[the_logos]

Muds with representatives recently added to Mindseye:
Threshold, Islands of Myth (formerly Red Dragon), Feudal Realms, Discworld, Necromium, and Carrion Fields. I urge you to join if you meet the requirements. Who knows if the group will survive (there may not be enough traffic with the requirements for membership) but it's worth a try.

As regards the earlier discussion about opening the list to being read by all, the current group members came down heavily on the side of "no" for a couple reasons:
1. We may discuss things we don't wish our respective playerbases to read. There's nothing nefarious there, but if we're discussing a design problem or an upcoming event we would like to be able to share information with each other and know that it's unlikely too many people outside of the membership list will ever see it.
2. We don't really want to deal with the inevitable bitter types who will copy posts from there and repost them here or on TMC in order to flame a poster.

Sorry, but human nature dictates the purpose of the group cannot be fulfilled if we allow open read access. I understand this is disappointing to some people (and no doubt those who seek any excuse to attack me will continue to babble) but please understand that it's not an attempt to be exclusionary for the sake of being exclusionary: It's an attempt to create a group specifically for the needs/desires of administrators of larger muds, which are somewhat different from smaller ones. 50 is an arbitrary number but then any number we picked would be fairly arbitrary. The only other solution we could come up with was hand-picking people but that smacks of potential unfairness as whoever is doing the hand-picking is going to have biases. (Voting isn't really an option as it's too unwieldy.)

Now, I understand some of you are likely to still say, "But I'm not an idiot just because I don't run a larger mud." No one is calling you an idiot, or incompetent, or anything of the like. However, if you don't actually run a large mud you've not got much to contribute to a forum that is specifically for the concerns of larger muds. Experience in whatever we're discussing is what matters to us and if you don't have the experience of running a larger mud then there's not much reason to have you in the forum.

Sorry to disappoint anyone but that's how it's going to be for now at least. Join us, grow your mud and join us, wish us luck, or heck, go ahead and curse us out. Every post attacking this group validates the reasoning behind why we made the group in the first place, and, in fact, the attacks in this thread are the primary reason that certain group members are VERY against open access (and I'm slightly more ambivalent about it than a couple of other group members).

--matt

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by (Rhuarc @ Dec. 10 2003,17:28) To say that your mud must meet a certain popularity requirement unnecessarily limits the number of experienced admins who could give valuable feedback to such a forum.

What if the topic of discussion is how to run a large mud?

What if the topic is one of the things I listed in reply to KaVir?

What if the topic is how to maintain a sense of community even when your game reaches hundreds of concurrent users?

Would someone running a small mud be able to provide valuable experience on those matters?

Do you feel insulted by every group or organization that excludes you because you do not fit their membership requirements? Should english majors be mad that they are not allowed to join IEEE?

Really, there is way too much being made about this. How can so many people be so unable or unwilling to accept that large and/or commercial muds face unique issues that other muds do not face? Isn't this obvious?

[Alastair]

Note, though, that while administrating large MUDs is completely away from my domain of competencies, mission-critical service availability is something I deal with daily in my job - on the service provider side.

This is typically the kind of real-world experience which could benefit certain large-scale MUDs within the realm of their specific issues. To take your English major example, a linguist might actually be of help to the W3 Consortium...

Anyway, enjoy yourselves.

[Sanvean]

I've joined the forum being discussied. I also read and post to MUD-Dev (which I think any good Mud developer should definitely be subscribed to), and I read these forums, as well as occasionally posting. I read Imaginary Realities when it was being produced, and went so far as to briefly work on the MUD Journal. Periodically I do random google searches on MUDs, or poke around on gamesites. In short, I look for discussion regarding MUDs wherever I can because the more information/discussion/exhange there is, the better, at least in my opinion. Show me a message board with good content and I'm there.

[Rhuarc]

Originally Posted by (Threshold @ Dec. 10 2003,17:52) What if the topic of discussion is how to run a large mud? What if the topic is one of the things I listed in reply to KaVir? What if the topic is how to maintain a sense of community even when your game reaches hundreds of concurrent users? Would someone running a small mud be able to provide valuable experience on those matters? Do you feel insulted by every group or organization that excludes you because you do not fit their membership requirements? Should english majors be mad that they are not allowed to join IEEE? Really, there is way too much being made about this. How can so many people be so unable or unwilling to accept that large and/or commercial muds face unique issues that other muds do not face? Isn't this obvious?

Originally Posted by A group of head admins of some of the larger text muds are starting a small forum (not at all designed to compete with Topmudsites or Mudconnector) focused on high-signal discussions of issues involving established muds with at least a medium-small playerbase.

Nothing in this statement of the supposed purpose of this group lends itself to the idea that only topics concerning large or commercial muds will be discussed.   There are many, many issues involved in running a mud, large or small. And many of those issues have nothing to do with the popularity of the mud.

Originally Posted by Assume the following issues,for example: * Attracting and securing investment. * Advertising: What places work, what places don't. * Server Co-Location, T-1 leasing, etc. * Server manufacturers. * Legal Issues: copyright, trademark, patent, etc. * Security: Maintaining a good security plan, setting up firewalls, etc. I think I would find it more beneficial to discuss issues like the above with people who have DONE those things and have had to deal with those issues on a large scale.

 If this is the reply to Kavir you are referring to,... What, do you think that only an admin of a popular mudsite has this type of experience?  What about those of us who consult for a living? I certainly have considerable knowledge about co-location facilities, T1s, firewalls, setting up load balanced servers,  server hardware, etc.  I've also worked as a professional 3d game developer as a lead c++ programmer so I know a good bit about game design, copyrights, licensing third-party 'middleware', etc.

Look, all I was trying to say is that the single requirement that a mud have an avg. online presence of 50+ players is too limiting.  You have *no* idea who some of these mud implementors are, what they do for a living or what kind of experience they have.  

Further, i was not at all insulted by the original post, you go do whatever you like, I have no time for yet another forum anyway nor any interest in joining yet another 'high-signal' 'advanced' mud forum.  I was just commenting that I believe the group is limiting it's options unnecessarily.

[Hardestadt]

Originally Posted by (Rhuarc @ Dec. 11 2003,08:06) If this is the reply to Kavir you are referring to,... What, do you think that only an admin of a popular mudsite has this type of experience? What about those of us who consult for a living? I certainly have considerable knowledge about co-location facilities, T1s, firewalls, setting up load balanced servers, server hardware, etc. I've also worked as a professional 3d game developer as a lead c++ programmer so I know a good bit about game design, copyrights, licensing third-party 'middleware', etc. Look, all I was trying to say is that the single requirement that a mud have an avg. online presence of 50+ players is too limiting. You have *no* idea who some of these mud implementors are, what they do for a living or what kind of experience they have.

Can you think of any alternatives that will filter out the trolls and people with very little experience, yet not take up large amounts of the moderators time?

[Threshold]

6-->

Originally Posted by (Rhuarc @ Dec. 10 2003,22[img http://www.topmudsites.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif[/img]6)]Look, all I was trying to say is that the single requirement that a mud have an avg. online presence of 50+ players is too limiting.  You have *no* idea who some of these mud implementors are, what they do for a living or what kind of experience they have.   Further, i was not at all insulted by the original post, you go do whatever you like, I have no time for yet another forum anyway nor any interest in joining yet another 'high-signal' 'advanced' mud forum.  I was just commenting that I believe the group is limiting it's options unnecessarily.

What is your proposed list of membership requirements that will still result in keeping away the flamers, trolls, no-experience know-it-alls, and people who do not have experience running a large network based application like a large game?

Are you so certain that people would not complain about whatever set of requirements you thought up?

[Hephos]

Just get along, grow a pbase and join when you can Our pbase isn't large enough (yet), but when we get large, i would love to discuss with other large games all the problems that might arise with having more players.

We'll just wait while we grow. Not a big deal. Can't see why people need to make a fuzz about it...

[Fharron]

Could we just bring this puerile thread to a close please it really isn’t going anywhere. If a group of people wish to establish a new select forum then surely that is their business, not that I can personally see any lasting value in it.

It’s all well and good to shriek in the first instance ‘why can’t we be a part’ but to be honest my initial thought was, based on creative and intellectual quality of the posts I’ve seen by a number of the members, ‘why would I want to be a part’. It all seems a bit like walking with dinosaurs to me - stagnating muds talking about tired ideas and things that are intriguingly sterile, readily apparent to anyone with an ounce of business acumen and system knowledge.

If I’d seen any of these muds make any moves towards developing something progressive, original, and inventive within their <a href="http://0-29.com?go=games" onmouseover="window.status = 'goto: games';return 1" onmouseout="window.status=''">games</a> over recent years then I might be inclined to think differently, but I haven’t.

I think the greatest irony that is dripping from this select reservoir of knowledge is a simple fact. That with all the founders’ great experience the chosen method for drawing attention to the Mindseye (Hofstadter and Dennet are groaning as I type) was advertising on this forum – very creative grasshopper.

[Molly]

To Trespassor, Vedic and others who do not believe that these boards have changed.

Maybe you have just not been here long enough to see the change. Sure there has always been some flamers and trolls, but they were resonably few before. A fact is that there has been a very noticeable decline in the quality of postings since about the time when the old Forums where deleted and the new ones put in.

And if the quote from KaVir is supposed to prove the point that there is no such decline, you picked a bad example. If you actually read what he says, you can see that he is referring to exactly the same thing that I am talking about:

Trespassor wrote:

Originally Posted by Top Mud Sites isn't old enough to warrant this perception that "so much has changed since the begining". Here's a post from KaVir on May 2002 (Advanced MUD Concepts): Quote   Please note that "Me too" posts are not welcome here.  I encourage you all to add your thoughts and feelings - and particularly your suggestions and insights - in response to posts made here.  These can be positive or negative, but they must at least be constructive - a post which simply agrees or disagrees will be deleted. We seem to have sunk to an all-time low in terms of posting quality since the move to these new forums.  I cannot speak for the other forums, as I only moderate here and Legal Issues.  However I'm going to try and pull the two forums that I moderate out of the "mud" (pun intended) and try to get us back to a decent signal/noise ratio. That was over a year ago. If we could go back even farther in time when TMS had a different board system we would see the exact same stuff we see today.

[Jaewyn]

It seems some people are a little slow on the uptake, the whole reason they want to have a discussion group outside these forums is because of the types of messages posted in this very thread.  Molly's term of "Trolls" is a good one, to me the people that post messages like these are like trolls hiding under a bridge. The only time you see them is when they come out making a lot of noise over nothing in the hope that someone *might* take some notice of them.

I don't admin on any mud, that doesn't mean I couldn't contribute to the discussions and statements to this effect have been said, the point is, you gotta draw the line somewhere to try and keep the trolls at bay.  I will say this though, I suspect there are some trolls that make the criteria anyway.

Good Luck!

[Kastagaar]

Originally Posted by Soljax wrote: Quote To:"Matt Mihaly, Iron Realms' CEO. " **** off you ****ing sell-out. Free mudding for everyone. Especially the kids. Oh, and get a real job. That sort of thing really says it all to me.

You're making generalisations of the people on these forums by something Soljax, a well known low-of-the-low, scum-of-the-scum, banned-of-the-banned, trouble player, said?

Well that's just brilliant. That really says it all to me.

[Stilton]

Threshold:

Originally Posted by What is your proposed list of membership requirements that will still result in keeping away the flamers, trolls, no-experience know-it-alls, and people who do not have experience running a large network based application like a large game?

Maybe an alternate way to get in: submission of a relevant article to the list.

Or just a straight resume submission.

Originally Posted by Are you so certain that people would not complain about whatever set of requirements you thought up?

This is totally beside the point: as we recently found out, people will even complain when you give money to charity :)

The important thing is to maximize the value to the group- I agree with the people who have pointed out that you're leaving out many potentially valuable contributors.

On the other hand, there was a good point made about keeping the group small and controlled (aside from quality of posts) to allow discussion of topics that you don't want to immediately become general public knowledge.

I would worry a bit that with the present criterion, the group won't have the critical mass (and periodic fresh blood) to survive in the long run in the sense of an active group discussing new ideas regularly, though it may do fine as an occasional place for members to ask questions of each other.

Stilton

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Threshold wrote: Well that depends, KaVir. Assume the following issues, for example: * Attracting and securing investment. * Advertising: What places work, what places don't. * Server Co-Location, T-1 leasing, etc. * Server manufacturers. * Legal Issues: copyright, trademark, patent, etc. * Security: Maintaining a good security plan, setting up firewalls, etc. I think I would find it more beneficial to discuss issues like the above with people who have DONE those things and have had to deal with those issues on a large scale.

Absolutely - those are the sort of things which are of significant importance to any starting mud.  Unfortunately the only people able to ask such questions are those who no longer have much need for the answers.  Indeed, those who would really benefit from such advice won't even be able to read the forums.

Originally Posted by I would agree with you 100% if the focus of the forum was on discussing ground breaking game development ideas, advanced mud features, etc. But it does not sound like that is the goal.

It doesn't seem to be the goal, true, but there is always some crossover.  A mud without any ground-breaking features is less likely to attract or keep a large playerbase, after all.  Subjects of discussion might include systems which keep players interested for longer, different types of coded support for newbies to stop them leaving after 10 seconds, "popular" features or styles of interface which make players from other codebases feel more comfortable, etc.

There would no doubt also be interest in how best to handle large playerbases - not just physically handling a large number of connections, but also in terms of gameplay; a mud needs to have enough things for everyone to do (eg some of the MMORPGs suffered in that there were not enough worthwhile locations in which to hunt mobs).

Originally Posted by Do you feel insulted by every group or organization that excludes you because you do not fit their membership requirements?

I ran a mud which easily filfilled Matt's requirements, long before he started working on Achaea - and had shut it down by the time you created Threshold - but that is not the point.  I do not feel insulted, I simply feel that his new forum is counter-productive.  His new "bio" requirement is certainly an improvement (in that it cuts out those who fill the other requirements without being of any benefit to the forums), but it also cuts out a huge percentage of the people who could provide valuable experience.

Stilton already provided some better alternatives.  The approach used by MUD-DEV back when I first joined (you needed to be invited by another member) also worked quite well, although some sort of moderation is going to be required whatever approach is taken.  Strict moderation is how I handle the Advanced Mud Concepts forum on here, and it manages to achieve an excellent signal/noise ratio IMO.  But if the_logos really doesn't like taking our advice, perhaps he should ask his Armageddon members how they filter new players to determine which will be of benefit to their game?  Armageddon is renowned for its roleplaying, after all, so they must be doing something right.

[visko]

The rants on trolling brings back memories...

Someone created a "which is the best pk mud" thread (I can't remember the exact name) and all of the players from Groundzero decided to pick that day to find this forum. I don't remember how long the thread was by the time everyone got bored, but I hope there's a log of that somewhere; putting that in a help file on my own MUD would make for a good example of why the MUD isn't focused on RP or "intelligent, well-spoken, considerate people."

As far as Minds Eye is concerned...everyone's pretty much discussed every angle of the attack/defense of the forum. And in the end, everything ends up in an archive somewhere; wait long enough, and the forum will end or start to release its earlier threads, and we'll all drink from the fountain of wisdom by our masters, the Imps Of Really Big Muds.

-Visko

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by (KaVir @ Dec. 12 2003,12<!--emo&[img http://www.topmudsites.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif[/img])] Originally Posted by Threshold wrote: Well that depends, KaVir. Assume the following issues, for example: * Attracting and securing investment. * Advertising: What places work, what places don't. * Server Co-Location, T-1 leasing, etc. * Server manufacturers. * Legal Issues: copyright, trademark, patent, etc. * Security: Maintaining a good security plan, setting up firewalls, etc. I think I would find it more beneficial to discuss issues like the above with people who have DONE those things and have had to deal with those issues on a large scale. Absolutely - those are the sort of things which are of significant importance to any starting mud.  Unfortunately the only people able to ask such questions are those who no longer have much need for the answers.  Indeed, those who would really benefit from such advice won't even be able to read the forums.

I think you missed my point here.

Of course those issues are important to people starting a mud. But the people starting one do not have any experience HANDLING those issues and therefore their presence would not be helpful to the other members. That doesn't make for a very mutually beneficial relationship.

I don't think ANYONE thinks the membership requirements are perfect. But what *are* perfect requirments? If it was invitation only you'd have accusations of favoritism and elitism. There really is no system that would be perfect or free from critique.

As for the read access, the immaturity level of people not eligible has already shown why that won't work. There is a "chilling effect" to discussion when you have to worry about disgruntled jerks taking something you posted one place and posting it elsewhere just to flame you. Also, as Matt noted, there are things discussed that admins would not want their playerbases to know about in advance.

There are plenty of places already where someone starting a new mud can benefit from the experience of people who have already done it. TMC, TMS, and MUD-DEV are three examples.

The Mind's Eye is a place where people who are already running large and/or commercial games can share experiences and get advice from other people (and here's the key) facing and dealing with the exact same issues.

For example, and please forgive me if this sounds harsh, I really don't want or need advice on trademark law, marketing, or how to secure financial investment from a 12 year old who just downloaded ROM.