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Saturday 25 January 2014

Proof of Intentional Storygamer Subversion of Wikipedia

Hello, dear readers.  What would you think of a group so desperate to push their agenda that they will try to viciously take over a project, a very noble project, supposedly intended to serve to provide accurate an honest knowledge for the betterment of mankind? What would we say about someone who went in there and intentionally altered truth into lies, manipulated the policies of the site to eliminate from the common pool of human knowledge those things that he personally did not like, that he didn't want others to know about?

I personally would call them the fucking scum of the earth.  On pure principle, whether I agreed with their personal politics or not, even if I thought their actual ideology was 100% right and pure, say if it was someone trying to stand up for Pipe Smoking, Coffee Drinking, Kittens, Chocolate Chip Cookies and Blow Jobs (all things I quite enjoy and generally support on principle), I would still find a person who went on wikipedia and tried to intentional alter, distort, or outright butcher truth; or manipulate what I think is one of the most important websites in the world to serve his own petty ends; to be someone absolutely beneath contempt. To attack knowledge itself, and in the process tarnish and harm the  quality and efficacy of an undertaking as noble and important as Wikipedia, puts you one step below lamb-rapist in my books.

And yet that's exactly what Storygamers feel they have no problem doing.  Its been an open secret that for years now they've been campaigning on wikipedia, infesting its list of editors like they try to infest everywhere else, making sure there were lengthy wikipedia entries on games almost no one plays and Forgist "game designers" almost no one has heard of. And if that was the only things they're doing, however smarmy and self-serving, then fine; those are the rules of wikipedia: what gets put up there depends on who's willing to get on and write things up. So if there's a shitload of inordinately lengthy entries for phenomenally-unpopular games because the Forgists put in extra hours, you can't really blame them, and if certain other games or forums or designers don't have their own wikipedia page because their supporters and fans have never bothered to get off their asses to post one, tough titties.

But that's not all they're doing, and here's some proof:
If you will, check out the wikipedia entry on "Diceless Games".  A pretty standard entry.   Now, the other day the erstwhile fans of the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow RPG noticed they were not on the list of Diceless Games there, and said so in a thread (and promptly went on to add it).  At the same time, I noticed that Lords of Olympus wasn't on there; and pointed it out.  Only it turns out that Brett Bernstein, owner of Precis Intermedia Games and publisher of Lords of Olympus had added LoO to that list quite some time ago, only now we found it gone.

A bit of investigation revealed why.  It was deleted, by a person named "neonchameleon".  It was removed for being "non-notable".  Even though it was the first major Diceless RPG in years.  Even though it was the top-selling game Precis ever published, if I'm not mistaken, and the most profitable RPG I've ever written.  Even though it has sold far more copies than 90% of the Forge games that have entries.
Note that it was the ONLY entry removed from the "Diceless RPGs" wikipedia entry.  The entry on "Troika Moira", a game whose sales were practically non-existent compared to LoO's, and who almost no one has ever heard of in comparison and garners, for example, 7580 results on a google search compared to 291000 results for LoO, remained utterly untouched.  In fact, if you go by quotation-mark-encased google searches for the games' title, Lords of Olympus gets more results than Active Exploits (43200),  Everway (224000), Lords of Gossamer and Shadow (63900), the term "Marvel Universe RPG" (22600) or "Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game" (6280). 
So in fact, only Theatrix, Nobilis, and Amber itself have a grater claim of "Notability" than Lords of Olympus.  And yet, Lords of Olympus, a game that sold better than about 90+% of RPGs published in 2012, a game which gets nearly three hundred thousand hits on google, a game with active online communities and dedicated web pages, was the only rpg removed from the list. Why is that?

Well, it might be because Neonchameleon is a storygames swine. That's his blog where he talks about the wonder and innovation of storygames.  Here's a link to his writing on the Storygames Forum, where he expresses his hatred for D&D.

So apparently the real quality for judging notability ought to be that it was notable enough for Neonchameleon to hate it, or more likely me, to betray every standard of accuracy as a wikipedia contributor in order to satisfy petty personal hatreds.

We have put Lords of Olympus back on the list.  But I think people should now be on alert for this man, and others like him, because unless they are confronted and shamed for what they are doing (and potentially, unless proper authorities on Wikipedia are alerted), they will likely keep right on trying to erase history, accuracy and truth in order to try to present the twisted worldview they want to force on the rest of us.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Quiete + Rattray's Accountants Mix

10 comments:

  1. What a stupid fuck. Like that was going to accomplish something other to bring everyone's attention on the games you were trying to silence.

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  2. Storygamers aren't the only special interest group that acts like that, either. I just earlier read a story about people describing themselves as "skeptics" on Wikipedia who have fought tooth and nail to keep the word "former" in front of the word "biologist" in the biography of Rupert Sheldrake, despite, you know, the fact that Sheldrake is still an actively publishing biologist with papers in Nature. Whatever one might think of the merits of Sheldrake's work, he is still a biologist. I've been saying for years that Wikipedia lost its way some time back, and these sorts of things just confirm my opinion.

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  3. Neonchamelon is a goon. He was probably just trying to troll you for a response... which you gave him. Good job.

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  4. The only thing that matters on Wikipedia are the references. So I added a reference to an RPG.net review. Which is considered "good enough" for Wikipedia.

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  5. Just wanted to pop in and say that defending LoO is a damned good thing from where I sit. I am a big fan of that game.

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  6. Thanks Timothy, and you too Chris!

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  7. it's darkmoor. What other world would be good enough to be the final countdown with Morganthe? truthfully, i will be upset if it's some lame Wizard101world like polaris or Empryea. I like those worlds, but not for the final battle. They just wouldnt fit

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  8. It's jackass behavior, but i wouldn't condemn the entire subculture based on the actions of a few.

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  9. The response among storygamers to this case has been the typical reluctance to condemn the individual in question, defensiveness, dodging the question, and talking about the other side's allegedly bad behaviour (which notably doesn't include targetted censoring of material on wikipedia or elsewhere).

    I might be less willing to "condemn the entire subculture" if said subculture didn't consistently choose to act in such a condemnable way.

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