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KaVir · 09-22-2002, 06:19 PM

In a lot of ways, I find myself agreeing with Tavish - Achaea isn't actually cheating, therefore why should it be a problem? However I also see the other point of view - that it is unfair on the other muds who aren't willing to bribe their players, and it puts pressure on them to apply the same sort of measures.

The trouble is it's not an easy situation to deal with. I've spoken with Synozeer about it, and as he pointed out, without extensive auditing it's not something he can easily prevent. Equally, it's unlikely to actually attract new players - the only people likely to vote are those who are already playing, who went the extra benefits - thus if anything it's only going to create a more "accurate" representation of that particular mud's popularity.

Therefore I think it should either be a clear cut "yes, you can do it", or "no, you cannot". If Achaea can get away with it, then I think everyone else should be able to as well - at least until someone can come up with a suitable (and most importantly fair) solution to prevent it.

So far I can only think of two ways to get around this. The first is the suggestion I've made in the past, which is that only people with TMS accounts can vote - however I think most people would end up just creating an account, so that might not help very much. The other solution is to remove the whole in/out voting thing and only count votes which go out from TMS - because then there is no way for mud owners to check whether or not their players have voted for them. The problem with that, of course, is that TMS would lose a lot of hits (which means that Synozeer would lose out - and bare in mind, he's providing this service for us for free, so I don't think that's a fair thing to ask of him).

So rather than complain that it's unfair, let's try and come up with some feasible solutions to the problem.

09-22-2002, 06:19 PM	#45
KaVir Legend Join Date: Apr 2002 Name: Richard Home MUD: God Wars II Posts: 2,052	In a lot of ways, I find myself agreeing with Tavish - Achaea isn't actually cheating, therefore why should it be a problem? However I also see the other point of view - that it is unfair on the other muds who aren't willing to bribe their players, and it puts pressure on them to apply the same sort of measures. The trouble is it's not an easy situation to deal with. I've spoken with Synozeer about it, and as he pointed out, without extensive auditing it's not something he can easily prevent. Equally, it's unlikely to actually attract new players - the only people likely to vote are those who are already playing, who went the extra benefits - thus if anything it's only going to create a more "accurate" representation of that particular mud's popularity. Therefore I think it should either be a clear cut "yes, you can do it", or "no, you cannot". If Achaea can get away with it, then I think everyone else should be able to as well - at least until someone can come up with a suitable (and most importantly fair) solution to prevent it. So far I can only think of two ways to get around this. The first is the suggestion I've made in the past, which is that only people with TMS accounts can vote - however I think most people would end up just creating an account, so that might not help very much. The other solution is to remove the whole in/out voting thing and only count votes which go out from TMS - because then there is no way for mud owners to check whether or not their players have voted for them. The problem with that, of course, is that TMS would lose a lot of hits (which means that Synozeer would lose out - and bare in mind, he's providing this service for us for free, so I don't think that's a fair thing to ask of him). So rather than complain that it's unfair, let's try and come up with some feasible solutions to the problem.