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If I'm not paying for it, then it's free.
Seriously, though, I suspect most systems for categorizing commercial, semi-commercial and/or we're-not-really-commercial-wink-wink-but-you-need-to-donate-if-you-don't-want-to-be-constantly-harrassed muds wouldn't really be any more useful than the system already in place. There seem to be almost as many different financial schemes for muds as there are muds that collect money from their players in one form or another. Any proposed system would in all likelihood be immediately met with cries from some corners to the effect that said system didn't adequately provide for certain business models, forcing some mud owners to choose between a) declaring themselves to be part of what they consider to be a less advantageous category from an advertising perspective, or b) declaring themselves to be part of a category that they feel more accurately and advantageously represents their model but which will immediately open them to attack from nitpickers, weekend lawyers, and self-deputized payment-category cops out to prove that they are being less than up front about their status as a pay mud.
Likewise, those who currently feel that some muds somehow "cheat" by not fully disclosing their status as pay-for-play or pay-for-features muds, would likely soon find themselves disgruntled by those muds which, in their eyes, are failing to adhere to the spirit and/or letter of the new system, which in turn would spawn any number of tiresome debates about which muds were actually flaunting their disregard for the new system and which were merely doing the best that they could with a system that fails to accurately represent the options they make available to their players.
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