[Q] RMB Recruitment in Frontiers

[Past beans]

wouldn't it be better to just tag frontier regions that are fine with recruiters as recruiter friendly?

[La Xinga]

limit the amount to twice every month?

give them control of how much spawn there is

You're talking about either sophisticated programming or massive moderator intervention. Both are non-starters. We can't write AI code that can tell the difference between a normal RMB post and a recruiting post. We're not going to add a rule that causes mods to review the entire post history of potential offenders.

The Regional Officers have been handling spam for years. I propose that we formalize that role, and mods should only step in for egregious spammy or multi-regional spam recruiting. It also wouldn't hurt to tell newbies (the main offenders) that regional ads are pointless. Suppress and eject them. Send them a TG. Do something.

You're talking about either sophisticated programming or massive moderator intervention. Both are non-starters. We can't write AI code that can tell the difference between a normal RMB post and a recruiting post. We're not going to add a rule that causes mods to review the entire post history of potential offenders.

Just require recruitment posts be tagged as such, and add a way to tag RMB posts as recruitment. Isn't that how TG Recruitment is identified for filtering?

In my region, The East Pacific, even linking another region is considered recruiting. Can regions block that without causing Fris's scenario?

[Comfed]

I don't think it needs to be banned by a site rule. It's not common nowadays, and the majority of the occasional violations of the RMB recruitment prohibition I see (in TNP at least) tend to be people doing it on a personal/informal basis rather than deliberate adspam.

[Sarzonia]

Shit-tonnes of recruitment TGs are a pain in the ass when I've created new nations.

I usually just mass delete them and ride out the storm.

I think the last time a recruitment TG actually was worth a damn was back in '04. That wasn't just form letter bullshit. It felt tailored to me. I later found out it was. It came from the region I'm in now.

If the same user or region is sending multiple boiler plate recruitment TGs to the same user, that's a behaviour I'd do away with. But that might just be me.

[Comfed]

Shit-tonnes of recruitment TGs are a pain in the ass when I've created new nations.

I usually just mass delete them and ride out the storm.

I think the last time a recruitment TG actually was worth a damn was back in '04. That wasn't just form letter bullshit. It felt tailored to me. I later found out it was. It came from the region I'm in now.

If the same user or region is sending multiple boiler plate recruitment TGs to the same user, that's a behaviour I'd do away with. But that might just be me.

We're talking about RMB recruitment, not telegrams
Also, it's not possible to send a recruitment telegram to one nation for the same region more than once every 28 (?) days.

[Juansonia]

You're talking about either sophisticated programming or massive moderator intervention. Both are non-starters. We can't write AI code that can tell the difference between a normal RMB post and a recruiting post. We're not going to add a rule that causes mods to review the entire post history of potential offenders.

The Regional Officers have been handling spam for years. I propose that we formalize that role, and mods should only step in for egregious spammy or multi-regional spam recruiting. It also wouldn't hurt to tell newbies (the main offenders) that regional ads are pointless. Suppress and eject them. Send them a TG. Do something.

Just require recruitment posts be tagged as such, and add a way to tag RMB posts as recruitment. Isn't that how TG Recruitment is identified for filtering?

In my region, The East Pacific, even linking another region is considered recruiting. Can regions block that without causing Fris's scenario?

If it's recruitment, the poster has a duty to tag it, allowing for auto-application of restrictions. If they fail to tag it as recruitment, a regional officer or a mod can deal with it as it happens. Requiring RMB recruitment to be tagged as such will reduce the amount of RMB recruitment, and it allows recruitment posts to be automatically dealt with in most cases - it could even allow users to block recruitment posts from their UI.

You might be thinking, "if nobody bothers tagging it, it will make no difference", but recruitment TGs must be tagged.

[Onionist Randosia]

One issue I can see with banning RMB recruitment is if a group of two or more regions/alliance of regions creates a frontier specifically as a recruiting 'hub'. I believe NSLeft is doing this already (correct me if I'm wrong). f that is the case I would expect that the regions in question would use RMB recruitment to convince the people who spawned into their joint frontier to join their regions, through embassies with the frontier in question.

[United Calanworie]

You're talking about either sophisticated programming or massive moderator intervention. Both are non-starters. We can't write AI code that can tell the difference between a normal RMB post and a recruiting post. We're not going to add a rule that causes mods to review the entire post history of potential offenders.

Just require recruitment posts be tagged as such, and add a way to tag RMB posts as recruitment. Isn't that how TG Recruitment is identified for filtering?

RMB tagging would be an entirely separate feature that would require substantial admin intervention to create. Not feasible, or if it is, it's definitely not a "just."

[Luziyca]

I don't think it would make much sense to outright ban RMB recruitment from the game entirely, given that in most instances of RMB recruitment that is done in GCRs, a regional officer can just suppress a post, yeet the offender from the region, and move on with their day, and in cases where modly intervention is required, the offender has probably broken other NS rules that can be used to punish the offender. I think banning it outright would not be the most productive use of moderators' time, especially if they have to determine whether X post is recruiting or not.

That being said, I do think that RMB recruitment is a deprecated way to recruit people, given that as I have mentioned, most GCRs have prohibited the practice on account of recruitment posts cluttering up their RMBs, and I do think that banning RMB recruitment would not affect very many people because most recruiters nowadays use the API, stamps, or manually send recruitment telegrams to newcomerrs rather than post on RMBs of random regions and pray that anyone at all comes to their one or two nation region.

[Sedgistan]

The "Regional Advertising Spam" part of the Spam rule has been changed from:

*Regional Advertising Spam: The only places where you are allowed to put region advertisements are: The Gameplay Forum (they will be deleted if posted elsewhere) and the regional message boards of the game-created regions (The Pacific, The North Pacific, The East Pacific, The South Pacific, The West Pacific, Lazarus, Osiris, Balder, The Rejected Realms and the Official Warzones). Note that it is not legal to advertise in copycat regions such as "West Pacific". One ad per 24-hour period or per 10 posted messages, whichever is longer.

RMB Ads are allowed in player-created regions if and only if the region has a "Recruiter Friendly" tag.

Recruitment telegrams must be labelled appropriately.

to:

*Regional Advertising Spam: Regions can advertise themselves either via Telegrams (which must have the "recruitment" checkbox ticked before sending), or in the Gameplay forum as per the requirements in the Guide to the Gameplay forum.

Posting regional advertisements on the Regional Message Boards of other regions is not permitted. Minor violations of this should be handled by a region's Regional Officers; egregious and multi-regional violations should be reported via GHR for Moderators to handle.

We have also deleted the "Recruiter Friendly" tag as part of this.

[Sedgistan]

On an unrelated but recruitment-related note, we had a task recently that reported a Frontier's welcome TG as "untagged recruitment" because it encouraged nations to move to another region.

After a brief team discussion we confirmed:

Welcome TGs cannot be tagged as recruitment, and are permitted to ask/suggest nations to move region.

[Past beans]

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Won't this hurt smaller regions a bit? I get they can pay for stamps and all (which are cheap). But not everyone wants to pay for them.

[Omnicontrol]

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Won't this hurt smaller regions a bit? I get they can pay for stamps and all (which are cheap). But not everyone wants to pay for them.

API. I do recruitment for my small region and API has worked fine.

[Sedgistan]

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Won't this hurt smaller regions a bit? I get they can pay for stamps and all (which are cheap). But not everyone wants to pay for them.

RMB recruitment has been highly ineffective for years. It gets suppressed straight away, bumped off the RMB by other posts, and no-one moves off the back of an RMB ad anyway.

[The North Polish Union]

I personally am rather sad to see RMB recruitment go. I disagree in principle with taking tools for region growth out of the hands of region-builders; even if those tools are broadly considered ineffective that doesn't make them useless.

As a player who has spent the entirety of my time on this site in various UCRs, it has been disappointing to see the continued consolidation of the playerbase into structurally-favored admin-created-regions. My hope was and is that frontiers could disrupt this, but coupling it with taking away tools for players to grow their regions seems like a step backwards.

It would be nice if the admin team would consider solutions to improve the effectiveness of the remaining recruitment methods now that they've removed one from the table. Is admin willing to consider proposals at this time or will they just get the 'we have other priorities at the moment' treatment? If there's openness I have some suggestions I could put up a thread for in Technical.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I personally am rather sad to see RMB recruitment go. I disagree in principle with taking tools for region growth out of the hands of region-builders; even if those tools are broadly considered ineffective that doesn't make them useless.

As a player who has spent the entirety of my time on this site in various UCRs, it has been disappointing to see the continued consolidation of the playerbase into structurally-favored admin-created-regions. My hope was and is that frontiers could disrupt this, but coupling it with taking away tools for players to grow their regions seems like a step backwards.

It would be nice if the admin team would consider solutions to improve the effectiveness of the remaining recruitment methods now that they've removed one from the table. Is admin willing to consider proposals at this time or will they just get the 'we have other priorities at the moment' treatment? If there's openness I have some suggestions I could put up a thread for in Technical.

You are always welcome to propose technical changes in Technical - can't guarantee how theyll be received, but if you have ideas, share them. If there are rule changes that you want to propose, then a separate Moderation thread is appropriate.

I'll say that I completely disagree with the concept that taking away RMB recruitment is a step backwards when coupled with taking 50% of nation spawns AWAY from admin-created regions. Nevertheless, ideas on improving recruitment are welcome in the appropriate venue.

[Reventus Koth]

How is this change going to affect the RMBs of raided regions? It isn't standard practice, and at this point only a handful of raiders still do it, but RMB posts celebrating a raid with credit to the invading region have been a part of raiding culture in some form or fashion for decades. This can range from the innocuous and probably not rule-breaking "Ben was here" post that one player leaves everywhere, to the mere suggestion of the raiding region, to outright copying the raid WFE onto the RMB.

The latter example is what I'm most worried about, because tags almost always contain advertisements for the invaders. I am not happy about this change and the removal of the Recruiter Friendly tag that served as an explicit "opt-in" for this kind of recruitment.

[Mallorea and Riva]

How is this change going to affect the RMBs of raided regions? It isn't standard practice, and at this point only a handful of raiders still do it, but RMB posts celebrating a raid with credit to the invading region have been a part of raiding culture in some form or fashion for decades. This can range from the innocuous and probably not rule-breaking "Ben was here" post that one player leaves everywhere, to the mere suggestion of the raiding region, to outright copying the raid WFE onto the RMB.

The latter example is what I'm most worried about, because tags almost always contain advertisements for the invaders. I am not happy about this change and the removal of the Recruiter Friendly tag that served as an explicit "opt-in" for this kind of recruitment.

We considered that when making the rule, any of those examples would not result in moderator intervention for regions that were raided. Unless R&D groups were separately RMB recruiting outside of the tagging context, nothing should change.

[Malicious NPU]

On an unrelated but recruitment-related note, we had a task recently that reported a Frontier's welcome TG as "untagged recruitment" because it encouraged nations to move to another region.

After a brief team discussion we confirmed:

Welcome TGs cannot be tagged as recruitment, and are permitted to ask/suggest nations to move region.

Requesting clarification on this.

Is this exclusive to welcome TGs? Are frontier ROs with the ability to send regionwide TGs permitted to do so encouraging nations to move to the administration's stronghold?

[Sedgistan]

Someone GHRed that question too. We'll answer it once it's been considered.

Feel free to express opinions here as well.

[The Ambis]

I think that it's best just to limit it to a welcome TG, unless appropriately tagged.

[Improper Classifications]

I think that it's best just to limit it to a welcome TG, unless appropriately tagged.

Disagreeing - I think it's fine for a region's comm officers to send a TG, say, once a week or so encouraging the nations of the region to move to the stronghold. It would defeat the purpose of Frontiers to limit it to welcome TGs.
Anything around 1 TG/day is excessive, but if it's with a regional update or something, I think it's fine to run once a week or so.

[Bowzin]

If there were restrictions on RO telegrams recruiting, could that bleed over to ROs recruiting nations to help in ongoing R/D operations, or would that be differentiated? It's a similar concept, petitioning the nations of your own region to move to a different one.

[Malicious NPU]

Someone GHRed that question too. We'll answer it once it's been considered.

Feel free to express opinions here as well.

The GHR was likely from a puppet of mine that at the time was a frontier RO with comms power. My personal view is that it ought to be permitted. Particularly since some frontiers were created largely to be a recruitment ground for a stronghold (The Frontier, Concord, etc.) it seems reasonable to permit the regional admin to take full advantage of that

[Juansonia]

I think that it's best just to limit it to a welcome TG, unless appropriately tagged.

Disagreeing - I think it's fine for a region's comm officers to send a TG, say, once a week or so encouraging the nations of the region to move to the stronghold. It would defeat the purpose of Frontiers to limit it to welcome TGs.
Anything around 1 TG/day is excessive, but if it's with a regional update or something, I think it's fine to run once a week or so.

The whole point of sending those TGs is recruitment, so they should be tagged and filtered accordingly. Those who will see such a tg as something to consider won't block recruitment TGs anyways, and those who block recruitment tgs probably will - at best - ignore the RO's recruitment for the stronghold.