The history of Sociopolitical Ramifications
  
by unci
  
SPR was founded the 19th september of 1994 by Gud (Martin C S Gauffin,
moment@lysator.liu.se) in Linkoeping, Sweden. It started with a public-
shout in FurryMUCK, and I had the luck to be online at that time. SPR 
started with three objects, and became public immediately: one room
and  two characters (Gud and Guest). I logged in as guest (along with
some  others connected to the same guest character), and Gud @pcreated
me as  #6.
  
Then he asked who would like to help build up his MUCK as a wizard. Of
course, I agreed. Tuxedo, another sociopolitical ramificator of the
first hour, took over building up the city, with streets named such as
Disk Drive and Processor Lane, after Gud's suggestion. There, a theme
started to form - something high-tech-like. As most came from 
FurryMUCK, they remained furry of course - that's non-human. However
humans are not forbidden.
  
One of the most important SPR policies developed soon: we want to get
along with the absolute minimum of regulations and restrictions for
players, we assume that SPR members are responsible individuals who
don't need written rules for living with each other. So, we became an
anarchy which works amazingly well even as we grow.
  
We gathered a pretty pleasant society by inviting our good friends.
With its policy of giving out M1 programmer level to all new players
and builder status without any quota, SPR became a place for
programmers, and we have a lot of unique programs and well-built areas
now.
  
Unfortunately we had some difficulties in October 1994, because the
bridge that connected SPR with the internet crashed again and again. As
these problems could not be easily solved, SPR temporarily moved to
America, because Tigerwolf (George F Nemeyer, tigerwolf@tigerden.com)
was so friendly to offer his 486 computer (meanwhile upgraded to
Pentium) as a server. Because of the limited connection capacity of
tigerden.com (two MUCKs, a number of users and many WWW pages sharing
one modem) and the lagged overseas connections for European users, we
moved back to Sweden in December 1995, first via a bridge (estragon and
godot), but as this was unreliable, we changed to a direct connection
(svansmoj.ctrl-c.liu.se) in March 1996. With the recent hardware
upgrade, we should be able to handle further database growth well.
  
A lot of SPR users have been wizards. As wizards are capable of doing
many things dangerous for the MUCK and its users, we have written down
rules for wizards and reduced the wizcore to under thirty players. If a
wizard abuses the additional possibilities, acts against the wiz rules
or is idle for more than 45 days, s/he loses wizard status. Wizards on
SPR don't rule but serve - anyone regarding wizard status as a position
of power should not be a wizard. Power is nothing more than an unwanted
side effect of being wizard.
  
Meanwhile SPR has over 25000 objects and is still growing. The
development has shown that anarchy works - and proven those wrong who
said that for a MUCK of a certain size to work, there need to be strict
rules, players have to obey wizards, can be thrown out for any reason
and have no right to doubt their decisions. We have learned from the
disquieting development on certain other MUCKs and hold more than ever
to our principles of not imposing behaviour rules on each other, being
open to everyone, respecting the personality and property of players
and keeping wizard power under control.
  
Until recently, SPR used to be mostly a world of great building and
programming, but did not have the around-the-clock action or the 
society of some other MUCKs yet. This changes, nowadays we have someone
at all times of the day (as our users are in all parts of the world).
We encourage everyone to start events for enhancing the social aspect
of the MUCK.