[MUD-Dev] Where are we now?

[Greg Munt]

From: S. Patrick Gallaty <choke at sirius.com>

> The mud culture on EOTL helped us steer the coder-wizards away from
> the social-wizards and allowed the two to do their own thing well
> undisturbed by power struggles between the two.

I do nothing here but describe a relevant experience of my own...

I used to run a user-extensible talker. Socially-adept people were
recognised as being important, and were admitted to the lowest levels
of the administration. However, they could never get above the lowest
levels, without techie skills - such as knowing how to create areas or
commands.  (Use of the internal language, basically.) I suggested to
the coder/owner, who had delegated overall power to me, that we split
the administration into techies and social people - thus allowing
social people to advance to higher ranks, and demonstrate social
skills were important to the long-term success of the game. Long-term,
I expected techie skills to be of much less relevance.

Thus, the politics began. Social administrators that reached high rank
were considerably more highly regarded and respected than their techie
counterparts. A move that originally was made to stop division and an
assumption of worthlessness for valued skills, actually caused a
permanent and fundamental change in the way the game was run. There
was a clear gender division between the two types of administrator. As
social admins were raised in power and stature, dissent was sown. The
mostly-female admins sought to change the entire model of
administration - from a hierarchial model to a flat 'council' model. I
steadfastly refused to entertain these ideas, explaining that they
would inevitably lengthen decision-making time, and cause possibly
unresolvable disputes. Soon I attracted the reputation of "corrupt
dictator" within the administration, and was eventually kicked out of
my admin role completely.




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