[MUD-Dev] Summary of off-list META comments:

[J C Lawrence]

Writing as list owner:

  I've received 28 off-list reponses to my META queries.  They are
(un?)surprisingly consistent in their contents.  As they are
off-list I won't copy, quote, or attribute them here, but I have
noticed the following trends:

  1) The resounding commonality of almost all the responses can be
summed as, "What are you worried/complaining about?  This is
incredible already!", along with many statements of gratitude for
the list and its traffic and other such heart warming stuff.

  2) 19 of the responses in some manner said that they were
intimidated by the list or the experience/authority of the existent
list members, and said in one way or another that they hadn't posted
because they didn't want to make a fool of themselves or to waste
the list's time.  Several of these went to some lengths to specify
that this wasn't a Bad Thing, but was more a sign of respect or
consideration.  Of the remaining 9 posts, 2 could be read as
inferring that they were somewhat intimidated but did not explicitly
state such.

  3) The "cutting edge ideas and discussion" was validated and
specifically singled out as a high point of the list by 9 of the
replies.  Several more said that merely following the list sparked
more ideas and understanding of topics they hand't considered before 
than anything else they did (MUD-wise).  

  4) 6 responses mentioned not posting because they hadn't searched
the archives yet for prior threads on the area, with 2 of those
mentioning specificly that they hadn't posted becasue they found
that the area had been discussed before.

  5) 5 responses commented on codebase specific discussion, and said
that it was unwelcome.  However 3 others said that they'd like to
see more code-level implementation discussion (not necessarily
code-base specific) going on, especially for concerns that applied
to smaller or less-established MUD attempts.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...