Cards Suggestion: Dismiss All Issues Button

[One Small Island]

It is my understanding that at some point in the past NationStates had a 'dismiss all issues' button on the issues home page of a nation. I think it should be brought back, and made so that hitting the button gives you a chance at spawning between zero and number-of-issues-your-nation-currently-has packs of cards.

Answering issues could still be tied with card generation, so that people who play cards as a secondary thing to issue answering can still take part, but clicking that button would provide them a more efficient way of farming cards, and if the use of that button was either not tracked by issue editors or tracked separately from the individual 'dismiss issue' button it wouldn't skew the information issues editors use to track which issues might have problems that need to be sorted out.

I'm sorry if this has been suggested before, I did several searches in this subforum to see if someone had suggested something similar and didn't find anything.

[Mushroom Gorge]

I feel like this would defeat the purpose of answering issues to get packs. This might only work if you have like a 0.1% chance of getting cards each time you hit the button.

[One Small Island]

With due respect, I disagree.

It has been my understanding for a while that one of the issues that faces cards is that tying it to issue answering turned out, in the long run, to be a bad idea. That there is a slate of information that issue editors use to determine whether an issue is balanced, and that card farming has decisively skewed that information.

Whenever the suggestion of tying card pack generation to another aspect of the game comes up there is always at least one, but usually two or three, people who pipe in saying that if card generation is removed from issue answering it will prevent them from taking part in the cards game for a variety of reasons usually relating to a lack of free time.

I see this suggestion as kind of a benefiting everyone sort of thing. Issue Editors no longer have the information skewed. Secondary-priority card players can still play exactly as they have in the past. Card farmers can farm cards more effectively.

The only people who shouldn't be happy with that outcome are the people who hate card farmers, but I honestly don't think there's ever going to be a way to make them happy... at least until/unless "accounts" are implemented and card generation is done via account rather than being done via nation.

Of course, I'm sure there are things I'm not considering right now that would be concerns, and there are potential issues down the line but right now this idea seems like a good one to me.

[Sanctaria]

Dismissal rates are still counted in our statistics. This would continue to skew that information.

It's long been the position of most of the editors that we would prefer it if cards were split from issues altogether and another way of generating them was found.

[Panagouge]

Dismissal rates are still counted in our statistics. This would continue to skew that information.

It's long been the position of most of the editors that we would prefer it if cards were split from issues altogether and another way of generating them was found.

Maybe we make it such that a "Clear All" button does not count as a dismissal. Failing that, we tie it to a totally meaningless "stat" that no one needs to see and exists only a backlog.

That way, cards are tied to issues without really being tied to issues. Nothing new needs to be added or changed.

[One Small Island]

Maybe we make it such that a "Clear All" button does not count as a dismissal. Failing that, we tie it to a totally meaningless "stat" that no one needs to see and exists only a backlog.

That way, cards are tied to issues without really being tied to issues. Nothing new needs to be added or changed.

This is actually a part of my original post. I'm not a coder though, so I don't know whether it would be feasible or possible to do it that way.

It seems like it should be though.

[Riemstagrad]

I really like this idea. Would also lower the need for scripts, because farming is reduced to clicking "dismiss all isues". Possibly also reduces the need for card-puppets because players can farm on nations with good stats without disturbing those stats.

[Exxosia]

at least until/unless "accounts" are implemented and card generation is done via account rather than being done via nation.

That is a good option. It might also help control raiders/malicious players/restraining order recipients as entire accounts and all of their alts/mules could be locked out — open regions, but the region higher-ups can essentially blanket block entire accounts/ISPs of ne'er-do-wells. Spammers and miscreants would have an additional hurdle to overcome. You could clear up about 70% of the problems on the site/game with a single account system, I like the potential.

Though I would like full dismissal for the ease of when I need to send a message to the issue writers that there are not enough issues or all of the options are awful. So perhaps we could set it up so if a person dismisses all issues (whether by single button or manually on each) more than three days in a row, it starts a timer where they do not get any cards for a month. That way people who are genuinely playing and are exasperated at the garbage pile of issues they got on a given day can throw them out, but card farmers who are just skewing the issue data are discouraged? But I guess that would just lead them to choosing the first option in the issues which would skew things essentially as much.

Maybe a nation has to be older than a year and active to be granted cards?

I want nationstates to get better. If cardfarmers are making things worse, I want that resolved more than anything.

[One Small Island]

Though I would like full dismissal for the ease of when I need to send a message to the issue writers that there are not enough issues or all of the options are awful.

There is already an option to dismiss issues at the bottom of the individual issue page that can be used for the second purpose. If you feel there are not enough issues you can help write them in the Got Issues forum.

The rest of your post does not really address my suggestion, so I don't really have anything to say about it.

[Haganham]

I think this is treating a symptom while ignoring the real issue. Cards shouldn't be tied to issues.
Personally I think any interaction with the site should have a chance to generate a card.

[Refuge Isle]

Dismissal rates are still counted in our statistics. This would continue to skew that information.

It's long been the position of most of the editors that we would prefer it if cards were split from issues altogether and another way of generating them was found.

Fully agreed. It would be better for both issue editors and site load to move away from issues entirely. We could skip the 3x5 page loads per nation and, depending on how alternate solutions work, could end up being a better experience for both farmers and casual players alike. There are several proposals to this end, most notably this one.

It would be a much more worthwhile pursue to work on a new system of card generation instead of trying to bandaid an existing one which is broken in myriad ways. Doing anything else simply shifts problems to new areas.

[Chingis]

I'm going to pitch in and agree that there doesn't seem to be any strong reason for providing a dismiss all tied to cards that isn't largely folded in a clear need to decouple cards from issues (though I myself enjoy getting card packs while passively answering my issues).

As I have stated in Discord before, the obvious solution is to make card farmers solve reasoning datasets on NS for every pack. An excellent place to start shifting over to NS would be Tsividis' VGDL collection.

[9003]

I'm going to pitch in and agree that there doesn't seem to be any strong reason for providing a dismiss all tied to cards that isn't largely folded in a clear need to decouple cards from issues (though I myself enjoy getting card packs while passively answering my issues).

As I have stated in Discord before, the obvious solution is to make card farmers solve reasoning datasets on NS for every pack. An excellent place to start shifting over to NS would be Tsividis' VGDL collection.

There is no reason that cards can't stay with issues for the passive play IF there is an easier or more direct way to get them for those who want to. Even like one of the suggestions I saw was have it tied to every NS button you can get a pack of cards from using. Prompts more natural activity (tho I see a degree of spam being possible)

[Bears Armed]

Maybe they should be tied to writing issues, instead?

[Riemstagrad]

Maybe they should be tied to writing issues, instead?

That would for sure increase the amount of low-owner cards!

[One Small Island]

Given that Sedge said this about two weeks ago:

Our data is useless already, and it's therefore not a relevant point. For as long as card farming is tied to issue answering, the data is worthless.

I'm going to assume that staff is still in search of a solution to the issues of decoupling cards from issues.

I don't think cards should be completely decoupled from issues, as there have repeatedly been people who have brought up that they only play cards because it has become a part of their issue answering routine. I think a better solution than complete decoupling would be to provide a more efficient alternate way to play for those people who are just looking to play the cards game, while still allowing those more casual cards players to take part.

So, to restate, I think the dismiss all issues button should make a return. I think pressing the dismiss all issues button should generate between 0 and X number of packs, where X is the number of issues that are dismissed by pressing the button. The use of this button should either be tracked separately from the use of the individual dismiss issue button, or should not be tracked at all. The argument for not tracking it at all is that the use of the button provides no information about the issues dismissed, someone reading the issues and making a decision about the content of them will use the individual dismiss issue button, while the dismiss all issues button will be used by card farmers or by people who just want the little flag to disappear off their page.

I am not a coder, and so I do not know if this will be easier to code than the suggestion to make cards spawn with every site interaction or not but I feel like it's gotta be a stronger contender for generating packs than some that have floated around.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[Bears Armed]

Dismissal rates are still counted in our statistics. This would continue to skew that information.

It's long been the position of most of the editors that we would prefer it if cards were split from issues altogether and another way of generating them was found.

Maybe we make it such that a "Clear All" button does not count as a dismissal. Failing that, we tie it to a totally meaningless "stat" that no one needs to see and exists only a backlog.

That way, cards are tied to issues without really being tied to issues. Nothing new needs to be added or changed.

<snip>

So, to restate, I think the dismiss all issues button should make a return. I think pressing the dismiss all issues button should generate between 0 and X number of packs, where X is the number of issues that are dismissed by pressing the button. The use of this button should either be tracked separately from the use of the individual dismiss issue button, or should not be tracked at all. The argument for not tracking it at all is that the use of the button provides no information about the issues dismissed, someone reading the issues and making a decision about the content of them will use the individual dismiss issue button, while the dismiss all issues button will be used by card farmers or by people who just want the little flag to disappear off their page.

But if 'Dismiss All' gives you a chance at cards that the simple 'Dismiss' doesn't then why would anybody -- unless they actually don't want cards -- ever use the simple 'Dismiss' option rather than the untracked 'Dismiss All' button... especially if, as was the case IIRC when it existed previously, the 'Dismiss All' button could be used when you only had as few as two issues queued? You could just answer the issues whose results you wanted and then 'Dismiss All' the remaining ones together, instead of using the individual 'Dimiss' option on each of those separately. So the data would still get skewed...