Meh. I found a Wiki yesterday about MUD design and can't seem to remember what magic combination of words I used to bring it out of Google.

If there are any good ones out there, someone let me know.

, perhaps?

That's probably the one. It's one of the only wikis I've seen with an aim towards muds. Maybe I'm taking things slightly off topic, but I'm curious what people think about muds + wikis? I recently added a wiki to my mud's site to allow the players an easy way to add their own content and express ideas. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though I haven't seen that type of thing around at other sites.

We have one for our volunteers, and one of our perspective players has created one for players, which we fully support.

That's actually not the one.  Still, it is a good one and thanks.  I think I found that one on Google pretty easily (No, I did not... just checked. Weird.)

I must have found them both through some other link somewhere.

I've seen wikis used by sevral RP muds. It can be a useful way to allow players to manage player information, plot information, logs, and the like. However, it can also devolute quickly with an immature playerbase.

Surely you can impliment mods to handle immature contributors though?

I've actually been playing around with the idea
of a WikiMUD. A mud where anyone can make changes.

I have a prototype up at:
rugose.com 6666

But There are some limits: you can't modify the main areas,
only your personal domain.

I've been wrestling with how to make a true WikiMUD,
but I'm not sure how to avoid malicious vandalism.

Any ideas?

-Crat

Most wikis allow you to restrict who can edit certain parts or even the whole thing. However, often times it is easy enough to set up certain pages so they automatically revert to a saved state after a certain amount of time, or to just restore certain particular edits if you don't think they are very good. So far I haven't had to worry about anything. Most players at my place are moderately responsible though, so hopefully I won't have to. (OOps, hope I didn't just jinx it)

As to a WikiMUD...That's an interesting design idea, though not one I think I would probably really want to be part of. I can easily see the use for letting people change the look of stuff (we've got a holodeck type thing at our place, and it's pretty handy), but it's probably the sort of thing that would work better at a RP enviornment. Still, how far do you take that sort of thing? Just to changing areas, or did you have something more in mind? It seems like the type of thing that could wind up being a headache to administrate.

You mean like all the various flavors of mush and mux?

Well, yeah, ya got me there. It's not a revolutionary
concept, that much is true.

However, a mud with levels, combat, etc, with an option
to be a mushlike creator if one wishes, I think is different
from the normal mush experience. Hence WikiMUD,
as opposed to StandardMUSH.

But I'm not going to try to argue pointfulness. There's
damn little actually *worth* doing when it comes to
muds, imo.

-Crat

"Surely you can impliment mods to handle immature contributors though?"

Sure, but that's not very helpful if most of your playerbase is immature. On the flipside, if most of your playerbase is respectful and mature with regards to wiki use, they'll keep the few bad sheep in line themselves, without any administrative intervention.

It's simply fair warning: don't waste your time on it if your players are the wrong breed.

When I read cratylus' idea what sprung to my mind was a MUD where you could alter the physical laws of your own domain and not only the looks of it. Something along the lines of having different spell/skill sets or spell/skill power or effectiveness in different regions of the MUD's universe, that inhabitants of the area can get together to change.

I was thinking it would be neat for a space-travel-type of MUD where you start everybody at certain planet and people can conquer other worlds. Each world would have its generic creatures, rooms, etc and some parameters, then according to those parameters, colonizers would be able to adjust/name skill/spell sets, and adjust somehow the laws of physics that govern that specific planet.

Anyway, I thought it would be neat, but then I realized how huge an effort it would be from the point of view of being balanced AND flexible enough so that it is more than having a couple of options per slot.