Unfortunately, the massive quantity of lousy snippetmonkeys and stock worthless MUDs has created a situation of mutual distrust.  In a hypothetical world where a truly gifted person were looking for a coder, and didn't already have their mud fully operational with a large playerbase, then their cries for coders would yield naught, as all the good coders would be forced to assume the MUD in question was just another stock.  At the same time, however, a very good coder who refuses to work for such a stock MUD, is **** out of luck unless they closely befriend an owner of a quality MUD.

It is the same with exceptionally good builders.  An exceptionally good builder refuses to work at a MUD if it can't readily prove itself to be worthy, but any MUD which readily proves itself worthy refuses to take on a builder who can't...

We all pay dearly for the bloody antics of the snippetmonkeys, the stock junkies and the "builders" who throw a few rooms together and then sit around abusing their magic immy powers

For a good coder, the only real solution is to create their own MUD.  But most good coders are busy people in RL.  I yearn very deeply to be able to just casually code somewhere, augmenting and perfecting an already finished world, but now that Aethar's closed down and my schedule makes creating a MUD from scratch impossible, there is no way.