[Zhiroc]

I agree, but it seemed like there was a building consensus away from the "defined payment model" proposal you had earlier put forth towards the describe-only free text. Maybe it's now begun to swing back.

But by the same token, there's no way to prove anything a bit of advertising says. So accordingly, why bother having any facts stated about a MUD other than their telnet and web addresses?

The thing about saying that a MUD accepts no money at all is pretty easy to tell. Obviously, you can't hide it all that much if you expect to take in any money. And anyone who does and lies about it would get savaged about as much as someone who violates DIKU.

Well, that would be nice... but I agree it would be next to impossible with most any donation or optional payment model. I once wrote an article about how much it takes in credits to do that for a character in a certain MUD. That part was hard enough. But then to calculate cost, it depended on volume purchases for one, and then you have "sales", and then finally, the ways one can "win" free credits, and/or buy them on the in-game market using in-game gold. The latter even turns into an argument that these credits are therefore not even a "required payment". I'm done arguing the point, except as an example of why I say that pay-(or notpay-)for-perks is such an opaque and complicated payment model that it borders on (admittedly the legal side of) deceptive, and is therefore one that I will never avail myself of again, and will advocate this position to try to convince others not to as well.