I have for some time pondered on how many MUD players there are. There doesn't seem to be any easy way to measure this currently.

Therefore I suggest that TopMudSites implement a protocol that lets you send through the web the amount of currently connected players. It is important that it's through the http:// protocol to make it possible for all MUDs to participate. Both commercial and non commercial. Implementing it on the MUD-side shouldnt be too difficult using a well known protocol.

Perhaps it would only be updated once an hour or even less. That way you would be able to see roughly how many players are online on for example Aardwolf.

Another thing that could be sent is the average amount of players online the current week.

The big issue though is bandwidth. What would happen when 1000 MUDs all at once decide that it's time to send an update?

This is very interesting....

We might make a similar protocol for our upcoming community site. (More info on that later).

Would this be a periodic polling of specifically participating games by code on TMS , or a push from all listed games  (from the games themselves)?  Would a daily sampling suffice?

After some pondering I have realized that the best way is to make the statistic site ask the MUD server to be sent the status. That way bandwidth can be controlled and there's little chance to get into a ddos.

I think that if the update doesn't happen often the average amount of players online for the current week is important. Of course both the amount of players online at last update and averages should be shown.