In-game Factbooks (no longer in beta!)

[Kandona]

Hello F&NI! There is a new feature in testing at the moment I'd like to get your feedback on.

Essentially, it is putting Factbooks on your nation page. The aim is to give good Factbooks greater prominence; currently, I feel we have some amazing work in this forum that goes unseen by the majority of our community.

To test it out, append "/detail=factbook" to a nation page URL. On your own nation, this will invite you to create a new factbook entry, in one of various categories. Adding that to the URL of other nations will show you view their Factbook, if they have created one. Example: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=test ... l=factbook

In one sense, this feature is a little like a no-brainer, but we've felt that what was happening in this forum was already pretty great, so there was no need to mess with it. What I'm hopeful we'll get from this feature, when it's done, is the best of both words: a boost to the F&NI scene, with much greater awareness amongst the general playerbase, and still robust discussion here about factbooks (how to create them, what people have written, etc), without so many good factbooks scrolling off the forum front page and being lost.

Please let me know what you think!

How would you be able to add the various flags of a nation?

[Milograd]

I don't like this feature at all. I have my factbook on the forum for a reason, and from what I've seen thus far, people are really just whoring the ratings on this so that their messages can be boosted to the top of the viewership/rating charts. Most of what I've seen, in fact, is advertising gameplay organizations through the system. It's quite useful to have in game factbooks, but I don't feel that the rating system is necessary at all, to be honest.

[Foguk]

Hello F&NI! There is a new feature in testing at the moment I'd like to get your feedback on.

Essentially, it is putting Factbooks on your nation page. The aim is to give good Factbooks greater prominence; currently, I feel we have some amazing work in this forum that goes unseen by the majority of our community.

To test it out, append "/detail=factbook" to a nation page URL. On your own nation, this will invite you to create a new factbook entry, in one of various categories. Adding that to the URL of other nations will show you view their Factbook, if they have created one. Example: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=test ... l=factbook

In one sense, this feature is a little like a no-brainer, but we've felt that what was happening in this forum was already pretty great, so there was no need to mess with it. What I'm hopeful we'll get from this feature, when it's done, is the best of both words: a boost to the F&NI scene, with much greater awareness amongst the general playerbase, and still robust discussion here about factbooks (how to create them, what people have written, etc), without so many good factbooks scrolling off the forum front page and being lost.

Please let me know what you think!

A GOD AMONG MEN. Seriously, This is bloody fantastic.

[Knootoss]

(Maybe noob) Question: Is it possible to link directly to factbook entries? Or is this just done by using the URL with the ID?

[Radiatia]

And one more minor bug which I've discovered - the [color] tag isn't working properly.

[Yohannes]

First of all, I want to add that I love this feature, Violet (and thanks for fixing the URL errors)

However, I will have to agree with Milograd here:

I have my factbook on the forum for a reason, and from what I've seen thus far, people are really just whoring the ratings on this so that their messages can be boosted to the top of the viewership/rating charts. Most of what I've seen, in fact, is advertising gameplay organizations through the system.

I can see that this will most probably have an impact for us roleplayers. For example, most advanced roleplayers such as I myself, don't pay attention to gameplay features. An example of how this can harm roleplayers; things such as:

Player A: Ohhhh, I have a much, much larger defence industry than you are!

Me: Oh... how come..?

Player A: This (*he or she goes to the gameplay feature which shows the chart of comparison between Nation A and Nation B's defence industry ranking)

Me: Uhmm..... You don't use that in roleplay, really.

Player A: Oh no! They exist though? They are there?

Me: No. You don't look at gameplay things. They are not a part of roleplaying in NationStates. For example, you don't follow the NS calculators for roleplaying, they are not applicable for roleplaying, and you are free to roleplay your nation without what NS calculator says your nation will be like

Player A: Oh, but that's not true? For example [goes to show factbook on the gameplay nation page, he or she describe there how his or her nation is the largest this largest that because of gameplay features, and how he or she can override roleplayers who have roleplayed their industry, etc. properly on the NS Roleplaying forum, such as the Global Economics & Trade, by exploiting the aforesaid gameplay feature, through his or her factbook, which is also located in the national page, technically a part of gameplay and not roleplay]

Me: ......

We have a problem.

[Knootoss]

And one more minor bug which I've discovered - the [color] tag isn't working properly.

To be more precise: the color feature DID work. (I used it in my experimental tinkering) but a few minutes to I guess half an hour ago it STOPPED working. Stuff between color tags now gets displayed as 0 0 0 0

[YellowApple]

First of all, I want to add that I love this feature, Violet (and thanks for fixing the URL errors)

However, I will have to agree with Milograd here:

I have my factbook on the forum for a reason, and from what I've seen thus far, people are really just whoring the ratings on this so that their messages can be boosted to the top of the viewership/rating charts. Most of what I've seen, in fact, is advertising gameplay organizations through the system.

I can see that this will most probably have an impact for us roleplayers. For example, most advanced roleplayers such as I myself, don't pay attention to gameplay features. An example of how this can harm roleplayers; things such as:

Player A: Ohhhh, I have a much, much larger defence industry than you are!

Me: Oh... how come..?

Player A: This (*he or she goes to the gameplay feature which shows the chart of comparison between Nation A and Nation B's defence industry ranking)

Me: Uhmm..... You don't use that in roleplay, really.

Player A: Oh no! They exist though? They are there?

Me: No. You don't look at gameplay things. They are not a part of roleplaying in NationStates. For example, you don't follow the NS calculators for roleplaying, they are not applicable for roleplaying, and you are free to roleplay your nation without what NS calculator says your nation will be like

Player A: Oh, but that's not true? For example [goes to show factbook on the gameplay nation page, he or she describe there how his or her nation is the largest this largest that because of gameplay features, and how he or she can override roleplayers who have roleplayed their industry, etc. properly on the NS Roleplaying forum, such as the Global Economics & Trade, by exploiting the aforesaid gameplay feature, through his or her factbook, which is also located in the national page, technically a part of gameplay and not roleplay]

Me: ......

We have a problem.

But a number of players do roleplay based on their NS page stats, since it's a lot easier than being an economist, politician, strategist, scientist, civil planner, and theologist (in some cases) all at the same time and developing things from scratch. I myself will reference some things from my NS in-game stats, as well as from the Absolution tracker, as a starting point for developing more permanent statistics.

[Milograd]

=Snip=

I think you missed my point entirely. The rating system is undesirable because it is essentially going to be whored, and has already begun being whored, so that the most viewed/rated boards can serve as advertising space. It also probably wouldn't make a player feel really good about himself if people gave him or her a bad rating ( a flag down ), which is why I really dislike the rating system on the in-game factbooks. I think it needs to be removed.

[YellowApple]

=Snip=

I think you missed my point entirely. The rating system is undesirable because it is essentially going to be whored, and has already begun being whored, so that the most viewed/rated boards can serve as advertising space. It also probably wouldn't make a player feel really good about himself if people gave him or her a bad rating ( a flag down ), which is why I really dislike the rating system on the in-game factbooks. I think it needs to be removed.

I agree with this completely. Though, to be honest, I didn't even realize it was a rating system, since I couldn't comprehend a rating system being added.

So yeah.

[Central and Eastern Visayas]

Challenging, but it's nothing impossible, at least for me.

I myself will reference some things from my NS in-game stats, as well as from the Absolution tracker, as a starting point for developing more permanent statistics.

Of course, different strokes for different folks. Back when Sunset was still running, I would use it as my tracker because all the figures are in Universal Standard Dollars (I think...).

Thanks for telling me about the rating system, M-grad. Didn't really see that coming, but I just started, so...

[Yohannes]

@YellowApple: Yes, that is fine.

For example, I also use NS stats for my GDP per capita. However one cannot enforce upon other roleplayers what they do not acknowledge (that alone already run across one of the most important rule of roleplaying). For an example, if you are going to tell me that you have a 100% tax rate and 100% defence budget rate, and thus meaning that (again, taken from NS calculator setting) that you will enforce upon me that gameplay feature to elevate your roleplaying capacity; now that will be a big problem because a 100% tax rate in a 100% defence budget is just simply unrealistic.

However, that is irrelevant to the question which I asked specifically for Violet (and to the main context of the OP itself).

YellowApple, if you wish to discuss further about the vital difference of gameplay and roleplay in NationStates and the importance of separating both, feel free to telegram me so that both of us won't spam this thread with out-of-context discussion which will spiral out of control in terms of context from the main OP. (I have seen it all happening too often, so speaking from experience here)

@Milograd: Ahh alright, then I consider my post there as a question of its own.

[[violet]]

I can see that this will most probably have an impact for us roleplayers. For example, most advanced roleplayers such as I myself, don't pay attention to gameplay features.

I'm not sure I quite understand... certainly different people pay different amounts of attention to game-side in their RPs, but I don't see how in-game factbooks will affect this, for better or worse. Some people RP with "official" stats, some people use the calculators, some ignore pretty much everything except the nation's name and flag... and these options will continue to exist. You can write a factbook that complies with your nation's "Overview" page, or contradicts it, or just ignore it altogether.

[Yohannes]

Ahh, okay... I was just a bit worried, that's all. Thanks for the clarification Violet

[[violet]]

I really dislike the rating system on the in-game factbooks. I think it needs to be removed.

It might end up being removed. It was actually coded for something else, and I decided to give it a shot here. The benefit is that it would allow some kind of list of good factbooks. Without that, it's going to be very difficult for the average visitor to find nations with good factbooks to read; they'd basically have to find their way to the right thread in this forum (and most NS players never even visit the forum at all), or just randomly browse 90,000 nations until they stumble across one.

But it is a slightly tricky feature, with issues as you describe.

[Milograd]

I really dislike the rating system on the in-game factbooks. I think it needs to be removed.

It might end up being removed. It was actually coded for something else, and I decided to give it a shot here. The benefit is that it would allow some kind of list of good factbooks. Without that, it's going to be very difficult for the average visitor to find nations with good factbooks to read; they'd basically have to find their way to the right thread in this forum (and most NS players never even visit the forum at all), or just randomly browse 90,000 nations until they stumble across one.

But it is a slightly tricky feature, with issues as you describe.

A system akin to the "featured articles" on Wikipedia might be ideal for in-game factbooks, and they could possibly be alternated every so often as to give new people a chance? This might help avoid the problems I mentioned to a certain extent.

[Foguk]

deleted.

[[violet]]

I broke color tags briefly. Sorry!

Changes since a few hours ago:

• Three-character hex color codes supported (e.g. "color=#CCC")
• New tags supported: table, tr, td
• Internal URLs don't have that little arrow icon
• A few little cosmetic CSS tweaks.

There is a test dispatch on Testlandia, aimed at using as many random tags as possible.

There are plenty of little things that are still a little messy with some of these tags, but I'll be cleaning things up over the next week.

Advanced editors may be interested to know that you can view the NScode behind someone else's entry by following the URL: http://www.nationstates.net/page=create_dispatch/edit=1 <-- replace "1" with the ID of the dispatch.

[[violet]]

A system akin to the "featured articles" on Wikipedia might be ideal for in-game factbooks

Yes, that's also a viable alternative. The downside is it requires staff to constantly review and rate factbooks. It also has a subjectivity issue: you would get people complaining that whoever is choosing the featured factbooks is biased.

[Knootoss]

Great progress!

The [list] tag still appears to be kind of broken. It's just showing the opening tag now. Before it was doing funky things by not recognising the closing tag.

[Milograd]

A system akin to the "featured articles" on Wikipedia might be ideal for in-game factbooks

Yes, that's also a viable alternative. The downside is it requires staff to constantly review and rate factbooks. It also has a subjectivity issue: you would get people complaining that whoever is choosing the featured factbooks is biased.

True, but perhaps there could be a nominations thread of sorts? If the decision process itself was more community run, albeit with a discussion thread, it wouldn't be as flawed as the current system, but it would still present the same benefits.

Furthermore, I'm having issues with list tags; once a large lists ends, it continues regardless of whether or not I actually end that list.

EDIT: See here for the troubles I'm having with lists.

[Knootoss]

Minor bugreport!

If you combine the [floatleft] and [box] commands, the text hugs the edge of the box VERY tightly. [floatright] does not have this problem, by the way.

[Radiatia]

Will anything be done to make it possible to post more than 10 factbook subsections/entries without them disappearing?

I say this as my factbook is more a fact-novel than a factbook....

[Saltha]

This is neat, though will you make it eventually so the nation pages will directly link to it, instead of having to do URL stuff to get to it?

I agree the rating system is kind of useless, and will only be misused.

[Warhaven]

I made a mini-factbook entry, using no tags and it works fine for me. I can't wait for the thing to go public.

I am going to announce this thread on my RMB, get more beta testers going for you. Or at least try.