MUDs, MOOs, and Other Rural Connotatives

MUDs, MOOs, and Other Rural Connotatives

The anonymous nature of MUDs furthers the equality ideal of democracy. Users are less likely to face dis­crimination because nobody really knows who else is online – just because a MUD character is described as being male does not mean that the character’s creator is male. Anonymity also gives users the opportunity to say things and do things they otherwise might not. While this may mean that users can tend to be more violent or sexually uninhibited through their characters than in face-to-face interaction, anonymity also means that, in a more serious situation, users can feel at liberty to express their thoughts. In particular, anonymity can encourage the expression of minority opinions.

Governance structures of the communities on these social MUDs, where players are not involved in an adventure game, but log in to chat with others, vary from MUD to MUD, but there tend to be a few constants. At the top of the social hierarchy of a MUD is the class known as “Wizards.” A MUD’s wizards are generally equivalent to the administrators of the site; on a MOO called WolfMOO “the wizards have special powers and controls that other players do not have, which allow them to successfully run and administer the MOO.”¹⁰⁴ The range of powers which non-wizard users of the MUD are awarded depends on the MUD. Wizards may grant users powers including increased disk quotas, the ability to program and create nonstandard objects on the MUD, or the ability to “boot” or kick off guest users who are being obnoxious.

Throughout MUDs, however, some level of democracy remains. Analogous to the Usenet “democracy” in which users ultimately decide which newsgroups to frequent and hence which newsgroups “live,” MUD users determine which of the plethora of available MUDs they will play in, encouraging MUD administrators to pass policies that players like lest their players leave to find a different, more satisfactory MUD. After all, “the common wisdom is that simple economics will make it unrewarding for a Wizard . . . to treat players badly, and so most successful holders of those positions will by necessity treat their players reasonably well.”¹⁰⁵

Often, to relieve their workloads, wizards will designate several experienced players as helpers. These helpers may be given tasks of answering questions and helping new players, or they may be given more substantial power. On a MOO called LambdaMOO, an Architecture Review Board (“ARB”) was created to shift the burden of determining which players could be granted a requested quota increase (so that the player had more room to store files on the MOO, for programming or other purposes), from the wizards to the community itself.

In general, decisions about MUD policy are made by the wizards. On WolfMOO, arguments between players are also resolved by the wizards; in fact, “to prevent the MOO from falling into complete anarchy, the wizards expect players with complaints or problems with other players to bring the problems to them . . . not to deal with them by themselves.”¹⁰⁶ WolfMOO wizards have gone so far as to punish vigilante players who try to exact revenge on their own without informing the wizards. On the other end of the decision-making spectrum, however, is LambdaMOO, whose head wizard determined that the residents of LambdaMOO would make all of the policy decisions about the MOO, and that the wizards would only serve in the technical role of carrying out the wishes of the MOO’s community.

1. Case Study: LambdaMOO

1. The Democratic Dream

As the last social decision we make for you, and whether or not you indepen­dent adults wish it, the wizards are pulling out of the discipline/manners/arbi­tration business; we’re handing the burden and freedom of that role to the society at large. We will no longer be the right people to run to with complaints about one another’s behavior, etc. The wings of this community are still wet (as anyone can tell from reading *social-issues), but I think they’re strong enough to fly with.”¹⁰⁷

Several issues related to the sudden onslaught of democracy on LambdaMOO still needed to be dealt with, however. Haakon asked what should be done with the ARB, for instance, in the same post. Additionally, although the community of LambdaMOO had been granted the power of democracy, there was apparently nothing to do with it.

An incident a few months later changed all that. Julian Dibbell in the famous article “A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society” discusses the incident in greater detail.¹⁰⁸ In March 1993, a LambdaMOO player using the character name of Mr. Bungle programmed a “voodoo doll” which the player then used to engage several characters in obscene acts against their users’ wills. Some other resi­dents of LambdaMOO realized what was happening and put Mr. Bungle into a box, but another well-meaning character freed him.

The LambdaMOO community was outraged. In heated discussion, many members demanded that Mr. Bungle be punished; the question was how. A “town meeting” was called, and about thirty characters showed up to participate in the discussion – including Mr. Bungle himself, who made a few statements before withdrawing. The meeting created no general consensus, however. Despite the lack of resolution, one of the wizards enacted punishment on Mr. Bungle unilaterally, by deleting the player from the database.

When Haakon returned from a trip to discover what had happened, he determined to ensure that, should an occasion like this arise again, the LambdaMOO community would itself be able to convey to the wizards what punishment should be imposed or rule enacted. Therefore, a system of petitions and ballots was created. LambdaMOO users could vote on issues, and their vote bound the wizards. “The awkward gap between the will of the players and the efficacy of the technicians would be closed.”¹⁰⁹ And for some years LambdaMOO was administered by the players and not the wizards.

2. The Empire Strikes Back

The wizards will no longer refrain from taking actions that may have social implications. In three and a half years, no adequate mechanism has been found that prevents disruptive players from creating an intolerably hostile working environment for the wizards. The [original proposal’s] ideal that we might somehow limit ourselves solely to technical decisions has proven to be untena­ble.¹¹¹

These turns of events provide a stark reminder that in cyberspace, authority comes down to the owner of the real space machine, or in this case, the programmers who solely have the ability to change the world. LambdaMOO tried a democratic system, with equal representation for every user and limited involvement by wizards, and it didn’t work. What must have originally been a system designed to lessen the work of wizards by distributing the decision-making process appar­ently turned into something which only served to heighten wizards’ stress. And the wizards responded to the system abuse by taking the system away.

Perhaps, in light of the governance structure changes on LambdaMOO, and in light of the cre­ation of alternative Usenet hierarchies such as Usenet II, an explicitly democratic governance of communities on the Internet will never be effective. Nonetheless, democratic ideals will always be valued, as long as market norms (the existence of multiple groups gives users the opportunity to pick which groups to visit) force administrators to enact policy which is pleasing to users. Even as Haakon says in the reversal-of-fortunes post, “Your input is essential.” ¹¹²