Welcome to MediaMOO!
MediaMOO is a professional online community for media researchers. It is a place to come meet colleagues in media studies and related fields and brainstorm, to hold colloquia and conferences, and to explore the serious side of this new medium.

MediaMOO is a research project of Amy Bruckman started at the Epistemology and Learning Group at The MIT Media Lab, and is now hosted at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.

MediaMOO News

Transcript from MediaMOO's 8th Birthday Symposium online!
A transcript from the 8th birthday symposium celebrated on 17/01/01 has been posted in the past events section, and here for your convenience.
JAN.22.01

Membership
Membership in MediaMOO is selective, and it is necessary to submit a membership application from inside MediaMOO. To become a member of MediaMOO you must be involved in doing some form of media research. We have made our definition of media fairly broad because we feel that a certain amount of diversity is important. The requirement that new members be actively involved in research is more rigorously enforced, as this is a professional community.

Graduate students in media-related fields are especially welcome. MediaMOO was founded by graduate students, and continues to be grounded in an academic environment. This is a great place to come and make professional contacts in your chosen field. It is also an excellent place to meet other graduate students, learn what they are doing, and hopefully be inspired.

If you're looking for a place to simply hang out with interesting people and are not interested in, or actively involved in the field, MediaMOO is not for you. We suggest that you look for other MUD's which better match your interests. Our MUD Resource section, favorite search engine or USENET rec.games.mud.announce are all excellent places to start.

Anonymity
Unlike most other MUDs, characters on MediaMOO are identified. You can find out who anyone is with the @whois command. This has been done to encourage a more professional atmosphere, and to encourage the transition between online communication and communication in physical reality. We wish for our members to discuss their real world research, and to gain real world benefits from their membership in our community.

Note on Research
MediaMOO is dedicated to provide a place for media researchers to network and share ideas, it's not a place to actually conduct research! Please do not do research on the inhabitants of MediaMOO without their informed consent. Membership in MediaMOO is no substitute for research ethics and methodology. MediaMOO is a great tool for computer supported collaboration, and we encourage our members to take advantage of this.

Note to Teachers
While MediaMOO is grounded in academia, we must discourage you from bringing classes of students here. Although these experiments are interesting, this is not the appropriate place. MediaMOO would become a very different place if it were to become a classroom instead of a open forum. Of course, teachers are welcome to invite their classes or groups of students to join us for special events such as the Birthday symposiums.

MediaMOO Resources
A good place to learn more about MediaMOO, the concept behind its design, and its history is among Amy Bruckmans papers

For more general research oriented material on MUD's, the "Lost Library of MOO" is a good starting point. Yahoo! maintains an extensive index of MUD resources and active worlds. Transcripts are also available of past events at MediaMOO