[Suggestion]: Make RMB regional Adverts Illegal

[Krulltopia]

This may be a bit controversial but I have believed in the futility of RMB Adverts (referred to as ADSpam later on) literally for years now, almost since joining NationStates and staying the Feeders. And when I say make RMB adverts illegal, I don't just mean in Feeders and Sinkers, I also mean "Recruiter Friendly" tagged regions (More on that later).

As some of you know, I guess I 'pioneered' the banning (and subsequently suppression) of ADspammers and ADSpam in the Feeders and Sinkers. This was originally started because of a half hearted conversation on our forums (I shall try digging out the thread later if anyone is interested, but it may well be archived) turned into the practice of banning ANYONE who posted ADspam on our RMB. Now we already had very stringent restrictions on adverts with line limits (I think I got down to 5 at one point) so banning them outright was not much of a stretch. Bear in mind, this didn't get rid of the actual message, it was more of a deterrent to get rid of the more persistent and annoying ADspammers. And to my astonishment, it actually started to work. What also astonished me was the reaction I got. I genuinely didn't think it was that much of a deal to be honest, but there was some uproar over it, and complaints about the legality of it (Again, links to previous threads coming later, unless someone else can dig them out for me). However, I was more surprised by the amount of support it got, and not just from Feeder/Sinker residents. I also noticed that because of this action, ADspam not only declined in TP but in the other Feeders as well.

And then came suppression. My exact reaction to it can be found here. I believe that this was the exact time that ADspam became even more pointless. Yes it simply hides it, but why bother reading it in the first place. Some would click on it out of curiousity, but the vast majority I believe wouldn't, especially ADspams desired target: new nations.

And now we have the new telegram system, which leads me to the most crux of my argument: why would anyone need to use RMB spam when there is an inbuilt system specifically designed to target new nations, even without the use of stamps?
There are even free tools available (possibly even pinned, I don't really pay attention those for obvious reasons) that could help a new region compete against older more established ones. And I know this may be astonishing to some people, but one of my main gripes about ADspam is that it seems to mislead new regions into thinking it's the superior option (?!?). It's not. And I do not see the point in making a new nation, sending it out to all the feeders to post a message, waiting 24 hours to post another and having to make a new one after it gets banned...when the same time one nation can be used to reach far more in a similar time frame. I just don't get it.

On the subject of new regions, one thing I've noticed is them sticking the 'recruiter friendly' tag on their region. After some observation I have come to the conclusion that they believe this will attract recruiters to recruit for them, not from them. Of course there are the (frankly quite weird) exceptions who seem to enjoy ADspam. Erm, good for them I guess. Anyway I believe either a clarification or removal/revamp of this tag is in order.

Going back to the main topic, there are some of you who might believe that, with regards to recruiting. I don't know what I'm talking about as a Feeder delegate, and that surely I do not understand at how difficult TG recruiting can be. And my reply is, yes I can. In my entire career as Delegate, I have not used scripts to either recruit or Endoswap in the Pacific. Neither have the recruiters for TP such as Aleisyr and Deslim the Recruiter. (And possibly quite a few others I've forgotten. I will add them once they remind me who they are.) What used to take me hours now takes me seconds. Even if I didn't use the regional system, the new method would be far far quicker than how I used to do it.

So please, don't whine to me about TGing. I already know, and I must have sent thousands of recruitment TG's in my time.

I believe that covers everything, thank you for your time.

[Tim-Opolis]

Tim first waves his Userite Card, to clearly establish that he is obviously a traitor to the Time-Honored Tradition of spamming RMBs

I completely agree with Krulltopia on the issue. As someone who, in my first month or two in NS, employed selective ad-spam in the past... I can safely tell you it's not worth anything. It's annoying, it's garish, and it doesn't do anything but remove from the conversations that people are having on that RMB. Sure, someone might bring the argument of "But it brought me X and Y". That's nice. Now imagine if you had sent a TG? Statistically, you wouldn't have just gotten X and Y. You'd have gotten X, Y, Z, and a few of those special characters too.

Posting on an RMB is futile. It'll get suppressed within an hour anyway! To those that don't realize, the GCR Dels contact each other if there's any sort of Bad Spam. There's no Magic Equation that gets you growth through AdSpam. No region succeeds through AdSpam. It's simply, as the latter part of its name states, spam. Get rid of it, so those stuck on such an antiquated and pointless tactic may finally get into the current era.

[Diol]

I agree that it is futile (I once went on an adspam run just to prove to certain members of my region that it's useless), but...what would NS be without zhe vords off encouragement to join von of zhe many nazi regions around zhis game?

[Cerb]

I don't think RMB does more than annoy the natives. I'm fine with making it an outright ban.

[Krulltopia]

I agree that it is futile (I once went on an adspam run just to prove to certain members of my region that it's useless), but...what would NS be without zhe vords off encouragement to join von of zhe many nazi regions around zhis game?

Much better.

[Mexar]

Even before Delegates could suppress messages, RMB ads were pretty useless. The next 9 ads would push it off pretty quickly.

[Cerian Quilor]

Leaving aside the biased inaccuracy of this statement

And I know this may be astonishing to some people, but one of my main gripes about ADspam is that it seems to mislead new regions into thinking it's the superior option (?!?). It's not.

(We get you like the Pacific. Its not 'superior', because people often look for differant things in differant regions, and people value differant things in regions. No region is overall 'superior', 'regional pride' aside.)

I agree that RMB ads are pointless and may as well be made illegal.

[Krulltopia]

Leaving aside the biased inaccuracy of this statement

And I know this may be astonishing to some people, but one of my main gripes about ADspam is that it seems to mislead new regions into thinking it's the superior option (?!?). It's not.

(We get you like the Pacific. Its not 'superior', because people often look for differant things in differant regions, and people value differant things in regions. No region is overall 'superior', 'regional pride' aside.)

I agree that RMB ads are pointless and may as well be made illegal.

I meant the method itself and not the exact region. Which was actually perfectly clear from the paragraph you grabbed it from.

[Dalimbar]

I too am in complete agreement with Krull on this issue. Far from me to offer advice to UCRs on how to recruit from the GCRs (as it's not in my interest as a GCR member), but as pointed out, the simple fact is that RMB ads just don't work. The only way in which they do work is to annoy those participating in conversations on the RMB. We've made strides from the days of massively long RMB ads, where no one else felt comfortable with having an actual conversation on the RMB lest it be lost to the flood of ads. However, with the points Krull raised, RMB advertising is dead. Can we please just get rid of it all together?

[The Seeker of Power]

Leaving aside the biased inaccuracy of this statement

And I know this may be astonishing to some people, but one of my main gripes about ADspam is that it seems to mislead new regions into thinking it's the superior option (?!?). It's not.

(We get you like the Pacific. Its not 'superior', because people often look for differant things in differant regions, and people value differant things in regions. No region is overall 'superior', 'regional pride' aside.)

And here I am wondering how people can really provide such a misread to that very clear paragraph

[Frisbeeteria]

Let's posit for a moment that the Mods agree with you in principle, but want to keep the option of regional advertising open. What could we do that might have better success that we could propose as a replacement?

We all know about TG advertising (and the current controversies about that) as well as the relatively ineffectual Regional Recruitment threads in Gameplay. What else might work?

[[violet]]

Many people don't know that the original icon for the "Suppress" button on RMBs was a little Krulltopia flag.

There are some plans in place here, but the general intent is to allow regions to become more self-governing, rather than drop a blanket ban on everyone. Because, obviously, different regions have different preferences. So instead of saying, "No-one can post RMB ads," I'd prefer regions be empowered to make those kinds of rules for themselves, and be able to effectively enforce them. Kind of similar to how Suppression lets regional administration decide what should or shouldn't be suppressed.

P.S. The first line is a joke.

[Milograd]

Can it be a rule that if you're banned for recruiting for a region, you can't recruit for that region any more?

It'd force people to be political about things, and would spare us from having to ban GGR puppets all the time. Regions like The Pacific could just ban everyone like they normally do and not be bothered by the tediousness of doing it daily, whereas some regions might let you post adspam if you, say, join their forum or something. It could be a lot better than our current situation.

[Frisbeeteria]

Can it be a rule that if you're banned for recruiting for a region, you can't recruit for that region any more?

It would be impossible to enforce. We'd have to keep track of all bans by nation name, puppetmaster, and posting region. We simply don't have a system in place that could track it ... and even if we did, the most common problem is old rulebreakers evading the mods with sneaky new puppets. The problem with rulebreakers is that, for some reason, they don't respect the new rules anymore than the old ones.

[Tim-Opolis]

Let's posit for a moment that the Mods agree with you in principle, but want to keep the option of regional advertising open. What could we do that might have better success that we could propose as a replacement?

Is one needed? Honestly, I see no reason to replace something that's basically a deadweight on the recruiting system. TG's work fantastic, in comparison, and if you write a good Region Thread then you can bring in nations that way too.

[Mahaj]

Just because something is ineffective, doesn't mean it should be made illegal.

[The Seeker of Power]

Just because something is ineffective, doesn't mean it should be made illegal.

While I can agree on this statement, you are missing the part of why we would like it made illegal: not because of its lack of efficiency, but for the level at which it becomes annoying, is purely spam, and then - as if not enough - it also happens to be as useful as a whale in a desert....

[Klaus Devestatorie]

Let's posit for a moment that the Mods agree with you in principle, but want to keep the option of regional advertising open. What could we do that might have better success that we could propose as a replacement?

We all know about TG advertising (and the current controversies about that) as well as the relatively ineffectual Regional Recruitment threads in Gameplay. What else might work?

You could do something with the featured region function. That does attract a handful of new members as it stands, and ironically, a ton of RMB spam to go with it.

[Hobbesistan]

It has no effect for the region advertising besides deeply pissing off the natives of that region.


Of the last 10 people to adspam TEP's rmb, not one nation has actually moved out of the region.


It's annoying, pointless, and I support banning it.

[Bicross fountain]

Let's posit for a moment that the Mods agree with you in principle, but want to keep the option of regional advertising open. What could we do that might have better success that we could propose as a replacement?

We all know about TG advertising (and the current controversies about that) as well as the relatively ineffectual Regional Recruitment threads in Gameplay. What else might work?

Just allow GCRs to add the Recruiter Friendly tag - harmonizing the rules on RMB Spam between both GCRs and UCRs. Then any region, both GCR or UCR, has to consent to RMB spammers.

That might even simplify the rules by approaching both kinds of regions similarly.

[Hileville]

Let's posit for a moment that the Mods agree with you in principle, but want to keep the option of regional advertising open. What could we do that might have better success that we could propose as a replacement?

We all know about TG advertising (and the current controversies about that) as well as the relatively ineffectual Regional Recruitment threads in Gameplay. What else might work?

Just allow GCRs to add the Recruiter Friendly tag - harmonizing the rules on RMB Spam between both GCRs and UCRs. Then any region, both GCR or UCR, has to consent to RMB spammers.

That might even simplify the rules by approaching both kinds of regions similarly.

I fully support this idea. Allow any GCR that is okay with recruitment on RMB's to add the Recruiter Friendly tag and be done with it.

[Cerb]

Let's posit for a moment that the Mods agree with you in principle, but want to keep the option of regional advertising open. What could we do that might have better success that we could propose as a replacement?

We all know about TG advertising (and the current controversies about that) as well as the relatively ineffectual Regional Recruitment threads in Gameplay. What else might work?

Just allow GCRs to add the Recruiter Friendly tag - harmonizing the rules on RMB Spam between both GCRs and UCRs. Then any region, both GCR or UCR, has to consent to RMB spammers.

That might even simplify the rules by approaching both kinds of regions similarly.

^^ simple solution to the problem. Gets my vote.

[Milograd]

Just allow GCRs to add the Recruiter Friendly tag - harmonizing the rules on RMB Spam between both GCRs and UCRs. Then any region, both GCR or UCR, has to consent to RMB spammers.

That might even simplify the rules by approaching both kinds of regions similarly.

^^ simple solution to the problem. Gets my vote.

Agreed.

[South Pacific Belschaft]

Let's posit for a moment that the Mods agree with you in principle, but want to keep the option of regional advertising open. What could we do that might have better success that we could propose as a replacement?

We all know about TG advertising (and the current controversies about that) as well as the relatively ineffectual Regional Recruitment threads in Gameplay. What else might work?

How about a new recruitment page where a random selection of character limited regional advertisements, similar to WFE's, are displayed? Newly re/founded nations can be directed to that as part of the process (between the point where they create their nation and are brought to their nation page), as well as having it on the sidebar to be clicked upon by anyone looking for a new region.

[Baden-Wuerttemberg]

For a new player, RMB conversation in the feeder their nation was spawned in is one of their first impressions of player interaction. If much of that current conversation consists of adspam, and negative reactions to adspam, those impressions of player interaction are both unpleasant and inane.

Dark figures by their nature don't show up in statistics. They can only be guessed. It is my guess that RMB adspam (and reactions to it) contribute to that dark figure of players who might have constructive and creative things to contribute, but leave and are lost to the game.

Therefore yes, feeders (and for fairness' sake, by extension all GCRs) should have the choice to have a Recruiter Friendly tag or not.

An idea to make region choices more accessible to new players:

Let 'The World' in the sidebar link directly to the region tag cloud.
http://www.nationstates.net/page=list_regions
Possibly with the Activity feed added at the bottom of the region tag cloud.
Make the 'list nations' page secondary, accessible via a link from the 'list regions' page.
Currently, the region tag cloud page is only accessible via a small link at the top of the World page. For many players, it may take a long time to find this portal to the wider NationStates world. The region tags not only link to region lists, they provide players with an impression of available activities and themes, which they can discover at their leisure, guided by their own curiosity and tastes.