NationStates Jolt Archive

please keep in mind, this thread is not to bash the mods or any ingame organisations or any people.

this is just some thoughts, some ramblings here.

started this mostly with a few posts of a puppet of mine:

what's happened? this game just isn't what it used to be..

rules are enforced much stricter, it seems like enforcing the rules has become more important than keeping the game fun..

and hate..some people feel actual hate over a game..

want an example: the "not being allowed to telegram ads to nations in playercreated regions"

i telegram these people back, asking if they know they're not allowed to telegram ads to nations in playercreated regions. they say they didn't, and apologised for doing so...
but when i read their telegram...they're deleted

and i can think of other examples too..
maybe an idea is to create links to the forum..

when someone creates a region, on the region-creation page make a link with rules which are relevant for founders (recruiting, founder rights and abilities)

when someone becomes a delegate, have them sent a game generated telegram with a link to the rules, abilities and rights of delegates.

etc etc etc...

any thoughts? i know the mods (or at least most) are good people who try and keep the game fun for everyone. but somewhere, the balance has shifted. from keeping the game fun for everyone, it has become more important to enforce the rules.

I've actually never created a region before. However, I just looked through the FAQ, and nothing that talked about advertisements for player-created regions. Furthermore, "crashing" and "griefing" are mentioned but the lines for acceptable and not acceptable are not defined on the FAQ. I know there's a thread somewhere on the forums that talks about this a litte more, but to force people to look for rules that they don't know exist is a little unfair, no?

yeah, so maybe it's handy to have relevant links in relevant places, so maybe people won't get deleted to fast..

In my opinion maintaining order around here has a higher priority than roleplays. The general forum has outgrown itself several times and new players join the game daily. Not to mention the serious lack of moderation staff. When you have rules, and nobody follows them the authority weakens. On the old forum that wasn't really an issue. There was flaming, but because after the move a part of the Jolt community started playing here, a whole new breed has moved over. 9 Out of 10 times a deletion is justified. There are questionable cases, I agree, but overall there's not a zealous war going on to take out the rotten apples and banning as fast as possible. Compared to other forums I see topics here that have crossed the line a dozen times. And besides, you can rehabilitate yourself after a ban. It's not the end of the world like other places on the web.

Follow the rules, don't do anything stupid and think before you post. That's all you need.

have you actually read my post?

if someone knowingly breaks a rule, okay, own mistake. but new players join daily, and there are so many rules still to follow, it is impossible for a new player to follow all, actually, even an old player like myself loses track of the rules at times, and even mods don't always know all the rules.

and there just is this shift from having rules and mods to facilitate the game and make everything run smoothly, from having rules to dictate and mods just to enforce the rules. i know this isn't explained very well, my english is getting too crappy for this now...

(...)Yes I have. And I agree, new players ought to have one extra chance. There are a lot of unwritten rules in the game and the forums as well. If you don't read the stickies, that's your own responsibility. The mods enforce, they aren't nannies. You can keep warning everybody forever, but sometimes you need to act. And with the endless waves of n00bs, trolls and other people who post just to provoke a reaction: ban 'em all. They add nothing to the game. Normal players who discuss in an ordinary fashion or RP without godmodding and such, why worry about moderation? If you don't mess things up, you won't be messed up.

And that's the bottom line.

mmm...never did like that line, guffy.

i know you can't warn people forever, but people do need to get a chance to learn. really, when i started playing, i didn't think of reading some forum, so i definatly didn't hear about stickies. and not every little rule is in the stickies.

i know a lot of the stuff i did in those days would get me deleted in no time these days.

i lived in the pacific, and our message board would move so fast, sometimes the oldest message was only one minute old. when people would advertise on it, we'd go to their region and advertise the pacific there. some acted grumpy, but most could appreciate the joke.

in my very first invasion, what we did would now be classified as griefing, namely banning natives and passwording a region without giving the password out to the natives. lucky us, those rules didn't exist back then. if they did, i wouldn't know. i only became aware of the invasion rules and the forum in september '03.

that's also when i noticed we had mods, actually....

sure, i had visited the forum when i first started...but it was so slow and crashed so often..

and still, in those days, mods were there to keep the game fun. to make sure people would get along. to keep things nice.

now, all you hear is: rules are rules. and that's a shame. i know there are rules. and i know you need them to keep something big like this running. but it seems rules are becoming more important than the people playing the game..

i dunno, maybe someone who understands what i mean can actually explain it better than me...

Do I think that newer players ought to be given some leeway? Sure.

I just want to add that before I even created an account on this site I read the FAQ, TOS, and most of the Stickies. The thing is, I'm an adult. I understand my obligations (and many of other things) a lot better than, say...a ten-year-old kid. The younger players on this site may not have the understanding to know that they should inform themselves fully before essentially indicating their agreement to an online contract (TOS). Hell, many people my age don't understand any better than the ten-year-old kids. :D

That said, there's really know way to tell if it's a ten-year-old kid or a fifty-year-old woman sitting behind that computer, so enforcing the rule consistently probably seems like the best option.

There are other issues like language as well. Some people may not be able to read the TOS or Stickies well enough to comprehend them (like Crazy Girl obviously can). :)

That said, I would have to question why they would use an English-language site, and if they did use the English-language site why would they be so surprised when they can't be understood or understand properly and get deleted.

If there has been any increase in the "read the rules, dammit" mentality, it's probably because the older players and especially the Mods can only take so much grief before they stop caring about the BS they hear every day. The stupidity wears you down psychologically, even if you understand intellectually that most of these newbies are sincere and just don't understand.

By most standards, I'm not a new player (don't look at my join date, I've been around since early '04), but I didn't really read the rules until one of my nations got deleted for inactivity. And I didn't need to know them until I joined the forums a few weeks ago. However, I think we can all use some common sense here. On the "Create a Nation" page, there's a link that says "the site's rules". People should read that. Then they'll know what's allowed and what's not allowed. If they get deleted, it is their own fault. This may sound cruel, and I'm not really a cruel person, but I don't have patience for those who use stupidity as an excuse.

Yep...I think the FAQ needs to be added to because some people never venture into the forums. Alot of the sticky information should be put somewhere where people feel more obligated to look, IMO.

mmm...never did like that line, guffy.

i know you can't warn people forever, but people do need to get a chance to learn. really, when i started playing, i didn't think of reading some forum, so i definatly didn't hear about stickies. and not every little rule is in the stickies.

i know a lot of the stuff i did in those days would get me deleted in no time these days.

i lived in the pacific, and our message board would move so fast, sometimes the oldest message was only one minute old. when people would advertise on it, we'd go to their region and advertise the pacific there. some acted grumpy, but most could appreciate the joke.

in my very first invasion, what we did would now be classified as griefing, namely banning natives and passwording a region without giving the password out to the natives. lucky us, those rules didn't exist back then. if they did, i wouldn't know. i only became aware of the invasion rules and the forum in september '03.

that's also when i noticed we had mods, actually....

sure, i had visited the forum when i first started...but it was so slow and crashed so often..

and still, in those days, mods were there to keep the game fun. to make sure people would get along. to keep things nice.

now, all you hear is: rules are rules. and that's a shame. i know there are rules. and i know you need them to keep something big like this running. but it seems rules are becoming more important than the people playing the game..

i dunno, maybe someone who understands what i mean can actually explain it better than me...

Crazy Girl, let me help. It sounds to me like you're expressing support for

A) a concrete conception of "the rules" especially for invasions that every one can know and access

b) Less moderation (the aim of having rules would be to reduce moderation) in order to reduce the inconsistency and arbitrariness in the application of the rules

Just for the record, after and long a meaningful conversation with Salusa, it is now my understanding that the game developers have been trying to incorporate the "unofficial" suggestions into the game since last year. The concepts of the game that the mods have been able to devise from these suggestions have been tough to implement. They find technical problems in implementing the ideas, and there is political disagreement between the mods which conception is best. We are a year out, and this is why there is still no official conception of the rules. Having said that, it is my understanding that senior game moderators like Salusa believe the status quo is unacceptable, and that Salusa believes that "sometime soon" there will be an overhaul and reforms of this situation.

Now, having said all of this, how come us players are not told this directly in the numerous conversations about the rules that have come up for the past year?

mmm...maybe it helps when i say i get people asking me things on rules and stuff, through aim, msn, irc...) because they don't dare to ask the mods...