The fact that the person who admins the system is the one who ultimately has to implement certain things does not automatically mean that they should be the ones who make all the decisions. The "Its mine im in control" attitude is rather outdated and one that is more likely to lead to eventual trouble when compared to a more open, transparent and community inclusive way of doing things. If the old way of doing things was so good, why is it that people now seem to have a need to change how things were done?
As if history is no example, every dictatorship in history have been brought to bear by the actions of a few determined people, some have even gone as far as to say Cratalus has won the war against Samson and has dethroned the leader of the once mighty Smaug empire. The way forward for any community is though engagement and inclusion of its members, through openness and the mentoring of some of the brighter more level headed people and those who show promise and talent.

The views that have so far been expressed in this thread are in no way representative of the greater community and that to garner a broader range of ideas of the wants and needs of the community at large, the admins of muds who used IMC should be informed of the presence of this thread and encouraged to participate in the formulation of the rules and also to the general way forward fo IMC in the future.

There is a real opportunity here to make some bold changes that will effect the greater culture of muds, lets not waste it because it might seem easier to take the antiquated approach of 1 man ruling with a big stick.

Maybe, maybe not, either way, the fact remains that whoever has control of the server(s) does, in fact, have the final absolute authority short of folks creating a new network on their own.


Um what?!? This is so not about the Samson/Cratylus thing and Samson wasn't the "leader of the once mighty Smaug empire".. in fact, it's not really even reasonably fair to say that there is/was such a thing as a mighty Smaug empire since the Smaug community has long been split about various versions and FUSS notions and such. If anything, Thoric was/is the throned leader… and I doubt you'd find many who'd consider him that either. Samson was a great contributor to, and a highly respected member of, the Smaug community, but he was hardly dethroned by Cratylus. :lol:


Woah there hos'! They've been told about this thread 72 times (literally) by the inews bot alone before this post that I'm making right now and it's been discussed several times on ichat and pchat since Kayle started it, what else are we supposed to be doing to let them know about it? Should we email every MUD gamer in the world and invite their opinion, even those who we don't necessarily care to hear from like Cratylus and Kyndig?

out of curiosity The_Fury, do you use imc? What name do you go by?

No, he doesn't use IMC

And yet at the end of the day there's no denying that all the committee debate in the world can't change that the server is in fact run by one single person who has access to it. If fundamental true change is what you're after, then you need to break that model somehow. Good luck. Because the nature of how the network currently operates prevents mob rule for a very good reason.



Yeah yeah, blah blah blah. We know you're tickled pink inside to think Cratylus has that kind of power. Get over yourself already. As Conner already pointed out, there was/is no "once mighty smaug empire" for me to have been dethroned as the leader of. You sound just like Kyndig who was giddy as all hell after torching the Smaug forums on his site thinking he'd finaly killed off the big bad nuisance of a codebase he'd always hated. Like a Phoenix, it found a new life elsewhere and is doing just fine.

Oh, and this utopian wonderland you're dreaming of? Fat chance. I really hate to be the downer on everyone's discussion, but cold hard reality will sink in sooner or later and you'll all realize this has been attempted and failed several times before in the past and it's always resulted in the collapse of the network in question. Things eventually return to one of two models: Total anarchy where a server is launched in fire-and-forget mode with no rules enforcement and a complete lack of human decency, or one where the server admins deal with everything on their own as issues come up. If you need specific examples of each, they're staring you in the face. I3 is total anarchy with an utter lack of human decency and has survived for 10 years in that mode. IMC is admin controlled at each server and though it has changed hands several times in the last 10 years, it too has survived running the same way it always has.

Communism doesn't work. It never has and never will. And don't point to China and say "uh…." because technically they're no longer communist in the true sense of the word.



Which greater community would this be? The one full of all the trolls and human garbage found elsewhere? I think it's safe to say none of us wants to see those people on the network. The admins of MUDs already on IMC are not those people. And they already know this thread is here as long as they're seeing the inews notifications. If they're not then I'm sure someone will mention it on ichat soon enough and those who want to come add their 2 cents will.



The nature of the IMC network makes it impossible for 1 man to rule with a big stick unless there's only one server. Think of IMC as a confederation of server admins and you'll be on the right track. And besides, making such crap characterizations only proves you've never actually participated in IMC or you'd know that in the last two years there's been no "ruling" anyone other than banning one problem member from the network. Otherwise things have been fairly tame compared to that broader community you seem to think is so much better.

Actually to many Samson was considered that, for the most part Samson was the face of Smaug, Fuss, AFK, IMC, MUD Bytes among other things. Mayby he was not literally those things, but to many people who i have spoken to, thought of him as such. I speak often with people who work on or develop muds do not actively participate in forums like this, who choose to stay on the fringes because of how the community is run and or how certain members act and treat each other, some of the very things that have been expressed to me have been the driving force and reasoning in how i have changed the way that i interact with the community as a whole.




No, i do not use IMC nor does my codebase have the code installed. My purpose within this discussion has been that of the external observer. With the intent of sparking some debate in areas i feel that are generally lacking. I think that change is a good thing, that a shift away from the old culture and way of doing things is be something that is long over due. The fact that some are thinking and talking about it is a good thing and it is good to see that many differing views and opinions have been expressed without this falling into anarchy.



Sorry Conner, i did not know that it has been advertised on IMC, in which case its rather sad to see such a poor turnout for a discussion that may actually impact them as end users. Hos, wasn't that in Bonaza, hehe now we are showing our ages. LOL.

Wow, that's.. sort of sad that there might be that many people who have opinions to express but have taken so little effort to learn about the codebase and its origins that they'd assume it was all Samson's baby. In fact, and I'm certain that someone here will be quick to correct me if I'm mistaken, I don't believe that Samson actually was solely responsible for any of the projects that you mentioned and that he actually only sort of inherited IMC and some of the other projects that he's been nominally in charge of which you didn't mention. He's very good and well respected and had been quite a driving force in the community, but I think you may be giving credit beyond the reality there.

On the other point you've mentioned, for the most part I think the new you is quite an improvement overall, for what that's worth. :smile:


Perhaps you should join us on IMC some time and see what you think, you might just be surprised to find that we're a pretty good crowd who does a lot to help each other out over the network most of the time with a good bit of friendly chatter and only an occasional tease or witticism to round things out …well, most of the time. We're still human and we do play around often enough for this whole discussion to have come up in the first place, obviously enough, but mainly it stemmed from one person being a jerk (who wasn't actually supposed to be on the network from the mud he was using in the first place) and a couple of other people from a new mud not realizing that he was out of line, especially in using the network to advertise.


True, but like any general election, one sort of has to assume that if everyone is given the opportunity to vote and they choose not to, they've still made their opinion clear in a manner of speaking… Why, yes he was, and yes, I find that I do that entirely too often compared with how often I actually intend to do so.. :lol:

Actually I am not, contrary to what you might think, our personal differences have not influenced any part that i have contributed to this debate. I have chosen not to engage you in certain aspects of the debate because it would spiral into the type of arguments that we have had in the past. You and I have vastly different opinions about a lot of things and that is likely to never change, for myself it has been better to accept it, move on and to carefully choose the subject matter that we engage in.

Well, I'm glad we had some "constructive" commenting and we all got that out of our systems… :thinking: Maybe we can move on now, and go back to where we were before we all got bitter again?

Here, have a random kick ass screenshot to look at: http://www.iguanadons.net/gallery/The-Sp...



Honestly I'm not sure exactly how to take this. On one hand it's an incredible compliment by those who feel that way. On the other, it's incredibly ignorant to assign so much credit to me.

Smaug is by no means mine. Spearheading a drive to fix its problems is a far cry from the true talent that lay beneath, marred by bugs. Think of it this way. Smaug was rough cut. I led the effort to polish it up. Even so, a lot of people have contributed to that effort, so to say it was all me is a bit weird. The end result of that effort being FUSS and its continued development, even if I'm no longer taking a very active role in that now.

AFKMud was more or less a sleeper. I had high hopes that what I was doing with it after the initial release would catch on and become popular. No such luck. It drew very little notice and ended up becoming a huge drain on my time for no real benefit. It's somewhat ironic that now that development has been shut down a lot more interest is being generated in it.

IMC seems to be a hot potato of the MUD world. Nobody really wants to keep ahold of it for very long. It tends to spark anger, hatred, bitter words, heated debate, and massive upheavals. It's highly volatile, yet somehow has managed to survive all of this. It may yet survive this next upheaval. However, I'm not confident of that based on past history. Every effort to go communist with it has failed, resulting in a new network springing up that sticks more to the old ideals of "be nice, have fun, and forget there's an admin lurking". It's happened three times since I took a serious interest in it. Strangely enough I seem to be one of the few members who has ridden through it all and stuck around. I may come off harsh about the whole issue of committee debate and administration, but I speak from experience having been down this road before. Three other networks have died in failure attempting to do the same thing being debated now. If my experience and contributions are as valuable as people say, it would do them good to listen to what I'm saying behind the bellowing blowhard talk.

As for MudBytes, who knows how I ended up being "the man" but I suppose it did happen. I more or less settled into the day to day public side of things and I'm sure I need not go back over that ground again since most of you were there to witness it. Not coincidentally, most of the trouble was caused by the same person who got banned from the network. I know nobody wants to hear it, but it's there plain as day. He's gone now and things here have been far less hostile than before. That said I've always felt MudBytes needs to be more of a true community effort. The tools have been provided for that kind of participation, but apparently there's not that much interest. Still, it's available if people would just use it. The site isn't just about the forums after all. :)

Yes your right, i guess i should log in and see for myself how things are now days.


Yes this is right also, in a manner, the lack of input by others who don't normally contribute to discussion here and or elsewhere can show a great deal. This could be something that could be looked into in a little more detail to ascertain why this is so.


Thanks, i can tell you its not easy, i wont bore anyone with all the details but i can say that the challenge is enjoyable.



So where were we. Maybe the discussion has gone as far as it wanted to and now would be a good time to wait and see a draft of the proposed rules that Kayle has been working on.

I look forward to seeing you on ichat. :smile:


It's unfortunate that we've got the electoral college in this country or folks might begin to understand that impact even more directly, but the fact is that if people don't care enough to vote they've earned whatever they're given. Unfortunately, the corollary to that seems to be that by voting you might still not get what you earned, but at least you had the courage (?) to make your voice heard a little and hopefully had an impact on the final decision.


Change is rarely easy, personal change is the hardest change of all, therefore, I can only imagine that it must be a grave challenge indeed. At the very least, know that it has not gone unnoticed nor unappreciated.


Actually, you may have a good point there, I think those of us who are actually speaking up seem to have largely run our course in this one, maybe it's time to see what Kayle's gotten from it. Though it looked like he was saying earlier, in response to Kiasyn, that he was thinking maybe the culture shift he was considering is sufficient in itself.

About the only rules/guidelines I think we need are:

1. No advertising. If someone asks for your connection info, give it to them in private (imctell works fine), don't broadcast it, we know where to find it if we want it. Plus, just being connected is free advertising, especially if people like the way you interact with others. They'll be more inclined to check your world out.


I don't really think there's a need for anything more. The culture shift I've been slowly pushing for by suggesting, and asking for things to be moved to their appropriate channels seems to have fixed what few problems arose from the recent debacles. Also, Circa seems to have gone MIA so that could have contributed to everything going peaceful again as well. Who knows.

[Edit:] For spelling. and half finished ideas. :P

I still don't believe we need even that rule, I think it should just be pointed out to the person that its rather impolite. I don't really foresee a problem.

What procedures are there going to be to deal with the next Circa, Cratalass or Tommi even? My point being that there will always be an idiot to replace the last one and that it might be prudent to have a plan and for others to know how to make a complaint and to whom to send it, plus how it will be dealt with. Just so its clear to all.

Complaints normally get emailed or PM'd to one of the Server admins. (Myself or Davion) And I normally talk to the owner of the mud they problem individual is from and let them deal with it on a first offense. If there's a successive offense, I well.. I dunno what I'd do, hasn't come to that yet. Circa disappeared before I got any more complaints. I supposed it'd depend entirely on who it was and what they were doing. For Circa, if he continued doing what he was doing, I'd make the channels ignore him. Which would leave AvP and Azereth on the network but save the rest of us from having to hear his banter.

And Kiasyn's entirely right. We don't even need the no advertising thing if we all do our part to tell people it's not acceptable, frowned upon, rude, what have you.

So 6 pages later, what comes of it? The only rule: Be nice, have fun, and don't spam. Which is essentially what I said a few posts back. And it's the way the network has existed for the last two years :)

The circle is now complete.

And that is the difference between guidelines and rules. The latter involves waving big sticks, and is ineffective in the end; the former involves setting the example and pushing people toward that example when they stray (i.e. the culture shift I initially pushed for).

that may be so, but ill take credit ;)