Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - Reasons to promote/discuss your MUD on TMS.

Valg · 07-28-2007, 10:23 AM

One player-friendly move I've advocated for a long time is to allow reviews on all MUDs, not just a subset. TMS is a third-party site, and it's not clear to me why a MUD owner has the right to arbitrarily prohibit discussion of their game.

Now, not all reviews are useful. We have a few dozen up (I remember we had more from pre-2004, but it looks like the database no longer includes them.), and there's certainly a few that I think are useless, either from the "fanboy" or "flame" perspective. Some contain factual mistakes. But in between all of that is a lot of good information. You could say the same about many forum threads.

I think the review system could guide feedback a bit by asking some questions, instead of presenting a blank slate. Threaded replies and moderation could allow other people familiar with the game (administrators or players) to discuss the review, while reminding people that you aren't there to have a "This is awesome./No, this is terrible!!!/Well, you're too dumb to understand it." playground spat. Even something as crude as a minimum character count (with the caveat that spam will just get the review removed) would likely boost the median quality.

A final important thing to keep in mind about fanboy/flame reviews is that for the most part, they're written in such a way that an intelligent reader can see through them. One review might be useless, but if you accumulate a body of a couple dozen, your game's style will come through.

07-28-2007, 10:23 AM	#16
Valg Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Home MUD: Carrion Fields Posts: 643	Re: Reasons to promote/discuss your MUD on TMS. One player-friendly move I've advocated for a long time is to allow reviews on all MUDs, not just a subset. TMS is a third-party site, and it's not clear to me why a MUD owner has the right to arbitrarily prohibit discussion of their game. Now, not all reviews are useful. We have a few dozen up (I remember we had more from pre-2004, but it looks like the database no longer includes them.), and there's certainly a few that I think are useless, either from the "fanboy" or "flame" perspective. Some contain factual mistakes. But in between all of that is a lot of good information. You could say the same about many forum threads. I think the review system could guide feedback a bit by asking some questions, instead of presenting a blank slate. Threaded replies and moderation could allow other people familiar with the game (administrators or players) to discuss the review, while reminding people that you aren't there to have a "This is awesome./No, this is terrible!!!/Well, you're too dumb to understand it." playground spat. Even something as crude as a minimum character count (with the caveat that spam will just get the review removed) would likely boost the median quality. A final important thing to keep in mind about fanboy/flame reviews is that for the most part, they're written in such a way that an intelligent reader can see through them. One review might be useless, but if you accumulate a body of a couple dozen, your game's style will come through.