Re: MUD Reviews
 

Agreed. For some reason, people use "Reviews can be spammed, and not all reviews are good reviews!" while commenting on forums that can be spammed, and contain posts which are not particularly helpful.

Pre-approval of reviews will filter 100% of the spam, and some lesser percentage (I'm assuming moderation will err on the side of allowing voices to be heard) of the least useful kinds of reviews. Assuming the moderators don't object to occasionally reading the reviews and clicking the yes/no buttons, why all the concern about spam?

Re: MUD Reviews
 

My big concern about the spam, is that when I read the reviews, I'm not looking for any specific game. I am looking specifically at the latest reviews, period. And if the latest 50 reviews are mostly spam, then I'm wading through spam in an attempt to find what I was actually looking for. Now granted in this specific situation I mentioned in my last post, there were two muds that were on that list of 50, which received 30 total "spam reviews" about some medication (I don't recall it being viagra, actually). So it's easy to just not click on any review of either of those two games. But, what if ONE of those reviews, was actually a review? Then I would have completely missed it a review, in the reviews section of a mudlisting service, because I assumed incorrectly that it was not, in fact, a review, based on the evidence of THIRTY SPAMS IN A SINGLE DAY, half of which were listed for that mud.

That's why it's a concern. Because mud admins who -do- want their games reviewed, will NOT have the reviews read, if people trying to read them are hit with dozens of spams instead of reviews. Readers will simply assume those games have no actual reviews, and not bother looking for any.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Oh and Molly, that was me, making fun of people who don't know what a review IS, and insist on posting in the reviews section as if it was their own personal forum or soapbox to post flames or respond to flames or send messages to their buddies or tell us all about how much we need to enlarge our collective penii.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Pre-approval by whom though? I mean, who has time to read a review and know if it is quantitative or qualitative or pertinant to that particular mud. Are you saying that specific standards would be set? What standards? Where do you draw the line at flame vs. criticism? And more importantly who sets that line? The moderators who they themselves are tied to specific games?

I personally don't mind a flame or two if they spell my name right.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I assume that the Review section would have a set of moderators, just like the boards do, (though not necessarily the same persons). That, together with the condition of a valid e-mail address, should take care of the spam, and probably considerably lower the number of submitted reviews too. A system, where each review entry triggers an automated e-mail response, with a code that has to be confirmed by the sender before it even gets to the validating stage, would probably be best. If posting a review needs a bit of afterthought and effort, it should hopefully raise the overall quality a bit on the entries. And it's not so easy and fun to troll, if you are not totally anonymous any more.

The required minimum standard would be published in advance on the webpage. Personally I think the standard should not be too detailed, but that's up to the Site owner to decide. I also don't think that negative reviews should be filtered out, as long as there is the option for the Mudowner to respond to them. Negative reviews can sometimes be very informative, and let's face it - not all Muds are good games. It's also usually very enlightening to see how a negative review is handled by the Admin.

As for the Review moderators, we cannot really expect people, who have enough interest in and knowledge of Text Muds to take on a job like this, to not also have some vested interest in at least one Mud. However, I don't think we need to worry overly much about potential bias among the moderators, as long as no decisions are taken by a single person. There should be at least 2 out of 3 moderators agreeing in a decision to delete a review, and in dubious cases Lasher could have final say. Probably the moderators should also not be allowed to take part in decisions about reviews for their own Muds. I think they should definitely not get access to the ip addresses of the posters, to avoid in-game repercussions for a negative review.

Finally I belong to the group who thinks that no listed games should have the option to turn off reviews, but I expect that to be a controversial question, since the ones most opposed to reviews also seem to be the largest sponsors of the site.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Whatever we do or don't do with reviews will have nothing to do with who is a sponsor and who isn't. The income this site generates could triple overnight by simply accepting more of those spammy "Wow Gold / Other game Gold / Arcade Site / etc ads" that I turn away almost daily and replacing the center sponsorship banner with rotating affiliate links. Those that pay per impression vs per click/action would do particularly well as TMS is high impression low action/stickiness. Now that I think about it, the forum was designed with the idea that non-registered users would see Adsense ads - partly as a nag to sign up and partly because they would generate at least some click-through. 5 months later they havent even been turned on.

I personally turned off reviews as a MUD owner because there was zero moderation, zero chance to add feedback that would "stick" with the review, no expiration of old reviews and no requirement to have played the MUD in question for more than a microsecond (not that there's any way to police this last one). We had more good reviews than bad, but in both cases very little actual information or content that would be useful to a reader.

Some of our discussions on here address some of these points and as the site owner I think we can do a pretty decent job of creating a review system. As a MUD owner, I'm still not convinced, and the first time a "XXXXX MUD SUCKS ASS D))DZ!!!" review is turned down due to editorial standards that also happens to be a MUD owned by a sponsor, there will be a barrage of quotes just like the one about 15 lines up to deal with.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

My two cents on how to get decent (or at least qualified reviews) is to require the reviewer to use the character name from the Mud they review plus a valid email and/or registration.

Some might balk at the required name because they feel that they should not have to divulge themselves. Here are some reasons why they should:

1. Credibility that the person actually played the game.
2. Ability to gauge how long the person played (Most if not all muds have timers).
3. Whether a good or bad review, the staff on the mud can see what angle the player is coming from, why they reviewed like they did, and in many cases have a better clarity to make modifications if the review was critical.

If a person posted the character they played and were required to give a valid email or log on I'm thinking this would reduce the amount of wacky reviews. If it were my decision I would require the character name for validation and require registration to write a review.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

The fellow that ran Game Commandos went to work for us actually (and still does). He confirms the reception of that hatemail! The trouble in the end is that reviewing a MUD properly requires far more than just a few hours or even a week of play. Much of the content/game systems is often not accessible until you're a well-established character, which can take many months. (For instance, no reviewer who has played for a week is going to ever see any of our political systems except from a distance. Similarly, no week-long player is ever going to be a ship's captain or experience what it's like to be in the Divine Order of a God. )

--matt

Re: MUD Reviews
 

A week-long player gets enough impression on what the game is about to give a glimpse to the game for others. While your assessment is correct, a weeker or 10 hours player reviews aren't totally worthless, as they can give information what it's like to be a green newbie in that particular game. For example, the newbie will see whether the area descriptions are properly written and other things. Also, the review brings things he was hoping from the game and whether or not his impression of the game met the expectations, which can help in guiding the decisions of the like-minded people. MUD players in general are of above average intelligence and many of us can read between the lines of a review.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I think most people who read reviews aren't really expecting to read about the newbie experience. While I agree that someone's first impression is developed in 10 hours of gameplay (which isn't unimportant), I'd hardly call that a "review" of the game. Why not call it what it is, "first impressions".

If I were reading a review, finding out that the area descriptions are properly written and what newbies can expect are low on my priority list. Sure, it's not superfluous information and I wouldn't discount reading about it, but to me a "review" should be more indepth than that.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

This is probably most unholy threadomancy, but everything seemed to cut off there, so I was wondering if there was a final word, and if not, whether it was still worth discussing.

After all, regardless of whether they are good, bad or indifferent, those review links are still stuck up there on the front page.

Perhaps one way would be to have a system whereby there is a team of review moderators (separate from forum moderators), and submitted reviews wait for 48 hours or so, and if no moderator reports an objection, they get posted. If there's an objection, then the moderators can discuss it, vote on it, investigate further etc.

There's never going to be a perfect solution though, because even professional critics have their own biases. It might be best to implement this basic spam/quality filter and then let it go as before, opt-out and all. At least then there's something out there, and people have some way of contributing in a much more controlled manner than the forum threads that have the potential to get out of hand. I don't think the opt-out is a big deal personally, as long as you see the "Top MUD Listing" as "these MUDs got the most people to vote for them" rather than "these MUDs are officially the best", because that's all it is really.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Good question. Thread necromancy indeed and I'm about to start some serious "code necromancy" here one of these days.

The "new" TMS has been up almost 6 months now and I got buried on another project right after it did. From what I recall we had pretty much decided to use the forum for reviews which gives us a certain level of authentication on who is writing them and allows comments to be added. The forum itself will need some hacking to allow this to be done, although I believe there are some third party VBulletin tools that help with it.

We didn't really come up with a good rating system - too many variables. It wouldn't be fair to have a mud's total rating dragged down because they score low on PK when they're not a PK mud, same with roleplay, etc etc.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I think that you'd need multiple rating categories if you want to put it into ratings. The categories could be world, PK, RP, whatever people think are good categories.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

You could use many of the categories that are already in the mud listing DB. So for example:


They said:. ........................I say:

Gigantic (20001+ rooms).............Totally bogus! Most of this is wilderness!
All Original........................Except for Smurf Village!
Completely G rated..................This happens to be true.
Restricted Playerkilling............I guess...since only my level 2+'s got PK'ed in their first hour hunting!
Roleplaying Encouraged..............There are 1 or 2 amazing RPers here.




edit: with the option to add numerical ratings to these, naturally.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I like that a lot. It provides a good structure rather than having rambling reviews that don't say much, but it also allows people to put their comments where they make sense. One thing that no one's mentioned is that many people find reviews hard to write due to their unstructured nature, and just putting a comment about a pre-determined facet makes them a lot easier to write. It also helps a bit in reducing things to facts, rather than "the admins are all cheaters" or something. It's like one of those "we welcome your comments" cards that you get at hotels and places. There could then be a general comment space below, for things not covered.

There could be 3 columns, one for the different categories, one for the reviewer's comments, and one for the admin's comments if any. I think the structured approach is a lot easier and a lot more useful than just writing essays, since people who are looking through thousands of MUDs can quickly get the gist of any review, rather than having to read a whole new story for each one.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

If you're going to use a rating system, I'd rather not have something where people can give 10 (or 1) in everything, otherwise that's what most of them will do. Instead, I'd rather see one of the following:

1. Each review has 100 points to distribute among the different categories (and all 100 MUST be distributed). This doesn't represent how good a mud is compared to other muds, but instead represents how good certain aspects of a mud are compared with other aspects of the same mud.

2. Each reviewer can choose to rate up to 3 categories as 'strong', but must also rate the same number of other categories as 'weak'. Negative reviewers who aren't willing to recognise any good things about the mud are therefore not allowed to rate what they perceive as the bad things, and vice versa. Once again the 'weak' ratings don't necessarily mean that the mud is bad in that category compared to other muds, only that the mud is stronger in other areas.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I agree with the problem of rating gamesmanship, but your system does assume that all games are roughly of equal quality. It is possible that Game X does all things badly or well.

Still, this could be covered in the introductory paragraph, and/or by an overall rating. If a game gets a 2/10 overall, it's pretty clear that I didn't think much of it, though your system would force me to identify at least a few redeeming features. (For example, a largely stock MUD based on a mature codebase might still have very high stability, and responsive staff.) This should lead to slightly more mature reviewing, and it's a standard sort of format for movie reviews, etc.

My larger concern is that you're going to have a very hard time coming up with a list of characteristics that apply to all games. 'Roleplaying' or 'PvP' might either be the core concept a game is built around, or something that isn't possible, or actively discouraged. It is unfair to rate a game 'unsatisfactory' or whatever if the game wasn't designed to include the feature in question, but it is equally unfair to omit those categories if it's the main purpose of the game.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

The point of my system is that it doesn't compare the mud with other games at all - the ratings are all relative to other features of the same game.

It is, but if any player can freely rate categories then the vast majority will give either top marks or bottom marks to every category, regardless of how well (or badly) the mud in question has actually implemented the corresponding features. This can provide some insight into the number of fan boys and disgruntled ex-players each mud has, but sadly offers very little else - while my approach at least forces the players to give some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each game.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I dunno, KaVir, it seems to me that a rating system like yours could be easily misinterpreted by the readers. (Just as many readers misinterpret the rankings on this list to be about quality, while in fact they only are about how many players that click the vote button every day).

Most of them would probably just skip the parts where the rating system is explained, and then they would interpret the rating literally.
Meaning that they'd think the part rated as 'weak' would be weak in comparison to other Muds as well, while in fact - if the Mud in question was a really good one - it would be way above average, even though other features in that same Mud were even better.

And isn't reviews actually ABOUT comparing a game with other games?

I think it would be a good thing to have a number of categories that the review would have to comment on to be accepted, but I'm not really sure about rating, in any form. I think it would be better to describe everything in words instead.

Anyhow - it WOULD be good to have a new and improved review system implemented, if nothing else to get rid of those old reviews that have been on the front page for ages.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Molly asks: And isn't reviews actually ABOUT comparing a game with other games?

No. That isn't what reviews are about. When was the last time you read a book review, where Harry Potter was compared to Deception Point by Dan Brown? Did you ever see anyone review a Broadway production of Oklahoma and compare it to Godspell as performed on the back 90 of Red Ranch in Greenfork Tennessee?

Reviews are reviews. They are to offer an opinion, based on observation, of a thing. To find out whether the thing is worth experiencing or not, on its own merit. A book isn't good just because it compares favorably with another book, a TV show isn't bad just because it compares unfavorably with another TV show. If something can't be determined "worthwhile" or "not worthwhile" on its own merit, then the reviewer has failed.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Point taken - partly. It only holds true however, when you talk about things that are very different. You don't compare apples with carrots, but you might compare Cox Orange to Red Delicious. You don't compare Harry Potter to Brown's Deception Point, but you might well compare it to C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. And actually I have quite often seen plays or films compared to legendary performances 20 years back.

You might not compare a RP enforced MUSH to an unrestricted PK hack'n'slash. But between those extremes most text Muds have a lot in common.

To write a good review you need some kind of references. If you've only read one book in your life, or just seen one film, how could you review it? If you've only ever played one Text Mud, how would you know that it's better than all the other text Muds out there?

People who love Text Muds use to argue that they are better than Graphic game because of more depth and detail, better RP or whatever. But that isn't really true. They only have the POTENTIAL for more depth and better RP. There are lots of text Muds that are just as shallow as any graphic game. If you don't have any reference points, and make at least some comparisons, the review is likely to be useless.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

I think that each category to be rated should also have a text box below them to for the reviewer to explain the grade and the grade to explain whether the tone of the review is seen as positive or negative by the author. The extreme end grades could have minimum character lenghts for the explanations so that people would have to give their reasoning for giving the good or bad grade.

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Re: MUD Reviews
 

Since we haven't had the ability for players to review for well over a year, my vote would be to just get back the original review ability, then argue a change. Those who frequent NW do not care about the method of review, just the ability to review: good, bad, or indifferent. I mean, the massive advances in the game and modifications and player base make the current reviews completely obsolete. It is like reading the review for Windows XP in determining whether you want to buy Windows Vista.