From: tuff@ellis.uchicago.edu (Geoff Tuffli)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.tiny
Subject: Re: Mua'kaar Returns!
Date: 28 Jan 93 00:41:53 GMT
Reply-To: tuff@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

In article garvey@skybridge.SCL.CWRU.Edu (Heather Garvey) writes:
>	It just doesn't have any damn HEALING COMMANDS so the five or
>six of us Healers have had to badger the Admin for the past two months 
>hoping that eventually we'd have something to do other that sit around,
>yawn and explore the city for the fiftieth time....
>	A truly amazing place and I like it enough to stick with it 
>after two months of no Healer commands, but ARGH! It's *not* a finished
>MU* by a long shot....

	Actually, I never claimed it was "finished" -- we keep on adding on
systems and ideas, so in fact it's fair to say that it will never be
"finished". As a suggestion as to what to do...ever heard of role-playing?
 ;-)  Somewhat more seriously, I think it bears mentioning that there is
an immense amount of work that goes into getting a MUSH without any systems
working; the amount of time, from personal experience, to get ONE system
working is truly hideous, in general. Mua'kaar has somewhere around 20
architects (including juniors), and we have been adding more at a somewhat
distressing clip for just the reasons you laid out. I've been considering
suggesting an "admin-for-a-week" to give players who have never admin'ed on
a MU* an idea of just how much work it takes to keep one of these @#$@ things
running, not to mention expanding them.

	In direct reference to the point of healing, we are getting the
systems done as fast as we can, and are severely hampered by the fact that
two of our more important architects are in the set-up phases of other MUSHs,
and as such have put their Mua'kaar stuff "on hold" for the next few weeks.
At this time, there are two or three systems that need to be repaired and
about half a dozen at least that are in various stages of completion. In an
effort to getting these done, there has been some talk of finding one or two
more full-time SysArchs (translation: if there are any MUSH-coders out there
who don't mind impossible coding in impossibly short amounts of time, you
might consider dropping a note).

	I probably speak for a good number of MU* administrators when I say
the following: We're only human, and while a friendly query once every two
or three weeks isn't unreasonable, paging every few days will, guaranteed,
nine times out of ten only serve to antagonize the administration and will NOT
get the systems done any faster. As I have stated many times in the past,
if someone puts together a system and it meshes with everything else, it WILL
be put up in all likelihood. There have been far too many times in the past
few weeks when I've been ready to strangle players who act like we've
machinegunned down a school bus full of elementry school children because
we haven't been able to get everything done instantly.

	It's enough to have made me more than once in the last week consider
ditching the MUSH. As an administrator, I don't ask for any thanks whatsoever;
what I _do_ ask for is a little understanding of how much time and effort it
takes to handle something like this.

	*Lets breath out*

	My apologies for the somewhat exasperated tone of that, and also for
the focus on Mua'kaar, but I felt this had a fair amount of reference to ANY
MU*, especially those that are, for whatever reason, expanding their own
server of systems.


	Geoff Tuffli
	The Green Griffin
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.tiny