Old Man Murray, a legendary PC humor site which inspired a generation of gaming journalists—and whose alumni just scripted Portal 2, one of this year's most hotly-anticipated games—was deleted from Wikipedia last week.
Despite references in countless publications, including Wired and Edge magazine, none were deemed substantial enough to rescue OMM from non-notability. Moreover, the nomination for deletion came from an editor accused of having a grudge against the site's creators—a fact not disclosed in the nomination. Rock Paper Shotgun's John Walker writes:
But like so many of the disputes that rear up on the encyclopaedia, this could be a personal matter. The initiative to have the entry deleted was started by user "SchuminWeb", one Ben Schumin. He's a fan of the defunct comedy cartoon website, Homestar Runner, which has an entry on Wikipedia that he links to. It is claimed in the discussion page on Wikipedia that Schumin has a long-running dispute with OMM. Chet Faliszek expresses his confusion about the matter here, saying he remembers helping Schumin set up his site back in the day. So what does Schumin have specifically against Old Man Murray? We've contacted him to find out. (Edit: Oh, he seems to have deleted my question, which seems a bit rude.)
Edit: While Schumin is declining to give a reason behind his choosing Old Man Murray (and only a week before, Portal Of Evil) for deletion, it's hard to understand how this didn't mean the Conflict Of Interest rule didn't prevent his nominating.
Meanwhile, there's a lot of anger about the decision – a lot of it unsavoury – all over the place.
It's a good example of how a determined Wikipedian can quietly orchestrate the removal of articles that hold little appeal to the online encyclopedia's own editorial community. By the time anyone beyond it notices, a useful resource is history.
Old Man Murray Deleted From Wikipedia [Rock Paper Shotgun]
UPDATE 1: The article's been reinstated. Jolly good.
UPDATE 2: RPS pubished a follow-up article quoting more than a dozen industry luminaries on OMM's influence.
