This is the story of a guy who started his own series of fancruft articles about Randy Richards of Spellbinder Games, who wrote the Dreadmire campaign setting.

Dreadmire's article got deleted, and Randy Richards' article got deleted and protected to prevent recreation. List of Dreadmire Fantasy Animals is now up for deletion, as well as its twin List of Fictional Animals in Dreadmire. The guy also created:

• Abysmal Ooze
• Aquatic Ooze
• Blood  Pudding
• Jelly Curd
• Jelly Quasit
• Jelly Wraith
• Ooze Demon
• Oozoid

All of these are, of course, up for deletion.

So the guy snaps, and nominates Greyhawk's article for deletion to, he thinks, prove a point.

Subsequently Spellbinder Games itself went up for deletion and the guy continues his trend by putting Necromancer Games up for deletion.

I love Wikipedia hissy fits. They are fatbeardlicious.

You'll note that he's also claiming Necromancer is not notable because the ENnies are "trivial."

Ah yes, Wikipedia. Never has a place been so prone to flame wars and petty feuds. :rolleyes:

Randy who?  Dread what?  This guy is arguing his point by going after Gary Gygax's Greyhawk, the quintessential D&D campaign world?

Sheesh.

I've become rather disillusioned with Wikipedia over time.  By and large it's not bad, but the basic principles the whole site runs on are fundamentally flawed.  

NPOV is a wrong approach to an encyclopedia.  There shouldn't be a POV in the thing at all, just facts.  The N part of NPOV is largely a joke.  

The end result is a hell of a lot of people running around Wikipedia using it as their personal soapbox, and the administration largely defending their actions, under some bizarre interpretation of "NPOV".  The most obvious of these examples is the now rather ubiquitous "Criticisms" section.

At one point, I attempted to remove the one from the article on computer RPGs (a rather pointless and rambling diatribe about  how inferior they were, couched in a lot of GNS garbage to boot), and wound up getting threatened by the mods.  

If I open up a World Book volume to a random article, I don't see rants.  I see facts and details.  Wiki's approach though, is to instead let the rants continue, so long as they're couched in neutral enough language to skirt by, or you can cite some shitty webpage somewhere to back it up (note though, that you don't have to back up the points in said criticism, only prove that the criticism exists).

And as for the fancruft thing, I think that whole lable has by and large come about as a result of a lot of dorks with big egos wanting to push people around digitally because they can't electronically.  One important respect where Wikipedia differs from a normal encyclopedia, is that it is digital.  There's no page limit, or any of the other things like that.  It's all just a few bytes on a hard disk somewhere, and while that could eventually become a problem with enough abuse, I think by and large it's overstated and pointless.

I mean hell, there's even advantage to allowing a lot of the more obscure stuff regular encyclopedias don't bother to include. Present Wikipedia does already in a lot of ways, like the sheer amount of coverage given to video game stuff.

I assume this was the offending passage:

QuoteCRPGs often face criticism from players of traditional RPGs. A common reason for this is the fact that most CRPGs focus on combat and statistical character management instead of storytelling and deep character development. This trend is called powergaming. Players also criticise the fact that the player has limited, pre-programmed control over their digital avatar, rather than unlimited control of a character who may interact with any aspect of the game's world.
These are common criticisms of simulated realities in general; indeed, these criticisms are also directed at gamist and simulationist players of traditional role-playing games. A virtual world might create the illusion of freedom in terms of choice and motion, but even in the most free-form CRPGs, a player's actions are limited by the amount of content that a game's designers are able to program. Narrativist RPG players, being used to having no such pre-defined limitations, find themselves unsatisfied with the experience provided in CRPGs.

The GNS stuff is ludicrous.

Quote from: Elliot WilenThe GNS stuff is ludicrous.

And completely meaningless to 99.99999999% of the population. It'd be like me using GNS to critique Madden NFL 2007.
What I really like Wikipedia for is as a fancruft resource. If I'm in the mood to learn more than I really need to about a geek or pop culture subject I use Wikipedia. I've long learned that it's simply bad juju for serious subjects aside from the most simple points. As for the jerks who are Greater Internet Fuckwads, well, you can't stop that until you can make a Taser that fires through the internet, so I've learned to tune most of 'em out.

I'm going to take a whack at some light editing to get rid of the nonsense. The "powergaming" thing is also non-sequitur IMO.

And I removed the last paragraph, for one because "roleplaying vs. rollplaying" is such a tired cliche that it pains me, and for two, the example given (information gathering) is actually something that is rarely if ever resolved by way of statistics/mechanics in CRPGs.

Quote from: jrientsRandy who?

You know the author of Dungeons and Dragons according to a current Spellbinder Games discription.

Quote from: BagpussYou know the author of Dungeons and Dragons according to a current Spellbinder Games discription.

For mean spirited and proud of it ignorance, try reading the comments by Cryogenic. I doubt he would know a roleplaying game if it came up and neutered him.

Quote from: JongWKAh yes, Wikipedia. Never has a place been so prone to flame wars and petty feuds. :rolleyes:

Except RPGSITE?

Quote from: mythusmageFor mean spirited and proud of it ignorance, try reading the comments by Cryogenic. I doubt he would know a roleplaying game if it came up and neutered him.

I'm learning from various sources who have seen the cloak and dagger Randy Richards tries to pull on online communities to inflate his own importance and smear Necromancer Games, amongst other parties.

See, Randy Richards got dumped on his ass by Necromancer Games, because Dreadmire is heavily plagiarized from Gygax and Arneson's work on Greyhawk, and the Necromancer boys didn't like that when they found out.

Bottom line, Cryogenic in all probability is Randy Richards, who has created many many sock puppets and smurfs in many other online communities.

Those who can, write games. Those who can't try to monkeywrench online communities to make themselves look more important.

Cribbing from Gygax and Arneson can get you in trouble?  Cripes!  That's like every D&D campaign I ever ran!  But seriously, how baldly do you have to rip off those two for someone to give you the boot?  My mind boggles.

"Randy Richards" sounds like the name of a 60's marvel charaecter. Really, it's no wonder he has more than one identity.

Quote from: Sojourner JudasBottom line, Cryogenic in all probability is Randy Richards, who has created many many sock puppets and smurfs in many other online communities.

Probable is Randy? More like definiately, there is even a Wiki article for the adventure he wrote for Dungeon ages ago now (created by Cryogenic when this asshattery started).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Magic_in_New_Orleans

Seriously how many Dungeon adventures have wiki articles?