[MUD-Dev] Re: META: who are we?

[Alex Stewart]

Ok, I guess it's time I threw my hat in too..  I've been lurking for a little
while trying to get a feel for the list and then I was away on vacation, but
now that I'm back:

> How many of you are from a Diku background, like me?

Nope.  Roughly in order: MOO (user), MOO (admin), Cold/Genesis (core
developer), MOO (admin/server hacking), LP (brief glance), LPMOO (another brief
glance), MOO (some more, narrowly escaped becoming the official LambdaMOO
maintainer (whew!)), DragonMUD (a hacked-up TinyMUD with some neat features
(user/builder)), Genesis (a bit), and finally Lithium (my own Java-based
5th-generation server, currently under development).

> And might be interested in stuff that is codebase specific?

Yes.  Just because I'm not coming from a particular codebase doesn't mean I'm
not interested in issues that arise under that codebase.  This is, in fact, one
of the main reasons I'm here, to get insights into some of the issues and
solutions people have come up with in systems I'm not intimately familiar with.

> How many think the list is too theoretical,

I personally find a large part of the utility of this list to be in the fact
that it is often quite theoretical.  Nitty-gritty
specific-question/specific-answer stuff generally isn't that useful to anyone
other than the person asking the question.  Discussion of the larger
theoretical issues can be applied to many other cases, however, some of which
might not have even been apparent before the issue was discussed.

> or feel intimidated by the frequent posters and by the volume of past
> history and discussions that seems to be requied knowledge in order to
> participate?

Frankly, I do find this list a little intimidating (and that says a lot,
because I don't intimidate easily), but not really for the reasons mentioned.

My problem stems mainly from the fact that only a small subset of the range of
topics which might be discussed on this list seem to be at the moment (mainly
social engineering issues and such, which actually don't interest me a lot),
and it has therefore been somewhat difficult for me to gauge what level of
interest there might be for other topics might be out there.  I have seen some
other people express similar comments, particularly with regard to technical
discussions (which I am always interested in).

The other problem, of course, is that while I would like to see some discussion
of other issues, because I'm very interested in what other issues are out there
and what people might have to say about them, I don't have any specific issues
myself which I have any need to raise at the moment, so I rather have to rely
on other people coming up with something to talk about :)

Anyway, that's basically who I am and where I'm coming from.

-R
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Alex Stewart - riche at crl.com - Richelieu @ Diversity University MOO
                         http://www.crl.com/~riche
           "For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky."