I've been looking at the voting board for some time and have begun to wonder about a few muds with their sudden "climb" in the voting tables.

The one that comes to mind is Achaea.

Now, I'm not attacking them directly, but I would like to use them as an example for the point I'm trying to make.

When I logged on to Achaea, I was playing not for more then 5 mins when the helpers asked me if I had voted yet. I found this really odd and told them that I had when I created (which I hadn't). They told me that I needed to vote while I was online. However, as time passed more and more tells of the nature "why haven't you voted" "you need to vote" came to me.

The spam was ridiculous. I couldn't even move without being told to reaid their helpfile of "your patriotic duty" which outlines how you are to vote.

I started to read the helpfile here on topmudsites and noticed that muds cannot offer rewards to players for voting. When I was reading this, I thougt, well, doesn't that make sense for the opposite as well? Can a mud in fact give a player disadvantages for NOT voting for them? Because if you do that then the people who are voting are in fact recieving a benefit (the benefit of not being penalized)

Muds are like societies in many ways, and I think that having a 'negative' status for not voting is a very real and signifigant disadvantage assigned by the mud.

Personally, I think the 'spirit' of the rules here is to have an atmosphere where players aren't pressured to vote in the hopes that their votes will be of their own will and not forced.

I personally think that a new set of rules should be put in by the webmaster here. Those being...

1) Muds cannot monitor who is voting.
2) Muds can ask for people to vote and bring up reminders, but not pressure them to do so.

I feel this will provide a much better "voting" atmosphere.

Rundvelt

Actually, I'm not too computer savy, so I'd like to get some information on how you think they would actually be able to monitor your voting. If I was doing it I would think that you would have the character online and when they voted the internet told the mud that it worked.

Not sure how the mud client would talk to the internet through.

I know I'm missing something because this just doesn't seem right. *ponder

Why do these kind of complaints come around every 2 months? :S

I'm positive that in all of my time playing Armageddon I've never been asked InGame to go vote. THere is a link at the top of their forums, and the occasional 'VOTE!' thread as well, but the admin definately don't badger us to vote with IG spam, tells, or rewards.

Seems funny to me that Arm and alot of other muds manage to stay in the top ten consistently without badgering players with voting reminders all of the time. I think it shows alot of loyalty from the players of these muds, while those 'other' muds have to heckle and spam players in order to get votes...

Just my view on things, possibly tainted by my disgust for other muds than my own.

I've pop into Achaea occasionally and I've never, ever been asked to vote. I've got the reminder once or twice, I think. I find it pretty unlikely you were pressured into voting too. You might've been asked multiple times to vote.. but you can just say no, and I'm sure this would've been restricted to the players.

Is a playerbase that is dedicated to seeing the mud rank 1st a bad thing? Put yourself in Sarapis' shoes, and ask yourself if you'd be asking for the rule changes then. If not, is what you're saying motivated by sour grapes?

For the record I do not work for IRE, and I play Achaea about once a month maximum for about 15 minutes, to catch up on events in the realm.

Leigh

[Edit]: Typo.

I don't know what Achaea you've been playing, but evidently it hasn't been the one I have played.

Romeo and Juilet (payed helpers there) encourage constantly to vote. I don't know about you, but I was immediatly turned off by this.

I'm just bringing up a point. Can a mud force players to vote? Can it be a condition to play? Can they keep harrassing you?

With all these happening, is the player really "voting" or are they just shutting the #### tells off?

Rundvelt

You're the CTO and head coder of an Achaea derivative, have a contractual agreement with Iron Realms Entertainment, and jump to their defence every time someone posts something critical about them - so please don't try to imply that you're giving an unbiased opinion.

At the end of the day, a mud can do whatever it likes - it's up to Adam to decide what the rules are. Achaea does have something of a reputation of following the TMS rules to the letter rather than the spirit, which was one of the reasons the rules were clarified previously to prevent incentives being given.

In my opinion, your point is a valid one and should certainly be addressed by the rules - even if it's just to say "that's acceptable". I've not played Achaea, so I cannot comment on their approach, but the sort of activity you described in something which some muds are going to do and so it really should be covered. The important thing is that the rules are clear so that all muds can compete on equal footing - only then does the ranking provide any sort of benefit.

The only Achaea derivatives are owned by Iron Realms. Hardestat's game has nothing to do with Achaea other than using the same engine as Achaea. Saying it's a derivative is like saying any game that uses the Unreal graphics engine is a derivative of Unreal, even if it's a game about roleplaying carebears.

Rapture comes with absolutely no content whatsoever, no game systems, nothing from Achaea whatsoever. In fact, the only thing a player EVER sees that's dictated by Rapture is a notice when connecting that the mud is powered by Rapture.

--matt

Well, similarly, I'm turned off by games that won't let you step out of character. I just don't play those games though.

No, a mud can definitely not penalize you for not voting. It cannot make voting a condition of playing. Achaea does none of this. In the last 24 hours we've had connections from 2933 distinct subdomains. Our stats say we've had votes from 461 of those subdomains.

In other words, only about 20% of our playerbase voted in the last 24 hours, at max.

And I'm not sure what you mean about Romeo and Juliet harrassing you personally. They don't have the power to tell if you've voted. We do send out global reminders to vote, but that's really our business. If you find the practice impedes your enjoyment of the mud, find another mud. That's the case with any feature in any mud. Having said that, there are 416 players on as I write this, all of whom apparently don't find it disturbs their experience enough to make them want to leave.

--matt

You know, this disturbed me, as they should not be harrassing newbies to vote, particularly as they don't even have a way of seeing if you've voted.

So I checked. You sir, are blatantly lying. In the last 100,000 commands entered by Romeo and Juliet (which is from mid-March on, approximately), exactly none of them were Romeo or Juliet harrassing people to vote. In fact, I was unable to find a -single- time in those 200,000 collective commands that they even MENTIONED voting, doing your duty, or anything of the sort, when it wasn't in response to a newbie question to them. And 90% of those maybe 20 times were in private tells to the newbie that asked the question.

Encourage constantly, my ass.

--matt

Yeah, and that's not even Achaea's 'who', 'say' or 'quit' code, all of which is quite a bit more involved than the code we wrote to go along with Rapture, which is largely there as an example.

--matt

I think that says it all, if the practice was seen as a problem by the players they would leave which would in turn decrease the number of votes.

Well okay, well let me rephrase that to "You're the CTO and head coder of a Rapture derivative". It doesn't change the point, though.

The game would still be a derivative of the Unreal graphics engine in the legal sense, yes.

Perhaps we could ignore the specific accusations and instead try to address the points in a more general context - because regardless of whether or not any muds do this now, it's certainly something that I can see some muds doing in the future.

As it stands, the rules state:

You CANNOT offer incentives or rewards to players for voting. That means you cannot give players items, experience, or anything else in return for votes.

I think we can fairly say that voting as a condition to play is covered by the above - but what about spamming vote requests to those who haven't voted? Or making players vote automatically (perhaps without them even realising it)? These do not fall under the wording of the rules, yet they would clearly skew the results in favour of the mud using such an approach.

Kavir, I'm surprised you didn't grasp it.

A game that spams non-voters with requests/nudges/demands to vote -is- offering a game incentive and/or reward.

The reward is - to be able to play the game without requests/nudges/demands to vote. It's like how mushclient requires that I endure the 30-second dice-roll every single time I open it - until and unless I decide to pay for it. Sure, I can use it free, but I have to deal with that wait period and minor advertisement reminding me that I can donate. I get the same thing with Trillian, and Zone Alarm, in different ways.

I don't know that Achaea is doing this kind of thing - I don't play Achaea. But it sounds more to me like there's a griefer running around making trouble for these people, and I'd believe the Achaea people quicker than I'd believe someone whose name I don't even recognize from this forum.

I've been giving some thought on rewording the rules a bit. How's this sound?

Can I offer rewards for voting?
You CANNOT offer incentives or rewards to players for voting. That means you cannot give players items, experience, or anything else in return for votes.  You also cannot require a player to vote to continue playing the game or to prevent requests to vote by the mud or its staff.

It's basically a clarification on the negative reinforcement aspect, which are still rewards  (vote or we keep harassing you).

Thoughts?

-Synozeer

Synozeer:
It occurs to me that you can solve the problem without changing the rules by making it impossible for the mud to tell who has voted.

I'm not sure how it's done now- do you send IP's and times to the mud when people vote?

Stilton

Why not simply require that the voting link must be a direct link and not through a proxy page that tracks any information of the person clicking through? Simple, to the point, and then there's no question of any information being kept, or how it may or may not be being used.

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

Please go back and read Synozeer's post. The rules have not been changed, just clarified. Most of your post is under this misconception.

Because then we don't need to worry about incorrect interpretations of the rules when someone accuses mud X of breaking rule Y.

Apparently you've not thought this issue out very clearly.

First and formost, what is being asked here is for the rules to be clarified. It's entirely up to Adam to decide the voting rules, but as they stand among mud admin there is obviously some disagreement concerning the definition of "incentive". I'm not sure how clarification of this issue can be considered a bad thing, unless you happen to be one of the people exploiting a loophole in the wording.

Now this basically leaves Adam with two choices: He could say "it's okay to spam people until they vote", or he could do as he has done and say "you can't do that". If he had gone for the former option, then any mud that wanted to be near the top of the listing would simply have to spam its players, while those who didn't want to pressure their players would fall a long way down the listings. This would certainly give TMS more hits, but would make the listings as much an indicator of how much they spam their players as how popular they are.

Personally I'm sick enough of web-based adverts as it is, without having to suffer them on muds as well, and so I applaud Adam's decision.

Regarding people leaving because of spam: Of course only an idiot would spam complete newbies with voting requests - but do it to players that have invested a few dozens hours and I doubt any of them would leave.

Note: I believe that TMS crashed after one of the really popular commercial muds asked all its players to vote - so to be honest I'm not entirely sure how well the site would hold up if so many muds started pressuring their players to vote, anyway.

You know, apparently "blatent" is the only word people seem to be using these days...

Now, I wasn't as clear as I should have been in my note. I figured people here would know enough to see what I was saying... silly me.

Companies do want to know all about you, but not for marketing directly at you, but to flush out and have a more complete and accurate set of statistical predictions about their business.

It's less of a "These people did this" scenario and more of a "We're very confident with the information we have here"

As for Logos, a couple things...

1) It did happen. You want to say it didn't and call me a liar, I could care less. If you want to check I believe it was around the Jan - Feb timeframe when there was the thread about Achaea offering rewards to people (I think it was after christmas, definitly winter time)

2) If it's not going to do anything, what's the problem? Let the Admin descide what is worth his time or not.

3) Bonus cards are so you spend money in their stores. The information is only a side benefit. This is also why stores have their own credit cards. They don't pay usage fees and get interest on the sales amount, when they are only minus the wholesale price.

I was thinking very clearly on the matter. I think back to when the rule was changed regarding giving out incentives as reward for voting. I'd like to know how many of the Top Ten muds here, that pay for advertising, were doing the complaining about incentives. The number is likely zero. Sites as good as this one are possible due to the advertising dollars of games like Aardwolf and Achaea. I think you all need to give a little more credit where credit it due and be more appreciative of just what they can do for your games indirectly.

Why should Synozeer care what goes on in someone elses mud. This need for a rule clarification is just another attempt to hinder the efforts of the big muds. Each muds players are their players to win or lose, **** off and/or make happy. There is only 1 rule needed here...no one person may vote more than once during any given 12 hour period. Plain and simple and leaves no room for arguement. How that vote gets here isn't really anyones concerns other than the individual mud admins.

I really don't see why there's so much of a fuss about a rule clarification. If you're punishing or harassing someone for not voting, it's the just the other side of the coin from giving them gifts for voting. Frankly, it really scares me to know that there's even the possibility of reprecussions in-mud for not voting.

This is where the letter of the law interpretations fall apart. Sure, an admin might not punish your character for not voting. But the fact that he knows that it's you, specifically, who aren't voting, can possibly affect the way he treats you. He may not even mean to. I think that's incentive enough to vote.

Pure and simple: I wish that mud owners didn't have access to this information. But as Jazuela talked about earlier, I also despise having to swipe a card before I can buy groceries. Why wouldn't you want one less big brother to watch you, if you could?

Then why not propose an alternative solution to Adam? He seems to be trying to do his best to create a fair compromise, but you need to make your suggestions known.

No, that seems fair enough.

If it's just a two-line reminder then I don't really see how your mud would be "punished" by the proposed clarifications.

The problem is that as they stand, the rules are highly abusable. It wouldn't take much effort for a mud to gather votes from the vast majority of its players through trickery and coercion.

It's not about what goes on in someone else's mud - it's about where the votes come from. If mud X gives players double exp for voting and half exp if they don't, while mud Y makes no changes, then a far higher percentage of mud X's players are going to vote. That result is a very skewed set of listings.

That is obviously false - the rule clarification puts all muds on equal footing. If anything, the big muds come out better off, as they can't be pushed down the list by smaller muds that are willing to irritate their players in order to push up their ranking.

Your argument is much akin to that of some mudders who argue that they should be able to do whatever they wish on the mud - that if the system allows it, they should be able to get away with it. Unfortunately such an approach does not lend itself well to a successful mud, nor would it lend itself here to a successful mud ranking system.

Hey,

I didn't mean to sound overly dramatic or worked up about it, so in hindsight the word "punished" was probably a poor choice. I simply wished to convey the fact that I worked quite hard at creating a system to track and enhance our voting rates that would be simultaneously ethical and within the boundaries of the current set of rules at TMS - and so I'd hate to see all that work go to waste due to an overly-broad new rule designed to combat the possibility of abuse, when I think that anyone who looks at our system in all fairness could not classify it as an example of such.

Being a law student myself, though, I am aware of the competing issues that crop up when you're trying to word a rule to prohibit certain forms of behavior. In essence you can either word it broadly, to capture as many instances of possible abuse as you can, and then sort them out individually if necessary - or you can word it narrowly, to capture only the most egregious instances of rule violation and allow the others to continue relatively unmolested.

That said, I think Synozeer's proposed clarification:

...would fall under the former "broad" category. In this case a MUD that, for example, spammed voting reminders every five minutes and auto-tagged non-voters so they could be harassed by fellow players would fall under the same rule violation that our own system would - even though it's obvious that the two are really nothing alike in terms of intrusiveness.

In my opinion, the rule as it stands currently is adequate. It would be up to Synozeer to decide what exactly constitutes a "reward". Consider the case above: in the case of the first MUD, freedom from the continual spam would quite obviously be a reward and/or incentive to vote. In our case, however, I don't believe (at least, I hope not, heh) that any reasonable person would argue that freedom from the dreaded two added lines of scroll equates to the same incentive. <g>

Of course, the rule as it stands currently obviously will invite quite a bit of debate as to what "incentives" are, as we see on a fairly regular basis on these forums... it may also involve a bit more work for Synozeer as well, to ensure that things are being monitored to ensure fairness.

So again, in the end my suggestion is really to go with what he prefers, heh. On the one hand, I think that leaving the rule as-is and allowing his discretion to kick in when he decides who's violating the rule and who isn't would be a bit more fair to systems like ours. On the other, I recognize the added work involved, and everybody knows that he's done enough already - so I'm not volunteering him for anything. <g>


T.

Edited to add: After re-reading your post I noticed that I missed a fairly significant issue - trickery and coercion, as you put it. I've addressed the coercion element above; as for trickery, I'm not sure how the proposed addition would do much to prohibit it. If it doesn't already go without saying that such behavior is definitely not kosher, an amendment such as: "MUDs cannot facilitate a player's vote without their knowledge" would likely go much further toward curbing that particular trend.

Ok. Who was your character? I'll do a search again this time looking for any and all communication directed at you by Romeo and Juliet. I'm perfectly confident of the same result, of course.

And the last time Achaea offered rewards was when it was perfectly legal to do so: around January of 2003, almost a year and a half ago.

Bonus cards/loyalty programs are offered for two main reasons: One is customer retention, the other is to gather information on the customer. Here's a in the NY Times about hotels doing exactly what I wrote. In case you don't want to read the entire article, here's a quote:
----
"Why are hotels putting the squeeze on business travelers? It is not just to load them up with incentives to come back. A new dynamic is at work: a rush to accumulate as much information as possible about as many guests as possible, as quickly as possible. The big chains, realizing that such information is crucial in a booming economy to keeping the customers they have and enticing new ones, are discovering that their databases are woefully inadequate.

''They're desperate for data,'' said Robert Mandelbaum, a hotel analyst with PKF Consulting in Atlanta. ''Hotels need information about their guests and especially about business travelers and getting them to sign up for their loyalty programs is the easiest way to get that information.''

Registering for Wyndham's frequent-stayer program, for instance, means telling the hotel chain your preferred bed type, whether you like to relax with a Coke or a Chardonnay after you check in and which airline loyalty program you belong to. Guests also submit their addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses -- and the online sign-up form automatically registers them to receive a monthly e-mail newsletter called ''Wyndham News ByRequest,'' which features ''member-only offers, program updates and information.''
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--matt

No, nothing would change. The list would measure exactly what it measures now: A measurement of how much traffic the mud sends to Topmudsites.

So then why would you applaud Adam's decision? In many of the muds in the top 20, this "rule clarification" will result in MORE reminders to vote, not less.

The assertion that a mud would get to the top spots and stay there by annoying its players with constant spam until they vote is a little absurd. I know exactly what would happen to our playerbase were we to, for instance, spam someone with a vote reminder every 30 seconds until he voted. We'd lose a crapload of players, established or otherwise, and we're a commercial mud where players often have both an immense amount of time and an immense amount of money invested. It'd be even worse for a noncommercial mud where time is the only investment.

--matt