Comments on Summit Nominations

[The Blaatschapen]

Out of curiousity, is there a slot for a RPer open?

We haven't got set slots. If you think an RPer needs to be represented, they can nominate themself, make their case, and it'll be considered.

A suggestion though - it may be best to represent the natives of those regions that want nothing to do with gameplay (or raiding/defending), as that's a broader group. There are probably issues players, WAers, NSGers and various others who hold a similar viewpoint.

Do you want me to poke Generalites?

[Sedgistan]

You're welcome to inform anyone who you think may have an interest in this, or be effected by its outcomes.

[Todd McCloud]

About how long will this summit last? Just curious.

[Unibot III]

I expect Unibot's a shoe-in for the more active, defender side of the debate, [...]

How so? May I remind you: "We are looking for individuals who can represent a particular point of view (e.g. tag raiding, mass defending, recruiter, native...), and not necessarily an organization such as TBR or UDL."

It's far more important that someone can state a viewpoint eloquently than who is in what organization (or may even lead it). It would be a shame if excellently qualified people would not self-nominate just because they would be (mistakenly) presume that the 'slots' for a particular side would be auto-reserved for a specific individual due to having an in-game position of power. We really don't care who runs which organization. We care about having a useful summit.

Ballotonia

My concern here is that the administration is underestimating how much organizations shape viewpoints and have their own distinct viewpoints. There is no distinct defender viewpoint -- defenders themselves are in conflict with one another often philosophically, this is shaped by their organization's prerogatives.

UDLers are as a block concerned with the competitiveness of the liberation stage since the defending world has sort of shifting the brunt of liberation missions on our shoulders, FRA is especially dependent on the competitiveness of the defending stage against tag-raiders and has taken that up as a rallying point in the past and TITO has often promoted ideas to reduce the extent with the R/D game can affect NS in general based on their traditionalist values. We're not a consistent bloc and "representatives" that don't really reflect these organizations will ultimately miss the actual philosophical reality of the defender-side which is very much shaped by these organizations.

[Frisbeeteria]

About how long will this summit last? Just curious.

We're aiming for two weeks or so around the start of December. We recognize that it's both holiday season and end of term for a lot of schools, so there will be built-in flexibility around the timing of responses. We're hoping to have the bulk of it done before the actual holiday.

As to when suggestions are implemented, that's a whole different discussion. In a phrase, "at the whim of admins".

[Frisbeeteria]

My concern here is that the administration is underestimating how much organizations shape viewpoints and have their own distinct viewpoints. There is no distinct defender viewpoint -- defenders themselves are in conflict with one another often philosophically, this is shaped by their organization's prerogatives.

We're intending to have several representatives from each of our primary viewpoints - invader, defender, and 'neutral'. What we're not intending is to provide a slot for each organization that wants in. That's where the Reps will take similar viewpoints and integrate their responses into a coherent and concise whole.

Fact is, the old way of doing it (sprawling Gameplay and/or Technical threads) isn't working. We're going to try it this way. Adapt, or move aside for someone who can.

[Peter Pan and the Lost Boys]

What we're not intending is to provide a slot for each organization that wants in.

That's not what I'm saying, I'm saying there are major stakeholders in this decision, with vastly different values from one another -- I'm not talking about "every" organization, many of them are hardly active or aren't particularly independent. I think a "defender" representative is not going to reflect these differences and you may have a "productive" session on the surface, but in reality, your decisions aren't going to be made with any sort of real representation and cause major problems for us to have to hash out in technical for years like Influence did. You're right, this isn't the old way of how to get things done, this is the old old way of getting stuff done and it didn't really work well last time -- we had a lot of people leave the game out of frustration with Influence and we're just recovering from it now.

I'd do my best to represent people's viewpoints into a coherent defender viewpoint, but anyone pretending as though they represent the entire defending world is a phony. There should be representatives for the different viewpoints within defenderdom and these viewpoints are often shaped by the major organizations.

- Unibot

[Reploid Productions]

We aren't necessarily looking for any single person to represent the entire defender community; we want people who can represent broad sections of that community. Surely several groups will follow similar philosophies and thus have similar concerns. What we don't want is for someone to just be representing their particular single group only.

[Frisbeeteria]

How many different ways to I have to state that there will be several 'defender' reps? Maybe it'll work out that a UDL rep gets one of the slots, a FRA rep gets another, and so on. Maybe it won't. We have a month to work out the details.

I will, once again, stress that long-winded Q&A sessions are exactly the opposite of what we're attempting here. [violet] has made it clear that 'concise' beats 'verbose' in this summit, and as Chair I'm entirely behind that decision.

[Peter Pan and the Lost Boys]

What we don't want is for someone to just be representing their particular single group only.

Sure. I'm more pointing out that there are only like three major defender organizations and their ethos are fairly well defined. Defenders outside of these three sort of main ethos are few and far between, mostly because it's really dahm hard to defend without having a team of people to back you up -- so defenders tend to gravitate towards these three hubs and share similar principles (Like Texas with TITO, RRA with FRA, UK with UDL). When I heard you wanted to have a "defender viewpoint" and reject organizations, my first thought was: oh gawd, only one group ethos is going to get represented, I can feel it.

I will, once again, stress that long-winded Q&A sessions are exactly the opposite of what we're attempting here. [violet] has made it clear that 'concise' beats 'verbose' in this summit, and as Chair I'm entirely behind that decision.

That's fine. I know I'm capable of being concise if you want me to be and I know other defenders are capable of being brutally blunt if need be.

Thanks for responding to my concerns,
Unibot.

[Vakolic]

Although I have put my nomination forward, as the sole mercenary thus far to have done so, I must ask a question of the organisers of this summit

If it is moderaters, and only moderaters, who may decide who can participate, how can we assure that the panel does not have a biuss towards entrants? As many of the moderaters/admins have not been affected at all by the r/d game in recent history, what gives mods and admins more levitude on the rest of the ns community?

Also, I can't help but notice that many of the moderaters, in there pre-moderater days have been defenders. How then, can you assure a fare spectrum of players?
Wouldn't it instead be more advisable, since it will be mainly ns players communicating in this whole affair, to elect their representatives to speak on there behalf?

[Reploid Productions]

Urm... slight correction there- very few of the moderators have ever been defenders OR raiders. In recent memory, the only gameplayer mods have been Sedge and CG, although if memory serves, Myrth dabbled in it. For a very long time, the mods actively avoided gameplay entirely due to the headaches of the pre-Influence griefing rules so as to avoid cries of bias. Additionally, mods have been affected by the raiding game; not often, but it has happened. My region was invaded (granted, as a joke, since there's an active founder and no WA access to regional control,) and there have been a collection of incidents over the years in which a region a mod hangs out in has been invaded.

Ideally, we would like you guys to offer feedback on people who have put themselves forward. We want players in their various groups to discuss it among yourselves and determine who you want to put forward, rather than have a bunch of folks in isolation decide "Hey, I'd be a good choice for this, lemme go post-." We're just the final vetting after extensive review of the nominations and any accompanying commentary. It doesn't help us if the panel is unbalanced or too heavily weighted in favor of one particular group; that basically would render whatever the summit comes up with pointless and broken.

[Vakolic]

Urm... slight correction there- very few of the moderators have ever been defenders OR raiders. In recent memory, the only gameplayer mods have been Sedge and CG, although if memory serves, Myrth dabbled in it. For a very long time, the mods actively avoided gameplay entirely due to the headaches of the pre-Influence griefing rules so as to avoid cries of bias. Additionally, mods have been affected by the raiding game; not often, but it has happened. My region was invaded (granted, as a joke, since there's an active founder and no WA access to regional control,) and there have been a collection of incidents over the years in which a region a mod hangs out in has been invaded.

Ideally, we would like you guys to offer feedback on people who have put themselves forward. We want players in their various groups to discuss it among yourselves and determine who you want to put forward, rather than have a bunch of folks in isolation decide "Hey, I'd be a good choice for this, lemme go post-." We're just the final vetting after extensive review of the nominations and any accompanying commentary. It doesn't help us if the panel is unbalanced or too heavily weighted in favor of one particular group; that basically would render whatever the summit comes up with pointless and broken.

Thanks for the answer. I'm just naturally suspicious of everything.

[Todd McCloud]

Ideally, we would like you guys to offer feedback on people who have put themselves forward. We want players in their various groups to discuss it among yourselves and determine who you want to put forward, rather than have a bunch of folks in isolation decide "Hey, I'd be a good choice for this, lemme go post-." We're just the final vetting after extensive review of the nominations and any accompanying commentary. It doesn't help us if the panel is unbalanced or too heavily weighted in favor of one particular group; that basically would render whatever the summit comes up with pointless and broken.

So basically you'd like us to kind of go through the list of self-noms and say 'yeah he/she would be good because...' or 'nah he/she's not good because...' and overall try to find a balance of people so we can get stuff done? I think we can do that. Do we have a ballpark number of people who will be at the summit, or should we just ignore that? Reason I ask is a small or large rough number will probably affect my opinions.

[Reploid Productions]

Eh, at the moment, "as many as we need"... so... um, yeah. Don't quote me on this, but probably a good dozen or so; we need enough to get a decent representation of the interested parties, but not so many that it becomes unwieldy for the actual summit discussion threads.

[Skyrim Diplomacy]

What ever happened to this "not being a popularity contest?"¹ That's all this will be if everyone essentially gets to choose who they think would work well.

Edit for spelling.

[Reploid Productions]

What ever happened to this "not being a popularity contest?"¹ That's all this will be if everyone essentially gets to choose who they think would work well.

Edit for spelling.

They aren't choosing; everybody is encouraged to offer their feedback on the nominations, which is info that the mods will take into consideration. Feedback that amounts to "I like X." or "Don't pick Y." won't be considered, because that's useless feedback that doesn't provide any useful information to be reviewed. Something like "X is a good choice, because of A, B, and C reasons, and here's a link or two with relevant posts." or "Y is not a good choice because of D, E, and F, and here's a link-" are useful commentary that gives us verifiable material to review as part of the selection process.

[Skyrim Diplomacy]

Fair enough, Reppy-thanks for the clarification yet again. I'll get back with some off my early thoughts later tonight.

[Erastide]

I'm still a bit confused on what people that are not the nominees are meant to say about the nominees themselves. Assuming the nominee does a good job on their own with their self nomination and you agree with what they said, is there anything more to say? And if you think the person is being untrue or a poor candidate, you want people to detail the reasons why?

Reppy mentions supporting links, but since we're talking gameplay, a huge portion of links that might occur would likely be to offsite forums, many of which would probably restrict access.

[Vakolic]

I'm still a bit confused on what people that are not the nominees are meant to say about the nominees themselves. Assuming the nominee does a good job on their own with their self nomination and you agree with what they said, is there anything more to say? And if you think the person is being untrue or a poor candidate, you want people to detail the reasons why?

Reppy mentions supporting links, but since we're talking gameplay, a huge portion of links that might occur would likely be to offsite forums, many of which would probably restrict access.

Unfortunately, the old tbk forums, which had a lot of info regarding tbk operations (and the operations of other groups) has been lost.

[Moronist Decisions]

Is there a way of making such comments confidentially?

[Kshrlmnt]

All right, all right, Sedge and Ballo, I'll keep my considerations of who's likely to get in and who's not to myself. But if we're talking opinions on candidates' merits, you have mine there. Similarly, in my raiding experience, Wordy's one of the best I think I've gone against when it came to stealth and chase instead of the detags and libs a lot of defenders do, nowadays, and that could be valuable.

On yet another note, I don't see many imperialists applying....

[Cerian Quilor]

IMHO, I think Gest has a good point.

Also, I think the obssession with 'native right' and 'natives' in general is an unhealthy distraction except in terms of trying to find ways to make Natives more capable of holding their regions or taking them back, rather than worrying what Raiders to Natives, or having someone to 'represent' natives.

[Galiantus]

IMHO, I think Gest has a good point.

Also, I think the obssession with 'native right' and 'natives' in general is an unhealthy distraction except in terms of trying to find ways to make Natives more capable of holding their regions or taking them back, rather than worrying what Raiders to Natives, or having someone to 'represent' natives.

I mostly agree, but only because it would be useless to try and define "native" fairly enough to get an accurate idea of who could represent them. And for sure, the summit is going to have to discuss ways to give natives more involvement in the R/D game.

On yet another note, I don't see many imperialists applying....

I fall on the very, very edge of that category, I think.

[Cerian Quilor]

I consider myself an Imperialist.

Although, I would say that if OnderKelkia applies, he pretty much has to be let in - he is the best mind the Imperialist world has to offer, IMHO, and a highly skilled military leader on both the Political/Diplomatic side, and the Operational side. And he's got a good intel background too.

NES too, for that matter.