SuperAntx wrote:

Looks like they're moving forward with the deletion. The article still doesn't cite any outside sources.

So we need to be mentioned in the mainstream media to be considered notable? WTF kind of policy is that? Does our popularity (~10K on Alexa) mean nothing?

Stephen001 wrote:

On the whole, no. They deal with things of the order of millions on viewers to be note-worthy when it comes to internet based things, I think. Although obviously if you're servicing that much traffic, someone 'important' will probably have blogged about you.

Well, I'm not saying we're in the same company with facebook and youtube and all that, but it's not like Wikipedia is super-selective (or so I thought). Isn't any site that gets a lot of traffic 'notable' by definition? Otherwise why are people even coming here?

They didn't used to be quite so selective, however they have put quite the focus on article quality after about 2006. This firstly manifested as a large-scale clean-up of Anime articles, primarily the axing of character pages. They followed this up with a large-scale clean-up on trivia sections, then for legal safety went around axing images for which there might have been copyright concerns. In spite of fair usage legislation, they're generally continuing that one. The latest gripe is notability. I think essentially the concern is that for something the size of BYOND, it may be difficult to get suitably cross-referenced sources of information, from which to build up a thorough, neutral and informative article.

BYOND falls quite happily into the technology categories of Wikipedia. To hold an article in those categories, you need to either be 'notable' as per Wikipedia's notion of cross-referenced source popularity (Or put simply, "you are notable because people are noting you"), or you must be technically interesting. As a for-instance, small-scale networking technologies deployed in corporate networks in the early 1980's were not notable in the sense they were discussed and referenced in literary works. However, they are technically interesting, because by virtue of their design they attempted (or similarly failed) to for-see certain technical issues within their domain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Voice_Protocol is a good example of this, although naturally it also holds some historical value.

Tiberath wrote:

Perhaps someone should fire off an email to any noticeable gaming website which has articles for things like Game Maker and RPG Maker.

Gamedev.net, according to themself, serves about 300,000 international developers daily and owns the largest game development viewing audience in the world (even though it's Alexa.com shows regression and worse values than with BYOND :p).
Their own Wiki mentions BYOND but features Game Maker.
Maybe Tom could contact them, telling them about some of the benefits BYOND has to offer (native and easy Multiplayer support, built in online player Database, automatic own homepage for your game, highly customizeable client, built in CGI support, friendly and helpfull community with tutorials and an easy language to start on).

It probably would have been a good idea to submit press releases to major online media outlets when the 4.0 update rolled out.

That's basically how most software/hardware works. Ever major update they send out a press release, which gets the big sites like cnet looking at them. When they look, they probably blog, or hopefully, write an article. Not only does this get us notability for Wikipedia, but it also draws in players. Perhaps with the 4.5 release(or the next major update) a press release should be created.

Video Tutorials
Review of some games

"BYOND is 100% free, and is excellent" -- Richard Bartle, father of the MUD.

Is there any proof of this quote? Richard Bartle has a Wiki page, surely a review (even if it's one sentence) by him is a sign of notability.

Airjoe, you just got the Wiki nazi to put up a warning on the debate page!

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Hazman wrote:

I say we go on a rampage, marking game creation articles with no notable sources as non notable.

This isn't eBaum's World, we're above that kind of crap.

I think the biggest thing BYOND can do to get users is to go for the social networking stuff. Go after MySpace specifically. MySpace is the popular choice for the younger crowd.

But taking a step back, the object is to get the word out to the kids, as those are the ones who are really gonna go for it. You can't convince a guy in his 20s to learn a new gaming language:P I'm convinced that the older crowd here has been here for years, or was moving on from a dead/stagnant language.

So to get the most users, you gotta target those hitting puberty. This is the most common age for programmers to start, uh, programming, as it's about this time when the mental capacity for programming logic becomes accessible.

So we're going after 13 year old+ people. Best way to get them is to,
A. get them into a byond game.
B. get them from social networking sites, through games and ads
C. get them from general web surfing through ads. I bet ads would really be effective too in this regard. Are you running a campaign on google adwords? If not, you should be! It can be fairly inexpensive. I hate to say this, but I think you should do it on specific websites. Your competitors sites. I won't name names. Using very few keywords.

BYOND Users, this means you too! There's money to be had by marketing BYOND on external websites.

I think marketing on web searches might not easily reach this demographic. And it's a very competitive one. It's much easier to advertise on specific sites.
D. Publish books and get em on Amazon. Get parents interested in teaching BYOND to their kids. I think targeting homeschooling parents would be a fantastic approach.

E. Make or hire out DM based web games. Make em open source. You'll get users who want to run games on their home servers. Look at the popularity of Legend of the Green Dragon.

You give Wikipedia way too much credit.