ON COMMUNICATIONS

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING LOGS

ON THE MATTER OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

ON THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

ON THE MAINTAINING OF CREDIBILITY

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ON THE NATURE OF ADVERTISING

There at least four ways to advertise your Mush:

1) Listing yourself with one of the webpages that serves as a MUD List. If you don't know any good MUD Lists, or only know one or two, I have gathered links to a dozen or so at Larry's List of Lists . Some of them will take anything that is submitted to them, any codebase (the Mud Connector is essential if you want any sort of M** to be properly advertised to the public) while others are more selective - one only lists MOOs and another only lists MUXes, for example.

2) The Worldwide Web. Once you have a webpage, even a small and simple one, set up for your mush, figure out ways to get other webpages to link to it so that you're likelier to pull people in who are already visiting other sites.

Things to concentrate on:

A) Search engines. Register your page with them so that searches for appropriate keywords will bring people to your doorstep.

B) If you're already listed, or want to be, on any MUD Lists (see Method 1, above) which also list URLs of Mush homepages, make sure you tell them yours.

C) Great Big Theme-Oriented Webpages. If your theme is based on something popular, such as Star Wars or Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series or the Oz Books, hunt down pages that try to list all sorts of Online Resources related to that particular theme, and offer them your URL to add to the list. Add that you are linking their page to yours, as well.

D) Webrings. http://www.webring.org/ is the Grand Central Station of Webrings. There are a couple that are oriented towards mushes, or "muds" in general, which will almost certainly be willing to accept your website if it meets certain minimum standards. And you'll want to run searches for webrings relating to your specific theme as well.

E) The Competition. Some (though by no means all) Mush's Wizards are either so generous, or so sure of their own popularity, that they voluntarily use their Mush's webpages to provide a list of links to other mushes of a similar theme, for the further enjoyment of their playerbase in the event that somebody wants to branch out with additional characters on a mush much like the one he's already on. If your theme is a fairly common one, and if you can find other mushes of this theme which are already listing each other's URLs, it can't hurt to ask if they'll throw yours into the pot. Naturally, it would be polite to offer to place a link to their page on yours as well, though I suppose it isn't mandatory.

F) Your Own Personnel. If any Wizards or Staff are willing to have their personal pages crosslinked with your own, take them up on it. Likewise, as you get regular players, offer to link their pages in even if their pages have nothing to do with your mush, and encourage them to add a link to your site on their own pages. A link is a link is a link, and you never know who might follow one to your website and stop to look around :)

3) Newsgroups.

The rec.games.mud.announce newsgroup is a good place to advertise the Grand Opening, Staff Recruiting Drive, upcoming Major IC Events, and so forth of your mush. Look at the stuff currently on file in that newsgroup for models of how your post should be laid out. Try other newsgroups if it seems appropriate (a Tolkien-themed mush could reasonably be advertised on a Tolkien-themed newsgroup).

4) Word Of Mouth. This one is chancy. Webpages and newsgroups have fairly large audiences, but Word of Mouth only reaches a few people at a time. By all means encourage it, but keep in mind that any mush that depends ONLY on Word of Mouth for ongoing recruiting is likely to grow at a snail's pace, if at all.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING LOGS

I worked to get a certain habit deeply engrained in myself. Whenever I started a session on any mush, any character, I immediately did whatever it took to start logging that session. When I ended whatever sessions I had been running and left the machine, I first copied any log I might conceivably want to keep onto a 3.5" disk. Just about anything that included any RP whatsoever went on the disk, as did any OOC discussions that seemed worthy of preservation for future study.

Afterwards, time permitting, I would edit them to get out the most pointless of the spam (running WHO lists, for example, or reviewing news files), but basically I kept everything of interest.

Why? Several reasons.

1) Practice. As an aspiring writer, I was trying to develop my skills for writing reasonably interesting dialogue fast and furious, but that kind of required being able to examine the record afterwards and thus gauging my own progress.

2) Proof. "If you don't write it down, it didn't happen." If I ever wanted to prove that something had or had not been said IC, when memories differed, having a log would be a big plus (and the problem did come up a few times. And at least once it was MY memory that was proved wrong by examining the log . . . but you can't win 'em all).

3) Personal amusement. Some of the scenes I RPed were very funny, others had other redeeming characteristics which make rereading them an enjoyable experience.

4) Posterity. In some cases the logs were of big events involving several (8 or 10 or more) characters at once, and some of them were counting on me to keep a decent log and e-mail copies to them afterwards. In other cases, I merely thought the logs might someday be posted on the mush's website to show newbies what real RP looked like in this neck of the woods.

So I encourage everybody to log all online sessions that might conceivably be of use or of interest in the future. Otherwise, you can end up 4 years of mushing and find you have nothing to show for it except some vague memories of all the fun times you had . . .

Those are the arguments for why individual Players should log things. But it occurs to me that those were strictly personal reasons. Now let's examine what Official Reasons a team of Wizards might have for encouraging their players to collect logs (with the intention of sharing them with others in some fashion).

1) To Mollify Those Who Don't RP With the Big Features

2) To Embellish the Webpage

3) To Orient Newbies

TO MOLLIFY THOSE WHO DON'T RP WITH THE BIG FEATURES

This argument makes the most sense if your mush is one of those based on a pre-existing theme which first achieved popularity in some other medium (examples: the X-Men comic books, the Star Trek TV shows and movies, the Wheel of Time fantasy novels). And if, having chosen the theme, you permitted certain Players to play the roles of prominent characters in the original material. Nevertheless, the basic reasoning may apply to any mush where some characters, by dint of their Power (in any of several categories), favorable reputation, or some other factor, are frequently talked about and generally desired as RP partners.

Fans of the original material, whatever it was, often flock to mushes based on that theme because they are already intimately familiar with the old stories and want to see bold new "stories" (called TinyPlots, they quickly learn) take place in the same vein and preferably with the same characters they already know and love (Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Doctor McCoy, etc). Ideally they want to play one of those old familiar Feature Characters themselves. They often are NOT joining just because they want to be part of "the background universe" described in the original material, but rather because of the very specific attraction of hoping to meet the Feature Characters.

Obviously the overwhelming majority of the newbies whose interest is focused on a small set of Features rather than the theme in general are going to be disappointed as far as getting a Feature Application approved is concerned. And most of this disappointed remainder are going to find that their chances of having regular RP with one of the really famous Features are extremely low, because most players of Features, like practically everybody else, tend to concentrate on RP with just a handful of friends at a time, once they've found such friends and gotten a TP started. And after all, even Captain Kirk can't be online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so he's got to take such time as he can get and concentrate on what HE wants to do, aided by people he KNOWS he will enjoy doing it with, which generally doesn't mean dropping in at the local bar twice a week and letting a horde of newbies shake his hand. He just doesn't have the TIME for all that.

It often happens, too, that the Wizards who set up the mush in the first place are also focused heavily on RP with the Features, to the exclusion of all else (although they, themselves, may not think of it that way). It is commonly alleged that some mushes based on popular themes have been set up principally because a small group of self-appointed Wizards said to each other, "Then *I* can be Kirk, and *You* can be Spock, and *You* can be Uhura. [or whatever perks are available in the chosen theme]" and didn't really care about making more comfortable the life of any luckless Newbies who came along later, after the really "important" roles had been divvied up among the founders and their best friends.

Even in cases where the Wizards don't consider it their right to grab all the most "prestigious" Feature Characters for their own use, it sometimes happens that they tend to concentrate on closely monitoring what the Features are doing, and using their alts to RP with those Features, on the theory that's the really "important" aspect of the Mush. This would make sense if they kept membership strictly limited (sort of like a conventional RL RPG group that meets every week and everybody knows everybody else quite well), but if the Mush is theoretically open to all comers (anybody can create a character in CharGen quickly and easily, it's only the High-Powered or Feature Chars that require an arduous application process) then a host of newbies find themselves gathered in the bar wondering what to do while the Wizards / Alts of Wizards / Features are pursuing their own private agendas in private buildings (with their characters set Unfindable) and blandly telling the newbies, "Find your own RP! It's out there somewhere!"

But I'm in danger of digressing from the point - the point being that even if the typical newbie has a very low probability of ever engaging in a lengthy TinyPlot with a couple of the big Features, you can at least cheer him up by having the Features post logs of their significant RP sessions at regular intervals so the newbie can read the silly things and convince himself that he really is, in fact, Roleplaying in the same universe as Kirk and Spock and Uhura (or whoever) and that things they do will affect his IC life, and vice versa.

TO EMBELLISH THE WEBPAGE

Still do I recall two of the first mushes on which I was ever active, and what first impressed me about them. The webpages. In both cases, the webpages made fascinating reading all by themselves for a Newbie like me, describing the political setup, the recent history, prominent characters, graphics of castles and things, and in both cases (you see it coming, don't you?) lots of logs of interesting RP sessions from days gone by, which I naturally read in hopes of picking up pointers on what mushing was all about, anyway. For a while after that (although I later altered this opinion) I always tended to judge a mush by its webpage before I ever decided whether or not to connect to it, reflecting that if it didn't have any, or not many, exciting RP sessions recorded on the web, it probably didn't have much of interest occurring online either.

If it worked on me, it will probably work on a lot of other newbies. Indeed, I'm constantly amazed at how little many Wizard teams have done to promote their own mushes on the Internet (except for the obligatory announcement on a newsgroup or two), to provide online examples of the exciting times that can be had, and to sum up the most important IC events their mush has had occur in the first year or two of its existence in order to demonstrate that yes, things DO happen here! If they have such a great place up and running, why don't they advertise it better?

TO ORIENT NEWBIES

In this case, I'm referring to total newbies (not just new to your own mush) who are pretty hazy on what Online Roleplaying is all about and what you're allowed to get away with. Just being able to study a few examples, such as logs, might boost their confidence a bit. "I can do THAT!", they'll be saying. "It's not so hard!"

CASE STUDY : A SITUATION WHERE PUBLISHING LOGS COULD HAVE GONE A LONG WAY TOWARD HELPING MORALE

I generally avoid naming names when I refer to a particular mush as being a textbook case of bad performance in a certain area (except when the mush in question has already gone out of business and so I can't possibly be accused of damaging its prospects of getting new recruits), and I may as well continue that tradition here, but to make this next story comprehensible I'll have to give enough details that anybody who really cares will probably be able to identify the place I'm reminiscing about (which had many excellent points, really, and presumably still does).

I once spent several months on a mush based on the Wheel of Time fantasy series by Robert Jordan, right after it opened. For those of you not already familiar with the Wheel of Time (FOR SHAME!) I will just say that in the mush, as in the books, virtually all "channelers of the One Power," i.e. people with broad magical powers, were members of an all-female organization called the Aes Sedai (this name is both singular and plural, by the way). A few lesser Talents (prophetic dreams, etc.) were available to either gender. Naturally, such powerful characters had to be applied for, and the Wizards had quite sensibly set up a strict quota system, so that only X Aes Sedai, Y Dreamers, etc., were permitted to exist at any given time. If every slot was filled then there was no point in applying for yet another Aes Sedai character until the numbers changed again. The precise numbers were based on a desire to make sure that only a small, fixed percentage of the population were capable of "supernatural" feats. At regular intervals, as the base population expanded (and as pre-existing powered characters disappeared), the numbers would be raised and a publicly accessible scoreboard would show how many vacancies were now available in each category.

So far, so good. I was enjoying myself with a couple of normal characters, and never felt it necessary to apply for any character with special "powers," though as an avid reader of the original books I figured my chances of putting together a well-reasoned, thematic application which would meet with Wizardly approval were pretty high. However, I did look forward to meeting some of these powered people and RPing with them. So did practically everybody else. That was the problem.

If an Aes Sedai appeared in a public place, people were liable to close in from all sides wanting to RP with her. But they were all residents in their headquarters, a huge complex called the White Tower, and common folk were not supposed to go inside the White Tower buildings IC without an invitation. Guess where most of the Aes Sedai spent their time? Guess who they generally RPed with? Right! Each other, and their bodyguards and such, and possibly a few "ordinary" friends on a regular basis, but with the rest of us left wandering the streets of the surrounding city trying to strike up RP with each other. Obviously, such RP was, at least 19 times out of every 20, totally "nonmagical." Pickpockets, drunken brawls, and the very rare prearranged Group RP Opportunity (almost never, in those first months, prearranged by the Wizards. We had to do it ourselves. For example, I finally arranged a costume party and got a surprisingly large turnout, as a lot of people had basically just been hanging around wondering what to do next).

I swear, a neutral observer dropping in and watching intently for a week, if he wasn't permitted inside the White Tower, would have left shaking his head and muttering, "This ought to be called 'Generic Nonmagical Medieval European Mush!'" This wasn't exactly what diehard fans of the Wheel of Time series (which described most of the RPers who took the trouble to create characters) were expecting; they wanted to SEE the sort of scintillating high-level political intrigue, frequent exhibition of magical powers, etc., that they got so much of in the original books. They didn't necessarily all want to BE Aes Sedai, but they wanted to INTERACT with Aes Sedai occasionally to help them feel that they were actually doing something in a world with more magic than this one.

A month or so after I had joined Cuendillar, the Wizards launched a TinyPlot they had spent a lot of time preparing. The action would all occur in some specially created rooms representing the road to another city, and the interior of that city, and the principal characters would be an expedition to that other city who ran into some major shocks. What local IC organization was sending this expedition? Who actually went on it?

BINGO! You got it on the first try! The White Tower was mounting the expedition and nearly everyone involved was A) An Aes Sedai, B) A Warder (the trusted bodyguard of an Aes Sedai), or C) In one case, a pair of young lovers who had somehow managed to previously get themselves installed inside the White Tower as guests (no mean feat - my hat's off to them) and went along on the expedition. How long did this TP expedition last? At least 14 RL days. So half the people online (essentially the "powered" half) in afternoons and evenings were totally inaccessible to the other half for two weeks straight, and at least one of the 4 Wizards was largely tied up (near as I could tell, from the outside) with serving as "Dungeon Master" to that TP to keep it moving. I kept explaining to lonely newbies, "I KNOW there are 14 people listed on WHO right this minute, but 7 of them aren't anywhere you can possibly reach, and won't be for at least another week, and a couple of the others are Wizards. Care to RP with me instead, even though I'm just a common minstrel and not a high-powered Aes Sedai type?"

"But at least [you say hopefully] when the expedition returned, everybody in town got to hear about the exciting things that had just happened, and maybe even participate in RPing the consequences (whatever they may have been) of the TP on the local balance of power among the Important Characters? RIGHT? "

To which I reply: "Not even close."

While the trip was still going on, I had communicated by page with a couple of the participants I happened to know slightly (mainly from friendly OOC conversations on the Channels) exhorting them to PLEASE keep logs of any matters of interest for the sake of posterity. I had the impression that at least 2 participants were doing so. A month or more after their return, having belatedly realized that nobody had any intention of editing and releasing logs of any part of the trip for the enjoyment of the rest of us (granted, I believe a couple of the participants had already disappeared for the summer - or at least had disappeared - but might conceivably have meant to share logs with us when they came back in a few more months), I posted a request on a global BB asking if someone could please just reply with another post describing for the public benefit, in a few well-chosen words, just what that whole TP had been about, what had happened to whom, and what IC rumors it might have generated in our city after the principals returned home. A few months later my request was still unanswered.

Around that same time (I think) I also posted something suggesting that the Wizards seemed to concentrate on the TPs involving the most powerful people (Aes Sedai and Warders, remember?), leaving us commoners out in the cold (any TPs my two principal chars had been involved in, I'd had to design and execute myself, with the aid of a few equally "powerless" friends. If the Wizards knew or cared what I was doing, they never mentioned it to me). A Wizard quickly posted a stern reply indicating I was pitifully unaware of all the work she and her comrades were doing for the ordinary RPer to help him find entertainment. She didn't mention a single example to prove her point, but she certainly resented my remark.

There are several points I could make about this experience, but I'll stick to this one: Having gone to all that trouble to plan and orchestrate a lengthy TinyPlot for the benefit of the "Powered" characters, the Wizards could have gone for the extra point and posted an account of it - even logs of the best scenes from it - on their website (where they already accepted the occasional log contributed by Players) in order to let the rest of the populace feel like they were at least able to share in the fun vicariously after the fact and perhaps impress them with the ingenuity the Wizards had displayed in creating the experience (assuming it did have any ingenuity in it. I still don't know enough about it to offer an opinion).

ON THE MATTER OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

There are several ways of communicating with your players, and for them to communicate with wizards. They include:

1) Mailing list (e-mail)

2) Webpage

3) Online newsfiles

4) Online Bulletin Boards

5) Regular Global Announcements which slice across everybody's screen, no matter what they are doing, to remind them of upcoming events, etc.

6) Channels for OOC discussions

1) MAILING LIST

This isn't too hard to provide. Bear in mind that (based on my experience with several Mush Mailing Lists) the list may be silent for weeks at a time, then have a sudden flurry of discussion on some interesting point or other. Nevertheless, when someone has something to say that's too long for a nice one-screen post on the BB, this is a good place to say it.

Also bear in mind that you should set up the bot to send out copies of each list message via blind carbon copy [i.e. bcc: ] so that each subscriber to the list does not end up in possession of the e-mail addresses of every other subscriber. I have seen this happen, and it upset - quite justifiably - several people who had been under the distinct impression that their e-mail addresses, while necessary for registration of a character on that particular mush, would remain very private.

2) WEBSITE

Ideally, a website could contain all of the following :

Logs of past Roleplay to inform the others of what's been happening and show examples of how to do it, for the benefit of newbies.

An HTML-ized version of the online newsfiles about the special house rules, etc.

Charming graphics, exciting blurbs, etc., to cause a first-time visitor to be likelier to want to connect to your mush and find out just what all the fuss is about.

Links to other sites of interest, such as a list of good Mud Clients for the convenience of your players.

Links to pages (when you have them) describing each of the IC Groups currently active.

A file summarizing the IC Recent History of the mush, so that newcomers will have a way to find out what's been in the headlines since the RP started (assassinations, wars, plagues, famous criminal trials, whatever has become public knowledge). One well-populated mush of my acquaintance has, at this writing, been advertising such a file as "Coming Soon!" on their website for at least 8 months and counting.

3) NEWSFILES

There's nothing particularly tricky about these in theory, it's just that in practice you need someone willing to spend many long hours writing the silly things. Explain special commands. Explain how to use the BB. Explain any unusual rules, the local version of the consent system, which Wizard should be consulted first on a particular type of problem, etc. Every time somebody asks a reasonable question about basic mush policy that isn't clearly addressed in the newsfiles, make a note to create a new newsfile to cover it - or to revise an old one.

4) BULLETIN BOARD

The ideal BB system, assuming you use TinyMush, PennMush, or TinyMux, is Myrddin's Global Bulletin Board, available via Myrddin's MUSH Code Repository at http://www.best.com/~merlin/mushco de.html

Ideally, you should have boards for the following topics:

IC Rumors - listing things that the typical citizen might have ICly heard. It might be a good idea to insist that posters differentiate between "news," i.e. "true stories," and unsubstantiated "rumors."

I have seen someone (who bravely called himself Anonymous) post an unconfirmed "rumor" about the IC sex life of another character. There was quite a bit of debate over that, including such questions as the ethics of posting that sort of rumor, the question of whether it was true, the question of whether anyone had a right to post an inflammatory rumor that was in fact false, the question of whether or not it was ethical to post such an explosive item (regardless of whether it was true or not) while hiding behind the name Anonymous (the Wizards stated that they could easily find out who it was, but that didn't do anybody else much good), etc. I admit that a character might want to post a news item under a pseudonym for valid reasons, but some sort of guidelines should be instituted before you get stung this way.

OOC - for general OOC discussion that doesn't belong anywhere else.

Want Ads - for listing character openings. ("Middle-Aged White Male, Duke of Plaza-Toro, wealthy, seeks decorative young wife able to preside at social functions and participate in political TinyPlots").

TinyPlots - for discussing upcoming TinyPlots. Recruiting help, announcing kickoff times, etc.

Events - for serving notice of things that are scheduled to occur soon. These will usually be IC Events, but it is possible that OOC Events will need to be announced from time to time.

Code - For mentioning any changes in the local coding that players ought to be aware of. Also for people to post suggestions on what they would like to see changed.

Building - For updates on how building is coming, for posts concerning the current rules about building your own rooms and objects, how to get them approved, etc.

Other Mushes - Let's face it. People like to gossip about things that interest them - even if it's your competition (a mush with a similar theme, for instance). If you forbid them to plug somebody else's mushes on public channels (I have seen Wizards attempt this) they'll just spread the word anyway, by page or OOC comment or @mail or simply by using channels when they don't think you're listening. So relax to the inevitable and give them a BB where they can post their sales pitch just once where everybody interested will eventually see it, and then, having gotten that out of their systems, they will hopefully find better things to do with their time, like roleplaying.

Moving right along, we come to the thorny issue of "How long should posts be left on each Board?" Let's consider some extreme cases.

On a certain Fantasy Mush of my acquaintance, there are two global BBs. One is called the RP Board and one is called the OOC Board. Each Board can display up to 47 message titles at once when you type +rpscan or +oocscan. If there are already 47 messages on a Board and you post a couple more, they go on it - technically - but they aren't "visible" when someone scans the board for titles, so it's kind of pointless to do it that way.

Accordingly, whenever the Boards get too full (say, once or twice a week) a Wizard deletes something - such as messages 1-20 on each Board and creates new elbow room for newer posts.

At this point the old messages are GONE. Nobody is assigned to save them on a floppy for posterity. Nobody transfers them to a webpage. Were you gone a week and were there some drastic IC Events explained on the RP Board, and some new rules discussed on the OOC Board? If the original, "official" messages are gone before you log in and check the Boards again, you can only hope to find out what happened via the tried and true method of picking up garbled gossip from other people after the fact and hoping you get it right. Is this a good thing? Of course not. Since not every regular player on a mush is able to log in every day or two without exception, let's agree that having a BB where your important post may be erased within 3 days is not much better than having no BB at all if you want everybody who could possibly be interested to have access to your message. Of course, you can repost your message every time it disappears off the top of the Board, thus contributing to the general amount of spam and causing other people's messages to disappear even faster . . . never mind.

OTOH I have seen mushes where messages over a year old were still posted on the BBs . . . and we're not talking about things like detailed explanations of special rules, or at least not just those; we're talking about IC Gossip, announcements of Events and TinyPlots that have long since expired, and so forth.

5) GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

Don't depend upon these too much. First : if they are coming every five or ten minutes, RPERS are going to get really annoyed at having their private chats constantly interrupted by unwanted spam. Second : if you install an option permitting people to turn them off - become deaf to them - you'll have people keeping them turned off and then claiming they weren't given fair warning that something was about to happen. They'll have a point if Global Announcements were the only means used to mention an approaching deadline.

6) CHANNELS

Channels are easily created. I recommend at least the following (names may vary).

Newbie : the channel for newbies to ask questions on, and those who are interested to offer them answers.

Public : discussions of whatever seems worthy of discussion and doesn't clearly belong on some other channel instead.

Staff Channel : For high-level discussions by the Wizards and their Staff. Or maybe for just plain silly discussions, depending.

Group Channels : If your Mush is full of tight little IC groups (Noble Houses, professional Guilds, populations of several different nations, or whatever) then each Group will probably want to occasionally discuss private matters (such as plans for future operations against other groups) OOC in a fashion that others cannot easily overhear.

ON THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

NOTE : The following material is drawn directly from a procedure implemented by Regent of Dune MUX during my tenure there. Obviously it made a strong impression on me :)

Occasionally there are pressing issues that the Wizards and Staff are not qualified to solve on their own, if only because they realize they don't know exactly what the bulk of the active Players want to happen. Granted, in the MUX where I first saw this occur, there was no BB and SOMETHING had to be done . . .

The procedure went like this:

Beginning at least a week or two in advance, the date and time of the Player - Crew meeting was posted on a notice in the main OOC Nexus, and mentioned in the hourly Global Announcements and in the logon entry screen so that anyone regularly active was bound to have a chance to see it.

At the meeting, one person had been designated Moderator; she made a brief speech (canned, I believe, so we didn't have to wait for her to type it out) and then invited comments on the first topic on the Agenda.

To get permission to speak, you paged an Assistant. The Assistant simply put your name on a waiting list. Each person who paged for permission eventually got to speak, although everybody was encouraged to have their statement all typed out and ready to go when their turn came, so as to keep things moving as quickly as possible (me, I kept lengthy statements typed out in Notepad and used cut-and-paste with my Windows-based Mud Client).

ON THE MAINTAINING OF CREDIBILITY

"Lying to other people is your own business, but I tell you now, a man with a reputation as a liar might as well be dead, for people will sooner listen to the wind."

Some players have a phenomenally long memory.

Don't commit yourself to any hard-and-fast deadlines unless you know &$%%$*@ well you can make that deadline, and add approximately one quarter to your estimate to be on the safe side whenever possible.

There are stories of people waiting up to six months to get an answer, even if it's a negative one, to their application for a particular type of character. Do the Wizards involved still have a high credibility rating?

I have kept an eye on a certain well-populated fantasy mush where the website has been promising to provide a "Recent History" page summarizing the important IC things that have occurred since the mush first opened, some years back. This promise of "Coming Soon!" has been there for at least 8 months at the time of this writing, without any correction, explanation, or apology. Are the Wizards maintaining credibility?

If you tell people that their applications for Feature Characters will be processed and replied to, Yea or Nay, within a certain timeframe (one calendar week, let's say) you had better know you can make that deadline every single time, barring such extreme problems as A) a lengthy server crash or B) Unexpected death or illness in your immediate family. If you discover you just can't make it every time, you should consider all of the following:

1) Hiring more Staff to help process applications.

2) Rewriting the online info that states the turnaround time for processing applications so that it is more in accord with reality.

3) Sending a personal note of apology to each and every player who has found himself waiting along with a guarantee that his app WILL be dealt with by such-and-such a date. If you miss that date too, without an EXCEPTIONALLY good excuse, you're luckier than you deserve if he doesn't give up entirely and quit the mush for good.

So ask yourself these questions at regular intervals - like the first day of each new month.

1) Am I keeping to my promised deadlines in every field where I have let myself be pinned down to a specific deadline? If not, have I posted an acknowledgment of the failure and modified the deadline to something reasonable with an appropriate apology?

2) Have I promised any favors, services, help in coding objects, etc., which I have not delivered? To whom and why not?

3) Has anyone brought to my attention a set of rules and/or policies which, considered side by side, are misleading, unclear, or flatly contradict one another in certain circumstances? If so, what have I done about it and how long did it take?

4) If serious accusations, especially from several different people, have been leveled against one of my Staff or fellow Wizards, what have I done about it?

5) Have I been regularly available for consultation as required by my particular duties?

6) Have I answered any and all @mail that requires an answer?

7) As a general catchall question, have I been caught lying through my teeth? How did this occur? What have I done about it? Entered a plea of Not Guilty By Reason Of Temporary Amnesia, perhaps?

NOTE : Logging on one afternoon, idling for an unbroken four hours while doing things in other windows or in RL, and then logging out without responding to any pages or @mail you received while online does NOT constitute being available. It constitutes playing mindgames.