[MUD-Dev] Re: pet peeves

[Steve Houchard]

> I don't have a problem with the appointment of friends as long as they are
> people you can trust implicitly although such appointments can lead to
> problems as well it tends to be more of a risk if we are talking about
> more immature individuals (such muds fade fast anyhow).
> 
> Does anyone else have a feeling for such things? Who should you consider
> for your admin team, should you accept monetary contributions?

First, let me explain my situation a little.  I'm currently part of an
admin team numbering something like a dozen or so with the great majority
too busy to contribute much--no problem there.  There are currently two of
us (myself and one of our three imps) who do any appreciable amount of
work at all and a few more who are around constantly but who don't
contribute much if anything useful.  The problem as I see it is that the
persons in question are RL friends of one of the other imps.  

Now don't get me wrong--I've nothing against these people personally
except that for whatever godawful reason the persons in question feel the
need to try to impress me with their knowledge of computers (fat chance
there).  On the other hand, I don't feel that either of the persons in
question (friends of the imp) are qualified or bringing any
resources/qualifications to the job.  With that in mind I assert the
following:  

   Don't give admin positions to friends just because they're friends.

The implication is that if the people are qualified for the job and can
contribute positively to the staff that it shouldn't matter whether
they're friends of a person in power.  

> As to the thread that started all this....
> 
> By the same token, I once had a person show up who just started chatting
> with me and with in a months time I had made her an admin. She however was
> not looking for the position. Her demonstraited knowledge and willingness
> to simply offer up solutions was wonderful. She was also a very fast
> coder. Simply ignoring her out of hand would have been a significant loss.

I've been on the recieving end of this as well.  I'd been playing on the
mud where I have my current staff position for only a few weeks when one
of the admin and a player were discussing some of the coding problems with
a proposed feature on an OOC channel.  I jumped into the discussion having
already dealt with similar features in my own mud coding endeavors and
eventually word got to the right people.  After a few meetings with the
admin we mutually agreed that I could contribute and the rest, as they say
is history.  For at least the last four weeks I've been doing 90%-95% of
the coding for the mud.  

Steve