Actually, it would hurt. I don't vote on TMC because it takes too damn long to actually vote, and that seems to be the general feeling from most of our players. I think TMS's system is fine, while it is possible to make a bot, such sudden large numbers of extra votes(expecially from similar subnets) will get noticed.

Quote (DonathinFrye @ Dec. 28 2005,18:50)
Excellent idea. It would make it a lot harder to manipulate the votes and might have some effect on the outcome.

I agree that TMC's system is a big pain in the butt.

It's tempting to say that the simple fix would be to whap one of the offending games with a rolled up newspaper when the data suggests a problem. But the flaw there is you don't want, say, an unscrupulous person writing a bot that votes obnoxiously for their favorite game's competition.

You can, of course, restrict IPs that the bots came from, but those tend to be pretty mobile.

Ultimately, a TMC system probably blocks bots very effectively, but it probably cuts their traffic by a sizable fraction. It might not be in Synozeer's interest to do that, unless he thought that the extra list integrity would draw in more people (who might think voting at present isn't worth it).

Just as an FYI - Armageddon's "players logged in" will -usually- average around 30-60 during times EST when most people are awake and in the general proximity of a computer. Peak time (as of the last time I played) was around 10-ish EST at night.

Arm has no in-game prompts to vote, and compared to the top 5 muds on the list has a small player base (I believe the last time any of the senior staff members answered a query from a player, the answer was less than 400 accounts). In the three + years I did play, I never saw more than 125 players logged in, and that was only once, for a period of an hour or so. So figure an "active" playerbase of around 250 and it's probably a reasonable guestimate (though most likely not accurate).

Voters on Arm do so -primarily- because they sincerely like the game and want to see it remain on the top 10 list.

Barring threats, which I'd imagine are pretty rare, and rewards, which haven't been legal for years, isn't that why people from every MUD vote?

--matt

Isn't that a rather circular argument? It's a good mud because it has lots of players, and it has lots of players because it's a good mud?

Many different things - and each person is going to have their own definition. The same is not true of a 'popular' mud, however. To be popular, a mud will have to appeal to a wide audience (which means more refinement of the commonly accepted features rather than having innovative and cutting-edge features) and a great deal of promotion (which usually means spending money, and/or being well-established).

It could be argued that EverQuest is little more than a Diku with pretty graphics. However assume I'm talking about a stock Diku without graphics: According to the argument you were making previously, were it to gain sufficient players it would suddenly be considered a 'good mud', even if the game itself were still completely stock.

A circular argument? And? What is there not to understand about it? Or do you purposely try to pick out individual parts of a post without reading and trying to understand the whole post? Simply, a mud has to be "good" to hundreds players for hundreds players to play it. You can call this appealing to a wide audience if you want. Sure, there are some muds out there that are "better", but they are only "better" to thirty or so players, not to the majority of mudders. If you still don't understand, I suggest replying to the first three questions of this quote, as they will look very confusing alone. Be sure to include some negative mention to money in muds, as that will gain additional attention and keep this thread going longer than it needs.

(Hajamin @ Dec. 28 2005,06:20)
Valg @ Dec. 28 2005,13:11
And who says they have to adopt TMC's system, which I agree is a bit over the edge?

But there must be simpler ways to stop the spamvoting from bots, which, as Hajamin pointed out, do exist.

For instance  the simple method of having to interprete a letter code seems to be pretty effective.

Or. better still, demanding an account with a valid e-mail address before you are allowed to vote. It would take a few minutes to register that address the first time, but after that voting will be quick and  simple again.

Would this result in less total hits on the site? Maybe.

But it would also result in a much more accurate listing, which should be in the interest of all mud owners, (except possibly the habitual cheaters). And it also would give the site a much higher status, which should be in the interest of the Site owner.

And as an extra bonus, requiring that all those who want to vote also need to create an account might actually lead to a traffic that really is a traffic, not just an illusion of it (i.e. hit-the-vote-button-twice-a-day-after-being-reminded-by-the-mud-code). In the long run more accounts could even lead to better discussions, which wouldn't hurt, since apart from the advertisment posts and the occasonal flamewar, the boards seem pretty inactive lately.

Anything more complex than this would lead to less traffic coming in to the site.

TMC's system is insanely pain to vote in, and would cause people to just stop voting and coming to the site.

The needing a registered account could be effective, but some people are reluctant to give away their email addresses due to fear of spam mail. Plus just that one time added step could deter people from voting.

I didn't specifically say that I know there are bots out there, I hope there aren't but the fact stands that it IS possible to create one. At the same time, it IS possible to detect them.

Have I been living on another planet, or doesn't TMC only require you to enter a matching letter code in to vote? I just logged onto their website and voted for a MUD just now - the prompt showed me a typical anti-bot letter code that I had to match, and I did so, then clicking on "cast my vote".

If you are trying to argue that TMC's 15-20 second long voting process is too much work, then I'd say you don't care about voting very much at all. Otherwise, you may just be unaware that the voting process on TMC seems relatively easy. Or, I could be a moron, and I could be completely wrong about the TMC system, somehow - I just don't see how, though.

I believe a higher integrity-protected voting system is always something worth striving for.

And KaVir again reflects my feelings on the difference between a 'good' MUD and a 'popular MUD'. In order to appeal to the masses, there is a certain amount of your creative energies which have to be suppressed and/or used for the appealing itself, and not for cutting-edge and original/exciting gameplay. This is very rarely untrue, from my long time of having played a large, wide variety of MUDs.

The fallacy there is equating "original" (can't say I almost ever see anything original on any MUD though) with "good." WoW is an excellent (in the minds of many people) popular game. It's also about as unoriginal as they come. The Sims is an excellent (in the minds of many people) and popular game. The Sims was also reasonably innovative.

'Good' is in the eye of the beholder. What you have to do to create a popular MUD is create a MUD that will be viewed as good by a reasonable number of people.

--matt

A circular argument is a fallacy, related to 'petitio principii' ().

No, it just has to be "good enough". Because the definition of "good" is in the eye of the beholder, no mud is going to appeal to everyone. In order to be as popular as possible, a mud would therefore need to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

As most mud creators will tell you, when designing and developing a mud, many features will force you to choose between "improving the overall game" and "being popular with the majority of the playerbase".

From time to time you'll see muds claiming that their every design decision is based entirely on the wishes of the playerbase (a pure 'popularity'-based approach), and such muds usually end up unplayable rarely last long - much like those which completely ignore the views of the playerbase.

Thus most muds will draw a middle ground between the two - even commercial muds which rely on large playerbases tend to have a strong vision of the direction they want their mud to go. For example, at least three of the commercial mud companies have taken the approach of offering multiple muds to appeal to a wider audience rather than trying to create a single mud that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

In summary, the point I am trying to make is that "good" is subjective and no feature is universally popular. The more people you try to appeal to, the more features you'll need to avoid, and this can impact the overall quality and individuality of your game.

At the same time, some features are only enabled as possibilities once you've achieved a large audience. For instance, things like players-governing-players doesn't become at all interesting until there's at least a couple dozen players, and player nations vs. player nations looks pretty silly until there are quite a few more players than that so that each nation has a minimally-sized citizenry of players. Raids that require large number of players are also not possible on MUDs with a small number of players (you can't have a 50 person raid on a MUD that doesn't even hit 50 simultaneous).

In other words, failing to appeal to a lot of players can also impact the overall quality and individuality of your game. I'm not trying to be snarky, but the point is that there are, equally, things that cannot be achieved by small MUDs that can be achieved by large MUDs.

--matt

True - but on the flip side, some features can also become infeasible once the audience grows too large. For example, in a very roleplaying-oriented mud a larger playerbase is going to result in less attention per player from the staff, and will also result in a "less personal" feel to the mud, whereby the player feels that they're just another insignificant face among thousands rather than someone who can actually make a difference within the game world. Equally, a particularly large playerbase is going to require more machine resources, which might become overly expensive for a mud which wouldn't or couldn't take money from the playerbase.

By its very definition a MUD is a multiplayer environment, and it's unlikely to ever be as much fun without player interaction. The ideal number of players is, like anything else, going to be a matter of opinion (and also depend upon the style of mud). But IMO this is still a separate issue from the mud itself; if a mud doesn't have enough players - or has too many players - for the style of game it promotes, then it's not going to be as much fun as it could be. But that doesn't mean the game itself is bad (or good, for that matter), only that it isn't operating at its full potential.

In an earlier post, DonathinFrye listed the number of players on various muds. One of your IRE muds had over three times the current playerbase of another of the IRE muds - but I'm sure you'd agree that that doesn't mean the former is three times as "good" as the latter, nor even that it's necessarily "better" at all.

DonathinFrye:: Dec. 29 2005,16:22    

I think what they are referring to is that on TMC you can cast 3 different votes. There is of course no need to adopt that part of their system, but the letter code seems to be a rather good way of making the list more secure from abuse.

This thread has provided some good input, and I really hope that the list Admin is following it.

Jazuela's suggestion of making separate lists for commercial and non-commecial muds is an excellent idea, that would be welcomed by a large part of the mud community.

There seems to be some sort of consencus that different people judge quality in a mud from different factors, and that a large player base isn't necessarily a factor, although it does have a positive effect when it comes tp PvP options.

This site should be about promoting the best muds, not just 'getting the most traffic to the site'.

A safer voting system would result in a fairer outcome of the listing.

Separate lists would give the high quality smaller muds, which are almost always non-commercial, a better chance of exposure, and consequently in the long run a better chance of  attracting more players.

I don't see how anyone could be against either of those suggestions.

It's quite easy to be against those suggestions. Why should MUDs that contribute relatively little get screen space in favor of MUDs that contribute much more to TMS? This site is effectively a traffic exchange, and it's not fair to ask the MUDs that contribute a lot to subsidize the MUDs that don't. It lessens the value of TMS overall by reducing the impetus for the MUDs that support the site to send traffic here. Keep in mind that the top 10 MUDs send more traffic than MUDs 11-100 combined.

This discussion is a bit moot anyway. The site's not going to be changed and if you want to use a voting site that implements suggestions like the letter code, use TMC. Of course, they get far less traffic on their voting list, for a reason. Same with Mudmagic.

--matt

Sure, of course. There are advantages and disadvantages to almost any feature.

Well, I don't entirely agree here. Insofar as MUDs are both products and services, I don't believe one can judge a MUD purely on a product basis (the code and the content). Other players and the player community are part of the service side and are always taken into account by potential and existing players in their judgements of a MUD.

As for objective 'bad' or 'good', well, I don't care. It's in the eye of the beholder. My personal opinion (and it doesn't matter to me if other people share it or not) is that a large MUD is, ipso facto, good insofar as it's managed to attract a lot of players that view it as good, while a small MUD is more nebulous. One can't really say it's bad, but, again, for me, small MUDs are simply indeterminate. They haven't, as you say, lived up to their potential, and it's far from certain the potential is there at all. Again, that's for me, and it's probably because my main interests in MUDs require larger player populations to work. No doubt others disagree, demonstrating the subjective nature of quality assessment.

No, I wouldn't, though I would say that the larger ones are more successful, given that I define success as achieving ones goals, and our goals are to create MUDs that will attract as many players as possible.

--matt

In response to the_logos’ post

“Why should MUDs that contribute relatively little get screen space in favor of MUDs that contribute much more to TMS? This site is effectively a traffic exchange, and it's not fair to ask the MUDs that contribute a lot to subsidize the MUDs that don't. It lessens the value of TMS overall by reducing the impetus for the MUDs that support the site to send traffic here. Keep in mind that the top 10 MUDs send more traffic than MUDs 11-100 combined.”



“As most mud creators will tell you, when designing and developing a mud, many features will force you to choose between "improving the overall game" and "being popular with the majority of the player base".”

As Kavir told us before, and the_logos brought to mind, the two ideas, Should we “Improve the overall game(I mean the website in this post)” and “Be popular with the majority of the player base?” I would go with the second thought, but doesn’t every mud pay the same amount of money to be listed? If that is so, everyone should get equal exposure. Just common sense, or make people pay different prices, which is just as unfair.

Two lists would accomplish this, IMHO. Why? It would separate the two biggest groups from each other, PtP and Free. I actually propose three lists though, P2P, free, and a combined list. That way, if you care, you can pick P2P or free. We can have the site automagickally load with a combined list, with the clickable words, Free and Commercial, on either side of the title. When you click them they show you the same page with a new list.

You do not pay money to be listed here. You pay in traffic.

TMS is a traffic exchange site. I honestly do not understand why so many people refuse to understand and accept this.

So payment is in the form of the traffic you send.

The popular games send the overwhelming majority of the traffic to the site. Why should games that "pay" virtually nothing to be listed here (they send very little traffic) get a special list where they appear more prominently? That doesn't sound fair by any stretch of the imagination.

MUDs that send little traffic (and get less votes, and are lower in the rankings) already benefit inordinately. They send almost no traffic, but they benefit from the fact that every person who visits the site might see their game, or might go looking for a new game simply by being exposed to the list.

The example Matt gave earlier about WoW helps illustrate this. Would anyone here really care if WoW seized the top spot with 90 gazillion votes, bumping everyone down one notch? Think of all those players they'd be sending here to TMS to at least SEE that there are other games out there, and possibly give one of them a shot. Personally, I'd be THRILLED if WoW would join the list and send their millions of players here to vote. I played WoW, and I know there are a lot of people there are who only marginally satisfied, and would jump at the chance to try something new- something that might actually fit their tastes better.

When you understand and accept that the TMS list/front page is a traffic exchange, you can easily and quickly see why separate lists, or annoyances like typing in letter codes are not things that promote TRAFFIC. A traffic exchange that does not promote traffic is not doing its job.

Well threshold, those that do contribute so much will still be at the top of 2 out of 3 lists. While making the lists more convienant for people. Instead of forcing them to dig through pages of free muds so they can look at the P2P that is sprinkled within their territory.

Sacac, seriously, can you please understand and accept that this is a traffic exchange? It is unfair to sites who send very little traffic to get their own list where they are shown more prominently. They aren't the sites that BRING the traffic. Why should they get special treatment. It doesn't matter if its 1 out of 3 lists, 2 out of 3, or 3 out of 3. It still goes against the nature of a traffic exchange.

As for "forcing someone to dig through pages of muds", come on. That's cake. You can easily select genres or other 20 MUD blocks right at the top, and that alone narrows things down so much that you get muds with very few votes on the front page. Anyone looking for a new mud has absolutely NO DIFFICULTY finding variety.

The truth of the matter, if you'd be willing to admit it, is that you (and many others) want to figure out some way- any way- to get less popular muds a more prominent location for where their mud gets listed. Such people want a mud that has not EARNED the prominence, by sending traffic, to get the prominent spot anyway.



Let me put it this way. *I* wouldn't even bother voting for my own mud every day if I had to enter some annoying code. I find having to do that sort of thing just more trouble than its worth. That's why I don't bother voting for my own MUD on TMC. It isn't that it takes a huge amount of time or anything. It is just that the value of a single vote is pretty small, compared with the annoyance factor of reading one of those obfuscated graphics and then typing in the letters.

It is just like the concept behind coupons. Companies that give coupons do so for two main reasons: the first is marketing, but the second is more interesting. They know that some people are willing to pay more for the exact same product. But they also know they can't have two prices for the same product, or else the people who pay the higher price will feel cheated. Thus, they give out coupons in newspapers, coupon books, etc. How does this work? The people who value their time more, and think it isn't worth their time to bother with clipping coupons, storing them, organizing them, remembering to bring them, etc. pay a higher price. People who value their time less, do all the things necessary to use coupons, and pay less. Voila! The seller just sold the product for 2 different prices, depending on how much the customer values his or her time.

I think any sort of obfuscated graphic with a letter code would dramatically reduce the amount of traffic to TMS. Not just bot traffic, but real traffic. That is antithetical to the goals of a traffic exchange site. You do not do things that REDUCE traffic. That would be Bad ™.

Then why don't these muds just remove themselves from the list entirely, if they aren't benefitting?

The fact is, smaller games benefit a lot more, by percentage, than larger games with more players. The more popular games are risking their own players every time they encourage people to come here to vote. They are willingly exposing their players to lots of other games. The reward is higher placement on the list, which they hope will attract at least as many NEW players to replace those they lose by showing them all the other games that exist out there.

Why should small games get artificial, preferential placement when they haven't sent the traffic or risked the players that all the other games have?

I hate the activation code idea. Hate it.

How can they EARN the prominence if they are buried so far into the database they can't even find themselves?

The truth of the matter, is that I firmly believe in providing for the good of the players and giving them every choice to pick the mud they like best. Instead of censoring (indirectly, but still censoring it, in my opinion), we make the whole community better instead of a few already massive muds and a random one here or there.

The point that smaller muds benefit more "Percentage wise" is kind of mute.

A massive mud can get 40 people and think nothing of it. (unless they all have the same playtimes)
A small mud can get five and it could add 44% more players, just like that. Still doing relatively little for the mud if they don't all log in at the same time.

I know threshold, we lay on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Maybe the way every other popular game earned their players? Create a good mud, rely on word of mouth, advertise, etc.

Is TMS supposed to be some kind of communist enterprise where popular games are supposed to supply less popular games with access to their players, prominent listings, etc?

Furthermore, it is very easy for a player to find less popular, smaller, or newer muds. You select one of the check boxes for 21-40, 41-60, a specific genre, or whatever. One click and there you go.

What is mute about it?



Do you mean MOOT?




How is that relevant? Again I ask you, are you wanting some kind of communist system where you take away from popular games to help less popular ones, not for any good reason, but just because the popular ones have more players?

That is a terrible idea. Furthermore, it will be killing the goose that lays the golden egg, because small games are getting otherwise unattainable publicity from being listed here. Why exactly should popular games bother risking their players by sending them here to vote, if the little muds get unfair placement? Then it becomes a valueless situation, and most of the traffic to the site dies. How does that help these little muds? Then they get ZERO new players, and have NO way of getting ANY attention because nobody sends traffic to the site.

They don't have the money to buy ads, and now they killed the traffic on TMS out of sheer jealousy.

Please reflect on the example of WoW. If we could get every graphical MMO on the TMS list, totally slaughtering us all in votes and pushing everyone down 5-10 notches, that would be one of the greatest boon to text muds since the first University let some creative gamers have a little computer space. Think of all those MILLIONS of gamers learning about text muds and every now and then saying "why don't I try one of these out?"

If that's too difficult, here's an even better example: MUD X (a game ranked higher than Threshold. that I won't name so I don't want to risk any kind of lame MUD v. MUD war). Am I happy to have Threshold down a notch because MUD X started pushing their players to vote recently?

I'm PSYCHED!!!!!

Why? Because we are getting tons of new players from MUD X. My referral logs are filled with people who found us while voting for MUD X. Most of them are people who like MUD X, but want a more IC/RP environment. I have no idea if they also quit MUD X, but that really doesn't matter to me.

So Threshold might be one notch lower in rankings, but the benefit is far superior because we are getting more players as a result of the increased traffic.

That's the beauty of TRAFFIC and EYEBALLS. That's what you want if you are trying to grow your mud, your business, whatever. You want your name somewhere where there is a CHANCE some people will see you and then give you a shot.

You (and others with the same type of ideas) are only shooting yourself in the foot by proposing changes that would ultimately reduce traffic, or run off the games that provide the traffic.

Luck? Where's the luck?

I had zero dollars to start Threshold with. I had no investors. I started it when I was a student. Any costs incurred were paid for by money I earned in crappy jobs I had before graduating.

That isn't luck. That is hard work and sacrifice.

I quoted your entire screed because it really slaughters your point. It is obvious you are motivated by some kind of communistic, anti-success belief that those who work hard and succeed should be penalized for their success and forced to subsidize others "just because" they are successful.

Nobody has slammed on small muds, or made a single negative comment related to WHY they are small. You, however, have chosen to slam every successful game as automatically being unoriginal. That is narrow minded and immature.

The reason might be that these people expected TMS to be something _more_ than just a traffic exchange site.  

And I still don't see how eliminating voting bots, or even having separate lists would be negative for the site. I also didn't realise that  the site has new owners. What happened to Synozeer?

You're being defensive, and understandably so, because I have attacked your indirect attitude. However, you are also both hypocritical and wrong in your choices of nouns used to describe me. I have stated in this thread, several times, that some large MUDs are capable of not compromising certain valuable things to remain popular. See below; I have been on staff of some such MUDs. I do not, and could not reasonably claim otherwise. Therefor, your statement is, simply put, wrong. Re-read some of my posts if you want.

In addition to that, I could not even gather information on Threshhold's playerbase size because I was told that there is no "in-game command" to see howmany players are logged on at one time by your staff, during the application section of the game. Therefor, I am not directly targetting your MUD, I have next-to-no experience with it. The only thing I criticized, perhaps, was your indirect cold-shoulder to smaller MUDs.

Speaking from personal experience, however, I've been high-level staff on two MUDs which reached peaks of over 200 players. Both were very unique and very enjoyable games - on neither did I ever question whether their concerns were more with mass popularity than quality. I did advertising for both of these MUDs, and I have a very good grasp on what it takes to make it work.

I simply do not think that having a large playerbase necessarily makes one MUD better than another - and I bet that the vast majority of MUDers would not base its "success" merely off of its size/popularity. Trying to say that I'm an immature communist, just because I don't value gaming success by immediate commercial means, is just sort of silly. We're talking about a genre of free, indepth text-based online rpgs here - we can leave behind the western mentality that we deal with every day in real life long enough to try to take the genre as far as it can possibly go ... and if that exploration's not for you, at least give a nod of respect to the ones that it is for.

The amount of traffic some smaller MUDs can give you and/or this website is insignificant when compared to the amount of good, creative ideas/inspiration some of the more commercial MUDs could gain from these more secret successes. If you were open to that sort of thing, of course.

Seperating commercial from non-commercial MUDs as different list choices makes sense. Commercial MUDs have the money, or commercialize themselves to make the money, to be able to advertise and draw in online game wanderers who are easy to suck into mass-popular stylized games. Non-Commercial MUDs sometimes(besides half-assed ones) are focused more on creating something unique and wonderful. In film, independent films are judged in their own category, aka a "Film Festival"(like the Sundance or Cannes), and Hollywood movies are seperated into another category, with different award ceremonies. It is the same concept. Indy Films often-times are far more creative and focused on the art of creation, rather than the pay-off.

Why should the owner of this site care about creating one extra list that would show the community how the non-commercial MUDs are stacking up in votes? I'm assuming perhaps too much when I venture to guess that the creator of this site did it for his passion of online text-gaming, and not for a "get rich quick" scheme. If this is the case, then it would benefit the MUDing community to be able to more easily take a look at the more "independent" text rpgs out there.

All of this talk of business ventures is taking away from the game. Again, if you are really in this for the 'business', you should go join up with a graphical MMORPG. Maybe I'm pushing my case too much here, but I'm just really suprised the attitudes on this thread in particular.

As far as being off-topic - yes, we are, very much so. It's probably about that time to move on. : p

The real problem is with the way in which TMS fails to explain itself, or even worse how it portrays itself.

Incorrect. It's not a one-stop resource, or even a resource for that matter. It's a "traffic exchange", as Matt said. That should be reflected SOMEWHERE on the site. It is not however. The closest TMS comes to explaining itself is that phrase in their Homepage title banner. And that phrase is simply not true.

If TMS was really a one-stop MUD resource, you'd be able to find what you are looking for rather than what the MUDs who contribute the greatest traffic want you to find. If it was a resource instead of a "traffic exchange", it would be more helpful in helping those visiting the site find what they're looking for rather than whoring for those MUDs who send in traffic.

So perhaps the sub-quality commercial MUD owners have it right. But only so far as in practice. As far as perception, TMS is misleading visitors to the site and not clearly presenting their "service" as it really is. A nice public disclaimer somewhere is in order, explaining that TMS is not a resource, at least not an intentional one, contrary to their own self-description.

Take care,

Jason

To mud administrators, this is definitely a traffic exchange. But to players of muds, who have no stake in which games succeed and which fail, no vested interest in which games bring traffic here and which don't, this is a resource. It's where we come to look for available games that suit our interests. And isn't it interesting, there are VASTLY more players than there are mud administrators. Thing is, it's the admins who are the most vocal and prolific on this forum, which is only one part of the website. The biggest part, the most obvious part, the part that people see most prominently when they come for the first time, is the list itself.

This is why I offered the suggestion of splitting the list into two sections. Side by side, with the commercial games on the left and the non-commercial games on the right. That way, no one gets "front and center" except those who pay for the banner ads at the top, which is as it should be anyway.

It has nothing to do with communism. It has to do with the function of this website from the perspective of the *majority* of visitors - the players themselves.

I, and most of the people I know personally who mud, came to Topmudsites for the first time because we were looking for a mud to play. Not because we had any desire to bring traffic to the site. Our game wasn't even listed, so it was impossible to use the voting system to come here. We were trying to find out what was available as an alternative to what we were already playing. This is just a dozen or two of people I personally know. The 11th person that I know, of this group, might know another dozen or two people. The 14th person of this group might know another dozen or two people. Do some guestimate work and add it all up, and you've got a couple hundred people all coming to Topmudsites who are NOT using it as a traffic exchange. And that's just in -my- circle of "people I know". Grab a couple percentage points of the entire mudlist's playerbase, and you can easily be well into the thousands of people who come here because they're looking for new games to play, and NOT because they want to promote a traffic exchange.

Topmudsites IS a listing service, a resource for mudders. It's one of the two most prominent ones on the internet for English-speaking people (and for many who speak English as a second language).

If you ditched all "resource" capabilities and left in 'only' the traffic exchange capabilities, this website would very quickly become either totally vacant of substance, or become the "Iron Realms Secondary Website," since their players comprise the majority of people who click on their own site's little button to come here.

Lanthum @ Dec. 31 2005,06:37

You are the one that has got things wrong here. What people  are expecting is for the site to be what it was originally designed for, and what it advertises itself to be: A resource site for all mudders.

Claiming that it is nothing but a traffic exchange is actually quite insulting, considering the work that has been put into the site originally by the  owner, and the contributions made by various members in the various sections. (Which I assume that you never bother to read).

Actually some things in life _are_ free. One of those things is the free muds, run by dedicated people, who donate their own time and even pay the expenses for the server out of their own pockets, so that players can enjoy their creations for free.
The fact that some commercial muds that advertise themselves as 'free' actually have hidden costs, doesn't change this very basic fact about free muds.

It might not be your cup of tea, but you should at least respect it and recognise it for what it is.

Excuse me, who are you talking to here? I don't own a mud. I just play on a couple. I might want to try out some more, but since I am mainly interested in free muds, of course I would like separate lists, (especially in view of the misrepresentation of some commercial muds). I would also like the listing to be as cheat-free as possible. And it still surprises me how anyone could be against that.

And there is no need to scream at us, by the way. we are all perfectly capable of reading your post without all the caps.

To conclude this, I am not _expecting_ Synozeer to change anything.
I am however _hoping_ that he is following the thread, and maybe realising that the main part of the _real_ visitors here, (not the ones that just click the vote button and log out again), would like the site to be something more than just a 'traffic exchange'.

What it all comes down to is the purpose of the site. Is it a 'Mud resource', as is said on the top and like it was designed  to be? Or is it just a 'traffic exchange', as you and some owners of big commercial muds claim?  

Sure, I am hoping that Synozeer would listen to the arguments and decide to do some changes, which I think would make the site better for most mud players.

If he decides not to, that is his privilege as List owner. But I would like to hear it from _him_. Not from the_logos.

There are no new site owners. It is still just me.

And I am listening to the thread.

-Adam

I understand Threshold. You want to cater to the biggest Muds. They have the most to lose. However, by getting those smaller muds onto the list and making their users happier, they will vote more and see your mud more. Of course, that also goes the other way, those smaller muds have a better chance of luring your players away and I know, that is bad for business.

The question though. Do you want to improve the community as a whole, or be popular with the “most populous” muds?

I know threshold, you want the latter. I want the former.

If this is truly a resource, we should provide for the quality.
If this is a traffic exchange, we should provide for the quantity.

Those are my thoughts.

Long ago, Johor (our retired coder imp) told us 'anything can be coded.'   This small thought drummed up a lot of enthusiasm and boosted us into a stable orbit, along with the caveat, 'just because it can be coded does not mean it should be coded.'

Kudos to Synozeer, on several fronts - the most important of which is strength in the face of the tsunami of browbeatings on this topic and others in the past.  I'm grateful for the service that TMS provides, which, along with the services of several other mud-related sites, gives our game the exposure we desperately need.

I have never said anything related to "gaming success by immediately commercial means" or whether a "large player base makes one MUD better than another"? You are arguing against a straw man there.

If you want to turn this into a flame war, then you'll have to carry that on with yourself. If you want to discuss things reasonably, I'll try to participate.

Nobody said eliminating bots, itself, is bad for traffic. But the methods suggested here so far, WOULD be bad for traffic. They would reduce REAL traffic. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.


Would you look at a hammer and want it to be _more_ than just a hammer? Do you understand than wanting a hammer to be more than just a hammer is somewhat silly?

The voting element of TMS was specifically designed from the very beginning to be a traffic exchange. The only reason any web site on the internet has any sort of voting or polls is to generate traffic. Period. The votes/polls are always incredibly unscientific, so obviously there is no goal of "truth" for these polls. The goal is always traffic. Period.

It doesn't make any sense to even hope for a voting/poll area of a site to have any other goal or purpose. Traffic is specifically the goal of polls.

As for the whole of TMS, there already is more. There is a large discussion area, and an incredibly worthless review section that should, in my opinion, be completely removed (but that is another issue).

If your desire is for TMS to be a more robust site, suggest features to add, or suggest ways to improve the discussion forums. Discussing changes to the vote portion, especially ways that only reduce traffic, is not productive.

Furthermore, I simply do not believe that any of the people suggesting things like separate lists have ANY goal other than trying to get artificially enhanced prominent placement of their favorite game. They want popular muds to send traffic here, and then their mud to benefit from it unfairly and undeservedly. That's their honest motive, which they occasionally veil thinly with other, transparent goals.

Well my friend, believe it. I want to have tons and tons of lists to make every need of mine viewable.

Call it a fetish of lists.

The only reason I see that you are against it is because the mud beneath you might steal your players. And every mud beneath you is unworthy of the same treatment you get. I'd rather that the player has list for everything. So they can see a list like the front one with all the muds that fit their query. Censorship by massive amount of uninforming information is a major turn off.

I mean this when I search for death.
Really unproductive.

Hah, I don't want a flamewar Threshhold. Easiest way to avoid feeling like you are a part of one is to not incorrectly generalize other people's comments, and avoid calling them immature and communistic. Again, it's just silly.

My opinion remains the same; this site is supposedly a resource site, and therefor should be focused on the community as a whole, rather than just a few MUDs. Others have echoed me in this.

On that basis, I still believe improving the accuracy of a fair voting process, as well as creating seperate lists for commercial and non-commercial games is more resourceful/beneficial to the community as a whole.

One last note, Thresh - I never knew the size of your playerbase, nor am I familiar with you/your game really. My notes have nothing to do with you, beyond re-clarification of my purpose to solidify my opinions. So let's just leave things to that. : )

Wrong. But nice try at putting words in my mouth.

I love how you equate fairness with "catering to the biggest MUDs." That just cracks me up.


Why do they need to be made happier? They should already be ecstatic that something like TMS exists that they can use to easily get some attention and players. They pay nothing and they get to be on a list that is visited by thousands of mudders (the majority of them sent here by a handful of the more popular muds). I sure wish TMS had existed back when I was starting Threshold. It would have helped a TON.


They don't have a better chance, they are just putting a lot less at risk and getting a lot more benefit.

Imagine 2 lists side by side, like Jazuela and others have suggested.

A top 10 mud on one list, sends thousands of people to the site. This is a lot of traffic, and that is also a lot of players they are risking by saying "Hey, go to this site that lists other games."

A top 10 mud on the other list, perhaps sends tens of people to the site. This is not very much traffic. They did not risk much and they did not send a lot of traffic to the site. Traffic is what benefits the site, and traffic is what benefits all muds in the community.

Both muds got the exact same "reward": #1-10 placement and the top spot on a list. They are both listed equally prominently. Is this fair? Not even close.

Of course, you don't care. All you care about is figuring out ANY WAY to get your favorite mud a better listing, so it can benefit unfairly and undeservedly from the traffic sent by other games.

Just be honest, ok?

Stop kidding yourself by trying to paint me and others as people who want preferential treatment for popular games. We aren't asking for anything preferential. We are asking for things to stay the same as they are, which is a fair way to do things. You send traffic, you get listed higher. It is that simple.

What amazes me most of all, is to listen to people **** and moan and attack the very MUDs that are sending them traffic and giving them a CHANCE to get new players from the traffic they send.

It isn't enough that popular muds send the majority of the traffic here. They need to also give up the reward of prominent listing and share that with other muds as well.

It isn't enough that Synozzer creates a site that helps MUDs get publicity and new players, which they did not have before. He has to find ways to artificially boost up less popular (for whatever the reason) muds so they can gain more players from popular muds.

Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.

This is not being 'fair'; it is being self-serving. If this site is oriented towards helping the community out as much as possible, it would be useful to add *any* features to the site that could improve the community as a whole. And the vast majority of MUDs in the community probably would feel greatly aided in a seperation of commercial/non-commercial lists. If most MUDs do not agree with you that the status quo is the best viable option, then it could be assumed that the community as a whole wants to improve itself with the afforementioned change.

I'm currently working on a massive commercial MUD project(granted, trying to avoid things I generally dislike about some of such projects), and I still feel like I would prefer two lists. Again, it would benefit the community as a whole.

How exactly does it aid the community to alienate and run off the MUD that send the overwhelming majority of the traffic?

That's calling killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Right now, smaller muds have the enormous BOON that is TMS. The popular muds on the list did not have anything like TMS to help them out. Smaller muds have an opportunity to be listed on a site where traffic is sent from tons of MUDs (which means the visitors are self selected to be interested in MUDs).

Since almost EVERY SINGLE player of every MUD tries out other games eventually, this means every small mud has a shot at these players from all of these muds.

But you WILL run off popular games if you continually push for these unfair, communistic ideas like two side by side lists that give equal prominence to games that are not sending traffic.

Why should one mud send thousands of its players here, to earn a placement that another mud can earn by sending a handful of players. That makes no sense.

If you were to get your way, traffic would drop and that benefits nobody. That doesn't help the community at all.

What helps the community is driving as much traffic to a site that provides information on MUDs. That grows the community.

By the way, you seem to only consider "the community" to be small muds. You realize that the majority of the mudding community probably plays about 10-20 muds total, right? So things that benefit the big muds still benefits "the community" of which they are a part.

A vast majority of MUDs might want that, but the vast majority of MUDs are also garbage.

How about the vast majority of MUDers? You know, the actual PEOPLE playing the muds and visiting this site?

Take a look at the votes (as they existed when I wrote this post):

[code]
6249 votes, top 10
1573 votes, 11-20
778 votes, 21-30
390 votes, 31-40
280 votes, 41-50
208 votes, 51-60
133 votes, 61-70
102 votes, 71-80
74 votes, 81-90
59 votes, 91-100

Total Votes; 9846

Top 10; 6249 (63.46% of all votes)
Top 20; 7822 (79.44% of all votes)

Bottom 90; 3597 (36.53% of all votes)
Bottom 80; 2024 (20.56% of all votes)
[/quote]

So if you want to talk about majorities, the majority of the traffic comes from the top 10 muds on the list, and the OVERWHELMING majority comes from the top 20 (front page).

Think about that, before you start wondering how the majority of the people who visit the site feel. Think about where the majority of the traffic for this site comes from.

Don't kill the goose that laid the golden egg.