It struck me as amusing the way my review on SWSE was replied to by the MUD owner (within 4 hours too, get a life) as a review.

The reviews are reviews. If someone submits a bad review, it's still a review. It's not an opening for the owner and regulars to jump in and state contrary opinions to the original review.

As long as the review isn't outright curse-filled flaming, it's still a valid opinion. Especially when someone bothers to go to a MUD and post the review non-anonymously. When the owner or another regular comes along to make counter-points to a review, it's no longer a review, it's a debate, and what the blazes is the point of that? If there were any valid counterpoints, they should have been made on the MUD, in gameplay and immortal behavior.

I'd suggest removing the nonsense reviews. If someone says a MUD is bad, that's his opinion, which is the whole point of the review system.

Ah, yes, but that's the catch, isn't it? Is it only a nonsense review if it's a good review in response to a bad review? It's often the case that negative reviews are nonsense too. Who gets to make that call? You? Me? The fly on the wall?

What makes your bad opinion of a MUD unassailable by the people who like it? Why should it be?

Personally, I think it's childish to turn reviews into threads, and have posted my peeve about that. But, at this point, that's all I think we can and should be able to do: Complain about it.

I have a feeling the only perfect way to fix the system is to disallow automatic review posting and ask Synozeer to screen and post, but then where's the free exchange of ideas in that? And does he really need the extra work?

Disallow all posting of reviews that are in reply to other reviews. No review should ever be motivated by another review.

Any review in response to another review is nonsense, bad or good. Again, if someone dislikes my review, then they can ask for it to be removed if it violates the topmudsites.com TOS - otherwise, it should not be touched. If they have a problem with me personally, they can email me.

I don't disagree with that in theory. If a reviewer posts something along the lines of: GenmaC has no clue what makes MUD X tick, we R00lz., then, yes, it should be disallowed.

But what if someone posts a positive review that, without taking the reviewer to task, addresses the negative points raised by the reviewer in an attempt to offer their own positive opinion of MUD X. It never once criticizes the reviewer, but absolutely defends MUD X in response to the bad review.

The easiest out here might be to whack reviews that are clearly personal attacks against the reviewer. But what about reviews that are clearly personal attakcs against the reviewee?

Yay, more neat smiley things to use.

Regarding this point, having responses to reviews such as mudconnector might not be a bad idea. Do not update the review on the main page, so it does not look like a new review.

On the other hand, any bad review posted is instantly assaulted by 5-8 hardcore, generally fanatical, players and/or staff that don't have a clue as to what an opinion is.

We all have opinions clearly. Letting the owner of the mud in question verify or delete reviews they do not see fit is not quite the answer either.

Making reviews into threads really isn't cool, but no one wants to let the other person get the last say in I suppose. Okay, this didn't quite help much.

Well, I refuse to reply to a reply to my review - it's a waste of time. I just thought I'd bring this up. An intelligent player will read several reviews, not just one, so if the negative review is some sort of anomaly, then the player will notice.

Basically, if I think a MUD sucked ####, I don't want the MUD owner coming along and saying "NO IT DOESN'T SUCK ONLY IT SUCKED FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS, THAT AND THE OTHER THING BUT IT'S A GOOD MUD EVERYONE COME PLAY."

There is no "hypocrisy" in my original post. I'm saying that there shouldn't be response reviews. Responses are fine, but not responses that are labeled as reviews.

There could be a response area, like Yuki said, or something like that, but not a bunch of people posting reviews that aren't reviews but are more like defenses of their MUD.

GenmaC, it sounds to me that you want to trash someone's mud but you don't want the owner or anyone who disagrees with you to be able to counter your points.

Oftentimes (in fact, more often than not), people who take the time to post a negative review have some kind of personal issue/bone to pick with the mud or its owner.

Think about it... How little of a life do you have to have to spend your free time posting negative things about some game you didn't pay a penny to play.

The normal, mature thing to do if you find a game online you don't enjoy is to simply stop playing it. It takes a real piece of work to feel the urge to bash on someone's hard work that you enjoyed for FREE!

Most "reviews" of this type are mean spirited and designed with no purpose other than to defame the mud/mud owner. They are generally FILLED with inaccuracies that really should have the light of truth shined upon them.

Perhaps your review was not one of these kinds. Perhaps your negative review was 100% honest. Perhaps you actually posted it out of some kind of "civic duty" you felt to other mud players in the community to help them avoid a "bad seed" (the odds of this are, imho, very small). Even if all of these things are true, and your negative review had only the purest, most benevolent purpose and motive, the owner and players of the mud are *STILL* acting completely appropriately by responding to things they feel are wrong, inaccurate, misleading, etc. in the negative review.

...I don't object to counterpoints, as I said.

That's the point of reviews, you know. How about TV shows? We watch those for free, so what's the point of giving a bad review? It's so that other users of a free service can avoid crap.

If it's purely hype for a MUD, then it's not a review, it's a suck-up fest. Sounds like you need to do just a tiny bit of thinking before you post.

I haven't read the rebuttal of the MUD admin in full, so all I can do is hypothesize here.

The quotes that GenmaC posted were obviously personal attacks upon his person, and I think most of us agree that this particular type of replying to a MUD review is stupid and pointless, as well as being more detrimental to the MUD in question than the bad review.

However, the idea that no MUD admin should be able to protest a bad review of their MUD is also ridiculous; if a guy walked into my old MUD, spent 5 minutes figuring out that he couldn't powerlevel himself into a badass, and then left and posted bad reviews on every major MUD forum possible, I would feel justified and even obliged to run around and reply in protest to his obvious lack of experience in the game, and willingness to understand something he hasn't encountered before.

My two cents,
-Visko

In reply to you Visko, sometimes silence speaks much much louder than a protest. Why give the person posting the negative reviews about your mud the power to have his review read? Although I have not had this situation happen to me, I believe that ignoring a situation of that type entirely is probably a better course of action than adding to the number of people reading it by posting under it. Ofcourse it is entirely impossible to judge what action is most efficient....

Just my thoughts.

Exactly. An obvious flame review will be deleted anyway, and a review that points out weaknesses in a MUD shouldn't be spammed to death because the MUD owner is terrified of losing potential users.

If the MUD owner can change the reviewer's mind, then the reviewer can have the review removed. Arguing is fine and good, but not in the form of a review of a review (hehe ;p ).

If a person can not write a constructive and progressive review, then they should not be writing a review to begin with.

No one, except for the writer and other "tards" who enjoy badmouthing people's work, should ever write a review in anger or hate. Even if you do really hate the site or the people on it. All it does is make the writer seem more like a moron.

Most would rather try to be constructive and give the MUD owners and players points of focus on what could be changed and developed, if anything.

A fallback is that when there is a really good review and a MUD or site becomes noticed, others strive to achieve the same glory by simply taking ideas from the other better MUDs or sites.

There is a saying, "Imitation is the highest form of flattery". It may have been valid at some point, but nowadays it encourages bad behavior in some. It has gotten so bad that sites are created simply to imitate other sites, but do so under a flag of negitivity and revenge.

In the end, all MUDs and related sites will be the same and this is when the MUD community will become stale and die. A lack of originallity and the balls to be the first at something new.

I, myself, am overly cautious when it comes to new ideas. I check with affiliates before I present new features and such, to ensure I do not step on thier toes.

I have reviewed/critiqued 30 sites in 2 months. I am hoping the first 20 make it into the Summer issue of MCM #4. I have 10 more completed and may be in either MCM #5 or on TMJ. I did purposely avoid a few sites for personal reasons.

I did review/critque both affiliates and non-affiliates as well as sites which have passed on. It is both a history lesson and a tour of the MU* communities.

Taking my review as an example - I pointed out a few obvious looking flaws.

Instead of saying that the MUD was planning to fix or improve anything, the MUD owner simply insisted that a) I didn't know what I was doing and b) that the MUD wasn't really all that bad.

Obviously I agree that hate/anger reviews are unacceptable, and I've never written a review based on either of those emotions (I run a small game/movie/entertainment review site on the side).

If the review is unacceptable due to hate or whatnot, remove it. Otherwise, it stands. Not every MUD is worth the bandwidth it uses, and players have a right to know about such places.

Just as you have the right to voice your opinion, so too does the owner have the right to voice his or hers.

I agree with you, however, that if theirs is a direct response to your own review it should not be a seperate listing. Doubly true if it's an attack response and offers nothing constructive.

I remain by my original point, however: The right to respond should not be removed, just moved to an addendum location on current reviews.

Actually I agree with GenmaC, if I understand his point:

The function of the review section is to write a review of a game. The function of the forum is to discuss.

If I write a review on XMu* saying: I didn't like the game because I couldn't learn languages and there wasn't any place to find gear.

and someone wants to tell me that I simply wasn't looking hard enough for the gear room and the languages were offered in MU* school, they should post a FORUM thread to that effect, and maybe even put "To Jazuela About XMU*" to make sure I'll read it.

If, on the other hand, they have something to say about the game itself, as opposed to my review of the game, then yes it belongs in the review section.

I read reviews fairly often (around once a week when a game I've heard of or tried shows up). As soon as I see it turning into a debate, I cease to read that game's reviews. Permanently. If I wanted to read a debate I'd come here. If I want to read reviews I go there. I agree that reviews based on erroneous information SHOULD be addressed. I agree with Genma, however, in that they should be addressed in the Forum and not in the review section.

That is all.

I have to say that I prefer TMCs way of doing things, allowing comments. Some of the reviews of my mud have been shockingly far from the truth, either by people with a chip on their shoulder or by people froma 'rival' mud. Now there's nothing wrong with people saying "I don't like <yadda>, I think it'd be better done in <yadda> way. Fair enough, that's your opinion. But when people write plain old mistruths, that's a different matter. Now I appreciate that the moderator here has made some effort to try and regulate reviews. But that, in and of itself, is problematic, for obvious "free speech" reasons. So my vote would be for allowing the registered admin user here on the sustem for whatever mud is being reviewed just chance at a reply. Ie not make it into a flamefest, but allow them to put their side of the argument.