[MUD-Dev] Re: Bruce Sterling on Virtual Community goals

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: J C Lawrence [mailto:claw at under.engr.sgi.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 15, 1998 1:25 PM
> To: rkoster at origin.ea.com; mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Bruce Sterling on Virtual Community goals
> 
> 
> 
> He has a point, not only in comparison to MUD-Dev itself (MUD-Dev is
> a MUD!  No its not!), but to our more standard fare of MUDs:
> 
>  http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/15611.html
>
> Declaring virtual communities an oxymoron, Sterling told ApacheCon
> 98 attendees that he thinks people gathering together on the Web
> need peer review systems like those used in scientific communities.

In fact, he and I have now talked at some length about this. He's really
into the idea of writing a mail list system that actually handles a peer
review process, or at the very least a mail list equivalent to
reputation points. I suggested that this could be done even with the
tools we have today, if someone were willing to handle email balloting;
we discussed the same sorts of pitfalls that had arisen with designs for
reputation point systems in muds.

-Raph