[MUD-Dev] Mud governance

[Felix A. Croes]

> Hi guys, I'm looking for documents on mud governance and 
> administration, and you're the best bunch to ask. Things like the 
> section of Javelin's PennMUSH document covering tips for mud admins, 
> or Amberyl's Wizard Ethics document (which I haven't been able to 
> locate, ftp.tinymush.org never seems to connect). This is for the 
> purpose of educating new admin staff... I also intend to salt 'em with 
> a few things like Dibbell's Village Voice article, Bartle's paper, and 
> the log of the Black Rose incident (as a negative example). Got any 
> other favorites?

Sorry, can't help you there.  In fact, I am very curious about what
you might be able to tell us.  How <does> one administrate a mud with
a thousand of players online?


> ObDiscussionTopic: to what extent should mud governance be an issue in 
> server design? And related to that, what then needs to be implicit in 
> the server design to support governance by an administrative staff?

Being of the persuasion that servers should offer programmability and
persistance and nothing else, I'll rephase this to: "to what extend
should mud governance be an issue in design?"  Answer: to the fullest
extend.  A badly managed mud is a bad mud.

If the goal is to reach an ideal mud, there are three factors involved:

 1) that which can be enforced in code
 2) that which the players can arrange for themselves
 3) that which the administrators must impose

A good design minimizes the third factor.  The type of mud is determined
by the balance between these three.  For instance, if player killing is
considered to be the ultimate form of harassment, it can be eliminated in
code.  On the other hand, player killing can also be considered a tool
for a self-governing mud population.

Felix Croes