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Every MUDer has his(or her) own cup of tea that they prefer. I just prefer to know what cup of tea I am drinking before I buy it. Some players play Achaea/etc without spending money and still enjoy it - it is statistically unlikely that they enjoy success as others do, but I am always glad when they enjoy their favorite MUD.
Some of us aren't huge fans of IRE MUDs - for instance, I've played them all and not really enjoyed any of them, besides Aetolia(slightly). If I am looking for questing, there are better quest-oriented MUDs. If I want a large world, there are plenty of them. If I want staff-sponsered events, they are all over the place. If I even want solid mob-bashing, I can *still* do better than IRE. If I want PvP, I can certainly do better... all in my opinion.
Not all of us enjoy the IRE MUDs, but that's not important - what is important is the impact some sketchier large MUDs have on the rest of the community. This forum is a perfect example; the owner is not able to choose what should be an obvious improvement to the current system, because his most wealthy clients are large commercial MUDs opposed to giving non-commercial MUDs an equal chance on the listings page(we're not talking about giving them free advertising banners, which you pay for with cash).
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The most obvious answer(of several) to your challenge is that Adam switching to a split system would improve the quality of the site, in relation to what it advertises itself as. "A One Stop MUD Resource". If you're creating the best MUD Resource you can, it behooves you to include as much variety as possible. Which brings me to my next point;
Why should Adam lose traffic? The top MUDs on the listing are commercial(largely), and they are competing with each other for the top spots. They would continue to vote and bring in traffic, as they do currently. Also, a second list would mean that smaller MUDs that feel like voting is pointless because they could never buy the playerbase Achaea has to vote for their MUD... those MUDs would all of a sudden have a reason to vote again, and there would be more competition in the secondary listing. If anything, this improvement could increase traffic.
The only reason Adam could lose traffic is, as Matt says, by "alienating" his most traffic'd MUDs. This is basically short-hand for Matt saying that if non-commercial MUDs are given their own list, he(or others) will send less traffic to the site in retaliation. Sounds like financial strong-arming to me, and is just another notch on the list of reasons to disapprove of certain companies/admins.
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