NationStates

Updating the articles for their three month recap to reflect the passage of time is just a matter of professionalism. Not doing so is indicative of laziness. Something that an organization reporting the news should not have in their releases.

ShrewLlamaLand wrote:

Helseth wrote:Such a non issue to whine about. Wow.

I think pointing out that a publication entitled "Weekend Edition - September 20th, 2020" was in fact released on a Wednesday, one and a half weeks later, is a fairly relevant complaint.

It's also an incredibly easy complaint to address, given that the only real issue seems to be the title - calling a release a "Weekend edition" when it is not released on weekends and actually covers three months worth of content, as well as backdating the release by 10 days, is honestly non-sensical.

Why don't you call it "NationStates Today - Q3 roundup" or something along those lines, which seems a much more appropriate title given it apparently covers content from July - September.

The weekend edition was published on that date, just it was shared here on the forums a little bit later as we are in the middle of an executive staff transition and things have been quite busy. You can find that out by just looking at the date when it was published on the website.

The reason they are labelled 'weekend editions' is just a carry-over from when our editions used to be more regularly published (we got one out almost every week from January to May 2019), but unfortunately they have become less regular. It is now published under that name merely as a matter of consistency, but we broadly refer to them simply as 'editions'. If it were logistically possible, we would love to get back on track with one edition a week, but they take a ton of work to design and we currently have a bit of a staff shortage that I am attempting to work on.

The Church of Satan wrote:Updating the articles for their three month recap to reflect the passage of time is just a matter of professionalism. Not doing so is indicative of laziness. Something that an organization reporting the news should not have in their releases.

As previously stated, the editions are a collection of the articles we have published since the previous edition in a different format for people who would prefer to consume their news that way. Following up on every single detail in all of the dozen or so articles included in each edition would require an immense amount of effort, without even considering that some of the original authors (with their expertise in these areas) are no longer staff members by the time of publication.

People also change their views about things as new information comes to light, which presents difficult considerations about what to do with quotes and opinion articles if we are editing articles after-the-fact. There are various considerations here, but ultimately substantially editing articles after they have been published is not standard journalistic practice.

On a separate note, I don't know why you feel the need to be so harsh by calling us 'lazy'. All of the staff of NationStates Today do this work because we want to contribute to NationStates for nothing material in exchange, and we each try our best. There's no need to share that sort of negativity here.

Llorens wrote:As previously stated, the editions are a collection of the articles we have published since the previous edition in a different format for people who would prefer to consume their news that way. Following up on every single detail in all of the dozen or so articles included in each edition would require an immense amount of effort, without even considering that some of the original authors (with their expertise in these areas) are no longer staff members by the time of publication.

People also change their views about things as new information comes to light, which presents difficult considerations about what to do with quotes and opinion articles if we are editing articles after-the-fact. There are various considerations here, but ultimately substantially editing articles after they have been published is not standard journalistic practice.

On a separate note, I don't know why you feel the need to be so harsh by calling us 'lazy'. All of the staff of NationStates Today do this work because we want to contribute to NationStates for nothing material in exchange, and we each try our best. There's no need to share that sort of negativity here.

It is largely a matter of changing verbs to their past-tense form. It's not the least bit difficult. I've done as much for my own articles in the past when TRT's publications ran late enough to warrant it. It's a couple minutes of skimming through each article. So yes, it is indeed a display of laziness to not do so for a mash-up of articles from three months ago. At this rate why don't you just stop spellchecking altogether? Clearly the effort involved is a difficult task for NS Today to devote time to. >_>

I actually sympathise with NSToday (for once) on this. I gave up doing quarterly publications for CCD because it's just an enormous amount of work, even if you've got a whole team working on it. NSToday probably discovered that when they were putting out weekly publications. That, and things tend to go out of date really quickly.

In CCD, we ditched lengthy quarterly publications last year. These days, I've gotten back into doing tabloid style one-article publications. These seem to do much better. The information doesn't go out of date (if there's a "big story", I can usually get it done in an afternoon and everything's still relevant). And each article gathers about 75% of the readership that the larger publications used to get (though CCD was a larger region back then, so perhaps the ratio is pretty 1:1, if not better).

My advice to NSToday (which, as I've always said, has great potential, which is why I tried to become involved with it in its early days) would be that if the format of publication isn't working, find an alternate solution. And I think it's fairly safe to say the format isn't working. My read on things is NSToday has been under some scrutiny recently. And NS"Today" doesn't really have any business publishing out-of-date articles.

Llorens wrote:On a separate note, I don't know why you feel the need to be so harsh by calling us 'lazy'. All of the staff of NationStates Today do this work because we want to contribute to NationStates for nothing material in exchange, and we each try our best.

Now, this is really interesting. What drives anyone to produce regional news? For me, it's my region. In so publishing, I encourage gameplay/roleplay. I present regional information in a way that makes it easily accessible to inter-regional circles. That's good for recruitment, allies, prestige, etc. But what motivates NSToday?

Well, we know there's bias. Some of the Executive Staff are regional officers, so those regions generally tend to garner decent representation. Game-play heavy regions are also prioritised - understandable, but one wonders why. For readership? Makes sense to me. For alternate reasons, like buying esteem with influential players? Quite possibly. We should all remember that NSToday fills a whole in the NationStates experience; it's not unreasonable to assume that, if that hole is well filled, the hole-fillers will achieve renown within the game.

For example, you'll see the Pacifics, TRR, and Lazarus feature heavily in this weekend edition (Sept 20). As does Thalassi-- hang on. Thalassia? Why? What about Thalassia suits NSToday's "inclusion criteria", for want of a better term, that can justify the region making the front page? Particularly when the article is on inactivity, which is somewhat ironic. Europe, Forest, Conch Kingdom, Karma, Wintreath, not to mention CCD, are all up to very interesting things (in my estimates) and are all decently sized - in any case, about double the size of Thalassia. And yet they don't receive mention.

Now of course I know that an exhaustive news publication is impossible, even in a purely regional setting if that region is large enough. But there are certain actions by NSToday, like the above, or the Power Rankings (which many firmly disagree with, myself included) that do give me cause to pause. How are the Power Rankings being measured? Again, using myself only because I'm the player I'm most familiar with in NS, I came in at #6 for the WA Gen-Sec election, and I know other players who have done incredibly powerful things that weren't listed in the most recent rankings.

TL;DR: Llorens claims that NSToday contributes to Nationstates "for nothing"; I argue there must be some overwhelming incentive for them to do so that has little to do with their generosity, because, speaking personally, generosity and/or enjoyment don't come into it when you're running an operation this big. What exact game are NSToday playing?

I reiterate that I have always supported NSToday at a conceptual level, but I do think that its operations need to be significantly reassessed so the organisation can realise its true potential.

I look forward to some debate over this issue, as in at the very least I think it will help the organisation to articulate its wants needs and ultimately drive it towards future successes.

(NB I didn't realise Shrew had commented here until I started typing, which should be relevant seeing as our opinions seem to briefly differ.)

I suppose Thalassia is slightly more relevant because none of the large regions you mentioned dissolved their constitution to establish an oligarchy

Honeydewistania wrote:I suppose Thalassia is slightly more relevant because none of the large regions you mentioned dissolved their constitution to establish an oligarchy

I guess you could say that, but hear me out:

If you go to the NSToday website, you'll find that under their "Sections" tab, there is: (1) Politics, (2) Gameplay, (3) International, (4) Culture, and (5) Perspectives. From what I can see, 1 deals only with political gameplay; there's no roleplay politics, for example. 2 is an extension of 1. 3 seems redundant, and might fit better under a non-politicised gameplay section. 4 would work well there too, and in any case there's no roleplay stories there either. 5 seems to deal with opinion pieces, but from what I can see all of these concern gameplay matters. And so:

Jocospor wrote:We should all remember that NSToday fills a whole in the NationStates experience; it's not unreasonable to assume that, if that hole is well filled, the hole-fillers will achieve renown within the game.

Getting in on gameplay matters would be the best way for said hole-fillers to achieve status.

What I'm getting at is that Thalassia only becomes "slightly more relevant" if NSToday is solely publishing content based on political gameplay. Which is fine, but no where is that defined. There's no mission statement or "About us" section on the website, for example. The organisation's intentions have never been properly laid down for their readership, and that narrative makes people like me doubtful that it's all just honest hard work.

But in terms of only covering gameplay, if that's the intent, then that's fine by me - gameplay is probably the most relevant experience for NS Players collectively. I just think NSToday should take some time to outline if that's the case or not.

I'll quickly add that this gives me renewed confidence in our own CCD model, which combines roleplay with gameplay. It's actually really effective in alleviating some of these difficulties, and it would be cool to see more regions pick up on it (even though it's slightly skewed towards authoritarian governments).

If I’m not wrong, NSToday is a gameplay magazine, not a roleplay one.

Comfed wrote:If I’m not wrong, NSToday is a gameplay magazine, not a roleplay one.

NSToday is not a gameplay magazine. Our mission is to serve as the premier news organization for all of NationStates.

Aumeltopia wrote:

Comfed wrote:If I’m not wrong, NSToday is a gameplay magazine, not a roleplay one.

NSToday is not a gameplay magazine. Our mission is to serve as the premier news organization for all of NationStates.

I'm not terribly concerned with the current discussion about NSToday, it seems like it's not really a large thing to update your articles upon publication so they're not months out of date, and refusing to do seems both stubborn and potentially misleading, but I also don't really care what NSToday does. However, what you're saying is a clearly absurd claim. NSToday is not a news organization for all of NS. The most recent issue had 0 articles on NSG, F7, GI, or the cards community, all large groups that surely have noteworthy events. And the most recent issue is by no means an outlier. So let's be honest, and call NST what it is. A gameplay magazine, that occasionally mentions other things.

Makdon wrote:

Aumeltopia wrote:NSToday is not a gameplay magazine. Our mission is to serve as the premier news organization for all of NationStates.

I'm not terribly concerned with the current discussion about NSToday, it seems like it's not really a large thing to update your articles upon publication so they're not months out of date, and refusing to do seems both stubborn and potentially misleading, but I also don't really care what NSToday does. However, what you're saying is a clearly absurd claim. NSToday is not a news organization for all of NS. The most recent issue had 0 articles on NSG, F7, GI, or the cards community, all large groups that surely have noteworthy events. And the most recent issue is by no means an outlier. So let's be honest, and call NST what it is. A gameplay magazine, that occasionally mentions other things.

I am going to be trying to make some changes to this as soon as I can through some more direct outreach, as well as to those in the issues, cards and WA communities, which we havee neglected for too long.

Whether unfortunate or not, NSToday found its staff overwhelmingly from a gameplay background in the early days, and we began thriving off of that content as we became well-known in that sphere. What few roleplay writers we had eventually turned over as most staff do after a while, and we simply ended up with no replacements and no active means by which to reach out to them. The Board still fundamentally holds being the premier news organisation of NS as one of its most central goals, as Somy said, and there is always room for us to improve upon that (perhaps now more than ever).

On a separate note, I'm not going to engage with the borderline conspiracy nonsense from Jocospor.

Llorens wrote:On a separate note, I'm not going to engage with the borderline conspiracy nonsense from Jocospor.

Mate, it's a legitimate observation. I gave you praise where praise was deserved, and I pointed out some concerns I had in other areas. My "conspiracy" (a terrible word for it; I posed a question, I made no claims) is only a portion of my writing as well. I provided you with strategies that might help you to overcome difficulties you're facing. Judging by the fact that several people agree with me regarding my gameplay commentaries, I'm clearly not wrong.

Like, it's just close minded.

Honeydewistania wrote:I suppose Thalassia is slightly more relevant because none of the large regions you mentioned dissolved their constitution to establish an oligarchy

Neither did Thalassia

Varanius wrote:

Honeydewistania wrote:I suppose Thalassia is slightly more relevant because none of the large regions you mentioned dissolved their constitution to establish an oligarchy

Neither did Thalassia

How large is that rock you’re living under?

Honeydewistania wrote:

Varanius wrote:Neither did Thalassia

How large is that rock you’re living under?

About the size of your tin hat

Varanius wrote:

Honeydewistania wrote:How large is that rock you’re living under?

About the size of your tin hat

The people with tin hats are the ones denying it, but this isn’t the thread for it

Aumeltopia wrote:

Comfed wrote:If I’m not wrong, NSToday is a gameplay magazine, not a roleplay one.

NSToday is not a gameplay magazine. Our mission is to serve as the premier news organization for all of NationStates.

If this is your mission, perhaps you should expand your content to actually cover "all of NationStates" rather than covering mostly gameplay content while vastly overrepresenting a select few regions.

Congratulations to the new appointees. I hope you will review the recent activity in this thread and change NSToday for the better.

Increasing staff when there's no clear business model is never a wise move - tends to lead to..."snaps"... I'd really encourage NSToday to clearly detail its business manifesto first.

The very titles of the new appointees (who broadly look to be taking on existing jobs) suggests NSToday have a pretty good idea of what their plans are.

In June 2019's Power20 list, all twenty participants were ranked, with Cormac being named the most influential gameplayer; the same with January 2020's Power20 list and Xoriet. In June 2020's list, there were no rankings (only an alphabetically-ordered list) due to what Wymondham described as "a lack of activity in Gameplay over the last 6 months." Now in January 2021's list, there are still no exact rankings, but there are five gold-ranked, five silver-ranked and ten bronze-ranked gameplayers - although Llorens has not provided an explanation for this.

Can't NST just find a ranking format and stick to it?

Tinhampton wrote:Can't NST just find a ranking format and stick to it?

Give it another year or three.