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Old 02-01-2011, 12:16 PM   #28
chaosprime
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Home MUD: Lost Souls
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Re: MUD - What do you think it should stand for?

Well, that's the dispute (on Wikipedia, between me and Scandum) that this poll comes out of, and why it asks what it should stand for. I don't agree; I tend to think that if Joe Socializer opens a MUD, and he has heard of Multi-User Dungeon, Multi-User Dimension and Multi-User Domain as things MUD stands for, and he doesn't want to run a dungeon because those are icky, so he decides that MUD stands for Multi-User Domain for his MUD, he is, in some sense, correct. The thought there is that certainly Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw get to decide what MUD stands for with respect to their project, but once the term went out there and became a generic (because Bartle decided to let it be one, instead of helping his corporate overlords at CompuServe enforce a trademark on it), and the generic acronym achieved far more currency than any supposed expansion of it, their choice for their project does not control for all possible projects.

On Wikipedia there's necessarily a sourcing dimension to the argument, but that's the ethical dimension from my point of view, minus the usual fight I have with Scandum about his Dikucentrism and pooh-poohing anything he sees as Tiny-related, such as the Domain and Dimension expansions.

While we're here, I think a far better poll would have been a multiple-choice one that allowed you to select all expansions for MUD that you consider valid.

Edit: So I made one; let's see how does. It also includes every bizarre expansion for MUD that I've ever heard of.

Last edited by chaosprime : 02-01-2011 at 12:34 PM.
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