It is always amusing to read any reply from Molly to the_logos and most of the times the ones going in the other direction. Really, eventhough the self-glorification of logos in many of the posts he write may get a little tiring, he usually states his point clearly and very often gives some kind of feedback about what is being written. On the other hand, the incandecent flame wars started not with a post of the_logos, but people making a whole drama because he was adverticing and helping some kind of non-profit organization in the process. Then, when the thread was being gotten back to its original purpose by Molly, at least partially, I saw a few good-intended and full-of-feedback and support posts by the_logos () . Now, in his post of () the_logos states his opinion, from his point of view, and in not a single word of his post a personal attack is issued. On the other hand, flame-starter-Molly promptly makes everything that follows to become Tokyo-while-Godzilla-is-paying-a-visit ().

Now, after the brief summary, I think a point must be highlighted. Molly, eventhough you keep claiming that there is a difference between the two attitudes followed by the two muds in discussion, yours and Medievia, you clearlly say also that this sends the message that eventhough you see what you do as something wrong, you do not think it is very wrong, at which point you are making your personal opinion to prevalece over the intent of the copyright. Even if there are lesser and more serious ways to break a license (steal, strip credits and put own, make money out of someone else's work, ...) it does not mean that doing the lesser thing (putting the area up for the fun of the fans) is any better. Therefore, if someone calls you hypocrite for condemning the first but promoting the second, they are at least close enough in their appreciation.

Now, as for the intention of the Mud promotion. The idea of putting stories together sounds very good, I saw Angie linking it to an art board discussion for MUDs which would make a very good mix, since as Hephos pointed out, good graphic material would be needed. The whole idea seems like a nice effort, but I would still pay attention to the advice of trying to monitor wether or not it yields the desired adverticement effect. The good part about this idea, I think, is that you are trying to build it in such a way that all material used is being given by people willing to help and who have no problems with that, so, even if the results are not the ones expected (on a free internet site for example), you could probably easily take a further step and try to publish some kind of periodical issue, or a single issue with the best of what you recollect, and try an approach as the one described by Brody and the novel he wrote.

Dulan, I realize that you're not big on reasoning vs. flaming, but it's only insulting if you consider using IP you don't have permission to use wrong. I'm not addressing that question as I have come to recognize that there are a plethora of legitimate different opinions on the validity of the very idea of intellectual property to begin with. If you notice, I have not condemned the use of other people's IP on this thread. I don't care, as long as it doesn't involve any of Iron Realms' IP or any of Feist's IP. I, personally, would take immediate action against someone using IP I own or control without permission, but that's my choice and certainly not an imperative.

I was merely pointing out that Molly should clean her own house before acting like Medievia is doing something she's not. Brody, you'll notice, isn't slighting Medievia. (and my god, name-calling is so juvenile. "Mercthievia." Grow up.)

I understand the arguments about fan fiction, etc, but from my own POV, it doesn't matter whether someone is making money off the IP or not. I think you could also look at it from the perspective of the value of the IP being taken. The DIKU IP has very little value. Even the owners don't care enough to make an effort to protect it. If someone wants to steal a rock out of my front yard and somehow turn around and make some money out of it, I don't really care. It doesn't hurt me, except perhaps my ego. On the other hand, if someone steals my car, which has a lot of value, I'm going to be quite upset. Yes, of course these analogies (like all analogies) are not perfect. Someone using someone's IP doesn't prevent the owner from also using it, unlike stealing a car.

At the end of the day, the DIKU owners have sent a very clear message that the IP isn't worth enough to bother protecting. Lucas has sent a similar message, though probably more along the lines of, "As long as they gain no public profile they can't really damage the brand very much, so who cares." If Brody's star wars MUD became super-popular, with a couple thousand people online, you can bet Lucas would take note, regardless of whether it's non-commercial "fan fiction" or not. (And as we've already pointed out, Lucas already prohibits the use of his IP except in a private, non-commercial venue, so there's no question that MUDs using his IP are in violation of the Lucas license. Whether violating licenses is a big deal is another question.)

I don't really expect those of you who use terms like "Mercthievia" to read this with anything approaching an open mind though, as you're on a crusade and any other point of view is heresy that must be crushed. I'm willing to look at Medievia as a mud that entertains a LOT of people. I don't like seeing them ostracized, because they clearly have a fair amount of knowledge and skill at running a MUD. (and let's face it, the code, which has, no doubt, been hugely altered by now, does not make the MUD. A MUD is as much about the service you provide as the code you have. That's why the Ultima Online emulators never even approached a fraction of the playerbase of the commercial service.)
--matt

Right, you assumed. On the other hand, you could just go read the Lucas license, where it very clearly states that you cannot use his IP unless it's non-commercial AND private. No need to make assumptions, because it prohibits it right there, in black and white.

You're obviously just going to pull out justification after justification for why you don't feel bound by the license whereas you feel Medievia should be bound by their DIKU license.
--matt

Dulan, what the heck does Brody have to do with this, and why are you claiming I"m taking potshots at him? This is the first time I've even mentioned his name in this thread, and I have no idea what you're talking about.

As for "pot/kettle/black" and IP issues, as far as I know, Armageddon has none. But then, since I'm not an administrator or IMM there, and I've never heard ANYONE accuse them or even question them other than you and KaVir, I have no reason to know.

Though you might believe you're really important, and though KaVir might believe he's really important, neither of your opinions mean diddly regarding any of this. I'll repeat:

I WAS POINTING OUT AN IRONIC STATEMENT MADE BY ONE PERSON WHOSE GAME HAS WITHIN IT COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM ELSEWHERE, WITHOUT ACQUIRING PERMISSION TO DO SO, WHOSE STATEMENT WAS TAKING A POTSHOT AT SOMEONE ELSE WHO HAS BEEN PROVEN TO DO THE SAME THING.

I have no opinion on the matter. I don't really care if Medievia steals stuff from DIKU. I have no stake in it one way or another. I don't care if Molly got permission or not from Lucas, because I have no stake in that either. I made a comment. Shall I go back and edit the comment, and delete it like some people do, and then be accused of being a moron for deleting posts that are taken out of context for the express purpose of insulting the poster?

I'll be glad to retract the statement and let y'all return to your usual flame fests without me if it give you the hard-on you seem to be aching for.

Congratulations! You have gained this flame war a new level! It is now eligible to enter the sexual insults field.

You know Fagin had a pretty successful business going too.

Now you started a forum where the Mercthievians are welcome and anti-Mercthievian speech is censored. If you want flame free discussions with Soliel and Vyce concerning muds you know where you can take them. Don't bother trying to sell that new corporate brand of "open-minded" morals free censorship thing as appropriate. That's really gay. It's sooooo totally gay it's juvenile. Annoyingly gay and immature. A young whippersnapper like yourself shouldn't be so "closed-minded" to the wisdom of elders who have many years of experience with dealing with degenerates and neer'do'wells the likes of those who run Mercthievia.

Show some tolerance for Christ's sake.

Aww thanks Angie. I've always aspired to bring discussions to new heights. Tune in next week, when I add "insulting peoples' pets" to the fray. I have a bunch of one-liners just itching to appear.

Copyright law regarding fan fiction is pretty muddy, but Stanford Law updates a pretty good primer on the subject. Start by reading the analysis of J.K. Rowlings' cease and desist letter regarding .

(Note to self: Shelve the Harry Potter Sex MUSH project.)

Actually it was a forum where people who run MUDs that have achieved a minimum level of popularity were welcome, and flaming was not welcome. Turned out not to have critical mass.

Is there anybody else that'd love to see an open (ie anyone is welcome) MUD forum where flames are simply not allowed?

--matt

Actually the flaming had pretty much stopped here until you came back.

Not my fault that Dulan, Molly, and company feel the need to flame me. Blame the source, not the target.

Dulan, you are SO not able to criticise people for trolling. Pot calling the kettle black, indeed.

-H

Absolutely.

-H

Hey well there's always mud-dev.

Here's a serious professional sample of serious professionals discussing something...

"In order for any profession to mature, a profession-specific nomenclature has to develop that professionals can use to talk about profession-related topics intelligently and with sufficient specificity. For instance, if somebody says "mob" in the context of our profession, I know exactly what they're talking about, even though someone from outside our profession might be thinking "pitch forks and torches." If we haven't decided on a name for the things that our profession works on (something that would seem to be a fundamental building block for any such nomenclature), then it seems to me that further discussion. is warranted to at least come to some general consensus."

"I use the term "multi-user virtual world" IF the world is a prominent aspect of the system. I am not objecting to the term
"virtual worlds", after all I did argue for it while you still wanted some other term. I am objecting to over-extending it. There are other terms too, of course..."

"I would not have guessed the discussion of the effect of newbies would migrate into a debate on definitive minutiae and use of the term "virtual world." Without a more formal taxonomy and phylogeny of "virtual worlds" within a stronger committee-based context (ie. authorative society), the discussion can wander far, far away."

"Personally, I tend toward "virtual world" when pressed. I'd like to find something better -- "virtual" equates to "hopeful" or even
"nebulous" and "world" has grandiose connotations. Not good things when talking to skeptical investors, publishers, or potential partner/customers who don't know a mob from a noob."

Serious and professional. Did I say professional? You can watch professionals argue over the definition of MUD just like 14 year old n00bies for only the price of an email. No extra charge for the 11-letter professional sounding words. Serious professional high signal stuff with nary a mention of women's breasts and no farting. Well not a whole lot of fun either.

Exerpted and names ellided to avoid embarassing the professionals.

Hey I noticed you don't have an avatar.

Yeah, unfortunately, mud-dev got hijacked by people purely interested in the largest possible commercial graphical MUDs possible quite awhile ago.

Terranova is not bad but again, they're focused almost exclusively on larger graphical worlds. I'm talking text MUDs only really.

The_logos; Dec. 08 2004,03:46
If that is what you want, why was the forum you started yourself anything but 'open (ie anyone is welcome)'?

The_logos; Dec. 07 2004,18:21
Did it ever occur to you that YOU might actually be at fault yourself, ie the cause of the flaming starting?

For instance, my initial post to Soleil in this thread was pretty polite, especially compared to what other people wrote about Medievia. But you just had to take a potshot at me, didn't you?
Apparently that is a habit of yours that you aren't even aware of, since nothing is ever your fault.

I freely admit that you quite often annoy the heck out of me with your quite often smug posts. At least you could try to admit your part of the blame.

Well, it's not like you're not allowed to discuss muds there. If none of us does, how is it their fault?

Oh, it's not anyone's fault. It's just the way it is. The list is largely structured for professionals or wanna-be professionals, and most pros or wanna-be-pros are going to be looking at the graphical arena these days. There's also the issue of needing common experiences to discuss, and list participants are far more likely to have a common experience in CoH or WoW than in text MUDs, all of which are small by comparison.

--matt

I want a lot of things in life. I fail to see how wanting one of them precludes wanting another.

No. I challenge you to find a single post from me on TMS in, say, the last -year-, in which I attacked any specific person when that person didn't attack me or someone else first. Seriously, try to find one.

On the other hand, I can point to at least three places in this single thread alone where you attacked me or someone else, unprovoked. The first, when you bitched that we didn't want to essentially single-handedly pay to promote all text MUDs, may have been a legitimate mistake due to English being your second language, though given your record of constantly attacking me and Iron Realms, I'm inclined to believe that Threshold's assessment of the situation is likely correct.

On this page you attacked me for (I can barely contain my chuckling as I write this), not thanking people who made posts in a post of my own, and accusing me of only thanking those who offered financial help. The former is a mind-bogglingly stupid complaint, and the latter is a flat-out lie.

And, of course, you shunned Medievia after they offered assistance, accusing them of using other people's IP without permission while you sit back and use other people's IP without permission. Yes it was a pretty polite attack on Medievia but so what? If I politely suggest that you are <pick your insult>, does that mean I haven't attacked you? It was still an attack on Medievia, and I get tired of seeing them kicked around when so many other people break usage licenses to IP worth orders of magnitude more.


Hey, your posts irritate me all the time, but I don't flame you just because I don't like your attitude (I'm not even going to bring up what it is about your attitude that irritates me, as I have no doubt that would lead to more crap being posted.) If you choose to attack, be an adult and take the blame where it belongs: Squarely on yourself. You flame because you want to, as it's certainly not incumbent upon you to do so.

--matt

*chuckle*

He calls for tolerance while using "gay" repeatedly as an epithet and insult.

I'm not sure what is worse: the bigotry or the hypocrisy.

[quote=Molly O'Hara,Dec. 08 2004,03:36]
Hahahaha.

You "politely" called her and her husband criminals?

Hey you should know better than to post quest spoilers to the group. The only thing I need to know is whether anything you were drinking came out your nose and whether there was damage to the monitor. Just type 'score' at the prompt to see how you're doing. ;-)

[quote= (Threshold @ Dec. 09 2004,18:08)]...or the complete inability to recognise blatant tongue-in-cheek?

Since when has anyone in the MUD Community been able to recognize tongue-in-cheek, KaVir?

Sounds more like someone caught acting poorly and covering it up later by claiming it was an attempt at humor gone horribly wrong.

Ask some gay people you know (assuming you know any) if they find it funny or acceptable even in that context. Many of them won't.

God, this is the thread that just wont die.

Please, please, please can you ****y little school children just let this #### thread fade away.

Pris

Hey you left out Mudmagic. I'm a moron there as well. Don't forget to mention MudMagic.

This entire thread is full of ego stroking, and it doesn't happen to be mine.

Not bloody likely. :-)

If I was in agreement, I wouldn't have posted Adolf.
I thought they were entitled to an opinion too, and I gave it.

Yeah right. This is like a mud forum dude. It's words going back and forth. If you want to censor ideas that offend you, then maybe you should see Matt and create yet another forum that censors ideas and opinions you don't like.

Thankfully most of the successful forums merely concentrate on censoring prurient speech rather than opinions. Hmm fancy that.


Hmmm... smug eh? Who'd have thought it?

Business, money, economy, eh?

While it may be a novel concept to you 40 million plus Americans give 20% or more of the personal incomes to charity every year. Another 40-60 million give 10%. They have real jobs. And they probably have hobbies too, like say.... mudding. Frankly if they all posted here boasting and crowing about how wonderful they are, I'd have to hire a whole staff of flamers. Might fix the economy though.

Hey now you're gay too. No points for you.

It must be frustrating not to be able to implement one's own intolerant administration policies on a public board. If you got that out of it then your score is now 2/3. If not, then I can't help you. I can show you how to get the parrot out of the cage though.

Where did I point that out? Or is this just more of your lying? Second time in this thread you've simply made things up with regards to what I've said. You're on quite the roll. Multiple unprovoked attacks and multiple false accusations, all in the same thread! What will your response be, one wonders? Will you apologize for making blatantly false claims? No? How surprising!


Naah, you're already abusing the Lucas license. Abusing the DIKU license would be a big step down for you.

--matt

Your continued bigotry does nothing but further erode both your credibility and your failed attempt at seizing the moral high ground.

The fact that you assume someone would think this way is an interesting window into the way you think. Very sad, really.

"If you give people any in-game benefits for their donations, you are in fact giving a service for the money you have rescieved. That is a commercial transaction, and thus you are commercializing our work. This we object to."
-- Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt (1st September 2000)

If you view charity as just a "guerilla marketing" strategy, like was claimed here. And you donate to charities in return for publicity, return links, and boosting traffic hits, well it ain't charity at all. It's a flaming business transaction by your own admission. So don't bother lecturing us and boasting about your faux altruism. Your motivations for it have already been stipulated to, commercialism. Frankly you add a foul meaning to the word "charity", just like Mercthievia gave to the word "donation".

Someone: But everyone is doing it.

Well I think it's real gay. I'm letting you know just how gay it is.

Someone else: I object. That's offensive. You are redefining the word gay as an insult.

Hey everyone is doing it. Deal with it. Shame about what the high school kiddies have did to your gay word, ain't it?

If you figured that out, you've scored 3/3 and can now move on to Zork II.

Tyche, is your posting account shared by multiple people? You aren't even coherent any longer.

You quoted me, and then you talked about things that had absolutely nothing to do with what I said or with anything I have even posted here.

You quoted a Diku author when I have not said anything about Diku nor do I run a Diku mud.

Furthermore, I am not a participant in the Child's Play charity drive so I have no idea why you act like I am.

Get your facts straight before you shoot off at the mouth. You are embarassing yourself.

Oh, and since you persist with this weird "score" tangent, here's YOUR score: No where in your rambling incoherent response did you come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. We are all dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.

Snarf gargle worf.

Oh now weren't you going on and on about me being a bigot and this "gay" word. I didn't much care about you going offtopic either, but that's the nature of public discussion forums. People didn't like me going offtopic on the "charity" thing either.

So? Your point is what? That you can't be bothered with reading the thread and you don't like summaries.

Your gay interruption is the same as my charity interruption.
And that's a good point.

Could you provide us with the source for these numbers? I have serious doubts that they're even close to true unless you include Americans who have no income (children, etc).

In 2003, Vertis did a study on Americans and their behaviors in terms of giving to charity and found that only 14% of adult Americans said they'd given $500 or more to charity in the previous year. Average household salary in 2002 was about $42,000. Heck, let's be generous and assume you were nonsensically including children in those averages. The average household in the US in 2003 had 1.91 people over the age of 18. Dividing 42k by 1.9 gets you average of 22k/year income. That means that, on average, only 14% of adults have given even 2.3% of their income to charity in the previous year.
 
So, where did you get your numbers from? I'd love to believe this was just a case of gullibility rather than, say, you just making things up.

--matt

I'm not really sure why you quoted this, frankly. The DIKU license was written years earlier. What his opinions on it are after it was written are no more inherently relevant to the license than the views of someone using the license, like Medievia. I mean, we have a license from Raymond Feist for his work, for instance. It's not as if anything he says now changes the terms of the license. Those terms were finalized. He couldn't just one day decide, "Well, we've decided that you owe us royalties based on gross revenue before cost of money rather than after cost of money. Yes, I know I said 'after cost of money' in the contract, but I've decided now that I meant something different."

A license is a contract, and while perhaps contracts may be unilaterally changed retroactively in some country somewhere, I'm pleased to report that such is not the case in the US.

--matt

Ummm.... hello? I thought this thread was all about promoting text based muds to the outside world? What will people from the outside world think when they see people that run these muds behaving like this? C'mon folks, put your differences aside for the benefit of the mud community and work together so we all win, isn't that what this was all about?

I told you why I quoted it, and it weren't to argue the Diku license. Reread the post without playing lawyer or accountant.
Your charity work ain't charity. It's commercial transactions.

As to former, the National Council of Churches. The RCUSA alone collected over 650 billion all by itself and Vertis apparently doesn't include that as charity. I do, and you are free to disagree.

A $200/hr lawyer and a $5.25/hr garbage man both take a day off to work 8 hours in a homeless shelter.

Q) Who gave more to charity? A) The garbage man.

But the lawyer did it to publicize his firm, "Dewey, Screwum, and Howe".

Q) Who gave more to charity? A) Well only one of them did any charity work at all, the garbage man.

But...but...but...That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. Have fun with the calculator and ledger.

Fair enough. You're more concerned with image and motivation. I'm more concerned with who gets helped and how much they get helped. That it may benefit me is no different from anyone else who gives to charity and benefits from feeling good about themselves. I'm sorry if you feel that my getting benefit somehow makes it evil to help other people. That's a pretty darn sad position to take in my opinion, but clearly our opinions differ. I'm glad that everyone who gets something out of giving to charity (ie everyone who gives to charity) doesn't use that as a reason to stop giving.

--matt

The_logos: Dec. 07 2004,18:26 and Dec. 08 2004,03:36
Boy, you really crack me up. You remind me on a troublemaker, who used to create havoc on my mud and then said, “Wasn’t me!” when confronted.

Trying to shift the blame is a really immature thing to do, something one would expect from a 12-year old kid, not a grown man. Also there is more than one way to troll, and I think most posters here have you pretty well figured out by now.

If you habitually post things that are obnoxious and/or insulting to a large majority of other posters, you must expect some flames. You have a well established record of doing that. If a large number of your other posts are chest-puffing, ego-stroking and patting yourself on the back, expect some more flames. You have a well established record of doing that too. You set yourself up as the target, buddy, now live with it. If you cannot take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

Come to think of it, you are not even just the ‘target’. You are the ‘source’ of most of the problems yourself. I totally agree with KaVir. These boards were pretty nice and flame-free before you arrived here. They became pretty nice and flame-free again when you decided to withdraw from the discussions for a period. When you returned, the flame-wars started all over again. Seems a pretty clear case of cause and effect to me.

Feigning innocence isn’t going to change it either, it just confirms the picture.

Uhm...

Right.

Sounds like the argument many rapists use to blame their victims, if you ask me. 'They dressed provocatively, they were asking for it!' Who is at fault, the flamer or the flamed?

Regardless, I think this thread would benefit most from a lock. Matt, please open Minds Eye to the public!

-H

Y'know, a mate of mine justified this to me once.  He said something along the lines of:

"Well, back in the 60s or 70s or whenever-the-heck-it-was, "gay" was redefined from being "gay" to being, well, "gay".  Now we're just doing the same thing.  We don't mean "gay" as in "gay", nor do we mean it as in "gay".  We mean it as in "gay"."

How gay.