[Valg]

There's that "vocal minority" marginalization attempt again.

I don't think "numerous" examples can be made.  I proposed two checkboxes, and I haven't seen a counterexample that doesn't fit into that scheme.  Please provide one if you're aware of one.

( ) Optional payments may alter gameplay.
( ) One or more mandatory payments are required for continuous gameplay.

Carrion fields, Armageddon, etc.: n/n.
IRE: y/n.
Threshold: y/y.

If you want to get really fancy, it goes all the way up to three checkboxes:

( ) A recurring fee is required for gameplay.

IRE: n.
Threshold: n.
Gemstone: y.

[Fishy]

[the_logos]

But that's what you are. There are thousands of users of TMS, and all we hear are the same few people, complaining vocally. That's the very definition of a vocal minority. It'd be one thing if TMS users were rising up en masse to demand some redefinition, but the fact is, it's just a handful of people out of thousands of users. You are asking Adam to make a change to the site based on the desires of a very small percentage of the sites' users.

I propose two categories, and I haven't seen a counter-example that doesn't fit into that scheme:

() Command & control ultimately by a hobbyist mud admin.
() Command & control ultimately by a professional mud admin.

Are you ok with this as well?

--matt

[Valg]

The converse argument would be that only the same few people oppose this change, who have a vested financial interest in obfuscating clear disclosure of their business models. This handful of people (out of TMS's thousands of users) is complaining vocally, trying to quash a reasonable suggestion and leaving players in the dark.

Oh noes! Valg can play the "invisible masses all agree with me by their silence" card too.

You might recall that you recently suggested a change to Adam about the voting rules. People discuss things. That's why the website has a forum. I'm sorry that you feel it necessary to cloak your business model, but I don't have to sit quietly in the corner because you told me to.

Come back when you have a more substantial reason why users of this resource shouldn't be able to see your business model up front. Invisible friends don't count.

[the_logos]

I'm not saying that the TMS users support my side or not. I am saying that TMS has been functioning quite well as is and that the only voices we're hearing clamoring for a change are a small handful out of thousands. I'm not arguing for change here: You are.

No, you don't have to sit quietly. You can ask Adam to make whatever changes he wants. I'm going to pipe up when you do, however, and point out that there's no reason to kowtow to the wishes of such a small minority.

Come back when you have a substantial reason why users of this resource shouldn't be able to see if they're going to be receiving a hobbyist or a professional experience up front.

(Note: I think both of those suggestions have equal value, which is to say, a lot or none depending on your point of view. Very little in mine.)

--matt

[Valg]

Art is subjective, and there is no a priori reason to claim a superior experience based on how the MUD's owner derives their income. That said, I'm not opposed to disclosing that status, and never have been-- I didn't like the loaded word "amateur" because of its (intentionally) ambiguous meaning.

However, there is an a priori reason to know the business model-- everyone has a budget (even if it is thousands of dollars), and if you can't afford a game where money matters, you won't be able to play it. Everyone knows their budget, and a good MUD resource would let them know what they are in for.

Conversely, you've argued that some players prefer a pay-for-perks model because it allows them to make a trade (RL money for in-game time) that another game might offer. They might actively search out a game with that criteria. More power to them. I just don't like hiding the information from them.

[the_logos]

I made no claim that hobbyist is inferior to professional. That said, I'm sure at least some percentage of the potential MUD playing population would like to know.

Then why is there a problem? There's already a pay to play checkbox. If it costs money to play, that box is checked. If not, it's not, and there's no issue. In our games, for instance, players can play for free, forever.


Not listing is hiding? Interesting. We're hiding that we have geomancers I guess.

I have no problem with listing our business model, as long as it is described in full and as long as nobody is being forced to advertise certain features on the front page. See other recent posts for what acceptably in full means.

--matt

[Valg]

Isn't that accurately conveyed by a "yes" to "optional fees may effect gameplay" and a "no" to the question(s) regarding mandatory fees? I felt like we were in agreement there for a while, but your recent posts veered off in a new direction.

[the_logos]

No, I feel that it also requires an explicit distinction between games in which you can acquire everything for free and games in which some things are reserved only for paying customers.

--matt

[karlan]

I am a professional, and I am a mud admin, but I do not make a living from running a mud, do I qualify as a professional mud admin?.

Your proposal DOES imply that the professional muds are somehow better, and it DOES come across as insulting if you are an admin on a "hobbyist mud".

The initial 2 suggestions from valg do not come across the same way. They do cover the various payment models.

After the first time I looked for a mud on here and tried some of the top ranking muds, I stopped mudding for quite a while (in ignorance, thinking that it seemed muds were based on the dodgy pron site model of claiming to be free but needing money), being able to see the type of payment model would have meant I probably would have gone to my current MUD first off.

And as for the "silent masses" some will be silent because they feel that it is pointless to try and make a comment that will be taken with any weight, unless you somehow have lots of posts in hour history. I myself, frequently swallow my comments because they have already been voiced by others (KaVir, Valg, Molly at times), and the last thing I want to do is increase the noise to signal ratio of these forums.

[the_logos]

No. If I go skiing, I'm not a professional skiier just because I'm a professional <something else>. I think you missed the point of my post though.

And if you'd read what I'd written, you'd note that I see no value in labeling with such a distinction because it doesn't tell the whole story and implies things that may or may not be true. Most muds ARE hobbies and the admins on them are hobbyist admins. "Do you have a problem with being accurately labeled?" That's the accusation being leveled against me in my resistance to an overly simplistic labeling of business model, and objecting to being labeled a hobbyist (when by every definition of the word, most MUDs are hobbyist enterprises) seems like exactly the same thing. I would not support a "hobbyist" and "professional" distinction not because it's not true (it is) but because it doesn't tell the full story that I, at least, view as relevant.

You mean, they don't come across the same way to you. That's your opinion and you represent yourself. To me, the payment model one comes across as being precisely the same as the professional/hobbyist distinction. That's my opinion, and I represent myself.


So you're in the small minority too. I'm not sure what your point is.

--matt

[Valg]

Careful. The "small minority" hasn't been staying so small in these threads!

Again, remind me how you know the proposed labeling is supported by only a "small minority" of TMS users? By my rough count, more people have posted in support of it in the two threads than against it(*). How are you able to speak for all of the people who haven't posted?

You might be right for all I know. But you might also be wrong.... and you're definitely wrong to presume you can speak for those people.

(*): A number of the antis are IRE employees... and a little birdie told me you've made it clear to your staff in the past about how you feel about being contradicted here. That's understandable, as your position allows you to speak for your company as a whole, but their positions are hardly independent of what you are writing.

I wouldn't publically contradict my day-job boss either, but it wouldn't be meaningful for him to say "And Valg agrees with me 100%!" given that.

[DonathinFrye]

Matt - there haven't been any threads, or even any posts supporting your Professional versus Hobbyist counter-suggestion.

Matt - the majority of the posters in these threads come from a wide variety of MUDs and have very little relation to each other(and no contact, mostly), and are here doing what forums are meant to do... bring lots of voices together to discuss a single topic.

Matt - the minority of the posters in these threads who argue against these suggestions come from IRE MUDs. As a matter of fact, I've asked for non-IRE counter-arguments several times and I've only received the response of one person(Spoke). And Spoke didn't suggest a Professional vs. Hobbyist MUD either. Also of note is that most of the arguers(most, not all) seem to have very few posts, inferring that they are relatively new posters. Lots of relatively new posters that are either IRE Staff(and a few players)... hmm - I'm not against hearing new forum-users voices at all(I'm new myself), but I didn't come here just to go punch-to-earbite with you on this subject.

You are not the voice of the majority of MUDers, Matt. Neither am I. However, the group of MUDers who are vocal about this topic come from a variety of MUDs(and yes, combining the "hobbyist MUDs" together makes that group larger than the combined "professional MUD" group). The group of MUDers who are vocally against this topic all seem to be from Professional/Commercial(specifically, IRE) MUDs.

Propagandic word-twisting rhetoric has been used in social communities for thousands of years. Being that most of us are at least semi-well educated and intelligent/intuitive, I'd hope that we'd be able to see that Matt is doing it now. Who benefits from keeping players in the dark about objective qualities of a MUD(especially ones that affect cost)? Well, I would too, and yet I still argue the other side of the fence. IRE is obviously tilted on this argument, and I've yet to see one counter-argument to my last suggest(made back on Page 9 of this thread) because the counters have fallen down to word-twisting, name-calling, and selective quote-arguing.

Reader's Digest Version: Don't call us the minority - we come from a variety of games, and not all of them are "hobbyist" to use one of your propagandic terms. Don't call yourself majority - your supporters are almost entirely from YOUR MUD. I'm not negating anyone's point of view, but you are being ridiculous and I hope that the majority of the users here can see that.

I'd be careful of the direction you're going in, Matt - more and more people are beginning to compare you to Vryce, and I'm sure that you(and IRE) won't like or benefit from that in the end. Take that or leave it, as you will.

[karlan]

I am a professional sysadmin, and I do run a mud, and I am fairly confidant I can say I run it in a professional manner, so I AM a professional mud admin, just not a commercial one. It is very frustrating to hear non commercial MU*'s equated with being non professional.


I think you missed the point here, you or valg cannot assume that the lack of response from masses agrees or disagrees, but I have seen in a few threads, you and others assume that lack of comment == support

[the_logos]

You don't even read entire posts do you? The entire point of that post was to demonstrate how a distinction, though true, may not contain all the information one feels needs to be given.

So, in other words, if someone is actually familiar with our business model through extensive experience, their opinion is invalidated. That's certainly one way to "win" an argument: simply tell the other side that their opinions have no validity.

I fail to see the relevance. Most users on TMS don't have forum accounts. That doesn't change the value of their opinions at all when they choose to create an account to post.

No, I'm not the voice of anyone but me, but then, I'm not the one telling Adam he should make changes to his site to satisfy me. All we have seen are a handful of TMS users asking for this change. That's it. Whether you come from hobbyist MUDs or PK MUDs or RPI muds is irrelevant. We have heard from whom we have heard from, and that's a handful of users out of thousands of TMS users, all of whom are visiting and using TMS despite this apparent huge sin of only listing whether a game is "pay-to-play" or not in terms of business models.


Whether you come from a variety of games or not doesn't change anything. You don't represent anyone but yourselves and that's just a few people. As I've said over and over, there are thousands of TMS users. Do you have a single whit of evidence to demonstrate that your view represents the majority of them? No.


I didn't call myself the majority. I did say that TMS has thousands of users and only a few of them seem to care about having this change made.


Chuckle.

--matt

[the_logos]

So what you're saying then is that there are multiple valid definitions of the word 'professional.' Interesting, as that's exactly what I constantly point out in regards to the word 'free.' Please keep in mind that I'm not insulting anyone. I'm just pointing out that the reaction you have to the professional/hobbyist divide because you don't feel it fully represents what you do and what you are applies to other things as well, including business models. I've no objection to listing business models in the database. I've an objection to listing them incompletely.



Listen, where's what we know: We know that TMS has thousands of users coming here. Obviously a lot of users find TMS valuable as it is or they wouldn't come here. Is it reasonable to assume some of them could find it better with certain changes? Yes, of course. Do we have any evidence or any way of really objectively telling what specific changes those might be? Nope.

What I assume isn't so much an assumption as just pointing out that there is evidence that TMS users find value in TMS as it is (in that they visit it frequently), but there is no evidence that they want this proposed change.

--matt

[Shao_Long]

the_logos:

As far as I'm aware, of all these thousands of people that come through TMS, only a small percentage has a TMS forum account, and even smaller percentage cares enough to use their account actively. Myself for example.

Most of players come here to look for a game, or to support the game they play already; I can't imagine why would an average player start reading through all the threads in the forums and "voicing their opinion" on how this site should be ran. If they don't like the site, they'll simply stop using it as much, or stop using the particular feature they dislike, or whatever.

Imagine a person new to mudding come to this site. Do you think they'd immediately start "voicing their concerns" with the rules of the site and the way it's ran? I don't think so.

Saying something like, "only few speak up on the matter, so this means no one else would like to see the changes you suggest" is simply ignorant and absurd.


Now this...
What is your definition of a "professional"? Someone who makes money off doing something? Or someone who does something well and is experienced in the field, no matter if they get paid for it or not? I think an Immortal who had been running a successful MUD for years and years deserves the title of a "professional", and money has nothing to do with it. If anything, a person that runs their MUD WITHOUT getting anything but personal satisfaction out of it, deserves more praise than any of the "professionals" who do it for cash.


And as far as your objections go against this suggested addition of 'business model listings' ... Why are you so concerned? Let's not add any "counter-proporsals", just tell us why are you so firmly disagreeing with having your business model listed ACCURATELY on the site?

It's a simple question, let's see a simple answer!

[Drealoth]

I don't see what the problem here is. Iron Realms' business model kind of relies on people figuring out that they can spend money in the game. Within five minutes of playing one of their games, you've learnt about the existence of credits and the advantages that they provide, and you are more than free to leave. With any other MUD, within five minutes you learn about the existence of certain attributes that are not listed on their info page.

Here's what I don't understand: what is the ultimate goal of requiring a MUD to state whether or not one can pay for certain perks within the game? More votes for Iron Realms, because people think that paid development results in a higher quality MUD? Fewer votes for Iron Realms, because nobody likes the big corporate types? Just discrimination because someone's figured out how to make money from the MUD world?

Although I have no actual numbers for this, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of votes come from people who are actually already playing a game. Of these people, I'd say almost all of them are aware of the existence of these infamous credits.

By the way, the definition of professional, according to Google: engaged in a profession or engaging in as a profession or means of livelihood; "the professional man or woman possesses distinctive qualifications"; "began her professional career after the Olympics"; "professional theater"; "professional football"; "a professional cook"; "professional actors and athletes"

But it's all just semantics, so I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.

[DonathinFrye]

Your selective quoting and empty arguments require a lot of energy from me at 4:30am to respond to, Matt.

I have stated, several times, that I appreciate everyone's opinions, and that they are all valid. You even quoted me saying so later on in your argument(I guess you copy-pasted wrong there). I simply would like to know if anyone besides IRE is against trying any our proposed ideas, and if their reasons are different than IRE's predictable ones. You say that we are a minority because most of TMS users don't argue in the forums(or in this thread). I say you are acting insanely to use that as an argument for your case, against mine, as your side of the argument has even fewer users(and they are from YOUR MUDs).

If we required a TMS majority to change something, things would never get changed - because the forum users here are a minority. Are you alienating us for having opinions that we express, while others do not? Do you realize you've placed yourself in the same minority group as us?

Do you realize that the relevance of my new poster comment was the insinuation that IRE players appear to be coming out of the woodworks to defend your side of the case, because nobody else seems eager to?

Do you realize you are arguing against being called "free-to-play, pay-for-perks", something which you obviously are? You can use whatever phraseology you want on your own website, but what the majority of users in THIS thread are asking for is a system for which TMS can easily show all players which MUDs fall into which business category. This is, obviously, an important change wanted by -many- players.

You're defending your company with as many teeth as you possibly can, Matt, but I'm not after your company in particular. I'm defending Valg's original suggestion to support an idea that is right for players who come through here looking for a certain kind of game. I've stated before(though you didn't quote that post, I suppose it was too objective for you to argue with) that it would take an hour or two at most to come up with a half-dozen or so terms to describe every business model out there for text MUDs. If an issue arose, it could be dealt with at that time, but it would really be very simple.

Anyone in this forum can see that you are only arguing to defend your game, Matt. If you really wanted to treat your potential players with respect, you wouldn't fight a resource site listing it as "free-to-play, pay-for-perks", because that is knowledge that should be given upfront to a player by the resource site.

I've still yet to see a) responses to my direct solution post, b) more than one response from either Syno or a non-IRE player/admin. So far, I've mostly seen c) flame-wars and d) Matt selectively quoting and condescending other players and MUDs.

Are we e) wasting our time, because Syno isn't going to make a change due to Matt's earlier threats of not sending as much traffic to TMS?

Let's try to deal with (A), (B), and (E) - they are things that interest me, and may produce positive results for the community. &copy; and (D), we've had enough of.

[somied]

Well, there is overwhelming evidence that people like fast food as it is (what's McDonalds up to now? 8 billion or so served?), however, I can say with 110% confidence that people would like it even more if it were healthier - a change for which there is no tangible evidence. But you and I and everyone else knows it's true, regardless - just like the TMS situation.

Anyways, the real reason you have a problem with informing potential players that your games are 'pay-for-perks' is because (as it's universally known in the world of advertising) it's bad for business to reveal your 'catches' before the players have time to get addicted first. It would net you less profit because this feature is generally considered undesirable, and without pre-existing addiction a good portion of MUD players won't dish out the money.

Whether or not this is morally right or wrong isn't up to me or anyone but yourself to decide. But for you to be publically opposed to an addition to this site that would only make it more user friendly and helpful for thousands of people, just because you stand to lose a little potential profit seems incredibly selfish to me.