Hello Mr. Hackett,

On tuesday July 26 an article in the August 1 issue of 
Newsweek was brought to our attention.  On page 10 in 
Periscope, under the Cyberscope section, there is an 
article entitled 'All Disney, All the Time', and at the 
end, there is this partial sentence:

"...but recently a few characters took over a branch of 
MIT's Wacko MUD, or multi-user-dungeon, and were 
reprimanded by the school.  For a look, telnet to 
red-branch.mit.edu 6003."

We (the two people who 'run' Wacko) thought you might be 
interested to know that the aforementioned statement is 
only vaguely correct.  

The phrase 'took over' is almost entirely inaccurate - 
the 'Disney people' who connected, created a large number
of objects for their own use, but nothing that they did 
or built disrupted the 'normal' flow of things on the 
MUCK.  The objects that they created were, in a way, 
hidden in a corner of the game.

Although wacko runs from a computer hooked into the internet
through MIT, the school has nothing to do with our MUCK. 
It is highly doubtful that MIT is even aware of wacko's 
existance. (although we do have permission to run a MUCK 
on red-branch.)  Therefore, the statement  'reprimanded by 
the school' is entirely innacurate.  One of us spoke with 
(complained to, actually) a number of the Disney people 
about the excessive building, but that is where the matter
ended.

Since the main point of the article was to discuss Disney,
these are not really points that we should pick on, but we
thought we should take the time to straighten these facts 
out a little for our own peace of mind, as well as for yours.

Considering that stories about the internet and its 
excursions seem to be of interest, and that we are already
in Newsweek, we were wondering if you might have any 
questions about the game itself, or MUDs (and all their
derivatives) in general.  We would be more than happy to
answer any queries you might have. There have been a few
stories on MUDs, but nothing (that we have read) from 
the point of view of the people running it. (as far as the 
whys, hows, whens, and other administrative stuff.)

Thank you for your time.

		Sincerely, 

         	Gamesmanagers of wacko,
		 Frank Wang (fwang@sbcs.sunysb.edu)
		 Pete Mackay (skidoo@red-branch.mit.edu)
		 gamesmgr@red-branch.mit.edu