I'm going to assume that this 'requests to vote by the mud or its staff' means being personally approached because you have not voted. I plan to continue the occasional global message reminding people that we appreciate them taking the time to vote. We do not, however, track who has and has not voted.

Synozeer: I'd be in favor of the rules change you propose. While I believe the_logos that he isn't sending staff members to harass new players (which is bad business anyway), I think it would preserve the integrity of the voting process if people couldn't skew voting by threatening to block access to the game, etc.

To everyone else: Our policy has always been to not disturb gameplay with non-game material like voting, and to not keep track of who votes or doesn't. It's a nice courtesy to the players that they appreciate.

I personally find it much better if a MUD uses a tracking system responsibly in order to remind players to vote. A flagrant, gigantic VOTE NOW banner is much more annoying and a turn off than a two-line reminder that shows up if you haven't voted recently when you log in. If I want to show my support, I will vote. If I don't, I won't. If the MUD isn't offering rewards or restricting access for voting (or not voting), then I really don't see why it should be a problem.

I thought the main reason the proxy page was put in was to stop web sites cheating by automatically opening a voting link via a popup which would cast the vote.  I also thought the reason the voters information is kept was to stop spam voting.

If I am right and these are removed, I think it will start a whole different problem of vote cheating. I'm curious as to why MUDs would have access to voters information, if they do.

The proxy page I speak of is not the one that the link brings up when you click on the vote button on 95%+ of sites.  What I'm speaking of is a transitional page that you click through, usually completely unseen, which then tracks the information of who's IP clicked through the page, and you go to what seems like a seamless click-through to the voting page to get to TMS itself...

Synozeer is not supplying anyone with information on who voted, simply totals. There are sites which are collecting it as part of the process of their players voting.

Terloch:
So they don't know if you just come directly here and vote, only if you fall victim to their referrer/clickthrough tricks. Ok.

I wonder if it would diminish the impact of spam advertising if they simply allowed players to vote less often. Once every 12 hours seems awfully frequent. If you could only vote once a week, there would be much less incentive to nag players every 15 minutes. It's almost always better to solve behavior problems through code than constant policing.

The gross traffic to topmudsites would go down, but people might stick around longer if they were visiting once a week to look around instead of every 12 hours to click a button.

Stilton

I recieved several tells saying to go and vote. I *know* I recieved unsolicited tells to go and vote from your helper staff. You don't log onto a mud and within 2 minutes found an obscure and non game related helpfile about voting.
(This was around the time there were accusations of Achaea giving out player rewards)

But let's say I am wrong and that I somehow imagined the whole thing (yeah, right). I still find it really suspicious that a mud would institute an IP trace for their voting if they weren't going to use it for some reason. I wonder why this is if A) you don't send tells to people about their voting B) Don't give bonuses or penalties because of it.

Regardless of this, I still used your mud as an example for the rules change because of what I experienced there. You can call me a liar, however, I think you have many more motives for lying then I do.

Anyways, I tire of this. If you say your mud isn't doing it, fine, then you should have no concerns about the rule change.

Runvelt, Achaea is a -commercial- enterprise. It pays serious money for advertising. In the real world where people do this kind of thing, they need to keep track of what their paid -and- unpaid advertisements are doing.

They need to track the incoming and outgoing votes to see if they are resulting in new customers, because they don't pay for them and if they are doing better with free advertising than with paid advertising, they won't need to spend money on the paid ones.

If they aren't doing as well with the free advertising, then they know they are getting their money's worth with the paid advertising.

It's called "keeping track" and it's a good business practice. Just like when you use your savings card in the supermarket, they keep track of what people are buying through the use of those cards.

In regards to Synozeer's proposed rule change:

I've got no problem with that, but don't really see the point either. There seems to be some motivation to preserve some experience of players in muds that remind their players to vote, but I have to ask why? Players aren't idiots. If they find something negatively outweighs the enjoyment they get from something, they'll just leave.

The entire impact of this proposed rule change would seem to be that EVERY player will have to get a message every X hours to vote rather than just some players getting said message. Whose experience are you trying to preserve?

--matt

I'm not talking about Achaea here, but the rules stop you from treating those who vote and those who don't vote differently.

Treating the two groups differently is seen as rewarding one group over another. A reward is something someone sees value in. XP bonuses for voting aren't a problem if there is no value in them. Some people consider getting a message because they haven't voted (regardless of how often it is shown) as spam. If only people who don't vote get the spam, those who vote before logging in are rewarded by not being spammed.

You could say "being in #1 is considered a reward" but everyone in the mud gains that reward regardless of if they vote, so therefore those who vote aren't being the only ones who are rewarded. The rules target rewarding those who vote. Reaching goals (such as reaching the position of #4) isn't (as far as I know) punished in the rules.

Heh - you're naive if you actually believe that Runveldt. They want to know the demographics. They also want to know who all these people are, who have suddenly stopped buying Bic shavers and switched to Gilette. They want to know their names, addresses, family size, how much money they're earning. They want to know what OTHER kinds of things they're buying as well. They want to know if the Johnsons are buying these shavers on a tuesday or a sunday, and what time of day.

And they most certainly want to know that it's the Johnsons, because that is how Bic will know to target them for their next ad campaign, to try and win their patronage back when they send out free Bic razors next year - or even during the devopment process so they can see what it is about the Gilette razors that made them switch in the first place.

Knowing -who- your audience is has a very significant impact on your product promotion. Knowing how to get in touch with them is equally as important.

Now, you -could- just stop using savings cards and insist to the cashier that she use one of the store cards. But then you won't get to write checks - because that's how the store identifies your checking account these days.

And you -could- just stop playing Achaea - but then you won't be able to play Achaea anymore.

Just because they have info about you doesn't mean they will use it to harm you. And for what it's worth, your naivete combined with Logos's check on 100,000 lines of text because he was genuinely concerned that his staff might be cheating - tells me that - you're just making stuff up to prove a point. And that wouldn't be such a bad thing if you weren't attempting to cause doubt against the staff of Achaea.

But you are, and it is. So cut it out.

That sounds good... Or perhaps it could be put in even more simple terms - that you cannot differentiate in any way between those who vote and those who do not, and that gameplay cannot be changed based on the overall mud ranking.

Another thing you might want to consider is how the website comes into play. For example a site providing players with discussion forums, hints and tips, news, and so on could also be associated with the voting - should the website be allowed to send an automatic vote when the players logs their account on? Should it be allowed that players may only access certain sections only after clicking the "vote" button?

However as Jazuela pointed out, "A game that spams non-voters with requests/nudges/demands to vote -is- offering a game incentive and/or reward". Players will click the vote just to get rid of the spam, the result being that the mud will receive far more votes than muds which don't employ such tactics.

Because I play none of the muds in question, I followed this thread with amused detachment. However, the idea that some muds make your vote automatic when you log in is is fairly shocking and repugnant. If someone is going to change a rule, that's where it should be changed. Afterall, by definition isn't a vote a voluntary choice?

Fifi,

It's not that the vote becomes automatic, it's that there is a script that keeps track of who votes and who does not based on their IP address, and then there's a bit of code so when you log on to the game there's a message displayed to you if your IP logging in doesn't match one of the IP's in the log created by the voting proxy page.

No, but that would certainly be a possibility - and one which isn't covered by the rules as they stand.

I've seen the Achaea banners, description and trophy a thousand times. Never once has it tempted me to log into their mud and check it out. What has driven me to look at Achaea are the countless multi page threads started to flame or comment on something they've done or something someone has claimed they've done. These threads are definately great advertising. Having said that, I spent at least an hour on Achaea the other day. Not once was I approached or asked to vote. Nor did I see anyone mention anything about voting.

I find it interesting that a commercial site (TMS) who's very lively hood is dependant on traffic, seeks to tie the hands of mud admins on how they send that traffic. Synozeer has no moral obligation to ensure players from any mud are not being rewarded or asked to vote. Lets face it, we all know the TOP 100 is by no means a reflection of the Top 100 best muds. It is a measure of the muds that are able to send the most traffic. That traffic, no matter what mud sends it, is good for all of us.

It would appear to me that the day is being ruled by the vocal minority. Ranting in these forums seems to carry more weight than ones advertising dollars.

I don't see this as relevant to the discussion really, but since you brought it up....Wal-Mart and every other retailer on earth would LOVE to know that the Johnson family bought 4000 worth of X good, so that the next iteration of X good can be marketed directly to them. Why do you think Safeway and other companies like that have their 'rewards' cards? It's so that they can track what YOU as an individual are buying.

--matt

I agree. I don't understand why the blatantly false rantings of one guy seems to cause any consideration of changes in the site, particularly when they will change -nothing-. Achaea and Aardwolf will continue to do our little dance at the top of the rankings. The site will get slightly less traffic, causing the site to be worth slightly less to both Synozeer and the listed muds.

Synozeer: There are thousands (I don't know how many, but I assume it's thousands) of people who come here every day to vote or read the forums or whatever. So far there seem to be almost nobody that has piped up saying they think the rules need changing. Why does a rant, particularly one that is based on completely false accusations, carry any weight whatosever?

I just fail to see the motivation in changing the site's rules I guess when the impact will be negligible. And really, if there IS a mud out there that is spamming people every 30 seconds with reminders to vote until they do, I'd say it's a pretty #### good mud if they can manage to retain a single player in the face of that kind of irritation.

I think you should decide whether the site is supposed to be a traffic exchange (which is how its set up) or whether it's genuinely supposed to rate muds (in which case I wish you the best of luck in such a quixotic enterprise.) Assuming it's the former (and all signs certainly point to that), to whose benefit is it to make increasingly restrictive rules on voting practices? Traffic is traffic and the only people I ever see complaining about voting practices are an insignificant percentage (far less than 1%) of the site's users.

Again, I don't really care personally about this rule change as it's not going to change the placement of our muds. It just seems like the more rules you have, the more time someone has to spend listening to accusations that mud X is breaking rule Y, and then investigating such. *shrug*

--matt