[shasarak]

I see. But it's not absurd to claim, on the basis of no other evidence, that the opinion of MUD players as a whole is the polar opposite of the opinion expressed by every single non-admin on this thread?

In any case, you're still trying to dodge the question by making out that this is about people being against commercial MUDs. Being for or against commercial MUDs has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, despite your increasingly frantic claims to the contrary. The question is: would it be useful for Lasher to give players the OPTION (when searching the list of MUDs on TMS) to filter the search by commercial status? This says nothing whatever about whether those players might be looking for non-commercial MUDs, or looking for commercial ones, or whether they simply don't care and don't use that as a search criterion at all. The only question to address is: should they be given the option?

Even if it is the case that every single player who has so far posted to this thread is unrepresentative of the majority of people who wish to perform searches on TMS (something that is entirely different from "all MUD players") so what? That would mean the majority will not use the new search feature, and will therefore be unaffected by the change. The minority, who are interested in a MUD's commercial status, will benefit. Other than people who want to be able to advertise their MUDs as "free" when they aren't, who exactly loses out here?

The problem is, you have yet to point out any pitfalls. We're talking about giving players more information than they currently have. The idea was proposed by Lasher himself: he is hardly caving in to anyone else's interests by agreeing with his own opinion. The argument that the giving or not-giving of in-game rewards is unverifiable is absurd, because as soon as you allow for the possibility of dishonest admins, there is no point in classifying MUDs in any way at all. You have yet to raise a single other coherent objection; everything else you've said is an attempt to deflect attention away from what is actually being discussed.

You still haven't answered my question, so I'll ask it again:

Lasher has proposed a change to TMS which give players more information about a MUD's policies than the players can currently get from a TMS search: he has suggested that players should have the option of searching for MUDs on the basis of their commercial status - if they choose to. You are opposed to this change. Why, therefore, are you so hellbent on preventing Lasher from giving players more information and allowing them to perform such a search if they want to? Even if you feel that the players' desire to make such a search is ill-advised, it is still their decision, not yours; and it is up to Lasher to provide such a service (or not) based on the effort involved and the benefit it would provide to players doing TMS searches.