[Raesanos]

Mudreading.com (not open yet) is coming soon. Contributors will have their MUD linked to for 30 days after any articles are published, so this is a good way to get free advertising while contributing to the MUD community. Let me know if you're interested in contributing.

The site will cover a variety of MUD topics of interest to players, builders, administrators, and anyone else in the MUD community.

I will post again here when the site goes live and has some articles to check out.

[Milawe]

Sent a PM, so please read it!

[Molly]

Originally Posted by Raesanos The site will cover a variety of MUD topics of interest to players, builders, administrators, and anyone else in the MUD community. out.

Sounds interesting.
I'd like to know how you plan to handle copyright questions. For instance; are you expecting the articles to be exclusive for Mudreading.com or can they be published on other sites as well?

[Raesanos]

I plan on providing very permissive copyright of articles. Probably one of the Creative Commons licences unless another license is needed, say if the author requests it. This would mean that its usually OK to publish the articles elsewhere with attribution.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Raesanos I plan on providing very permissive copyright of articles. Probably one of the Creative Commons licences unless another license is needed, say if the author requests it. This would mean that its usually OK to publish the articles elsewhere with attribution.

I believe Molly is referring to the rights of the actual author of the article. Would the author be expected to sign away their copyright or exclusive rights, or would non-exclusive rights (perhaps under the licence you mentioned) be sufficient?

I've allowed people to use my articles before, but some of the places using them have since vanished. I would therefore be very wary about giving away exclusive rights, for fear of having my work vanish.

[Raesanos]

Originally Posted by KaVir I believe Molly is referring to the rights of the actual author of the article. Would the author be expected to sign away their copyright or exclusive rights, or would non-exclusive rights (perhaps under the licence you mentioned) be sufficient? I've allowed people to use my articles before, but some of the places using them have since vanished. I would therefore be very wary about giving away exclusive rights, for fear of having my work vanish.

I'd be happy to publish work under whatever license the author wants. I'm just thinking about a default license to at least protect the content and let people know what they can do with it.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by Raesanos I'd be happy to publish work under whatever license the author wants. I'm just thinking about a default license to at least protect the content and let people know what they can do with it.

I think you all are being a bit too complex. You don't need anything more than a broad copyright at least in the beginning. Or tag each article with author copyright.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Newworlds I think you all are being a bit too complex. You don't need anything more than a broad copyright at least in the beginning. Or tag each article with author copyright.

The copyright is automatic, but without a licence he'd have no right to publically display the work - so Raesanos is wise to clarify the issue now. This is the sort of thing that needs to be sorted out at the beginning, not several months down the line after a heated dispute over ownership and assumed permission.

I also agree with the idea of recommending a default licence, as I imagine many contributors would go with that rather than researching into licensing themselves, and it could save headaches later on down the line - like this sort of thing: Tharsis Gate unofficial republication of e-magazine Imaginary Realities

[Raesanos]

KaVir has the right idea. I want it to be as simple as possible but more important is making sure people have rights to their work as appropriate.

In other news, I actually put up the first article. Its part 1 of a dig into my history with MUDs. I expect its more casual than stuff may be in the future but I wanted to start off with something fun.

Anyone interested in contributing I'd love to talk to; as I may have mentioned before contributors will have their MUDs linked to for some free advertising.

Again the link is mudreading.com and my email is gregorymsmith at gmail dot com.

[Raesanos]

I've been pretty happy with the response. A few more articles have been published and there are still more people who plan on writing soon.

I do have a question though. What types of distribution do folks like to use? I set up RSS and all that, but do people prefer mailing lists? Wouldn't be hard to set up.

[Ide]

I'm enjoying it so far. I wouldn't read a mailing list, what with all the RSS aggregators out there these days.

[Raesanos]

I've been working on this for about a month, there have been a variety of articles posted by different contributors. We've had some good discussions of MUDs in general, I did a series on applying interface design principles to MUDs, and there was a story that involves confusing MUDs with real life that amused the hell out of me. The web design has gone through a few iterations and I've about settled on the current one.

Right now we've been doing 1-2 articles a week, which isn't really much, but its been nice and sustainable as this works well with about how often I feel like writing.

Wanted to say thanks to the people who showed interest early on here, that really helped get me going in the early stages.

[MudMann]

Interesting read, kept me quiet at work for quite some time. Keep up the good work!