From: fortony@bart.gis.uiuc.edu (Felix Ortony)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud
Subject: split of rec.games.mud
Summary: the author believes most posters are mentally absent
Keywords: rec games mud
Date: 13 Apr 92 19:16:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: ux1.1992Apr13.191643.13819
Followup-To: rec.games.mud
Organization: University of Illinois, Geographic Imaging Systems, Urbana,  IL


It's incredibly clear to me that most of you folks posting on the
subject have no idea how newsgroups are organized.  None whatsoever.
rec.games.mud.VR?  rec.games.mud.adventure?  These are such ridiculously
lax and useless terms that any self-respecting MUDder would be personally
embarrassed if an RFD were sent into news.groups containing them.  Or
how about that argument that we should try for 'rec.mud.*', because then
people would be able to convince their systems administrators that it's
not a game?

How dumb do you think systems administrators are, Jason R. Pascucci?

Anyone out there who seriously believes that 'VR' (that hoary, child-eating
pipe dream word) is an acceptable suffix to any newsgroup except maybe
something beginning with 'sci' is foolish.  MUDding is not 'virtual reality',
no matter how much you'd like to try to convince your systems administrator
that it is.  MUDding, maybe, is textual reality.  But please.  Don't
wrongly overuse a word that's got enough problems of its own.  Unless, that
is, you can manage 5000 polygons a second in ascii.

So let's move on to the Galloping DikuMUDders problem.  This newsgroup
is, in my opinion, filling up with boring newbie questions from a bunch
of people who think it's great fun to interact aggressively with a pattern
of bits residing in the RAM of a computer a thousand miles away.  Since
Diku is about as exciting and enervating as LPmud, why don't we go right
ahead and create another ghetto for these people?  I mean, there's precedent,
right?  WELL I'LL TELL YA.  THE REASON WE'RE DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO BE ABLE
TO GET AWAY FROM DIKUMUDS NOW IS THAT ALMOST EVERY SINGLE DIKUMUDDER IN THE
KNOWN UNIVERSE HAS POSTED HIS OR HER PERSONAL THEORY CONCERNING HOW THE GROUP
SHOULD BE SPLIT UP, WHAT IS APPROPRIATE, AND WHAT A REALLY K00L LIST OF
ENDINGS SHOULD BE, LIKE 'PROGRAMMER' AND 'DUNGEON' AND 'TOPMUD' AND AND AND.

To be fair, this massive mental affliction has apparently migrated to a
chosen few other non-diku net.charlatans.  But it seems especially prevalent
in the ranks of the dikuMUDders, who by very nature have a much higher
cluelessness per capita than people who actually interact with other humans.

So what's going to be done about all this?  Well, I'm 100% straight out
flush true blue confident that the subset of morons who think their ideas
about mudding are going to convince the professional authorities to create
ten new groups is going to keep posting, and posting, and posting, filling
up this newsgroup, and perhaps news.groups, with unadulterated useless
dribble that could be described as masturbatory at best and as mewling,
incomprehensible excretions at worst.  And I'm even more confident that
this volume of ill-thought-out drivel will ruin any chance that this newsgroup
will fall back into the hands of its rightful owners, the tiny* set.
Which, in the end, is very depressing.

If anyone sane is listening out there, the only groups which have a chance
of making it, and that only individually, are:

rec.games.mud.diku
rec.games.mud.tiny
rec.games.mud.announce (moderated by Scott Goehring)

Those are just the cold facts.  Either get it together, or get it out of here.

Felix Ortony
fortony@murphy.gis.uiuc.edu
Rhodesia
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud