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I think if there was a comment section off of reviews, people would post their replies there. But I don't think it's a major concern having responses to reviews posted in the general forums either, since the subjects are clearly marked and you can ignore the post (any post for that matter).
I think administrators need a place to respond to reviews (positive and negative). There's no reason that disgruntled players (and we all have them on our MUDs) should have such an easy venue to voice their opinion without the opportunity for a response.
Growing a MUD population is not easy, and while I can't say for certain if bad reviews have a negative impact (since most reasonable people probably think, "Ok that's just a disgruntled player.") given the amount of time and effort that goes into a MUD I think it's absolutely fair for people to respond.
From my experience it is the disgruntled, unhappy people who yell the loudest, so they're the ones often posting on forums, boards, etc. to discredit a particular game. The happy people are happy and they're playing. Happy people often recruit, but they do it amongst friends and so it's a less obvious approach. Meanwhile the disgruntled people feel the need to post at web sites like this one, most likely in a broad sweeping effort to ruin a game.
No MUD is perfect. And so in any review there's a potential for a player to mention the "less-than-perfect" aspects. That's fine. More often than not, those things are being worked on. But when a review is wrong, full of lies or nasty then I don't see much of a reason for it. If a review highlights things that aren't great or perfect, that's fine, I wouldn't ever reply in an accusatory tone to that, but some reviews just beg for a reply to clear the air.
Pleos
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