[Newworlds]

Hello, mcfly, are you in there? *knock knock knock*. I'm talking about the "re-startup" of this thread in the last day, not posts made a week or two ago.

[chaosprime]

Then I have even less idea how you reached your conclusion.

[Newworlds]

Read the last five or six posts carefully, prior to my original. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

[Lasher]

As a side note, this whole thing wasn't dropped. I've been extremely busy on an offline project most of the month of September and have only been able to get to the bare minimum to keep the site functioning.

Even the new rankings (daily/weekly/etc) happily building away in the background haven't been linked yet, let alone new development.

[Newworlds]

Still, you should put this on the backburner. It is far less important than the higher priority items on your list.

[Emil]

And who are you to dictate what Lasher's priorities should be?

[shasarak]

I think the question you and Threshold need to answer is this: players clearly want to be able to search for MUDs on the basis of their officially stated policy on donations/payment and their impact; why are you so desperate to prevent players from being able to perform such a search?

[Valg]

The fact that this thread is by far the largest one since Lasher re-invigorated the site... speaks to a different conclusion. It would be silly for me to say that "Lasher making more forums for jokes!" is the site's highest priority, when there's a MUD Humor forum sitting largely unused.

Specifically, increasing the utility of the site makes it more than a voting portal, and pure voting portals are absolutely rampant on the 'Net. Being responsive to forum communities helps keep them active-- people weren't talking about TMS when the previous ownership went dormant. And being able to demonstrate that the site is a useful utility for players (by addressing a major flaw in the search utility) greatly expands the number of people who will link it or use it.

[Brody]

Agreed. Lasher's taking our feedback and actually doing something with it. I'm hoping to see this kind of momentum carry onward for a while

[Newworlds]

Okay, since you don't agree he has higher priority items than a new check box for free or pay, I will have to define them for you and Valg, since he also thinks I was talking about Joke forums or other inconsequential additions.

Higher priorities for your edification and argument:
There are likely 10 or 20 more priorities a lot higher than this one. I personally don't know Lasher's priority list and am certainly not dictating it to him, he can make his own choices, but let's be clear about something: This thread is not so long and huge because PLAYERS are dieing to have a new definition and search engine with four or five boxes about FREE games. This thread is so long BECAUSE many admins of supposed "free" games are angry at the commercial games that utilize the word free. This is very obvious if you weed through this thread and look at the posts.

This is also true about all forums. Look on any forum and you will find the most read and posted threads are those of strong argument and heated discussion, not necessarily the best topic or quality topic. Stop kidding yourself claiming that this thread is a big thread because it is soooooo needed. That's b.s., you know it, I know it.

Oh please. Again, I didn't see 100's of players crying out about a need for a search system detailing what free means and what muds are free. What I saw was a bunch of Admins of pseudo free muds complaining about the commercial muds usage of the term free. I saw a couple of "brand new" posters make some comments like they are players, but really that could have been a poser and some of them sounding like it.

Let's be honest with ourselves on this issue and truthful about why this thread is so long. Thank you and good day.

[chaosprime]

The term for what you mean now is "sock puppet".

[Newworlds]

The image that projects is hilarious. ROFL

[the_logos]

The difference is that behavior that is contrary to the roleplaying mandatory policy is verifiable by simply playing the game. By definition, in fact. If you see someone talking about Simpsons in a roleplaying mandatory game, you can be positive that roleplaying mandatory is a policy and that the reality does not match up to the policy.

Selling gear takes place out of the game, however, not in it. In-game, A giving B an item looks the same pretty much regardless of the transaction that took place out of game to a player.

RMT = trade between players, not first party sales from the admin. Players typically don't provide each other with receipts when trading stuff between themselves.

If you're talking about first-party sales from admins, then you can produce a receipt if and only if the admin in question chooses to provide one. If he doesn't, it's not verifiable. Heck, I run successful commercial MUDs and you don't even get a receipt if you mail us cash, check, or a money order (though you do via credit card or various other online purchase methods).

In other words, the only way it's verifiable is if the admin-seller chooses to make it so. There is literally no feasible way to verify that it happened otherwise. Contrast that with your roleplay example, where by definition violations of the policy are detectable in-game.

--matt

[the_logos]

1. There are 10s of millions of text/graphical MUD players in the world. To claim that a handful of people expressing an opinion on a tiny forum equates to the general opinion of all MUD players is somewhat absurd. TMS forum users are in no way representative of the MUD population at large.

2. I'm not trying to prevent anything from being able to perform such a search, nor am I capable of doing so. Currently, the non-existence of a way to perform such a search is preventing them from performing it and I am quite certain that I'm not responsible for implementing development priorities or development itself on TMS. If you feel that a discussion about the pitfalls involved with a particular course of action is counter-productive because it may give Lasher (who IS responsible for what is implemented on TMS) more than one point of view rather than only yours, that is, with all due respect, not a complaint I can take seriously.

--matt

[the_logos]

Hey hey now. I appreciate that we are somewhat in agreement on this issue but please don't malign posters just because their post count is low. How long someone has been a forum member or how many posts they've made doesn't have any bearing on the quality of their reasoning or opinions.

(Sorry, pet peeve of mine. I often hear people hear dismiss new posters in this way on this forum and others, and I don't think it's cool.)

--matt

[Newworlds]

I will agree with you in principle, but not in practice on this issue. The reason I will disagree is that the people I'm referring to (and I'll research and discount my own claim if I'm wrong) logged on ONLY for this post and strangely in the middle of the discussion oddly supporting one side. I'll find the posts and again apologize if I'm wrong.

[Newworlds]

After researching as I stated I would in my previous post, here are the facts:

So there you have it. Some research and the reason I posted what I did, Logos. I think it also shows a tremendous lack (as I stated in a post #450) of player concern but mostly Admin's arguing with eachother about the meaning of Free.

[Brody]

So, of those, only one really seems to match your possible "sock puppet" profile. Out of seven. Talk about making a lot out of nothing

I think you could have found more productive ways to spend your time.

Overall, I think the general consensus favors having the information and letting the customer beware (and check it out for themselves).

[the_logos]

Gore is an admin on Batmud btw.

--matt

[Newworlds]

Look again. Posters 3 and 6 (2 out of 7) fit the category. And, my research also proved my earlier point. That is: The players don't have a definitive issue with this as shown by the other 5 out of 7. We the Admins do.