[Threshold]

I imagine this is a problem more and more MUDs are having now that so many of them have been around for a long time.

What do you do with old content that doesn't mesh perfectly with the rest of your world?

What do you do with old content whose writing quality is not as good as newer content?

I was thinking about this when recently working on something that was more than 10 years old on Threshold. It was something I had written, so when I decided it was crap I had nowhere to look except at myself. I ended up doing a lot of rewriting, which is never the most fun way to spend one's scarce development time.

I imagine I am not the first developer to face this problem. If you know you have old content that is not as good as newer content, do you go back and redo/rewrite the old content?

I can't help but wonder if that is a bad way to invest developer time. Presumably, at the time it was written it was judged to be of good quality. So surely it is at least good enough to be left in place. It is possible that any time spent rewriting/redoing old content could be better spent simply developing new content.

Now, if the issue is balance, then I think it is always good to revisit old content. You don't want something to be too good or too crappy (and thus useless) simply because it is old. But if the issue is simply one of style, I think as a developer the best course of action is just to accept that it is from an earlier time, and continue working to improve one's own skills when making new stuff.

But then, if you happen to be confronted with some old content face to face, and just can't stand it... it probably doesn't hurt to do some rewriting occasionally.