The Threshold Has Been Reached

This doesn't have much to do with Warhammer, other than being an elderly ancestor to the genre, but I've been following this story for the past week with absolute fascination.

In short, a MUD called Threshold has had its entry under the threat of deletion in Wikipedia due to the overzealous ambitions of admins looking to increase their power. Apparently, this happens a lot in Wikiworld, but this time they touched on a significant part of MMORPG history, and the community has bucked back -- hard.

Loads of people have covered this event, so I scarcely need to, other than drawing your attention to it (if you haven't been aware of the story):

• "Wikipedia's War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG" @ Bright Hub - Great article including a significant analysis of how Wikipedia works and why it's borked.
• "Corruption, Treachery and Deceit and Wikipedia" @ Wolfshead - A good overview of it all.
• Richard Bartle's protest
• Raph Koster's protest
• Lum the Mad's protest
• Massively's coverage of this event
• /random's protest

There's quite a few more articles about this, of course, but those should give you a good grasp on the situation.

My two cents about this is that, in a weird way, this is a positive conflict. Positive in that it's helping to expose some of the most fundamental flaws of Wikipedia, which will hopefully result in change for a better, more balanced and reasonable system where a few idiots can't throw their weight around and drown out the sane folks. My professors at seminary are adamant that Wikipedia never, ever be a source for any paper we write (although the sources they link to may be considered), simply because it is such an unreliable source of information. Sure, it can be vastly entertaining and educational, but I've seen people accept Wikipedia as the be-all, end-all source on any subject, preferring to quote a Wiki instead of a dictionary or a real encyclopedia.

I think the Threshold entry (which is back up after a deletion or two) will survive, especially since so much critical force has lashed out against this petty abuse of administration. But if it doesn't worry you that (a) so many people take far too much stock in Wikipedia as a primary source of information and (b) entries and history can be changed on a whim and even deleted, then you are a stronger man or woman than I.