Thread: MUD Reviews
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Old 11-01-2007, 08:47 AM   #55
Molly
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
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Re: MUD Reviews

I assume that the Review section would have a set of moderators, just like the boards do, (though not necessarily the same persons). That, together with the condition of a valid e-mail address, should take care of the spam, and probably considerably lower the number of submitted reviews too. A system, where each review entry triggers an automated e-mail response, with a code that has to be confirmed by the sender before it even gets to the validating stage, would probably be best. If posting a review needs a bit of afterthought and effort, it should hopefully raise the overall quality a bit on the entries. And it's not so easy and fun to troll, if you are not totally anonymous any more.

The required minimum standard would be published in advance on the webpage. Personally I think the standard should not be too detailed, but that's up to the Site owner to decide. I also don't think that negative reviews should be filtered out, as long as there is the option for the Mudowner to respond to them. Negative reviews can sometimes be very informative, and let's face it - not all Muds are good games. It's also usually very enlightening to see how a negative review is handled by the Admin.

As for the Review moderators, we cannot really expect people, who have enough interest in and knowledge of Text Muds to take on a job like this, to not also have some vested interest in at least one Mud. However, I don't think we need to worry overly much about potential bias among the moderators, as long as no decisions are taken by a single person. There should be at least 2 out of 3 moderators agreeing in a decision to delete a review, and in dubious cases Lasher could have final say. Probably the moderators should also not be allowed to take part in decisions about reviews for their own Muds. I think they should definitely not get access to the ip addresses of the posters, to avoid in-game repercussions for a negative review.

Finally I belong to the group who thinks that no listed games should have the option to turn off reviews, but I expect that to be a controversial question, since the ones most opposed to reviews also seem to be the largest sponsors of the site.
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