People often set context-sensitive @look_places then forget about them and move on. People change states a lot. Since we're on the subject, I may misremember but I believe that Arm also made distinctions between a message you could set which works like our @look_place and a message you could set which would automatically revert once you changed rooms.
Items don't tend to get around by themselves. Their custom messages would be cleared when picked up. I can't recall this ever being an issue with the feature. You wouldn't see a sword walking down the street with a message pertaining to it tending a bar. Items don't tend to change states unless interacted with. Their arrange messages scarcely become irrelevant because they aren't animate. There are some fringe examples of course but these messages tend to have far more leniency than setting a sensitive @look_place. 'Oh darn, that freshly prepared meal has been piping hot for TOO LONG' versus 'Oh right, my @look_place still says I'm balls-deep in that chica and I've just arrived at my corps boardroom meeting'.
It was a useful tool for setting a scene as opposed to seeing a collection of items on the ground as a solid wall of text or strewn across/within their given containers or flyers and business cards everywhere who-the-fuck-knows-wherever because they have no associated message and could be anywhere. Did that business card flytipper emote when leaving that card? Too bad for anybody witnessing it who stuck around in the interim for the next person to come along and grab it who has their own interpretation. Drop that card in a bin bag full of discarded condoms? Someone is going to put their hand in it to retrieve it because the only context they have is that an item is here.
The ability to enrich a scene especially came into play when somebody used an item as a prop in a scene, an actor can come in midway through the scene and at a glance understand what they're seeing within the room. A burglar might leave objects in disarray with custom 'arrange' descriptions to leave their mark. Items might accumulate cobwebs and dust to show that they are neglected. Seeing somebody's home or a place they used and how they had set their item arrange messages gave you insight into their character. The examples are really limitless. These are all powerful roleplay tools that give objects and rooms charm and personality and offer incredible diversity.
I suppose you could consider taking an item and then returning it but not 'arranging' it in a pristinely kept room to be making a mess, but that would be IC carelessness and an IC issue with individual cases, which really isn't a problem at all because this in and of itself is a form of expression and roleplay.
It's like you said: your immediate thought was that I would spend my time fixing other people's plain wrong shit. In that case, the fact that I'm advocating for it and calling it an excellent feature should tell you plenty.
I have to admit, your reply sounds a little jaded about this community, Vetra. I don't find the two commands that comparable due to the reasons mentioned and I'm certain that Sindome players would have no problems adopting it. I wonder why you were given an immediately negative impression when my recollection was positive.
Better arguments I could see would be abuse cases along the likes we've seen in the past with spam attacks. A character limit could be imposed to combat this. This is generally a lot more effort than somebody just flooding chat channels either way (and much easier to stop since removing their character from IC effectively stops the attack).
Another argument would be the code architecture not supporting adding the new @message which would pretty flatly shut down ever seeing it. In that case, more ways to present items in room using other objects would definitely be appreciated and awesome.
