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Old 09-10-2002, 11:31 AM   #10
Molly
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
Home MUD: 4 Dimensions
Posts: 574
Molly will become famous soon enoughMolly will become famous soon enough
Sure I could, Smadronia. But I am not 100% sure that I would.
If I had had a very bad day, if you put the request in the wrong way, or if we had had a fallout before, I just MIGHT be so tiffed because you doubted my integrity, that I'd decide to just leave and offer my services elsewhere.

I can be terribly stuffy when someone questions my professional competence... Yeah, I know, it's awful, ain't it? *snicker*

But all kidding apart, I am totally aware of the problem. A majority of the people who call themselves Builders are not worthy of the title. They lack the interest, imagination, verbal skills, endurance and determination for the profession. They just CLAIM to be Builders for reasons of their own - (mostly a desire for power) - and they give the real Builders a bad name in the community.

Over the years I've seen too many non-builders come and go in our Buildport, and it has left me jaded. I used to be a very ambitious and active Head Builder, I used to tutor new Builders, answer endless building questions, discuss ideas and designs for the zones, and all in all participate in everything. But over the years I have come to realise that about 90% of the efforts I spent was just a waste of my own time. I'd teach someone to use OLC, and they'd leave as soon as they learnt how, to build somewhere else, (probably on their 'own' mud). I'd discuss zone ideas with promising Builders, offer input, ideas and advice, or just patiently listen while they outlined their extensive plans. And the next week they'd be gone, without an excuse, an explanation or even a goodbye.

In the end I realised, that it was just a huge waste of my time. So I don't do it any more. I provide good building manuals, I've even put helpfiles on line for all the OLC commands. If people are motivated enough to read those documents, they get along fine. If not - well, tutoring them personally would most likely not have made any difference. If they cannot put up the effort to read through a manual, they most likely will never finish a zone either.

I naturally look at zones if people ASK me to, I still lend a hand in solving tricky problems, they can e-mail me questions at any time, and I answer them as quickly as I can. But that's that. I let my very competent Head Builders run the day-to-day work on the Buildport, and rarely visit it myself, I do all my own building off-line. And my time is much too valuable to be wasted on non-builders.

Like Davairus so wisely put it:

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