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

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 15 Oct 1998 19:14:54 -0700 
Jon Leonard<jleonard at divcom.slimy.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 15, 1998 at 11:24:42AM -0700, J C Lawrence wrote:
>>  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

> [Bruce Sterling's comments about virtual communities being an
> oxymoron, and how peer review might help]

> This reminds me of Eric S. Raymond's "Homesteading the Noosphere"
> http://www.earthspace.net/esr/writings/homesteading/, which
> discusses status among open source software developers, and how it
> relates to getting software developed.  (The prequel paper is also
> well worth looking at:
> http://www.earthspace.net/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/)

Bah!  You're stealing my thunder -- I had it all planned to lead
gracelessly into the Raymond mantra and the benefits of cooperateive
development via your player base.

> There's some similarities to the peer review and footnotes of
> academia, but important differences as well.

<nod>

> In any case, I don't think trying to implement a peer-review system
> is the right thing to do for either MUDs or mailing lists.  There
> are better mechanisms for improving the quality of content, like the
> MUD-Dev list owner occasionally reminding us what's on topic.
> Mailing list messages are just too close to real time for the delay
> of ratings or moderation to work universally, and MUDS fit better
> into a software development model than an academic model.

That really depends on the character and function of the venue.

MUD-Dev is schizophrenic in that regard.  There is a very definite
sense (for me) of timeliness and currency on the one hand (what
exactly are we discussing now) as well as a sense of building an
knowledge base via the archives which acts a little like a
cooperatively built mountain that we all use as a springboard and
return to for inspiration.  We're also very flighty, flitting from hot
topic to hot topic with little sense of order or control.

Some of the other lists I'm on, expecially those with more weighty
topics and lower traffic are *much* more controlled, and almot
implacable intheir pursuit of each item down to its bitter end.

cf Slashdot's moderator system (weighted peer review).

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                             Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...