I am certain I seen a thread in which Synozeer said it WAS allowed to offer a mud wide reward for 'voting' on the top 100. However, in rules it states that you cannot offer ANY incentive. Which is correct or under what circumstances can we 'reward' our players for attaining a goal via voting?

Rewards of any sort, whether for single players tracked by IP address, or to the entire mud, or percentage of players, or one person, or anything, is completely forbidden and against the rules now.

There are no circumstances which you can reward players for voting.

Synozeer wrote

[/quote]I've decided to go ahead and not allow incentives and rewards to be given to players for voting. Here is the new entry in the Rules section:

Quote  
You CANNOT offer incentives or rewards to players for voting. That means you cannot give players items, experience, or anything else in return for votes. You CAN offer a game-wide prize (e.g. for ALL players on your mud) for reaching a goal, such as getting your mud the top 20, finishing in the top 10, etc.


I decided to go looking for what I had seen. Perhaps the rules section has not yet been updated to reflect this policy?

Directly from the rules...

You are not allowed to offer incentives to players to vote. That does not mean to say you can not give all players, even the players who have not voted, a reward if you come say 10th or above in the top 100.

Actually, you can't do that either. In the first draft of this rule you were able to, but now you're not allow to give rewards for anything to do with voting.

Synozeer

Actually, you can't do that either. In the first draft of this rule you were able to, but now you're not allow to give rewards for anything to do with voting.

Very cool news, Synozeer. I think this greatly improves the reliability of the data.

Other thought: What do you think about adding a "I found this review to be helpful/unhelpful" (Amazon-style) feature? For example, our MUD has dozens of reviews up, and a couple are of the "This MUD roolz. (n/t)" variety, whereas many others are quite thorough. It would be useful to me if I was browsing a MUD to be able to see "Helpful: 15 Unhelpful: 3" before I click on a review, to help guide traffic towards the better-written ones.

The sad truth is that even features like "I found this review useful" are targets of abuse. I remember seeing a series of posts where some moron was boasting about always clicking the OPPOSITE of what a reasonable person would select: Not Useful for anything that sounds like a fair and balanced assessment , and USEFUL L for obviously biased, bash-fests.

If I truly want a review of a book (I buy many, so I do this often) I read the 'official' review first, remembering that it will not likely point out flaws or other negative aspects; afterall, they ARE trying to sell the book. I then scan the user reviews; I feel that I can get a good sense of whether or not it was written intelligently with just a glance; sometimes the first sentence or two.

I respect Mud-Connector's use of a review format and that there is some level of accountability; they do not allow just anyone who logs onto the site to submit a review. That being said, even though there are a significant number of fluff and bash submissions here on TMS, I find *some* value in even those.

I understand why IMPs may wish to shield themselves from abusive former players who 'have an axe to grind', but even in those, I often pick up hints about the mud that ARE true.

Anyway, if it is an easy thing to implement, I would be all for adding the "I found this review usefull/not usefull" feature; if not, I don't think we will really be missing that much.

My 2 centavos' worth.

No one answered me the last time I asked this, so I'll ask it again.

Does Achaea still give bonuses when players vote?

I cannot be bothered to create a char there to find out.

Somone must know.

Nope. We stopped as soon as the rules were changed. We are sticklers for the rules and despite what some exciteable types might claim, we don't cheat.

--matt

So it's safe to say that, even though this News item from Achaea was dated *after* the new policy went into effect, it's since been rescinded?

Just curious...

Of course. It was rescinded as soon as the second rule change went into effect. Synozeer made two rules changes:
1. Disallowing individual rewards, followed, a few days later, by:
2. Disallowing all rewards.


--matt

Actually, when Synozeer and I were chatting about the rules, I considered bringing this up, but I figure, if you can survive as a MUD by punishing your players for not voting for you, well, more power to you. Our players loved getting the reward we gave them for voting, and I am still getting complaints from players asking why we had to remove it, but I'm quite sure that if it was a punishment for not voting instead of a reward for voting, we'd have an insurrection on our hands.

--matt

Nevynral says:I'd think that'd end up backfiring on the MUD, causing its players to vote for *other games* out of spite. Players don't tend to do things on behalf of their MUD to avoid being penalized - they can log off and avoid penalties. They do respond well to being rewarded, one way or another.

Do you think mud owners add their muds to the listings for an ego boost, or because they want players searching for specific muds to come across theirs?

Do you think mud owners post adverts to the promotion forums for an ego boost, or because they want to attract new players?

Do you think mud owners pay for advertising banners for an ego boost, or because they want to draw more attention to their mud?

Top Mud Sites is one of the most popular mud sites on the net - I'd probably guess the second most popular - and it's main "feature" has always been the "top muds" list. A mud which is in first place is going to gather a lot more attention than one which just adds a banner - and unlike banners, it's free advertising. All you have to do is get your players to vote.

Of course if the voting is unfair, then so are the results - if you do something which encourages (say) 80% of your playerbase to vote, while someone else is only able to get 40% of their playerbase to vote, it really doesn't take a great deal of complex maths to work out that the voting is giving a poor indication of what it's supposed to.

What exactly is it that the voting is supposed to represent?

You know, I get the feeling that people post in the promotion forums largely for an ego boost sometimes. If not, they're not thinking very clearly, as these forums are read by no more than a large handful of people. Not a very attractive advertising medium.

In response to what topmudsites measures, however, I'd say it's completely fair and measures exactly what it's supposed to: How much traffic you send here. The only way that could be unfair is if someone figured out a method to spoof TMS with fake IPs, or hacked the database. In the end, any assumption that TMS measures anything on the rankings list beyond traffic sent here is a perception imposed upon TMS by the user, not the other way around.
--matt

I run a site that currently sits in the 21-40 turf of the listing.

And I think, after much consideration, that the direction we're going with the "rewards-for-voting" dilemma isn't necessarily the best to follow.

Oh, I definitely believe it's wrong to use fake IPs to inflate votes and bypass the one-vote-every-twelve-hours limit. But even if I might never see my site in the Top 20 *again*, I still think games should not just be allowed, but *encouraged* to hold gamewide rallies to see if their players can pull together as a team and reach a certain level by voting, and they should be allowed to hand out XP or whatever they want as a reward to their players at the end of each voting cycle.

Part of building a successful game is developing a sense of camaraderie and community - and Top MUD Sites provides one of those cool competitive features that can allow a Little Game With Attitude the potential to rally and make it into the Top 20 sometimes. It's not merely an ego boost for a game developer, but also for the players, to see their game on the list. That's a motivator for building community. It also keeps people coming back to TMS, more and more. When we had the ability to reward an entire game for making progress on the list, I saw more of my players perusing the forums and posting here. Since we quit that due to the rules changes, there's really not as much motivation to either 1) vote or 2) spend time in the TMS forums.

Some people will abuse the system, no matter what form it takes or what rules you put on it.

I just think we should be careful not to regulate the system into oblivion. The current setup - banning any gamewide rewards - marginalizes the players who might get behind a voting rally for their favorite game.

I understand the *point* behind a blanket ban on rewards-for-voting, and I respect the premise, but I suggest we keep in mind that adding regulation on top of regulation to the site may have a long-term detrimental effect. A game like mine, for example, might make the Top 20 if I can rally my troops with the promise of XP at the end of the cycle. But the bigger games don't *need* to dangle a carrot-and-stick much - they've often got the playerbase to dominate without it. Taking away the gamewide-reward option hurts the smaller games, in the long run.

All that said: I once again encourage those small games who *can* to help support Top MUD Sites and buy a banner ad that can run in the front page rotation. Now that I'm back to writing a column for TMS, I'll probably get back to advertising - and we got lots of visits to my games thanks to those banner ads when we ran them in the past.

It's a very rough indicator of the popularity of a mud.

I guess I don't really understand this question. It measures what it measures, which is how much unique traffic you send here every 12 hours. Why try to draw other, weakly-correlated, conclusions?

--matt

Assuming all other things equal.

As I said, assuming all other things equal. If the mud does something which encourages a much higher percentage of the players to vote, then obviously the results would be uneven. But generally speaking, without incentives, you're going to get around the same percentage of players voting on most muds.

Because many people see the phrase "Top Mud Sites" and think "Best Mud Sites."

This leads to all sorts of misunderstandings, as becomes obvious in this and other threads.

___
Stilton

Sure, I understand that, but that doesn't answer my question. How does the weakly-correlated conclusion that ranking means generally larger playerbases help with that at all? Neither speak to "Best mud sites". One speaks to how much traffic a mud can drive here. Another speaks to how many players they have. In neither case can "best" be extrapolated, unless your personal definition of "best" means "can drive the most traffic" or "has the most players". I know there are lots of MUD players who specifically look for muds without hundreds of simultaneous players.

My point was just that "most players" is as irrelevant to "best" as "able to drive most traffic to TMS" is.

--matt

Driving the most traffic to TMS is not irrelevant; it is the model TMS operates with. Muds with the most traffic get the 'premium' positions.

Casual observers and those new to the site reasonably think top means 'best' in terms of popularity, quality, fun, etc.

It takes time and experience in the form of delving into the forums to read players' views about particular muds, get exposed to the long debates and flames over how some muds may be 'cheating' the system to improve their positioning, and actually logging into some of the 'top' muds to find out that TMS isn't really a listing of mud sites in any order that fits with those initially perceived values.

It is, rather, just as you have stated, the muds best "able to drive most traffic to TMS." While this is meaningful from a business standpoint for the individual muds and TMS, you have to admit it is much less so to prospective players.

Note that I did not say that the rankings were totally useless from a prospective player's standpoint, just much less so than the advertisement/promotion angle.

Though your mud was the primary target of most of the accusations of 'cheating' for rank, I was not referencing it specifically above... I meant that it takes exposure to those arguments, hearing both pro and con, to understand that the 'rankings' are not what you may be inclined to think they are at first glance.

Sure, of course.
Exactly! That's why any particular statistic is not really going to speak to 'best'. What's 'best' in anything is always dependent on the criteria you're using, and those criteria differ for everything. MTV's movie awards can claim to rate the best movies in the world, because in the view of their procedures (I don't know how they're actually chosen, but I think it has something to do with people going to their website and voting) they do choose the top movies in the world. Someone from, say, the Toronto Film Festival might find a claim like that from MTV a bit laughable, however, because his/her definition of 'best' is going to be different.

As consumers, we all have our priorities, and we all either learn to be skeptical of -any- claim of "best", or we're suckers. Happily, most people do develop some level of individual judgement and discernment, and are able to deal with an advertising-laden world. Some people might think that topmudsites (or -any- site. There is no format that could possibly rank the best MUDs in some universal sense, as there's no such thing. There is only the best mud from a particular point of view.) does actually somehow manage to mystically determine what the best muds in the world are, but they clearly have bigger problems than playing a mud that they may or may not end up liking (like any mud).

There's actually a really good essay by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin called, "The Pursuit of the Ideal" in which he talks about how in his view two factors, above all else, have shaped human history in the 20th century. 1. The development of science and technology. 2. The "great idelogical storms that have altered the lives of virtually all mankind (stemming largely from the Russian revolution and its aftermath).

What's interesting is that I constantly see those same trends in muds, particularly on text mud boards, as opposed to general mud (including the graphical muds or mmogs as some people call them). The technology aspect is obvious (can't have muds without them), but the look at all the ideology you see. They dominate many of the boards, and people go to war (flame wars) over them. Everyone gets riled up because someone contends that this feature or that is the devil, or is absolutely required to be "the best". We've all seen the silly little flame wars over commercial vs. free muds, or over roleplaying, with people on both sides acting as if it's just unthinkable that a mud could be good with feature X or without feature Y.

In other words, while I recognize the natural inclination to tend towards exclusive viewpoints like "My idea of the best mud is the objectively correct and best idea of the best mud." there is no point in catering either to people who believe that THEIR idea of the best mud/best real world is the only good one (take the President of the US, for instance. He certainly feels that way, or acts as if he does) or to people who are willing to believe that someone else's idea of the best mud/world has exclusive claim to being universally Right.

So, in the absense of not only the ability to pick some objectively "best" mud, but the actual absense OF a universally "best mud", does it really matter what criteria you use to pick one? "Ability to drive traffic here" is just as good an indicator as "how many rooms" or "does this mud have chinchillas?". Just like any site with reviews of anything, the only way that site has any real value to you is for you to check out the "recommended" muds/books/movies/etc and then decide if the criteria that site/company/person uses fits into your idea of what's good.

For instance, I find one of the SF Chronicle's movie reviewers Mick LaSalle to have such completely different opinions on movies than me that I just ignore his reviews entirely. On the other hand, I like David Ansen of Newsweek, and Roger Ebert of the Sun Times (though I just read his website, which rocks.... Go check out his "Great Movies" section. Fantastic resource for film lovers.) The -only- way I could possibly make an accurate judgement about whether any of their reviews are useful to me is to read them, then go see the movies, and start ignoring the critics with whom I didn't agree. Everyone does that automatically. I'm sure you have friends whose opinions on a movie will influence you to go see it, and friends whose opinions on a movie you'll discount. There may be reasons to read critics you don't like, but as I read critics solely to decide which movies to spend my time and money on, it's key to find ones whose preferences are more or less aligned with mine.

Anyway, if there were a whole cadre of professional mud reviewers, I'd probably find that a lot more useful than topmudsites. But, there's not, and given the amount of time it takes to actually fully learn about a good text mud (hundreds of hours, especially in muds where the elder game is a lot different than the newbie or midlevel game) and the small size of the market, isn't likely to ever be. Without those multiplicity of opinions to pick and choose from, you're stuck. You could have an official reviewer, but his or her opinions are no better than the current system, as if the reviewer's preferences differ from yours, the review is meaningless (and regardless of your position, a majority of people are going to disagree with you on a whole bunch of things).

Thus, you may as well use a generic metric, whether it's driving the most traffic here, number of rooms, or whether or not your mud has crazy spider monkeys with banana-shaped laser guns. Of all those generic metrics, the one that is most likely to bring you the most traffic if you're trying to make a ratings site is by measuring the traffic a website brings you and rewarding it with a privileged list position. Getting people to compete to bring you business, essentially.

--matt

Or more accurately, "Quality is in the eye of the beholder.", but yeah, basically.

And I agree that even the nonsense that generally passes for reviews can have some utility. It's just that it doesn't make for a good business model for a ranked list, as there's no incentive for anyone to drive traffic here. I don't actually even allow reviews of Achaea, however, as the quality is generally so bad that I don't even want to be associated with them, useful or not.

--matt

Siskel sucked (not to slam on a dead guy). Ebert is a true film lover though. His tv shows are not particularly good. Read his website (). He's a true film lover, without being a complete snob like A.O. Scott of the NY Times was or is (not sure if he still writes for them). He's got a very high appreciation for pure "fun" movies. He even gave the last Harry Potter movie 3 stars (not my thing, but I can understand why he did).

I think my best friend and I are the only film lovers on earth that didn't like Crouching Panda, Leaping Ferret. I swear, after the raves it got at Toronto, I was expecting the greatest film ever made.

--matt

I've never watched it. No offense to the fans of it, but fighting in the treetops and the ridiculous overuse of wires just puts me off from ever seeing the thing.

I was trying to figure out how to respond to your question about how my claim led to attempts to data-mine the voting for information that really isn't there, and the exchange between you (the_logos) and Loremaster helped a lot:

Someone who wanders up to the site expects to see the 'Best' muds (ignoring for a second that this is a meaningless phrase).

When people see how the system works, they generally seem to have one of two reactions:

1) Oh, ok, the voting is a marketing scheme for the topmudsites.com website. Ho, hum.

2) Hey, the muds near the top aren't there because of any measure of quality, it's just votes by their players!  We've got to fix this to make sure the results really show the Best muds on top!

People with reaction number 2 will then, with their desire for the rankings to better reflect what they WANT the rankings to reflect as motivation, do all sorts of strange things.  

Try to extract weakly correlated data from the results because it's what they think the voting SHOULD measure, complain about the ways votes can be gained, etc.

Hope I'm clearer now?

___
Stilton

Personally, I feel that the voting should be more of a quality thing. There is no way to have it so that people could. My idea that I was having:

Elect delegates who have no immortalship on any MUD or have some kind of adminstration job on Top Mud Sites, Mud Connector, or any web site like that. The delegates go around, try out a MUD for a bit, and report back their findings and vote for the MUDs they looked at (rate 1-10). Players can still vote like they do now, but that way it would even out the votes a little bit based on quality.