Sports RP survey, June 2020

[Kelssek]

At the start of this week I put up a survey in light of all the recent discussion about the organization of the World Cup particularly, and the problem of people feeling "burnout" with sports roleplaying. I've summarized the results in this file. You can also see the raw data if you go back to the form and click on "responses".

Keep in mind that with ~50 responses on any given question, 1 person represents about 2 percentage points. So be careful about drawing conclusions on small differences. A 60-40 margin is a difference of 10 people, and something like 55-45 is five people. Having no real way to be sure we have a representative sample, anything must be interpreted with caution. This must not be regarded as being anywhere near as credible as scientific polls, which are based on random samples of thousands of people, and can still be very inaccurate..

Some key points, at least in my interpretation:

Burnout is a problem for sure, but one that might be exaggerated. It also seems to be more about having not enough to RP about and pressures from normal life, than with the pace of scorinations or tournaments. These are things outside of the control of the community and which can't be fixed by tinkering with scorination formulas or tournament formats. This suggests that a lot of the agonizing about length and tempo of scorinations is misplaced. (Knowing this data a bit earlier than you folks helped guide the decision to have groups of 12x5 rather than 15x4 in the Cup of Harmony last night. It's not much but one more matchday and one more opponent gives that bit more raw material to work with)

I constructed a couple of hypothetical scenarios to see what tradeoffs people are willing to make between length of qualifiers, double scorination, and more time to write RPs for each MD. The result was surprisingly not that complicated, there is a clear preference for the qualifiers to be shorter in RL time, even in the most extreme scenario of double scorinations for 15 RL days.

Happily, a wide majority consider the community to be welcoming, but the free responses suggest those who don't feel very unhappy with the general vibe. I personally don't know if this is good news or bad news.

There is about a 50-50 split between those who feel anxious that they're not good RPers and those who aren't so worried. Combined with the other findings, maybe we should discuss fixes not based on organization and structure of the tournaments, but more advice, mentoring, and discussion about what makes a good RP and how to get ideas and develop them.

[Krytenia]

Perhaps we could have some subforum RP mentors? It's been used in other forums, can't see why not here. Gives a good place for unsure newbies to touch base with if they have questions.

[Ko-oren]

A tl;dr on the survey results:
- a small majority picks double scorination (2 MDs every 48 hours) over single scorination (1 MD every 24 hours)
- an overwhelming majority wants 20 RL day qualifications (scorinations every 24 hours) over 40 RL day ones (scorinations every 48 hours)
- the community is overwhelmingly seen as supportive
- about a third of us is burned out, while a little over 50% aren't
- people experience a major problem in how long it takes for [new users] to advance [to the World Cup] (words in brackets mine)
- the emphasis on RP is seen as a good thing by most, and most feel that RPs are properly rewarded
- for those that are burned out, I suggest opening the pdf at least to see the nice pie chart for the reasons
- the most important problem is identified as retention/newbie friendliness by 9, as slow pace by 5, as community issues by 11, organisational problems by 5, expectations on users by 5, and miscellaneous by 6.
- community issues boil down to drama and toxicity, and some 'old boys' criticism
- miscellaneous involve the following: we take ages to codify procedures and then we don't, as well as multiple issues with slow pace combined with a large impact for every MD, conservative host bids, football playing too big of a role, and 'there are too many problems, what is the problem that we're trying to tackle specifically?'

I think the free responses can be summarised as:
- some scorination schedules weren't included in the question
- some questions were posed as dichotomies rather than spectra
- there's too much pressure on writing RPs every day
- it's too hard to get a good KPB - but we can't make it too easy either, the people who have a good ranking deserve to be up there as well

And some final remarks from the free responses that were mentioned just once, but I haven't seen in this discussion before:
- Allow a more lenient ranking system for WCC (make it best [3] performances from last [5] WC cycles?
- RP bonus should be made public
- We have info from a reliable source that a certain coach was seen at a strip club in an undisclosed nation using his club's money to pay strippers. He was quoted as saying "It's rolling, baby!"

[The Sherpa Empire]

I don't know how much mentors would help. When people come and ask a n00b question, they usually do get helpful answers, at least from what I've seen. I think that's something that the community is doing pretty well even without a formal mentoring system.

On Discord earlier today, some of us were talking about "toxicity," and I said I would elaborate on that. I'm bringing it here so that I can write a more detailed post without the chat moving too fast.

There are a couple of things that are not directly related to Sports RP:

1. A lot of people are under more RL stress than usual because of COVID. That makes people more short-tempered. Nothing we can do about it, but it does exacerbate every other issue and make arguments more heated.

2. Heated arguments from the #currentaffairs channel on Discord can spill out. Some steps have already been taken to address this, but it was an issue relatively recently.

But the reason I brought this over to the forum is about the World Cup. There is a lot of emphasis on the World Cup, and it is not only because of the number of people who are interested in it. It's also the attitudes surrounding it. People say things like, "Basically everyone does the World Cup" or "If you run other tournaments at the same time as the World Cup, basically everyone will prioritize the World Cup" -- and those things become self-reinforcing. The more you repeat them, the more people who don't really care that much about football end up entering and RPing because they want to be part of the group. People feel pressured. It also comes across as a bit exclusionary toward the people who DON'T prioritize the World Cup.

When you have people that are there because they feel obligated, you can't expect the same level of enthusiasm as people that are there because they just love RPing about football. You can't expect them to work their way up with the same patience.

On top of this, the World Cup has one of the most ossified rank systems on the forum. Established players can rank coast quite far, but new people have to work for years just to get off the ground. Even if the World Cup happened more often, the number of cycles that new players have to RP to gain a foothold is a lot. I do not believe that the talk about making things easier for new players is serious. I think it's mostly empty lip service, while the majority of established players are not willing to actually sacrifice their ability to rank coast. Some of that talk might come from players who are genuinely conflicted, but when push comes to shove, I don't think many will vote for anything that undermines their rank coasting ability.

Then you have established players in the World Cup that are oblivious to the rest of the forum, who judge everyone by their KPB and/or the quality of their football RPs -- regardless of how much that person might be contributing to the community in other sports. Even if it's only some people some of the time, not everyone all the time, it is enough to be annoying.

So you have a tournament where it's hard to gain a foothold, and you have people that are snobby about it if you don't do well or at least make an effort. That's a recipe for people getting pissed off. The problem isn't whoever went on a rant when things didn't go their way. It's the people that rigged the system, and then pressure everyone to come back and keep trying anyway. If the community didn't attach so much significance to success in the World Cup, people wouldn't get so pissed off when something goes wrong or it's hard to get ahead.

[The Plough Islands]

There is a lot of emphasis on the World Cup, and it is not only because of the number of people who are interested in it. It's also the attitudes surrounding it. People say things like, "Basically everyone does the World Cup" or "If you run other tournaments at the same time as the World Cup, basically everyone will prioritize the World Cup" -- and those things become self-reinforcing. The more you repeat them, the more people who don't really care that much about football end up entering and RPing because they want to be part of the group. People feel pressured. It also comes across as a bit exclusionary toward the people who DON'T prioritize the World Cup.

[...]

Then you have established players in the World Cup that are oblivious to the rest of the forum, who judge everyone by their KPB and/or the quality of their football RPs -- regardless of how much that person might be contributing to the community in other sports. Even if it's only some people some of the time, not everyone all the time, it is enough to be annoying.

This is a point I've been making quite a bit, including in the survey - the background radiation of the World Cup is very, very strong in the community, and while I appreciate some of that's inevitable with the sheer size of the event, the attitude that occasionally pops up is that some sports are more equal than others (I've had people quite literally not take 'no' for an answer when I'm asked why I haven't entered the World Cup yet).

By contrast, though, most people in the community are absolutely lovely and I've been perhaps lucky to have met and got to know some wonderful people here, right from the start. I'd echo the comments about people being willing to help without formal mentorship, as I've learned a lot from helpful players (particularly, although there's too many to thank, Starblaydia and Nephara who both went above and beyond when I was completely new) who were happy to answer questions I had early on - something I gather isn't always the case or as accessible with other subforums on here. I do still think a formal RP mentor scheme might be useful though, just to give newbies who are nervous (as I once was) an idea of who is going to be happy to help without biting their heads off - it's always easier to figure these things out when you have a starting point of where to go!

1. A lot of people are under more RL stress than usual because of COVID. That makes people more short-tempered. Nothing we can do about it, but it does exacerbate every other issue and make arguments more heated.

Also, this - the combination of global lockdown and some of the biggest tournaments we've had in their respective sports has been a particularly volatile one, and it's something I know I've contributed to myself at times >_<

[Zwangzug]

Just to comment on the RP mentor thing: the main reason I've been opposed to that idea in the past is because of what I've seen lurking the II/Economics forums in the past. Every so often there seemed to be a push from various more established users to try and help newer ones "learn" to RP, but it felt like a very same-y, purple prosey way of writing that led to a lot of copy-pasted, formulaic styles (like the copy-pasted "apply for an embassy" forms). What worried me was that if such a system was implemented here it could lead to more cookie-cutter "this is how to write a match report for sport X," when I think a lot of the RPs that I enjoy are fun because those users found their own style and made it original. I'm not sure where to strike the balance, it might be useful to have patient appointees to go to with questions like "I want to RP gridiron, can you remind me what's the difference between a touchdown and a safety."

[Jeckland]

I'd like to bring across my own thoughts about 'toxicity' that I expressed on Discord last night. I will try to avoid using the word 'toxic' as it can be construed to mean a lot of things and I'd rather be clearer. To clarify as well, I said in the survey that generally this community is supportive.

A lot of people seemed surprised by the number of people who mentioned some form of toxicity as a problem with the community. I was not. It is a fact that at times certain users can seem unwelcoming to others in the community. I'm not going to namedrop people in this post, because I think that in this case it would be counterproductive to do so, but I'll outline what I think happens in the community below.

The nature of hosting tournaments is that users have to prove themselves, by RPing and hosting smaller tournaments, in order to progress up the ladder to host bigger tournaments. This inherently results in a hierarchy forming, with the most experienced hosts at the top and the newer ones at the bottom. Whilst this is necessary for hosting, it is also an inherent part of the community as a whole, with the opinions and actions of the experienced users having greater weight than those newer to the forums. This in itself is not the problem.

The first part of the problem is that a minority of users feel a sense of entitlement and superiority as a result of their length of tenure or accomplishments on the forum. This can lead to them treating newer users in a different way to other more established ones, often talking down to them. Whilst giving advice to newer users is a good thing and something this community is generally good at, some appear to be less constructive, often jumping to point out negatives about a persons actions or character in a way that may drive newer players away - I felt unwelcome at points in my first months on NS.

The second part, which is not acknowledged, is that despite a majority of established users being a positive influence on newer ones, they do not do enough to call out the actions of those who are not. The sense of entitlement that some people seem to feel over their experience means that they are more likely to respond to criticism if it comes from people equal to them in the hierarchy, rather than newer players. However, as any animosity is likely to be felt by newer players, they are less likely to criticise those above them, knowing that it is fruitless. That's why you're seeing a lot more mentions of toxicity in this anonymous form than you do in general discussions about the community.

I will give an example of where I think the problem is. A couple of days after coming back to NS, a well established member of the community sent me a DM on discord in relation to a discussion being had, saying that I should not take the side of another, less established user. This in itself is obviously poor behaviour in creating a welcoming community. When I mentioned this in public on the server a couple of weeks ago, naming the user, people acknowledged that this person often behaved in this way, but to my knowledge nobody actually said this to the person. For somebody like myself to say it would be fairly useless as I am less established than them. Some who agreed with me would have had the 'clout' to make the user think twice about things, but to my knowledge did nothing.

So to everyone reading this, I ask you to think about these two things:

1. Do I treat newer users with less respect than older ones? Do I speak to them in a different way?
2. Where I see this behaviour occurring, what actions do I, as a third party, take? Should I be doing more to be critical of those who are unwelcoming?

[The Royal Kingdom of Quebec]

Just a minor piece of suggestion, mostly to the younger generation of RPers but also to few of more experienced RPers :

If you feel burnt out or near burnout because of being overwhelmed or lacking much time, it may not be a bad idea to space out the frequency of your RPs, or to pre-plan them in advance. The latter, while it'd mostly work under the assumption that you already have something thought out, would work out well because not only does it means that you can space them per your schedule, it also means that you would be able to add or apply RL inspirations to your work as well. During the course of my seven years on NSSport, this factor proved to be a major one with my stories getting additional details, edges, etc.

As for former, spacing out the frequency of your RPs would work out in favour of you on long run, because it means that you have control over your IC schedules to your RL needs and mostly, fun and inspiration. Of course, it'd be great if you can RP a ton and expect to cash big money outta the bank from your first WC/WBC/WCoH cycle, but more often than not that's not how it works, especially given that ranks take some time to acquire. So what you can do instead is to take more time, space yourself out and let things just fall accordingly to it. That would also give you enough opportunities to think a bit and kinda think of your next storylines - the less you feel burned out, the better you'll feel about yourself and your RPs too.

Just to comment on the RP mentor thing: the main reason I've been opposed to that idea in the past is because of what I've seen lurking the II/Economics forums in the past. Every so often there seemed to be a push from various more established users to try and help newer ones "learn" to RP, but it felt like a very same-y, purple prosey way of writing that led to a lot of copy-pasted, formulaic styles (like the copy-pasted "apply for an embassy" forms). What worried me was that if such a system was implemented here it could lead to more cookie-cutter "this is how to write a match report for sport X," when I think a lot of the RPs that I enjoy are fun because those users found their own style and made it original. I'm not sure where to strike the balance, it might be useful to have patient appointees to go to with questions like "I want to RP gridiron, can you remind me what's the difference between a touchdown and a safety."

I think this one answers my general view of RP mentor or anything similar well. The community's not only feedback friendly, but also quite freegoing on this aspect. I have received much feedback and support from RPers like Schottia, Banija, Farfadillis, Siovanija and Teusland (Sicoutimont), Kita-Hinode (Unified Sunrise Islnds), Huayramarca (San Jose Guayabal) in past, and their RP styles were all quite different from one and another. It's lot more relative than in II/Economics and Esquarium (the region I was in right before AO), which I stopped participating years ago due to that C+P-ness that I've also witnessed.

[Torisakia]

Good to see my free response got a mention or two.

I won't provide my thoughts on the whole toxicity thing with NS Sports as I've participated intermittently over the past 5 or so years due to IRL obligations. I will say that I, like many others, have experienced burnout when it comes to RPing. Personally, this stems from me not having a clear vision of what to write about rather than the competition I'm participating in running too long as seems to be a concern with the current WC. Quebec suggested the idea of spacing out or pre-planning your RPs in advance. I can attest to the latter as I have done this a few times over the years and it's helped me avoid burnout since I actually know what I'm writing about and how I'm going to do it. But frankly, not everyone has the time to even plan out RPs in advance. This brings up the notion that too much of an emphasis is placed on RPing in the NS Sports community, but since I've infrequently participated on NS Sports over the past several years I have decided to not go into the topic. Overall, I believe that we're taking the right direction with how to cater to a wide range of players, but it will take some time to figure out what works and what doesn't.

As a last point, I would like to remind everyone (new and old players) that at the end of the day this is all just a hobby. Your life and well-being doesn't depend on what or how good a fictional country playing in a fictional football tournament driven by borderline fanfiction does. If you're an older player with a lot of experience, it may seem like NS Sports is your life and that may be true (I'm sure someone here at some point in our history has quit their full time job for NS Sports), but you shouldn't feel like you're obligated to participate just because you've been here for a while. If you're a newer player, a lot of this can seem overwhelming as you see these convoluted RPs and these players with a literal decade plus of experience. Just remember that everyone started somewhere in every hobby to exist, and sometimes it may come easy and sometimes it may come hard. When I first started participating in NS Sports back in June 2010 (I had a nation before this one. No I won't tell you the name of it because the 778 posts I had are all cringey as hell. I was 11-13 years old, shut up), I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. My first event was World Cup of Hockey 12 and I knew not the first thing about ice hockey. However, as I posted one low quality RP after another I eventually began to comprehend and enjoy the aspect of storyline RPs. Although most of my early RPs were match recaps, I still liked to explain the 'how and why' of events. And now 10 years later I still don't know what I'm doing, but I enjoy writing out RPs more than ever before.

So I'd tell you to stick with it, and be thankful that you're in no worse shape than you are. If someone gives you unconstructive shit for what you're doing, tell them to meet me on playground after school and we'll settle it like men. If you're an older player, giving criticism to a newer player is fine, but make sure that it's done in a constructive manner. Nitpicking at every little thing and making them feel like subhuman trash is not a good way to keep players here. And then in 5 years when NS Sports has become a deserted wasteland, we'll know who to blame. If someone really grinds your gears with how they RP, your best option is to just ignore it (unless they're breaking RP permission rules, of course).

Stay calm and keep it rolling, baby!

[Starblaydia]

Perhaps we could have some subforum RP mentors? It's been used in other forums, can't see why not here. Gives a good place for unsure newbies to touch base with if they have questions.

What worried me was that if such a system was implemented here it could lead to more cookie-cutter "this is how to write a match report for sport X," when I think a lot of the RPs that I enjoy are fun because those users found their own style and made it original. I'm not sure where to strike the balance, it might be useful to have patient appointees to go to with questions like "I want to RP gridiron, can you remind me what's the difference between a touchdown and a safety."

Speaking as a player, with my mod hat firmly out of sight, Zwang's worry is one of my concerns with applying the mentor system to NS Sports, too. In my experience, I think NS Sports is, on the whole, a welcoming community and we provide a lot of guidance and help to newcomers that largely mitigates the call for mentors. It's hard, however, to read some of the criticisms and not think that having users with shiny, official green badges, who can be pointed directly to for inquiring newcomers and relied upon to present the best face of the forum to them and their standard list of questions and 'mistakes' (i.e. doing things contrary to one of the methods the NSS Hivemind has worked out to be some version of 'correct' over the years).

What has concerned me rather a little more, though, frankly as both a player and a Game Moderator, is the following from Jeck (in both Discord and this thread), summarised in the following section:

despite a majority of established users being a positive influence on newer ones, they do not do enough to call out the actions of those who are not

I'll be the first to hold up my hands and say that I've not been doing that often enough when I have noticed it - both during my recent few months of inactivity and more generally throughout my time here. The responses to this survey, and the follow-up discussion, is pointing to the fact that we as a subforum still have a ways to go in order to be welcoming of everyone. Our NS Sport-based mods (of which 2/3rds are on board with this statement and I'm sure the other third will be in agreement of) will keep a more watchful eye for this sort of unhelpful behaviour, and attempt to guide discussions in the correct direction.

This does not represent a moderation policy, nor should it be treated as such, but more of an informal understanding that some of us veterans will pay a little more attention to how newer or inexperienced users are being responded to, and call out any actions that don't meet the high standards that NS Sports is already setting for itself.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

So, my two cents, I missed the survey so didn't end up participating:

I pretty much only write for the Olympics now. I do sign up to other things in the hope that I might write something, but I often don't. That's fine, I'm obviously not saying that a person who doesn't write should qualify for the main event, but I feel that, at least in the early stages of qualifying it might be beneficial to have things more spaced out.

If I've missed the very start of an event and I'm losing because obvs I didn't write anything, I typically end up not writing anything for the rest of qualification and giving up on it. If we spread out scorenation days during the early days the likelihood of people missing things and then deciding not to try and salvage the situation would decrease. Idk if it's just me who has this issue though, it quite possibly is.

[The Sherpa Empire]

If I've missed the very start of an event and I'm losing because obvs I didn't write anything, I typically end up not writing anything for the rest of qualification and giving up on it.

I occasionally do that, but changing the schedule would have minimal impact on how often I do it.

[Sylestone]

I know I’m a little late on this, but just following on from Jeck’s point, I have also found similar things. While I, myself, haven’t experienced those sort of problems and everyone in the NSSport community has actually been very welcoming to me, I have actually seen this sort of thing happen. I’m not going to mention any names, but a newbie created a thread for their own league, and when signups halted, one of the more experienced nations kept on rubbing in the fact that no one was interested. This is the kind of thing that needs to be realised and stopped as that person would not have done those sort of things if the victim was much more experienced.

Now with the RP mentors thing, I don’t think that RP mentors are needed because then RPs are basically all the same. I have gotten both Cassadaigua and Kelssek to read my RPs and comment on them, as I am a newbie, but that is really as far as you should go. That allows you to write better RPs as well as having them different to others.

That’s my personal opinion on these topics.

[Mattijana]

Firstly Kellsek, thanks for making this survey. Whilst far from scientific, it's nice to get some organised feedback from the community and I hope this is something we can continue doing.

Secondly, I'd like to know your rationale for posting the initial survey in the world cup discussion thread rather than in a separate thread such as this one. A commonly cited issue with the community is that it is too football-centric and I worry that posting the survey in the main football thread shows bias towards those with an interest in football, not giving this issue the representation it deserves.

I missed the initial survey because I'm not particularly interested in the world cup, so didn't check the discussion thread. Had it been in it's own thread, I would have taken part. I know you've published the original results (the pie-charts were good), but would you consider re-opening the survey for other nations in my position to gain a more representative sample size? I'd also like to make use of the anonymous rant section for pre-written RPs (don't get me started on them)