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 keep. (non-admin closure) Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 03:03, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

MUD trees[edit]

MUD trees (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Article attempts to build family trees of MUDs. There is no indication that reliable sources have covered this topic and the content appears to be primarily original research. The closest thing to a reliable source in the article is Keegan's paper which may have been published in the Journal of MUD Research, an extremely obscure, short-lived, on-line only journal. Note that there was a previous VfD discussion in 2004 with an inconclusive result. Pburka (talk) 19:15, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge or keep I like the nice family diagrams and most of the boxes are in fact Wiki links. One could make a case that this is a sort of list-class article. However, at least some of the information implicit in the trees is already contained in the Family, Codebase and MudLib fields of the list in the Chronology of MUDs article. As the trees add useful information that would be hard to discern from the list, it would be useful and on topic to merge the trees into the Chronology of MUDs article. Update: Keeping the article would be reasonable, too. Mark viking (talk) 22:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I tried to check if the trees were accurate, and they do appear to be. I would liken the article to an Outline article, useful for navigation purposes. ROM (MUD) has a reliable source verifying its history. --Odie5533 (talk) 22:55, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep the tree contains links to other articles which include numerous reliable sources. Those sources could be copied into the tree article as well, although it seems a bit redundant. KaVir (talk) 09:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game-related deletion discussions. (G·N·B·S·RS·Talk) ★☆ DUCKISPEANUTBUTTER☆★ 23:04, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. This is a legitimate informational + navigational list article per WP:LISTPURP, and Keegan's work (which I believe this article to be largely based on) is entirely valid, as demonstrated by its citations in dozens of other works. —chaos5023 (talk) 13:58, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. The article is well sourced, well referenced, and continues extremely interesting, useful, and valuable information. This is not ORIGINAL RESEARCH (OR) according to the Wikipedia definition of WP:NOR. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cambios (talk • contribs) 09:11, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge or delete. I agree with Mark viking, this article is already contained in Chronology of MUDs under the Codebase column. Likewise, a page that lists MUDs in colourful balloons as in Keegan's paper, figure 1 wouldn't be any different in content. The only difference in content is that Chronology of MUDs only contains notable MUDs and MUD trees does not. 87.67.187.183 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:34, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - definitely appreciate the effort to collate this information from the sources listed and present it in such a concise format. The geneology of codebases is a valuable encyclopeadic reference and has merit. -- Gth-au (talk) 05:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The article is well sourced and provides useful information not found elsewhere. While some of the information may be available in the Chronology of MUDs article, most of it isn't. Further, the chronology lists specific servers, while this page lists codebases - the two are as different as a list of discovered fossils versus the graphs of species by category. The original research warning tag should also be removed. Opening a book to look up the print date isn't original research any more than looking at the copyright and history notices in a codebase. We shouldn't need to reference a research paper to make obvious data available for use. Flying hazard (talk) 17:17, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Isn't "useful information not found elsewhere" a synonym for WP:Original research? This article seems to meet the definition of WP:SYNTHESIS. Pburka (talk) 00:06, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • What novel conclusions is it reaching? —chaos5023 (talk) 00:24, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Do we have a reliable source which says that MAGMA was derived from AberMUD? If not, a family tree which shows such a derivation is a novel conclusion. Pburka (talk) 00:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • FYI, the historical codebase archives available at http://www.mudbytes.net/file-2692 trivially show the derivation history. As I said before, I don't feel that the WP:OR warning tag is even remotely warranted. Flying hazard (talk) 22:12, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • "useful information not found elsewhere" on Wikipedia. Of course the information can be found outside of wikipedia, in the same way that publisher and date can be found in every copy of a physical book. Flying hazard (talk) 00:59, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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.