[Discussion] RP mentoring in NS Sports?

[The Archregimancy]

After analyzing with some users later today on the IRC, we thought about the possibility to ask the moderation stuff to create NS Sports mentors and introduce modifications like the modification or creation of a new Guide for Sports RPing thread which aim would be to provide tips and further help to starters in NS Sports and improve their experience in this subforum, other users asked me to discuss this publicly, hence I modified the original aim of this thread.

Help Guide Draft in Google Docs wrote by 95X and contributions from Yttribia and I in case you want to help.


ModEdit: Poll removed from OP for reasons that will be outlined below

[Gregoryisgodistan]

How is this different than the OOC questions thread that is already stickied? This seems like a good idea, but it seems like someone already thought of it. Unless there's some cool new feature I'm missing.

Edit: Way to change the title, OP, and everything else and make me look like an idiot. My response to what this says now is below.

[San Jose Guayabal]

How is this different than the OOC questions thread that is already stickied? This seems like a good idea, but it seems like someone already thought of it. Unless there's some cool new feature I'm missing.

The reason why I created this is because I heard from some experienced NS Sporters that we need a better thread for starters as the Guide to Sports OOC Questions has been inefficient through the time, it's too superficial, what we plan is to create a more comprehensive guide for beginners in NS Sports, not being too general, it will be a more in depth guide for them, as we will even provide tips for those who ask and not limitating us to just answer questions.

[Ko-oren]

If we need something more than what's in the World Cup FAQ in the OOC questions thread, I'm willing to help out. What kind of questions need to be covered, etc. Stuff like:
- What is NS Sports? (IC community, etc)
- What do I need to do to participate in an event? (sign-up threads, hosts, host voting processes)
- What do I need to host my own leagues/create my own domestic newswires? (xkoranate, basically, as well as an idea how the league works and how the sport works you're scorinating)
- What do I need to host an event? (Seeing as this is an often asked question by people who aren't fit to host yet, so I'm guessing the answer to this question is 'experience as a participant')
- What determines my chance of success? (Rank, RP, Random)

I think the World Cup FAQ might be too specific and hard to find (as in, two mouse clicks away). Is a more general FAQ like my idea above a good idea?

[San Jose Guayabal]

If we need something more than what's in the World Cup FAQ in the OOC questions thread, I'm willing to help out. What kind of questions need to be covered, etc. Stuff like:
- What is NS Sports? (IC community, etc)
- What do I need to do to participate in an event? (sign-up threads, hosts, host voting processes)
- What do I need to host my own leagues/create my own domestic newswires? (xkoranate, basically, as well as an idea how the league works and how the sport works you're scorinating)
- What do I need to host an event? (Seeing as this is an often asked question by people who aren't fit to host yet, so I'm guessing the answer to this question is 'experience as a participant')
- What determines my chance of success? (Rank, RP, Random)

I think the World Cup FAQ might be too specific and hard to find (as in, two mouse clicks away). Is a more general FAQ like my idea above a good idea?

In my opinion, it it's a good idea, also I want to show a draft originally created by 95X and some modifications from Yttribia and I, we can collaborate in it

[Kyrusia]

Just to note this thread is being watched. Considering I've seen it, I'll go ahead and lock the one in Moderation but provide a link here so its content can be seen.

[San Jose Guayabal]

A poll has been created for the issue, I encourage to submit your thoughts here too, please.

[Saintland]

I think we need a more extensive Guide to Sports RP, of comparable quality to the guides in the other RP forums. Yes, there are some who won't bother to read it, but if it clears some things up for those who do read it, its worth it. In addition, I think guides to the rules of various sports and the tactics used in those sports would be helpful for those trying to RP those sports.

After we improve our stickies, I believe we still need mentors for 2 reasons: 1) So newbies have somebody whom they know they can contact for accurate answers to their questions and 2) To hopefully put an end to the periodic dogpiling of tournaments run by an overly-eager newbie who's often not fully aware what they're getting themselves into. My hope is that, if we had mentors, it would discourage this sort of thing, which usually results in the would-be host being chased out of NS Sports without ever actually running the tournament or participating in anything (in several cases that I can recall, this has even happened to experienced users who were returning under a new nation and clearly, from their thread OP, knew what they were doing).

On the other hand, the Sports RP Mentors need to be chosen carefully to ensure that they A) are relatively experienced and competent to hold the position and B) are level-headed enough to hold it. Giving mentor status to somebody who isn't competent to do it or does not have the right temperament would be worse than the problem we're trying to solve with mentors, as that would be giving official sanction to potentially bad and/or inaccurate advice in the former case or to conduct that drives newbies away from NS Sports in the latter case.

[Drawkland]

Personally, a lot can be learned from NS Sports, or in any forum here really, by just lurking around and figuring out what's happening by observation. However, a lot of people don't do this, and get themselves into way over their head. I personally believe that Mentors would be a good step forward to help out the people who are less inclined to lurk first and post later, and provide a better system to convey information to the newbies. Plus, if the correct users are chosen, it would may prevent the newbies from being intimidated by more abrasive people, and provide a hopefully noon-contradictory source of information.

[Farfadillis]

I think there are a two undeniable facts here. One, we have pretty much zero written material to help out newbies. Two, our community is far too complex to be able to afford that. Personally, it took me a couple of cycles to fully understand most things, and I believe a well-written guide would've been an immense help. I can't help but wonder how many fantastic users we've missed out on simply because we didn't help them understand how things work. It's not that understanding our inner workings is so mind-bogglingly difficult, really, we're just bad at it.

So yeah, I'm all for writing a comprehensive guide, and I'm also all for having a couple of very experienced members "promoted" to NS Sports-specific (let's face it, this subforum is not very similar to the others) RP mentors to help ease new users in. As a personal suggestion, it would be great if they were the only ones allowed to "advise" new members to stop dead in their tracks when they try to start a new tournament or something. Believe it or not, having twenty people rather angrily tell you that you're wrong, wrong as you may be, is a big turn off. One guy with a green, bolded nation name kindly telling you what you did wrong, and how you could do it right sounds a lot more appealing.

[CoraSpia]

I often find that the response towards newbies in ns sports (especially those trying to create their own tournaments) can be rather toxic, without actually giving them a way of improving themselves. Mentors, as someone with semi-official authority, could help with this.

[Flardania]

I like the idea of a mentor, when I started off I was mostly lost and confused. I have to give a lot of credit and thanks to my fmr unofficial mentor Buyan who helped me know what I needed to know. He reached out to me and I feel it would be convenient for the incoming scubs to have an organized system of mentors.

[The Archregimancy]

I'm keeping a close eye on this thread.

For now I won't intervene directly just in case anything I say on the topic gets construed as an official moderation statement, and I don't want to stifle your discussion. As things develop, it may be more appropriate for me to step in and offer an opinion, but for now discuss away.

[Gregoryisgodistan]

Wow, SJG, way to change the title and everything else on me and make me look like an idiot...

As for what it says now, I think this is a good idea. We have a number of users who genuinely want to learn how to do this properly but aren't quite there yet, and a number of users who want those users to learn to do this properly but don't actually help them. So yeah, I think this could be a good idea.

[Reploid Productions]

Just as a quick off-the-cuff observation, any time in the past that the notion of expanding the Mentor program to include NS Sports was raised, the general response we'd get tended to be in the negative. If this has changed, we would certainly be willing to entertain such an expansion, especially now that we've got Kyru on deck taking the helm on the program and working on updating/overhauling it.

As others have already noted, NS Sports is an extremely esoteric form of RP, one that is far less easily accessible to a well-meaning but totally clueless newcomer than the free-for-all of the other RP boards. Even if the Mentor program isn't expanded to add Sports Mentors to the team, a community-written newbie's guide would no doubt be a great resource. The current Guide to Sports RPing sticky is a great quick overview, but it could probably be expanded on or otherwise complimented with a more thorough walkthrough.

And like Arch, also keeping an eye on this thread to see how the conversation develops.

[Astyrian Olympics Delegation]

Long overdue. I hope this goes forward as a comprehensive guide and mentors can only be beneficial to both NS Sports and those newbies just getting started.

[Lamoni]

If there is any interest in talking to any of the existing mentors so that we can explain the program as it already exists, or to simply answer questions, please let us know. As far as I know, we don't have any existing mentors with extensive NSSports experience, but I did reside in Atlantian Oceania some years back (and won the AOCAF thrice), so i do have a little experience, and some of the other mentors have limited experience with the NSSports forum, as well.

[Ko-oren]

Where do we go from here? Do we need more written material, mentors, or both? What are the pitfalls to avoid from the last time we tried a mentor system? Whatever we go with, I definitely want to help out.

[The Archregimancy]

Where do we go from here?

Well, first of all I would recommend getting written input from more than nine or ten participants in NS Sports before making any decisions.

The poll is helpful, but it would more helpful still if this thread had broad input. Which isn't for a second to suggest I/we don't value the input from those who've already posted, but the broader the input the better.

[CoraSpia]

This would be especially useful as the culture in NS sports is so much different than in II and the other subforums.

I know that when I came from II (as Greater Vakolicci Haven), I expected things to be quite similar and so did what a lot of people in NS sports saw as me simply acting like a dick (sorry about that, btw, you know who you are:(.)

[The Archregimancy]

After some behind the scenes input, the mods have removed the poll from the OP.

While the overwhelming majority of voters no doubt have the best of intentions, NS forum polls are entirely unscientific and are easy to manipulate via the use of puppets.

Moderation will therefore gauge the appropriate response to this discussion via the reaction actually posted in this thread, not a thread poll - all the more reason to try and encourage a broad response to this discussion.

[Schiavonia]

Having never really ventured into the other forums (I have little to no interest in doing so), I'm coming at this with absolutely no idea what mentoring programmes are like there. However, I've been part of the NS Sports community on-and-off since 2004, which is quite a long time. When I first joined, I didn't have any specific mentor, but the community as a whole seemed to help me develop. If someone could have shown me the ropes, would I have been any better, and would more than four of the newbies that cup cycle stuck around for more than a couple of cups (though two of those four still remain, which I guess is decent retention)? I think the answer to both of those would be a yes.

For me, the best sports RPs are ones that go beyond the usual - be it through unusual characters or species, spin-off stories or pretty much anything else that would grab the attention. I didn't know that when I started, and most of what I produced early on was pretty much rigid news reports. They also reflect the personality of the nation and - probably to some extent - the writer. If I had someone with a wealth of experience to free me from the shackles that writing about a randomly-generated football result feels as though it puts on you, I would have definitely improved quicker.

And if someone is showing the way, guiding people through these beginning stages, then I can only see retention rates rising, and interest going up. Selecting mentors is a difficult process, though. They have to be understanding of what it is like to be new, non-judgemental if a newbie comes in thinking that they want to host the World Cup within a week, and be able to give them the freedom to RP and let their imaginations run wild!

Something I have noticed from being on and off this the change in numbers in the NSWC. When I returned the time before last (WC68), there were a lot more nations involved than I was used to - somewhere near 180, IIRC - and I didn't see this as a bad thing. Fast forward two years, and numbers are back down to around 140. So retention rates are not as high as they could be. I think that mentoring could help with this.

[Apox]

I believe that last time this discussion came up I was in the minority in favour of having NS Sport mentors.

In many ways, we all have "mentors" as most new players who stick around will normally end up through circumstance asking a specific number of nations for help/inspiration when they join (for me that was Saugeais, Wight, Cyborg Holland and Licentiapacisterra), as well as often giving out advice and help to new nations.

Perhaps having a more open channel through which to gain help and advice would be beneficial?

[The Sword Bloke]

Yeo, mentors are needed, I agreed last time and I do this time. Thanks to SJG for making this thread, and the mods for watching this.

Anyways, I assume that I can nominate a few people to be mentors, so I nominate Apox, Saintland, Vilita, Gregoryisgodistan & NSI to be at least considered for the role of mentor.

They are all active NS Sports members who write amazing, sick RPs, and they have loads of NS Sports experience. Which is exactly what would be needed for this. A good RPer, experiences and active.

[Barunia]

Yeo, mentors are needed, I agreed last time and I do this time. Thanks to SJG for making this thread, and the mods for watching this.

Anyways, I assume that I can nominate a few people to be mentors, so I nominate Apox, Saintland, Vilita, Gregoryisgodistan & NSI to be at least considered for the role of mentor.

They are all active NS Sports members who write amazing, sick RPs, and they have loads of NS Sports experience. Which is exactly what would be needed for this. A good RPer, experiences and active.

They also need to have an attitude of wanting to help people and a capacity to give good advice, as well as a friendly manner. I can think of a few people who certainly match your criteria, but would be terrible at what I've just said. One of the names on your list included.