Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

Hi all, I am new here, so appologies if this have been brought up before.
It would be good to have a report dead mud functionality in the mud listing.
There is quite a few dead muds that I found and I cant find a way to flag them for deletion.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

I have to agree with you. I think there needs to be a purge. I would guess at least 2/3rds of the MUDs in the database are no longer active. If not purged from the DB, I think these muds should be tagged as dead or inactive. Perhaps kept in the database for historical reference.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

Good suggestion. It would be a shame if someone came here to find a game to play, and met with repeated dead muds. That would give a bad impression of the overall hobby.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

I got the impression that development on TMS had ceased unless they found a vB developer (from what the admin said).

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

That was specifically development on the review system. A script to connect and flag as appropriate does make sense.

How long would you say before something is considered "inactive" to the point that the admin has to get in touch to re-activate when it comes back? The mud listing itself could show "Unable to reach for 8 days", but at some point we have to just stop checking them and drop them from the list.

On the other hand, even MUDs that are usually extremely stable can have something happen that takes them down for a week or more, such as, say, a hurricane (ouch).

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

Could they not be moved to a separate "inactive" list, which continues to check their connection (maybe once per day), and automatically restores them to the main list if a connection is once again established?

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

I would say 6 months or a year. Many MUDs on the list are years old without connection.

I'm not sure of your system or how hard it is to have the system check, but if it checked all the muds for successful connection once a day for 30 to 90 days that would be sufficient. Even if you limited the checks to once a week and mark a mud dead after say, 10 weeks of consecutive failed connection, mark them dead.

On the other hand, if at the same time, the system checked the listed MUD's main homepage and came up as a dead link you could mark it dead simply based on that. Anyone with an active mud would be quick to let you know or fix that dead link.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

Maybe even do something with people voting for the MUD, doubt people will vote for dead MUD'S.

If a MUD has no votes for 3-6 months it gets placed on a possibly inactive list, which gets a connection test to see if it's active, if it passes it gets placed back on the normal active list, and if it fails it gets placed on the inactive/historical list.

If the hurricane scenario would occur people would have voted for it or be voting for it.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

I'd have to disagree with basing it on no-longer-voting MUDs. There are loads of MUDs whose players just got disillusioned with voting sites and stopped voting here, but the MUD may still be quite active. Having no votes is certainly justification for a "This game has 0 votes." tag, which would let users draw their own conclusions, but it might be rushing things to identify them as "possibly inactive" on that alone.

Of course, we'll also need a working definition for inactivity. Some MUDs have virtually no players except for an occasional newbie who stops by from something like this, plays alone, and then leaves after a day or two (I've seen MUDs like this and even been the newbie. It's kinda' an interesting experience, navigating a ghost MUD), but they're still up and running and can be connected to, even though their administrators have long-since abandoned working on them or even logging in. Personally, I'd still find these MUDs worth listing. Others may disagree.

Inability to connect is all well and good too, but some MUDs do experience technical difficulties on occasion, which will bring them down for as much as several months, which while this is certainly bad for business at the MUD, it would be a shame to have their listings cut for. At least one MUD I've played at had this problem, going down for most of a Summer, but they came back and have been running smoothly and healthily ever since.

Simply having the site automatically check MUDs periodically might be too much a strain on site resources with enough MUDs to check. It might be more convenient to use player reporting to flag a MUD as "possibly dead," then have a timer for the site to start checking up on them, and if after a set period of time, which is considered too long for a MUD to reasonably come back from, purge it. This would take longer to clear out the dead sites, however.

Just my two cents,
-Kereth

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

True, probably will need to be longer then what I purposed, just a idea. Just thinking it would work as a in-case the server went down for a while, if you do quarterly connection tests and fail two/three in a row could be bad luck or the MUD is down permanently. Maybe have a voting list, no-voter list, and dead/historic list. Which a disclaimer for the no-voter list, which might read, These MUDs may or may not be active, just there has been no votes in the past year for any of them. Which yeah people would probably still pick a judgment from, but I find TMS is one of the easiest voting sites that is widespread enough to possibly get people coming to it, so just having someone click to vote every couple of months to keep on the active list wouldn't be hard.

Yeah, defining stuff always help out. Just having a Mutli-User Dungeon only having a single person on it would seem to kill the purpose of it's classification, which I know a lot are currently because of how widespread they are and how many existing with the same base.

Yeah, a possibly dead flag would be nice, but still want some restrictions on it so if someone does get bored they can't just mark alive games with the possibly dead flag, so if there was votes the possibly dead flag is removed/faded out.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

How about a combo of a few ideas.

1) A mud is flags as dead/offline by a TMS surfer
2) A series of emails are sent to the admin email(s) on file for the MUD. Maybe first, second and final notice to update the MUDs info or confirm that it is inactive.
3)If the owner/admin of the MUD either does not respond within a certain period or they do respond and say that the game is inactive, the MUD will be will be listed as such.
4) OR, if the game is active, just experiencing down times, nothing changes.


Or, what about sending emails out on the 6 or 12 month anniversary of each MUD's entry into the DB? The email could be sent the emails on file and "remind" owners that they are listed and if there have been any changes or updates, they can log in and make changes. That way, there will be a 'last updated on' on the page that potential players can see.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

I like your ideas Realedazed. Though there is no reason to over think this. It's not that big of a deal to mark a MUD inactive for a number of reasons. If the MUD isn't inactive it will be quick to notify TMS or if they do not, then they don't follow/care about TMS enough that it matters.

I have never known an viable active MUD to be down for 3 or more months as stated in some earlier posts and still return active. If a MUD like that got marked as inactive would anyone care? Not to be insensitive, but let's be realistic here.

Re: Suggestion:Report dead mud
 

I agree, I think 3 months is long enough that if a connection can't be made that the MUD would be removed from the listing. At that point a series of emails could be sent to the registered email address, and if nothing is heard back within 3 more months, the MUD could be removed from the DB completely.

This way it doesn't clog the listing, but if the owner is still around and doing something, he will respond to the emails. Helps with cleaning up the DB regularly also.