Because of MediaMOO's unique purpose, basically everybody at the Tuesday Cafe can be identified; nobody is anonymous. This feature encourages the interactions at the Cafe to be more grounded in the kinds of relationships we have with each other in e-mail and at conferences.
People who have identities on MediaMOO must be doing media research and thus are likely to be graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty than students or non-university-affiliated people.
Though everybody at MediaMOO, and at the Cafe, is doing research, members are expected not to conduct research on the people they interact with there. Some writers quote from Cafe and MOO discussions after having gotten explicit permission from the person quoted. I think the culture requires that the writer e-mail the MOOers being quoted a copy of what they said and a request to quote them that describes what kind of writing it is and where it will, or where it will be likely to, appear. Because nobody is anonymous, the e-mail address of each MOOer is easy to find.
Teachers are discouraged from bringing their classes to MediaMOO. As Amy Bruckman put it in a note describing the purpose of MediaMOO,
A note to teachers: Unfortunately, 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 filled with, for example, hundreds of freshman composition students.
Last updated: 10 June 1996. Questions and comments? Please e-mail Sharon Cogdill at scogdill@tigger.stcloud.msus.edu.