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No - so obviously when someone else looks at him, they should see something else. It's only a problem if the information sent to the player is potentially inaccurate - so in this case, if the description is static (ie shows exactly the same information regardless of who is looking).
Well I think "you" is the ideal solution (I will include my reasoning at the bottom of this post). Take any example of when "you" is not used in a room description and I'll show you an alternative way to describe it using "you". Further more, show me any static description (either with or without the use of "you") and I'll show you information in it which is potentially inaccurate - and it's the inaccurate information, not the use of "you", which is the problem.
Don't confuse "fixing the problem" with "hiding the symptoms".
EXACTLY - which is the very point I was making!
Anyway, here's the post I mentioned, which I originally wrote in December 2001, in response to someone who claimed that the use of "you" was one of their personal pet peeves:
One of my personal pet peeves is people who think that using "you" in a room description is wrong. There is nothing wrong with using second person - indeed, for a mud it is the ideal choice, and most of those who claim otherwise rarely have any explaination for WHY it's bad, other than "that's the way I was taught". I "taught" my cat to use a litter tray, but that doesn't mean I wanted her to use it for the rest of her life - it was just a short term solution to keep her from making a mess on the carpet. Teaching a builder to use third person is pretty much the same thing - it's an aid for incompetent writers who haven't been "potty trained". The trouble is, it's a bad habbit which seems to stick with them, and with which they contaminate others. Not only does this stunt the creativity of the writer and the quality of the mud, but it also gives the builder the false impression that by not using "you" they've suddenly become a "good builder". Here are some points to take into consideration:
1) Many of the early areas (ie stock areas) were badly written. They were also written in second person. Many people seem to think that the two things are related. They are not. Writing in third person can be good practice, and it's easier than writing in second person, which is perhaps why newbie builders are often taught that way. In addition, because most academic work is written in third person, builders are likely to be more comfortable with that style of writing.
2) Writing in second-person is not "bad writing style". It is "unusual", because it places the reader into the story. As the idea of most muds is to make the reader feel like they are their character, this is ideal. If you'd rather create a generic "picture on the wall" description that different players can look at and try to interpret as best they can to imagine what their characters would see, use third-person. If you'd rather tell the player EXACTLY what their character can see, hear and smell, making them feel as if they are actually looking through the eyes of their character (rather than reading about their character in a book or watching them on TV), use second person.
3) It is bad style to mix first/second/third person. If you decide to use third person in your descriptions, you should change the rest of the mud to the same style - so "You draw your sword" should be "KaVir draws his sword", "Bubba grins at you" should be "Bubba grins at KaVir", "You get a big pot pie from your backpack" should be "KaVir gets a big pot pie from his backpack", etc.
4) The reason many people started using third person in muds is because it's easier to make the descriptions "generic" (ie, so they don't contain things specific to a certain character). However dynamic description snippets have been available for over two years now. If your coders find it too difficult to install snippets, or if you are too lazy to put the extra time into writing dynamic descriptions, then you may want to stick to third person.
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