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Re:Stop measuring community engagement by empathy_m on Thursday September 08, 2022 @11:10AM (#32766725)
Historically, the immortals on MUDs used to optimize for thing like "fun" and "clout" - how much do you enjoy interacting with the players and being seen as the person in charge of their game? How much do you enjoy telling people you volunteer your time to work on it?

If WSB members were doing bad stuff like, making mean jokes about the leadership of companies Ryan Cohen divests from in; or coordinating real-life harassment of family members of employees of the Depository Trust Company or something; you'd probably want to put a stop to that and focus them somewhere else. Because it wouldn't be fun.

If Fox News interviewed you and you sounded silly and all the community members got mad at you, you'd probably also quit the volunteer job.

But as long as you make choices that make the community a fun and engaging place to hang out and feel like you're part of a big secret treasure hunt, that seems awesome, and you would probably want to make choices that maximize that.

TBH most MUDs were not data-driven and kinda govern by feeling -- they'd sort of add steering they thought was interesting and keep it in place unless there's a backlash. The tedious administrative stuff (bans, moderation, player requests for item reimbursement) would always have a backlog and you'd recruit junior imms to help out and they would feel like they were part of the fun too.

Re:Stop measuring community engagement by JAA1337 on Thursday September 08, 2022 @12:15PM (#32767716)
Just want to give you a shout out for using the acronym MUD. I havnt seen it used in like 25 years :). Thank you!
Re:Stop measuring community engagement by smeyer on Thursday September 08, 2022 @04:12PM (#32771418)
What does it stand for?
Re:Stop measuring community engagement by yoyohello13 on Thursday September 08, 2022 @04:18PM (#32771528)
Re:Stop measuring community engagement by solardev on Thursday September 08, 2022 @04:18PM (#32771521)
Multi user dungeon, basically like early MMORPGs, usually text based. MMORPG are massively multiplayer online role-playing games, like World of Warcraft.