[the_logos]

You can't verify whether a MUD owner is taking payments from players and rewarding them for it unless they are open about it. Fundmentally, it can be a completely opaque process if the MUD owner chooses to make it so, and since a negative cannot be proven there is neither any way for a MUD owner to defend against this accusation if he's innocent nor any way for TMS to prove it happened.

That is different from most of the other checkboxes used to describe a MUD, even in the very 'grey' areas like "Encouraged" roleplay vs. "Mandatory" roleplay" vs. "Accepted" roleplay. Anything about the game itself can, at least in theory and with enough time, be checked using whatever definition of, for instance, "Encouraged" that TMS wishes. Behind the scenes actions have no reasonable possibility of ever being verified. Even in the completely absurd and hypothetical situation where a TMS administrator/moderator is given access to a MUD's logs, those logs are all completely in control of the MUD operator to begin with and have essentially no value as a way to audit the MUD as a result.

The point here is just that some things about a MUD can actually be verified. Some cannot, and whether a MUD's owner gains revenue from players or not cannot be verified, nor can whether players are rewarded for sending revenue to the MUD owner. Can't really call it donations either when it's just income that the MUD owner is free to spend on anything he/she wishes, barring the hypothetical case of a registered non-profit. What the MUD owner spends income from MUD players on is equally unverifiable in practice.

There is no other option in the 'advanced search' for MUDs that is fundamentally unverifiable.

--matt