NationStates

Shortly after this forum was created in 2009, it was decided to sticky the NS World Cup: Presidential Announcements thread, on the basis that no other event was even close to matching the scale of the World Cup. This is no longer the case, and the World Cup should not be promoted over all other tournaments by having its announcements thread stickied.

Although the World Cup still attracts the most participating nations of any tournament, the Olympic Games are at least comparable in scale. Most importantly for this purpose, the Olympic Council is a larger voting body than the World Cup Committee, and the most recent (uncontested) vote to choose the host of the Olympic Games had a greater turnout than the most recent (uncontested) vote to choose the host of the World Cup, despite the latter being more prominently announced via a sticky. If the World Cup announcements thread remains a sticky, then at least the Olympic Games announcements thread should also be stickied. I think it would be best if no threads specific to a single event were given that privilege.

Perhaps allowing the Olympic Council to post in the existing announcements thread would be sufficient resolution?

The low-frequency of the Olympics in comparison to the World Cup sanctioned events would allow this with minimal impact on the existing thread.

I would otherwise be in favor of stickying the Olympics thread.


The reason I prefer stickied threads to destickying all, is due to the world-wide prevalence of the real life threads.

I think a stickied "World Cup" thread - in addition a potential future stickied "Olympics thread" - may aid in reducing the n00b/random threads trying to create their own World Cup/Olympics etc.

Its well known that people don't have the patience for using the search function in general, but, if at the very least, the two largest competitions both in NS, and in the real world, are front and center on the NS Sports Forum as the first threads in the list for all new visitors, they will be compelled to at least click through them to see that those events already exist, instead of flooding the forum with "Hey lets have a world cup!" type threads, just because it happens to be during a time like this where the baptism of fire is ongoing, signups are effectively over, but the competition (World Cup) itself hasn't started yet.

Vilita wrote:Perhaps allowing the Olympic Council to post in the existing announcements thread would be sufficient resolution?

The low-frequency of the Olympics in comparison to the World Cup sanctioned events would allow this with minimal impact on the existing thread.

That’s an interesting concept (one which would obviously require the input of Polar Islandstates and The Kytler Peninsulae), but then why shouldn’t every other Tom, Dick, and Harry with a tournament get to post there?

Vilita wrote:The reason I prefer stickied threads to destickying all, is due to the world-wide prevalence of the real life threads.

I think a stickied "World Cup" thread - in addition a potential future stickied "Olympics thread" - may aid in reducing the n00b/random threads trying to create their own World Cup/Olympics etc.

Its well known that people don't have the patience for using the search function in general, but, if at the very least, the two largest competitions both in NS, and in the real world, are front and center on the NS Sports Forum as the first threads in the list for all new visitors, they will be compelled to at least click through them to see that those events already exist, instead of flooding the forum with "Hey lets have a world cup!" type threads, just because it happens to be during a time like this where the baptism of fire is ongoing, signups are effectively over, but the competition (World Cup) itself hasn't started yet.

The people who do that sort of thing are generally quite skilled at avoiding reading the stickies.
We do get those World Cup threads even though the World Cup announcements thread is already stickied.

I'll give the issue some thought.

At this point I'm inclined to leave the World Cup sticky in place out of custom rather than logic.

However, I'm inclined to consider Vil's suggestion of accommodating the Olympics alongside the World Cup in some manner, with the understanding that these would be the only two events given that privilege since they're clearly the two premier events in NS Sports in terms of scale, participation, and (in the case of the World Cup) age.

I missed out on the last Olympics due to the distractions of co-hosting the last World Cup, but I am a regular participant in both; which I suppose is neither here nor there, except in noting my familiarity with both to anyone passing through the thread who isn't a regular participant in Sports.

Stopping by, almost certainly too late (I was on holiday):

Olympic announcements are, indeed, rather rare. Two events per year, plus the odd vote on procedural changes such as updating event lists - hmm. It makes logical sense to combine the announcement threads, and there's a good case that the Olympic prestige matches that of the WC these days - at the time of the sticky, they were already huge, but at least the Summer Games were hugely reliant on one user. (The user who has made this proposal, coincidentally!)

I'm not sure it "feels" right, for want of a better word, but it's certainly logical.

In short, I don't have a strong preference on how the Olympic announcements gain extra attention, merely that it does.

I TG'd Kytler to make him aware of this thread/discussion; I'm grateful for his input.

I simultaneously TG'd WCC president Polar Islandstates, and would prefer to wait for his input before making a final decision.

Why does the world cup need its own anouncements thread?

Why not have 1 general anouncements thread so that new people who might want to get into ns sports can check it periodically for sporting competitions, rather than having to trawl the forum?

The greater Vakolicci Haven wrote:Why does the world cup need its own anouncements thread?

Why not have 1 general anouncements thread so that new people who might want to get into ns sports can check it periodically for sporting competitions, rather than having to trawl the forum?

We could edit a thread that has discussion threads for various more established sports to new users can find them more easily.

The greater Vakolicci Haven wrote:Why does the world cup need its own anouncements thread?

Why not have 1 general anouncements thread so that new people who might want to get into ns sports can check it periodically for sporting competitions, rather than having to trawl the forum?

A general announcments thread would in my opinion be a total disaster, as people would have to trawl through announcements they don't give a damn about to find the ones they want to see. Most competitions use sign up and discussion threads for these, and apart from the WC Announcments thread being de-stickied (as there is no reason for it to be there) I don't see any reason whatsoever to change.