Member Discussions

How many consecutive days does a MUD have to be down in order to be removed from the TMC Spider?

I've seen some that haven't been up for over two months and it just seems like to me that's long enough for a MUD to be considered dead.

This was brought up before, but I'm not sure where the topic is. There is suppose to be a spider that runs, but I don't think it does.

The spider runs everyday, however the number of days downtime required for removal has been increased dramatically. I got tired of removing dozens of muds only to have them all submit new listings within 48 hours of their removal. *sigh*

Icculus

Just an idea, but why not make an option for the listing owner to delete their mud listing. If they no longer are running their MUD?

Probably because most admins wouldn't bother to delete their listing.

Thanks for the replies, and I definitely understand how annoying that would be, having to re-add them right after they get taken down.

Something that might be worthwhile to consider (although I really don't know if it would be more trouble than it's worth) is to allow MUD admins to login into their accounts and click a button to "renew" their listing if their MUD has been down. I assume the spider or something related could send an automatically generated email to the admin email provided to let them know that since their MUD has been down for 60 days, they risk losing their listing unless they login and click 'Renew my Listing' within X amount of days. So this way, MUD Admins can maintain their listings, even if their MUDs are down, and those that are really gone and be removed quicker.

This would likely improve the overall quality of the listings as there would be fewer dead MUDs to sort through, though like I said, I don't know if it would be more trouble than its worth. But, it's just a suggestion, anyway :)

Of course, this wouldn't address the problem of MU*s that have had no activity since 2004, have been "closed for an emergency" for a year, or that are actually something else entirely than what is listed. Like the last eight I just tried out of the Roleplay Enforced listings under MOOs and MUSHes.

I'd almost think that it would be more useful to require administrators to take some action, like replying to an e-mail, to *keep* their listing in place. If someone isn't paying enough attention to reply to an e-mail in two weeks or so (or to change the contact e-mail address in their listing), then they likely don't have an active game. Right now the listings are of very limited use because they are so littered with corpses.

That wouldn't be bad if it could be completely automated. With the 1000+ MUDs listed now, it would be a lot of ask for anyone to try to keep up with any of that manually.

Why not just whip the listings of MUDs and start over? That way there'd be no "dead weight" in the listings. I know this is rather extreme, but it would slash the dead weight, and give mud admins a chance to update their listings, etc. I agree that the admins who publish their MUDs on the list should be allowed to either update or edit their listings, even deleting them if their mud goes down.

Does the spider delete the muds that are down automatically, or do you have to? If it does it automatically, I'd say 3 months with no activity is more than fair. If the mud gets deleted and its still actually there, then the admin just needs to re-list it. Isn't it the "job" of an admin to keep on top of things like that anyway? Or perhaps someone can code up an automated email generator that sends an email out to the admin of the mud 2 weeks prior to the 3 months from the listing date that they have to login and re-verify their listing or it will be automatically purged?

This would keep the list fresh, get rid of the dead muds, and make sure that the muds listed are actually active.

(I'll probably get my head handed to me for this post, but, its just an idea)

I think the entire thread is a valid suggestion. People have been moaning about this or that in regards to making the site more useful or effecient, whether by sorting MUDs different, changing search filters, etc. but when you really think about it, the simplest and probably most important aspect to keep the listings valid is to make sure the MUDs on there are actually still being ran. :p

I understand maintaining a site like this has to be extremely time consuming, and it HAS to be extremely frustrating to put measures in place to remove MUDs that haven't been up in a while to just have, a couple of days later, the admin emailing and bitching that they lost their listing.

But if there is some relatively worthwhile solution possible, I think it would be a great benefit to the site.

I really don't know the work involved in most of the solutions presented, so if those more informed would chime in, that would be great.