Practicing MUD etiquette (Mudiquette) will maximize your and other’s enjoyment of the mudding experience.
Each MUD is a different place with it’s own particular membership that has a shared history, and will have developed a particular etiquette and community spirit. The following general guidelines are useful advice for any MUD:
- Help. The first thing you should do after signing on is to type “help” to get access to help documentation.
- News. The second thing you should do is type “news” to get recent information.
- Practice. Practice using the commands described so that you will be able to move around once you enter the MUD.
- Courtesy. A MUD often has dozens or hundreds of participants. Obey the rules of each particular MUD, and be polite in social interactions — the golden rule applies in the virtual world as much as it does off-line.
- Flooding. Flooding happens when someone sends a long list of several lines of text on your screen instead of a short message, causing the screen to scroll up several lines and making it hard to keep track of the conversation. Both newbies and malicious blowhards flood — it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart. In general, don’t flood others, and ask flooders to stop.
Resources. The section on Internet Netiquette has additional information about Internet etiquette in general. The following sites provide additional information about Mudiquette.