Richard A. Bartle: Usenet Postings

Usenet Postings

These are the major postings I've made on Usenet of which I retained copies. I don't post often because I find it very tiresome having to decide whether the people who reply are a) genuinely interested in further debate; b) interested but rather dim; or c) trying to wind me up. It also doesn't help that every time I post I get a mailbag full of junk from people trying to make me join pyramid schemes or buy pornography, sigh.

	An early history of MUD. I've made one correction: the original gave Spring 1979 as the date of the first version, however that was when Roy finished version 2; version 1 was written over a few days in Autumn, 1978, then version 2 was begun. With that alteration made, the posting is a pretty accurate record of what happened. Feel free to quote it at length!
	An exposé of the attitudes of many of the people who run commercial MUDs, and why they're quite happy for people to think such games are dead. It also swipes heavily at the arrogance of some of those involved in the industry.
	A description of how MUD2's parser goes about its business. This is actually three consecutive postings, collected here as one document. There was further discussion on the MUD Development Mailing List.