MOOs as virtual meeting spaces for professional communities are becoming increasingly popular. Well known examples are the MediaMOO (Media Researchers), AstroMOO (Astronomers), BioMOO (Biologists) and PMCMOO (Post Modern Culture).
Let's have a look at the purpose of MediaMOO (obtained by typing ``help purpose''):
-------------------------------------------------------------- Media MOO 4/95 >help purpose MediaMOO is a professional 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, to explore the serious side of this new medium. Unlike other MUDs, characters on MediaMOO are identified. You can find out who anyone is with the @whois command (except for a few early members who are still anonymous) so that you can contact them to continue professional discussions. To become a member of MediaMOO you must be doing media research. We are more interested in knowing about what you are doing than what you are interested in. Most college and pre-college students who apply are not really doing media research. If you're looking for a place to hang out with interesting people, LambdaMOO is at lambda.parc.xerox.com 8888. In fact, if you read the USENET newsgroup rec.games.mud.announce, you'll find a list of hundreds of MUDs and MOOs, almost all of which have no requirements for membership. 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. Welcome! Sincerely, Amy Bruckman September 1993 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message written in 1993 clearly tries to emphasize distinction between a place dedicated to one specific task (being a place for a community) and multi-purpose MOOs such as TECFAMOO.
BioMOO shows a similar statement, but is also used for educational purposes.
------------------------------------------------------------- Bio MOO 4 /95 >help purpose ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BioMOO is a virtual meeting place for biologists, connected to the Globe-wide Network Academy. The main physical part of the BioMOO is located at the Bioinformatics Unit of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. BioMOO is a professional community of Biology researchers. It is a place to come meet colleagues in Biology studies and related fields and brainstorm, to hold colloquia and conferences, to explore the serious side of this new medium. All characters on BioMOO are identified. You can find out who anyone is by using the @whois command, so that you can contact them to continue professional discussions. BioMOO is continuously growing and changing. Your ideas for new additions and modifications are welcome. Please contact Gustavo by email to Gustavo@bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il If you're looking for a place to hang out with interesting people, LambdaMOO is at lambda.parc.xerox.com 8888. In fact, if you read the USENET newsgroup rec.games.mud.announce, you'll find a list of hundreds of MUDs and MOOs, almost all of which have no requirements for membership. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------