[MUD-Dev] Amy Jo Kim's "Community Building on the Web"

[Richard Woolcock]

Raph Koster wrote:
> 
> Amy Jo's book is now out. You can find it at Amazon.com:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201874849/002-6667192-0689808
> 
> Paperback - 352 pages 1 edition (April 2000)
> Peachpit Press; ISBN: 0201874849
> 
> I haven't read it yet, but I expect it to be superb. :)

I ordered a copy and it arrived in the post today.  I've only had the 
chance to skim through it so far, but I thought I'd share my opinions.

Good points:

The book is well written, well laid out and contains a mixture of text 
and diagrams to put forward it's points in a clear and concise manner.
It provides a number of suggestions about how to join or create an online 
community, with a number of examples, covering pretty much all types of
community (including Ultima Online, EverQuest, newsgroups, discussion 
boards, IRC, talkers, and a fair number of specific sites).  It gets a 
little too specific in some places, but overall I wouldn't complain 
about anything that's in there, so much as stuff that isn't (see below).

Bad points:

The one area it doesn't seem to cover is text-based muds.  The only 
mention I can find is on page 132, where it discusses Richard Bartle's
"Player Types" - and in my opinion it doesn't do it very well at all.
My gripes are as follows:

1) There is no mention at all of what a MUD actually is.

2) Richard Bartle is described as being "a longtime MUD developer" rather 
   than the creator of the original MUD (minor point, I know, but it's an
   important part of mud history in my opinion).

3) The URL given for Richard's article has a typo in it, so it won't work 
   unless people realise that it should be "tinymush.org" rather than
   "tunymush.org".

4) The descriptions of the 4 player types don't quite match those given 
   in Richard's article - it describes KILLERS as being "harrassers, 
   dissidents, or brats", basically implying that they are always 
   destructive in nature.  The competative KILLERS who enjoy fighting 
   players rather than mobs simply for the pleasure of a challenging
   opponent (such as myself) are incorrectly classified under the 
   ACHIEVER type.  Yes, there are KILLERS who run around killing newbies
   and taunting people.  There are also SOCIALISERS who go around 
   commiting mudrape and cyberpedophilia (as anyone who has been reading 
   rgma will be more than aware), ACHIEVERS who specialise in exploiting
   every possible bug and EXPLORERS who spend their time trying to find 
   new ways to break peoples muds or hack characters/servers.

So in summary, I'd say it's a pretty good book, although I was personally 
very disappointed that the mudding community didn't even get a mention.
It seems that we always get overlooked - despite the existance of several 
thousand muds - and I'd hoped that someone who had put as much research as 
Kim obvious has would take the effort to include us like she appears to 
have included everyone else (even Quake and StarCraft get a mention).

KaVir.



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