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

[Sellers]

Randy wrote:
> I visited Amy Jo Kim at a signing party recently, and shared with her that
> this thought had appeared on Mud-Dev (a list that she is familiar with.)
> She asked me to tell y'all that she's sorry. She indicated that she
> originally had a section on MUDs, but was forced by publishing constraints
> to remove it in an earlier draft. "Sorry, just not enough room" is pretty
> close to a direct quote.

I can vouch for this.  She had a number of very interesting case studies and
lessons-learned that were cut at various points during the editorial
process.  That's just part of writing a book I guess.  

> [If you ever meet her, ask her about the Original article she wrote for
> Wired about UO. They utterly eviscerated her work when they published it.
> The original was worthy of becoming a classic Mud-Dev reference work. ]

Too true.  Hmm.  I wonder if she'd let a copy loose, now that a fair amount
of time has gone by...

> There's not a lot of history in this book. It's mostly prescriptive,
> explaining how to build a good _web_ based community. I, for one,
> didn't really miss MUDs at all. Neither did I miss VRML or lots
> of other less-mainstream stuff (including my own work).

Yeah, I have to agree.  She (rightly) aimed this book at people who are
really just getting started in this area.  There's *plenty* of room for both
historical perspectives and more advanced topics in others' books.

Mike Sellers



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