From: beeman@cats.ucsc.edu (Adam Beeman)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.lp
Subject: Admin Burnout and the TMI Dilemma
Summary: I want to quit without killing the mud
Keywords: burnout, the vision thing, dead weight, MudOS, other projects
Date: 31 Jul 92 10:47:11 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.mud.admin
Organization: The MUD Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu



	Okay, I place this question before the collective net-mind 
because I think outside advice would be helpful...

*** Historical background ***

My friend (Sulam) and I started this MUD almost a year ago.  At the time
we were both getting frustrated with mud politics and people arguing about
genres and we also felt very limited by a particular mud admin we had been
working with who wanted to do things a particular way, etc... a whole host
of reasons basically, that brought us to decide to start this new mud...

At the time we started this, LPmud 3.0 was a really new thing and there wasn't
any 3.0 mudlib available on the net at all... Genesis seemed to be taking much
too long and Lars had just put out mudlib.n version 6.  Warhammer 2, the mud
we had been working on, seemed to be one of the first native-mode muds,
alongside Borderline, Genesis, and what later became Discworld.

We decided to write a 3.0 mudlib from nearly scratch and support the conversion
that other muds would need to go through, and provide a base mudlib for people
to start with.  It was also our hope to create a place of learning, where the
newer dialects of LPC would be taught and developed.

And thus, The MUD Institute (TMI) was born.

From the start, TMI has been an all-wizard mud.  Once we had password checking
and some other basics installed, the place was open, with the understanding 
that it was still undergoing changes and development, but that we would do our
best to help whoever came on.  This apparently must have been either a
fantastic idea or an insanely stupid one, because before we knew it we were
bombarded with "applicants" who wanted to learn LPC, and a few hotshots from
the LP world came along... some of them stayed, others just visited... even
Lars himself logged in a few times as we were just getting started.

Eventually Lars quit working on the LPmud game driver and as his patches 
grew more and more infrequent, a group formed on TMI that was intent on making
their own set of changes to the driver, in whatever ways we saw necessary.
We decided to call this driver the MudOS enhanced LPmud game driver, and
wonderful ideas were added.... (can you say "creeping featurism?" :) )
This project moved initially at a very rapid pace, and is now tapering out
to perhaps a final release before some of the primary coders devote their
energy to newer projects... as one said, "We've taken this almost as far
as it can go."  There are a number of basic design limitations that we
can't solve without a total rewrite, such as multithreading.

We also put out a "distribution mudlib" for a while, which you can still get
and use, if you can get it working, which while isn't complete can be a very 
good base to build a mud from.  For a while it was the only one available,
other than mudlib.n, the older 2.4.5, and eventually Discworld and CDlib.

The entire mud has undergone an evolution, clearly, and many ideas came along,
some of which failed miserably and others which we're still using.  I 
could no doubt write quite a bit more about the mud's history than you want
to read.  I'll save that for another time, and get right to the point now.

*** What's going on now ***

Seems like no mud can last forever without changing sites or admins or
general character, and when Sulam and I started TMI there was no politics;
there were people coding, we knew what needed to be done, when changes were
made we logged them into a DONE file, and everyone got to know everyone else
based on what we put into the place.  The people who were worthy of greater
file access seemed to gravitate to the surface and they got it.

Now, we have this mess of "guilds" for each of the major projects the mud
holds, and guild rankings, apprentices, sponsors, this whole yucky power
structure and politics sort of thing again.  We're back to what brought
Warhammer 2 down, meetings of people that got logged with tons of ideas 
and decisions and nobody doing the coding afterwards...

And then Sulam quits.

He beat me to it, actually... we have both invested a tremendous amount of
time and energy into this mud, but in some ways it just isn't that much fun
anymore...  Now I'm the only one left with account access to it, and
we've moved from dogstar (our old site) to a new one, and the admin of 
dogstar doesn't really want TMI to return when dogstar goes back on the net.

*** The real low-down stuff ***

I'm getting sick of feeling responsible for this fairly biggish mud with a
lot of potential, and would like to either scrap it, give it away, let it
fall apart, or *something* to change the way it functions and my role within
it, since it is taking too much of my time and energy, yet if I don't log in
regularly then it always seems to crash or fall apart or something...

I'm also, sad to say, tired of "newbies" who think I'm an expert.  I managed
to become an expert in a pretty narrow field, and so I've been starting to 
keep a lower profile lest I get totally plastered with LPC questions... which
seems to happen anyhow.  I'd like to move into new areas.

What should I do with this place?

When I've talked to people on the mud about this, most of them have begged me
not to shut down the mud or leave the mud world, and I feel like the entire 
mud with a fairly large user base is depending on me to log in regularly, etc.
Now, if I were getting paid to run this mud, it might be a different story,
but since it's financially zilch for me, and less and less fun to boot...
Yes, I'd take a full time job as a mud admin, but I don't see anyone offering
me one.  And a job, it is...

We're also going to need a new site eventually (like in a month or so).


Direct flames to /dev/null.  If you have any thoughts you'd care to share
you can either follow-up to rec.games.mud.admin or directly to this account.
I realize this has been long, and it's still not the whole story.
If you want any other details or have the solution, or even nice 
anaecedotes about how something like this has happened to you or someone you
know... mail me!


-Adam Beeman
Buddha@TMI





-- 
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
#define NAME	"Adam Beeman"
#define EMAIL	"beeman@{cats, ucscb}.ucsc.edu"
inherit SIGNATURE; // enhanced .sig virus
Xref: sparky rec.games.mud.admin:150 rec.games.mud.misc:340