Talk:Star Wars MUSH

VfD consensus dispute
This page was voted on for deletion at Votes for deletion/Star Wars MUSH/first nomination. There was no consensus. dbenbenn | talk 15:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes there was, it was to delete. Don't lie. --Spinboy 17:30, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * It is in your own best interests, Spinboy, to refrain from making false accusations and personal attacks. Upon reviewal of the VfD discussion there was clearly NO consensus with a vote of 4 keeps and 4 deletes.  --GRider\talk 19:12, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I counted 5 to delete, (including my nomination, that counts as a vote) and 3 to keep at the time. Your vote came after the page was archived. --Spinboy 19:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Be it 4:4 or 5:3, neither one fit the definition of a consensus. A concensus would be 6:3 or greater.  In this particular instance, there is clearly none. --GRider\talk  19:51, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree, it has 50%+1 of the vote, it should be purged. --Spinboy 19:55, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Why are you so hot to delete this? Moralis 23:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

On 4 Mar 2005, this article was again nominated for deletion. The result was keep. See Votes for deletion/Star Wars MUSH for a record of the discussion. &mdash;Korath (Talk) 18:21, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Definition of the word "consensus"
n. A specific method of community decision making where agreement by all parties is required, and one party can block the decision.

Is it encyclopedic?
I've thrown this page onto the MU* Games category, because it matches what else is there -- the only question I have, mostly driven by the fact a similar article of mine was removed last week, is whether or not this should be listed on wikipedia? I'm not the owner of this mush, and am on good terms with the HW (Minkar), so I'm not about to propose it as a vfd. I'm just not sure to what extent muds/mushes should be listed, and where the perception for whether a game is historical or significant enough to be listed. I don't want this to sound like a case of sour grapes, but where is the line drawn?

Sure, there's information listed on the history and evolution of the idea, but every site has that. My own has six years of history behind it, so it's hardly a flash in the pan. I don't want this to sound like a rant, though. Just trying to understand the process :)

--Tarison 05:37, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The page is currently lacking content. I don't see how it's useful to Wikipedia, either. I'm not aware of any culturally significant events that have come out of the MU* community. It's too much of a niche. Nothing against Minkar, but this page just doesn't belong here, IMO.--Eric 21:08, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OTOH, that could mean getting rid of the whole category. I suppose it can stay, it just needs major work. Noting my vote on the VfD page.--Eric 21:14, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

About the Spin offs
I removed the note about Brak Sector being 'more successful' than the original other fractures from SW1, because it's very much based on point of view. SW2 (A New Threat) ran from the split, up until late 2004. Minos Cluster stayed till at least early 2001, when it changed its theme (though I can't recall exactly which name it assumed), and lasted for 1-2 years afterwards.

From what I recollect, Brak closed for a time (not sure when, though I'm inclined to say prior to 2000. It reopened in 2003, though I'm not sure that it is still open now -- hardly what you would call 'more successful', next to the others. I think it's better we don't get bias into the article, though. There are a lot of other 'spin-offs' that reach back to the original, whether they spun off others or not. --Tarison 07:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the update. The phrasing wasn't a result of bias, as I've never played any of the spin-offs, just a bad use of language. Moralis 23:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

About the "Historical Significance"
I've put back the section on the history of the game, which was deleted as 'POV crap,' on the basis that it's all factual. If someone would like to delete it again and explain why this time, I won't argue with their decision. Meanwhile, as far as I've been able to tell through research, SW1 was the first game to incorporate the features touched on, which pretty much refutes any allegations that the section was 'POV-based'. I have changed the wording of the article to sound less biased in the direction of the game; however, given several complaints over time regarding the article's lack of content I'm wondering why certain people are so devoted to deleting new sections in their entirety without explanation. Moralis 23:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm still 99% sure this is a POV thing, though in terms of STAR WARS-based MUSHES, they may have pioneered certain systems. I wasn't the one that removed what was previously added, however, so I can't really comment on why they removed it. The problem is, mush code gets around. One of the first spin-offs from SW2 (not SW1) was 'A Legacy Born' -- and I say spinoff, because those that formed it were all there in one faction, though it was a completely fresh DB. ALB was a TPM-themed place, started before TPM was released (I can't remember if it was mid 98 or 99 off-hand, but it was one of the two). The simple globals on their (written by yours truly), stayed on the DB after it closed. One of the co-founders (there were 3 of us) had a copy of the DB, which they offered to a Superhero themed mush. When that mush fractured, those globals ended up on a new site (BNB, also a superhero theme). Years later, I visited it as I had a friend who staffed there, and lo and behold, there's the globals I designed -- they had a very distinctive look and feel.

Still going along this chain of thought, I used my own copy of the ALB database as a basis for my own game (SWU) at the end of 2000. It had a few systems that actually travelled back to SW2, such as the language system I'd written for it. The space system ended up on AoA (these two volunteered via me), and its faction system ended up on others. I'm not really sure how long DarrienSpace has been around (whether since launch or not, I don't know -- if its only from the 96 relaunch, I'm pretty sure Grk's space system from SW2 predates it). This also doesn't take into account the contributions of the many Trek MU*s. Rhysem's ThunderCombat is another system from SW2 which also propagated to many other mushes, and I know that the ALB chargen was a heavily modified version of this, which SWU modified again through its cycles.

My point is that since many of the old mushes are gone, we really only have peoples memories, and if we're lucky, copies of old databases lying around. It's hard to determine which Even when looking at a single mush, it's often the case that there's gaps. I haven't changed the article content at all, but I thought I could shed some more light onto my impressions of the situation, and maybe help those who do edit the page look at how things should be done. --Tarison 02:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I concur with Tarison, and would go further: most of the claims made in the "historical significance" section are not only difficult to verify, but they are highly suspicious. DarrienSpace is not that old, and softcoded space systems (written in the MUSH's internal extension language) were far more common before the relatively small number of such systems written in C became popular. As a long-time MU* player, I was not familiar with DarrienSpace, and I'm informed by acquaintances who were on SW1 back in the day that DarrienSpace specifically was derived from an older space system, which would likely date its provenance to the '96 reboot; this would mean, as Tarison mentions, that Grkthaw's space system on SW2 predates it, likely meaning that the influence worked the other way.

Additionally, the practice of having "trained and authorized to respond on-call to roleplay disputes" is actually quite common. The first mention found of the JUDGE flag in the PennMUSH codebase dates back to '95, and is credited to "Mike K from StarWars;" so it's possible that SW1's innovation was to specifically delegate this function to a group of players who were not otherwise game admins (one of whose traditional functions was precisely this), but that's not clear from the wording, and I know that this practice was used on games run by people who had never been on SW1, under a different name (typically "RP Admins").

I've placed a number of citation needed tags on what seem to me to be the most questionable claims; the above, and the elevator code--as with most such problems, there are a finite number of possible solution algorithms, and the number of efficient algorithms is a subset of this set, which, particularly in this case, is not large to begin with. --Eric (talk) 17:32, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Vfd this vs Vfd for Planes of existence (chat site) and lintilla (chat site)
I have been very upset that the two pages listed above were nominated for deletion - both 30 seconds after creation, yet they have significant historical significance. I believe that the first of something and the most popular of something grant automatic notoriety, just like how Star Wars MUSH was the first ever MUSH with a star wars theme. I agree that this page deserves to stay.

I compiled the above pages as part of doing a history of talkers, because they form a major part in the development of talkers, and, secondly, in its transition from talkers through to instant messenger services such as ICQ. However, someone nominated it for deletion, and then made all sorts of false assertions about it, insisting it was non notable.

The Planes of existence talker has been closed for 2 years, and has not been popular since 1999, and was really only a major cultural influence for 2 years - from 1997-1998 - although it did influence the creation of zoo code in 1996. However, one of the scandals there was a major part in destroying the talker community, and was subsequently used by Yahoo! messenger which in and of itself asserts notoriety.

Some people have said that an extinct chat site has no notoriety, but if that is the case, then I dare someone to Vfd Cat Chat (talker), the first ever talker on the internet. They also suggested that Alexa ratings were relevant, when talkers are not web sites and are not generally rated by Alexa. The fact that Sleepy's multiple worlds, the first spin off from lintilla, is now the 3rd most popular talker (according to Alexa), the most popular NUTS talker and the most popular adult-orientated talker suggests that its original form, lintilla, is also notable.

Now, Star Wars MUSH, as you said, had 22 users online. Lintilla at its peak had only 80. But PoE had 300 on at a time. What is the level in order to assert notoriety? 300 is not the most popular in history. I think that the record is out around 2,000 somewhere, probably by either Surfers (talker) or Resort (talker). What's the level?

The thing is, and this is how I look at this. Could you legitimately do a school report on it? I don't mean making some obscure book about it or something. Wikipedia is used a lot by school students to do reports. I say yes.

If you asked some kids "Tell me why talkers came about, and why they disappeared, and what they were", you could not answer that question without referencing planes of existence. You could possibly answer it without referencing lintilla, but only if you stuck with ew-too talkers and stuck with all ages talkers. Otherwise you'd have to mention it.

Now, I would assert that students could feasibly be asked a question like that, and henceforth that it has validity to remain in an encylopaedia.

Similarly, kids could be asked a question like "Tell me about how Star Wars influenced internet culture" and you would have to include Star Wars MUSH in the answer.

I think that these kinds of things have some kind of debate, but once we have established that an individual site can remain, I think that we have to see that as policy, and allow them all to remain.

In my opinion, as soon as we allowed an article called Talker to exist, we had to include Planes of existence (chat site) and Lintilla (chat site).

You certainly can't call it vanity when the place has been closed for 2 years. Nor advertising.

Zordrac 19:53, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

space system
I asked and was told that this MUSH uses a custom space system, and was curious if it's important enough to be noted in the article? I should think it would be, but I haven't played the game very much.. Zalethon 16:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Well I just noticed that it is mentioned in 'historical significance'.. However, I had meant is it important enough to have its own section? Zalethon 17:00, 14 October 2006 (UTC)