. From zero it takes about three minutes, and I burn through that in two or three mobs. I’m not that patient.
Red Alert 3
Finally, my gaming odessy includes Red Alert 3 for the PC.
The thing I always liked about the RA games was that they didn’t take themselves too seriously. Red Alert 3 is not an exception to this rule. Just in the opening scenes, we have Tim Curry, and a large Japanese war machine with high tech Samurai and giant robots. Even later we have George Takei as the Japanese Emperor.
The gameplay doesn’t suffer either. You effectively get an assistant who has his or her own base, and whom you can direct to a certain extent.
And man, the Russian adjutant who gives you your orders and mission briefs. If the Russian military actually had their female soldiers in uniforms like that, I might consider defecting!
So. Is that enough gaming for you?
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
January 9, 2009
I just checked the blog comments, and lo there appeared before me well over 200 spam comments from the same dirtbag.
I use Akismet which is usually pretty good at catching this type of spam. Over the last two and a bit years, Akismet has stopped 56,692 bits of trash from littering the site. Minus the last coupla hundred.
So I went through and spent a little time marking up the spam and telling Akismet about it. Akismet, as I understand it, is trainable and if a bad comment gets through, Akismet will learn from it making it less likely to reoccur.
What is probably attractive to the spammers is that the comment links in this blog (which is pagerank 4) are do follow, which means that they provide link juice to the sites that this one links. This in turn helps the spammer site do better for the search terms they are trying to rank, which leads to more web traffic.
Personally, I’d like to keep the blog as do follow. I think that a legitimate commentor who wants to link back to his own site deserves the benefit of a do follow link simply as thanks for the comment. Spammer’s will never get that benefit though, because I use a WordPress plugin that keeps the no-follow link on a comment for a few days. This gives me a chance to delete any spam before it gets that much sought after link juice.
So the scumbag who flooded my blog with spam today ain’t getting nuthin’. Even if Google crawled my blog today while the links were there, it would have ignored the no-follow spammy links.
Now if Akismet could only string these spammers up by the genitals and spin them around slowly, my day would be complete.
Popularity: 4% [?]
