OOC: The Future of II

[Malachor III]

the "free form roleplay" argument holds no water as an excuse to be an idiot.

And again I love how the fact that a few simple enforced guidelines which do not infringe upon anyways freeform rping are ignored.

It really shouldn't be a problem to ask that threads stay on topic, as far as rps go IC stays IC and ooc stays in the ooc thread, again on topic, and to ask that people be able to type so that others can understand them clearly. All three of those are not enforced on NS, have nothing to do with freeform rping, and no other forum I have been on has an issue with making sure threads at least stay on topic. 4chan /b/ image threads can stay on topic better than most of new II's rps ffs.


I don't care if LOLNOOB1 invades LOLNOOB2 let them be and have fun, they can at least do so without posting "I NUKEZ JOO "and then three posts later start talking about last weeks ball game.

[Oseato]

Honestly, though, why can't those RPers who believe they are "excellent" simply RP with each other and ignore the rest?

The others will then have three choices: to continue as they've begun with other who agree that their style play is just fine, to improve and join the better roleplays, or to create a new RP of their own in which they and improving players play.

It sounds like what you're asking for is Storytellers or Gamemasters, and at that point, someone's running the RP and the rest are playing in it. We don't say you can't do this.

If what you want is for mods to be STs -- well, that's a good deal more involvement than some of us want. Others of us already are involved in RPs of our own.

If you want monitors in threads jumping in to say "you can't do that!" it's going to cause more problems than not. The best thing about RP is that it IS creative and freeform -- if you want police, then people might as well read from a script. Not to mention that I'm quite sure that there would be massive complaints, as per usual, about any modding that might happen when it's not some OTHER guy who got told.

This is what I hate seeing. I don't believe any of us want to force the existing mods to do something they don't want. What many, including myself, have suggested is appointing a set of new modlings so that the old mods don't /have/ to be story tellers. Why are there stickies on the forums if the rules and quality control guidelines set within it are going to be completely unenforced by the moderation team?

The reason this thread was created to voice the collective displeasure at having a large number of highly competent and high quality RPers being kicked off the forums because all their RPs get snowed under by a bunch of posts that might as well be spam. "I send 200000000000000 troops to invade you" is not RPing, it's simply spam. RPing is freeform, but honestly, that's not RPing. We're not telling people to read from a script, no on in the old community, who polices itself, is ever forced to essentially write from a script. To say that a moderation staff for II would force people to RP specific storylines or plotlines or with specific character guidelines is simply ignorant of the ways of RPing.

I'm really sad to see that the current mod staff, save for a few, have completely written off the idea because it /might/ require more work on their part. It's the reason people came forth with the idea of volunteers. I don't believe I've ever seen a Red Cross volunteer complain about their work load, simply because they /choose/ to do it. I'd hate to see this opportunity to help II become a better place squandered because no one thinks anyone else wants to do the work without actually finding out if people would like to volunteer for the duty.

If we have rules and guidelines already established, why can't we create a mod group to enforce them?

[Oseato]

I think some of you who are complaining about standards are going to have to put your money where your mouth is and work on improving them among those players you interact with. For example, if a group of you agree on a workable "standards" list, one of you could write them up as a single-post "RP Manifesto", the OP could request a lock so it is not cluttered up with OOC objections, and those who feel it is useful could make a point of politely TGing its link to new players. Or refer any new players to it when they enter your RPs and ask them to agree to it if they want to continue. As Reppy has pointed out, OPs have enormous power within their threads. You could, for example, insist that if any OOC post is made in the IC thread, it will be reported to mods for deletion.

Put our money where our mouth is? I had and have several RPs on this forum that have attempted to create and example for current IIers to follow. Also, Standards list? We already have that in the sticky on the forum and still they are utterly ignored. To simply suggest we're not trying to improve things beyond complaining to the mods is down right offensive. We've all tried to set examples with our RP's, tried to include new RPers in them for them to understand on several occasions, but in the end they're totally snowed under by the massive amounts of poor quality one line spam that passes for RPs these days.

I'm really sad that once again someone has accused the "old guard" of slacking and simply complaining. We have tried to actively make II better, to no avail. Now we plead to the people with the power to enforce change, and we're simply blamed for the problem.

[Malachor III]

@ Ardchoille

See NSTrainers, it didn't work. We've been trying to keep the forum from being cluttered and destroyed not working.

We have stickies for a reason, they provide guidelines on how things are supposed to go on the forum, Sadly no one seems to read the stickies and posts garbage. Now if only we hada group of people to enforce those stickies and forum guidelines....we already do...they just aren't doing it so we formed a petition. I'm all up for either moving entirely to an offsite and using NS for nothing more than my population, or just forming a larger seperate community where we just ignore II trash entirely since clearly the mods who are supposed to enforce the stickies and guidelines etc don't do it on NS forums for some reason.


viewtopic.php?f=5&t=29381
Perfect example of a decent thread being ruined by II trash. Coming from someone who clearly didn't read the stickies.

[United Gordonopia]

signed, United Gordonopia

Maybe if II improves, we can get some of the good rpers off of regional boards and back into the broader community

[Grays Harbor]

I do not see it as the Mods job to police II. They are here for one reason only, to keep the Forum in line, not play RP Cop.

More established RPers have the option to create closed RP's should they, and newer players are freee to get the "noobishness" out by RPing with others. I find it rather elitist for some of the more practised RPers to look down their noses at new players, getting snarky and snobby with them. I would like to point out that they had to start at some point themselves, and I am quite certain they made a few mistakes along the way themselves.

So I would have to put myself on the side of No New elite "GOOD RPers ONLY" Forum as a part of NS. Should they want to create their own, fine, thats an option. In my own home region we have had our own forum for RPing since 2003 and it is still in use. But to demand that either (violet) or the Mods create a NEWBS KEEP OUT forum? No, thats not the way to go, in my opinion. That is just elitism, narcisism and snobbishness at play.

[Grays Harbor]

signed, United Gordonopia

Maybe if II improves, we can get some of the good rpers off of regional boards and back into the broader community

an excellent point. I know many in my own region who have been active RPers on our regional forum, and haven't posted on the NS forums since pre-jolt days. Most tend to be quite good at story-telling and RPing, and their presence here would be a plus, but they still have nightmares from several failed RP's back in 'the early days'.

[The Parthians]

I'm in favor of reducing some of the lulwarz and other pointless spam on II just as much as everyone else, however, I don't think that asking the mods to rule on subjective RP based criteria would be the mest means of achieving a better II as it would probably be way too much to sift through and too subjective a criteria.

On the other hand, a good rpers only forum might not be such a bad idea, and I would put my support behind that.

What I do find funny is the perception that II used to be a lot better. It wasn't... It's always been pretty bad in terms of the ratio of good posts to useless spam.

[Arivada]

Now some people are just not good rpers. It takes time for some people to at least get below Average. I personally was a n00b. I made some IC mistakes. Now after several months I am finally a rper with decent(Though nowhere near perfect) rping skills. I took the advice from other people and improved just by reading the stickes. Now I have recieved compliments from 4 different people saying you have improved Arivada.

[Justorica]

I Justori Bronzeg, president of the great nation Justorica, sign this petition.

[Grays Harbor]

What I do find funny is the perception that II used to be a lot better. It wasn't... It's always been pretty bad in terms of the ratio of good posts to useless spam.

Thats because many of us "old-timers" have tried very very hard to forget either our own beginnings, or the spectacularly enmbarrasing ways we failed, or the numerous spammish posts and RP's that are everywhere all the time, and try to focus just on what worked well.

there is also this, where a few of us are trying to do something useful about the level of RPing, and we welcome any ideas and participation. please.

[United Gordonopia]

One of the problems with II is that there really aren't enough people to lead by example. Once the Jolt forum ended, a vast number of excellent RPers locked themselves up in their region's forums, and as Grays Harbor said, don't post at all on II anymore. If some of them were to come back, there would be examples for people to go by. Right now, on the first page of II, there is really only one, maybe two, really good, well written RP going on. There are a few more with good OPs, but that devolve after that, and a couple that may end up being good, but it's to early to tell. If we even got a couple dozen good rpers back, we could easily increase those numbers greatly.

Also, I am in support of the "modlings" idea, but I would be in favor of making even more forum specific. Many people who are excellent II rpers stumble when it comes to GEaT, and many great businessmen can't do an NSSports RP to save their life. Creating a couple modlings for each RPing forum might do even more good. For example, there might be two or three, maybe four, modlings for II and NationStates (being that it's the biggest and the two forums are fairly similar), one maybe to for GEaT, one or two for NSSports, and one or two for Factbooks.

[Unibotian WASC Mission]

From a totally outsider to II:

Well, why don't you guys create a good ol', high quality roleplay and enlist the key players that have signed their names here to join the event?

Show em' how its done, boys.

If inexperienced, potentially crud roleplayers want in on it, they should have to sign a list of terms like Grays Harbor wrote up, if they don't follow the list of terms. Bah, I'd post in moderation asking for them to be removed from the roleplay for having a bad flag.

[Malachor III]

I do not see it as the Mods job to police II. They are here for one reason only, to keep the Forum in line, not play RP Cop.

More established RPers have the option to create closed RP's should they, and newer players are freee to get the "noobishness" out by RPing with others. I find it rather elitist for some of the more practised RPers to look down their noses at new players, getting snarky and snobby with them. I would like to point out that they had to start at some point themselves, and I am quite certain they made a few mistakes along the way themselves.

So I would have to put myself on the side of No New elite "GOOD RPers ONLY" Forum as a part of NS. Should they want to create their own, fine, thats an option. In my own home region we have had our own forum for RPing since 2003 and it is still in use. But to demand that either (violet) or the Mods create a NEWBS KEEP OUT forum? No, thats not the way to go, in my opinion. That is just elitism, narcisism and snobbishness at play.

I didn't ask them to play rp cop. Infact I even stated I didnt care if noobs do their 1 line posts etc. Nothing I suggested infringed on anyone's ability to rp however they want. Since so many want to bring up the "freeform rp card" even when it doesn't apply. I guess they're just out of legitimate counterarguments I don't know.

I asked them to enforce the stickies which include forum guidelines. Which that is part of a mods job, NS forums are the only forums I have ever visited where enforcing the forum guidelines is an issue.

[Automagfreek]

Alright, I'm going to offer my thoughts on the situation.

I recall a few months ago being ridiculed about speaking about the "old days" because these are no longer the "old days", but it seems now those people are experiencing a dose of our reality. Truth be told, the current state of II is waaaay better than II when it was first introduced. I should know, I was the 2nd one to ever post in II and have made this my home since the moment it was created. When II first started it was a complete mess, there was practically no separation of IC and OOC, threads were constantly ruined by either spam or trolling or bickering, and the few of us who were dedicated to RPing felt just as disenfranchised as you guys do.

I personally remember venting this same frustration some 5 years ago about how II was crap and the mods should kill it with fire. I even found these threads I made concerning this very same subject, some 4 years ago. Link, Link.

Things really are going pretty well, but I do think there are some legitimate concerns that the staff need to address. I understand not wanting to police RP, but when RP's start to become fouled with OOC bickering, I think a mod should at least make his/her presence known and say "Hey, get this back on topic and stop bickering. I'll be watching.". I see threads all the time that could use a little friendly kick in the ass like that, but granted the mods don't have time to read through RP's because there really are more important things to do. In the past I have offered my services to help moderate II and help keep things under control, and that offer still stands.

But in closing, as I've said so many years ago, the best way to change II is to do it by example. Believe me, the good RPers WILL win out over the bad, just don't become too overwhelmed and frustrated in the meantime. If some of the prominent roleplaying regions made a comeback, like Haven, Greater Dienstad, Gholgoth (we're working in it as we speak), etc, then there will be so many good threads about that the nooblets will simply be forgotten.

-AMF

[Reijvajik]

I can't be bothered to argue, so, simply, signed, the Greater Republic of Reijvajik.

Also; problem: people who think they're good but aren't.

[Akimonad]

Signed.

I would also like to point out that Justorica's post is a prime example of the sort of thing happening to II. This is, after all, clearly marked as an out-of-character thread.

No offense intended.

[Tropicalnia]

República de Tropicalña

Consider this petition signed.

[Greenlandic People]

Signed.

I don't know what II needs. But it definitely is in need of something.

[Avenio]

Signed.

As stated before, something needs to be done about II's quality, but exactly how much and how strict it should be remains to be seen.

[Tropicalnia]

Signed.

I would also like to point out that Justorica's post is a prime example of the sort of thing happening to II. This is, after all, clearly marked as an out-of-character thread.

No offense intended.

Well, Aki, that sort of thing has always been around, as long as I remember, even on Jolt.

Hell, I even used to do that. We all learn, eventually. He's just new, is all.

[Tahar Joblis]

The original intent of II was to provide a zone in which the moderators would enforce RP etiquette rigorously (as opposed to the original NS section, where things were to remain looser). If you look at some truly antique RP threads, you'll see some examples of me and other mods stepping up to resolve what "actually" happened when players came to an impasse. It was in some ways like a GM or ST role, one that was exercised only occasionally and mostly by request of participants, and it's one that we tried to balance very carefully. However, it takes a lot of time to pull it off for a large active forum, and we didn't have that time.

The RP culture also shifted.

What has changed over time is that ignoring is more common and the community more fragmented. It used to be that deciding to ignore someone was a really big deal, hence the giant I.G.N.O.R.E. cannon pictures. I can remember stepping in as a moderator to tell other players that yes, it was OK if they decided The bisons no longer existed and ignored any continued IC activity by that nation. Today, The bisons would have had a great deal of trouble getting most of the players who had an IC beef with his nation to interact with him at all, and nobody would expect a moderator to step in to make a ruling like that at all.

Many more threads are closed with signup phases. You've organized yourselves to avoid problems with RP, but it comes at the cost of making things harder for new players to connect with older players, and harder to learn from them. It's different from the way it was, a little, but not in the way that you're complaining about. The quality of posting overall has not really changed much. Many of those who are good writers now now were not so good a few years ago; there were plenty of one-liner posts involving large numbers of troops back then, too. I can go back and read some of the threads I participated in back in 2003 before Jolt, that were imported to Jolt. Some of it is really neat stuff; a lot of it isn't. Some of the more interesting parts would be labelled gross violations of the normal RP etiquette today and promptly ignored, rather than being engaged with in creative ways and hashed out at metaphorical gunpoint in OOC comments.

[Amazonian Beasts]

Props to AMF's post. Good stuff in there.

[Kirav]

I speak as someone who spent a fun-filled two-and-a-half years RPing on Jolt. The quality of RPing there was exponentially greater than it is on the new II, and I miss it. On Jolt, quality was ensured by the presence of RP conventions, concieved by and maintained by our oldest, most experienced RPers, that is, those from 2005 or earlier. When one is new, one knows nothing. One makes mistakes. But the presence of a hierarchy of experienced roleplayers who do play by the rules makes one know that noöne will RP with soneone who acts like a dolt. If one wants to stay, one starts to learn those rules, RP with them, and advance in their undertanding and experience to the point where they can begin teaching others. This I know from experience, and let me tell you, I was a slow learner.

The problem is that that hierarchy is not present on the new II, that is, "made men", if you will, (those with ≥1-2 years of experience) no longer make up a majority of active posters in II. This is because activity on Jolt II had declined sharply in the months before the switch, and many old-timers had either left or become less active. So when the new forum goes online, the brand-new players form the majority of the pioneers, and begin posting without enforcement and maintenance of the norms, conventions, and traditions by older players.

I don't like the idea of letting the Mods quality-police II. When I came to Jolt II, I was a libertarian, so I suppose that the assurance that "this is a freestyle RP forum, you can do what you want" appealed to me. And I think that we must remember this; that we should allow players to be creative, and to break our conventions to create new ways of RPing.

However, the new players that now populate II are not looking at roleplay in new ways, or really doing anything constructive. They roleplay in the first-person, do not even make an effort to spell (gimmi a brake im tiping frum mi iphone wil trying 2 txt my frend), and godmod from here to Kingdom come.

I would support some minor Modpowers, such as the ability to lock threads that contain a certain proporition (>50%) of one- or two-line posts.

I would support this petition if and only if the powers of the Mods to regulate quality are:

-Outlined in writing
-Non-elastic (They cannot be expanded 'as neccessary')
-Strictly limited
-Expressed in clear, firm language, with the least possible room left for interpretation.

[Santheres]

Everyone who says the "good old days" were crap is right. They were. That's part of why I think it's BS for an 03 or an 05er to come on and claim they're better for age.

However, 07 and 08 were better than 09. Why? Because while the percentage of garbage may well have been the same, there were, as said above, fewer ignores and good RPers weren't nearly as downright afraid of having everything they do ruined. And that goes beyond their own threads and into interaction in other threads. It seems like people are expecting decent players to sacrifice their own fun so that spammers and trolls can have theirs. And yes, we for a long time had a spammer and troll "RPing" on this board and the mods ignored it; hell, I reported it because it was so obvious, and the thread in moderation got zero replies.

You say to close the thread? WE KNOW we can close threads. WE DO close threads. We're not idiots, we're not children, we are aware of basic RP etiquette. Anyone telling us this clearly does not understand the problem. If you close a thread, you are cutting yourself off from the majority of the community, which means new players who show promise are probably not going to join. Even semi-closed threads look cliquish and are daunting to a new player who might happen by. Sign-ups are daunting, too; many don't want to do them, and it's not due to inherent laziness and poor RPing skills. Frankly, they're a bitch and a half, and that's coming from someone who does have the confidence to do them; they're worse for someone who doesn't.

Closed RPs are fracturing the community. It's what they do. They're inherently meant to do it. They're not bad in small doses, but when you have half the community locking all of their threads to keep out garbage, something is clearly wrong.