Is it time to dissolve the newbie queue?

[Gamma Emerald]

How were they doing that?

[skirt skirt]

seo doesn't even really work anymore, at least in the way it used to that was easily manipulated

[Thestatusquo]

seo doesn't even really work anymore, at least in the way it used to that was easily manipulated

the first thing you said and the second thing you said are not even remotely similar. the first part is completely false, and the second part is irrelevant because I doubt anyones plan was to go build a bunch of shadowy links.

[skirt skirt]

um, no. seo used to be relebant, you could get super high on Google results including the top with a low budget and very minimal work. it was pathetically easy. Google changed their search algorithm a few years ago because of the system being abused. if you want to be technical, seo still works, sure, because you can still increase your sites likelihood and do a number of things to increase traffic. seo in the classic sense and in the easily abusable way? absolutely not. i guess you could say seo still works, but most things under the blanket of seo don't do shit anymore, it's am exercise in futility. you're seemingly taking seo literally (search engine optimization) as opposed to the practical usage. you also seemingly misinterpreted me. you uses to be able to manipulate Google super easily.

this is also wildly off topic, sorry for getting into this. if you want you can pm me and I'll show you what seo in 2007 could do vs seo now.

[Thestatusquo]

Hi I worked for 2 years as an SEO analyst. Please don't lecture me on how SEO works. The specific thing I'm taking umbrage with is your comment that "SEO does not really work anymore."

It's just completely false. The only thing that Panda has changed, really, is that you can no longer cheat the system. This does not mean SEO does not work, but rather that you have to create content and relevancy through creating actual value for your users. You can't do it by just creating hundreds of geo-targeted articles with very low amounts of actual readable content, with link farming, or with guest authorship on blogs.

This is irrelevant because the site creates a huge amount of relevant searchable content daily, to the point where actual content creation is probably not the sites problem. If I had to guess the main issue is probably that we don't try at all to rank for the keywords that are actually relevant. A brief look at "mafia" as a search term shows that many of the links that are taking up page one are wikipedia, and we're just not going to be able to outrank them. We could try to rank for things like "mafia game" "party game" "werewolf game" etc. I don't know what kind of strategy, if any, the site has managed to put into place.

The reason I responded like I did is because your comment is not just off topic, but also useless and irrelevant. No one was claiming they were going to try to rank the site using techniques that worked in 2007. When people say they're going to improve the SEO of a site in 2017, the most reasonable interpretation is that they are going to try to do so using googles algorithms that are actually in use right now, not ones from ten years ago. Which can be done. Very easily. All google algorithm changes do is limit the ways you can cheat the system.

[Thestatusquo]

Heres a case study of ranking #1 for the keyword of "search management." You'll notice the date is 2017, not 2007.

https://moz.com/blog/case-study-ranking ... me-keyword

[skirt skirt]

I'm used to dealing with idiots on other sites that think they can become the top result for "pizza" with 500$ and a months effort, so that's why I responded as I did to seo. i don't consider that the "reasonable interpretation" because that's not the interpretation I've commonly seen. It's good ms doesn't have unrealistic expectations. if you were an seo analyst you definitely know more than I do, I have a friend who's one and did it for a couple larger sites that I use, just going by what I've learned from him.

[RadiantCowbells]

Is it time to Annie the Annie?

[humaneatingmonkey]

Merge Open and Newbie together.

[Lycanfire]

Open has it's own problems and sewing it together with Newbie would just attach a dead red headed step child to the queue you want new players to sign up in.

Open Queue needs its own discussion on why it's slowing down, what worked in the past and what could be done to make the queue more enjoyable in the future. None of those things involve Newbie.

[Creature]

I don't really see a problem in keeping up a slow queue.

[Ectomancer]

Forgive me for putting words in his mouth, but I don't think the issue TSQ was having was that queues that don't fire often necessarily need to be removed but that it's important for the first game that a newbie plays to fire quickly so we turned them from mildly interested people who registered and typed /in into a user that accesses the site regularly in order to play a game. The longer the distance between point A and B the more likely we are to lose people.

I think then that anyone who feels a dedicated member of this community will remember now and again to add a newbie game to their annual allotment. Let's help to turn them over at an optimal rate for attracting new dedicated members.

[Jingle]

Respectfully, there are people who should stay out of the Newbie queue. You don't have to IC/SE/mod a newbie queue to be a valuable member of the site. You do have to be able to reasonably commit to playing start to finish to be a valuable member of the newbie queue, at least in the IC and mod roles.

As far as the OP, I can say from reading this thread that the Newbie queue fills a valid need, as testimonials from people like Keychain show. If even one dedicated player comes to join us BECAUSE of the Newbie queue, I think it's worth addressing problems instead of abandoning the system. Just because you personally don't like it, doesn't mean that the queue doesn't serve a valuable purpose for the community. If you don't like Newbie games, the answer isn't abolish the Newbie queue, it's don't /in for Newbie games.

In fact, as far as I can tell the the big issue with the newbie queue is the one shea originally brought up (length of time between signup and game start). How long is too long there? My thought is that instead of having a cutoff with number of players in queue, we could fairly easily implement a system where after x days, the newbie slots could be filled by more experienced players to ensure we have a healthy number of games firing. But how long is too long? It seems to me that a good consensus in this thread is that most newbies don't want to wait 5 days. Is that true? Would three be better? And we have to remember that creating an unrealistic expectation that if you sign up for a game it'll fire the next day might not help anything in the long run either, because then when newbies migrate to other queues after their first or second game they're dropped into a world where they do have to wait suddenly.

Additionally, PP brought up a lack of SE's and IC's, but at least speaking for myself I would be happy to help out there if I realize we were low on people to fill those roles. I think that's the reason we get an influx of people when the queue runs dry, because most people who are willing just don't think to check how deep the Newbie queue is when hunting new games to play. My only thought there would be a user group (or even just list you could /in to) where people qualified to help out in the Newbie queue could indicate their willingness to play. Then, if we run short on either role it's just a simple matter of sending out a form reply to a list of users, which doesn't seem like too much extra work.

[Mulch]

Agree, disolve it

[Thestatusquo]

In fact, as far as I can tell the the big issue with the newbie queue is the one shea originally brought up (length of time between signup and game start). How long is too long there? My thought is that instead of having a cutoff with number of players in queue, we could fairly easily implement a system where after x days, the newbie slots could be filled by more experienced players to ensure we have a healthy number of games firing.

I actually think this is a really good suggestion.

We get newbies in chat that are like "how long until a game starts?" and the answer "it's hard to say for sure but it could be up to a week" is always really unsatisfying to them.

[AnonymousGhost]

I disagree.

In my first newbie game, there were three of us. One user that was completely new to the concept of mafia, and then the two of us who knew how the game operated but we were simply new to the site. The two of us picked it up pretty quick because we had played it before, but I had a few moments where I bumped against a learning curve.

Learning this site's culture.

I can't speak for the other user, but here's my experience. Offsite, we played nothing but blitz games where there were either 44 hour long days or 20 hour long days with a 4 hour lockdown period (games were almost always nightless). Because of this shortened day length, I didn't know the acronym RVS because the day was so short it didn't allow for that section of time to exist, so the acronym never came up in conversation on that site. Plurality lynch mechanics were used over majority lynch mechanics and hammering someone didn't immediately end the day because by the time we hammered, it was usually an hour or two before the day's end would arrive.

In my first newbie game, I hammered two days before the Day One deadline would've arrived. I didn't know that it would immediately end the day since I skimmed the rules and assumed that this was stuff I knew already and didn't require a deep reading.

oops

Lesson learned.

Now, I know that mafia requires someone to have a thick skin because it can get heated. But I feel like a new player - new to the concept of mafia and how intense it can get - would've been shamed for having performed such an anti-town move, maybe even hard enough that that experience sours their opinion of mafia indefinitely...

if

they played anywhere but a Newbie game. In newbie games, the job is to encourage new players to continue playing mafia, so... experienced players usually give them the benefit of the doubt for their anti-town behavior instead of immediately thinking that it's scum behavior because they are a newb and are learning as they go along.

Offsite, we hosted games specifically for newbies. We had our own version of ICs - we just called 'em veterans, limited 2 per game (so, 11 newbies per game), and then killed them off on the third day so that the newbies could play on their own using the veterans' advice - and then offered advice on how to improve your play style at the end of the game.

Let's be honest... how-to's and guides can only get you so far. Mafia is something that you can only learn by doing. And you only learn if you're in an environment that fosters learning. In a game designed to introduce someone to the game mafia, that environment is an invaluable thing to have.

Do you shame a new student when they honk out a B sharp instead of a B flat on their clarinet? Unless you want to scare or discourage them away, then no. You have patience and give them the benefit of the doubt because they're in the process of learning how to play that instrument. If you manage to not scare them off, chances are... they're going to feel the accomplishment when they finally honk out a B flat instead of a B sharp every time and probably want to continue learning the rest of the notes.

Back to the original question...

I think the wait time between newbie sign-up and newbie startup and the two week per day length isn't all that much of a problem. If a player has an issue with the time length, then they might be more of a fit for Town of Salem rather than mafiascum. Coming from an environment that played nothing but blitz games, I had a brief adjustment period where I balked at the suggestion of two weeks. Then I played my first game. And now... I think it's fine as is. It reminds me of writing/practicing for a 2 minute speech. You always write more than two minutes because your speech is going to be longer than when you give your actual speech because you speak faster and faster as you your speech goes on, mumbling through phases and cutting off your words and oh my god when is over I wish it was over already... yadda yadda yadda

Having a two week per day length is acceptable because you have a population of the player base within the game that are on a learning curve. More often than not, you'll probably end up ending day one earlier than letting it run to its full two week length.

[AnonymousGhost]

"Offsite, we hosted games specifically for newbies. We had our own version of ICs - we just called 'em veterans, limited 2 per game (so, 11 newbies per game), and then killed them off on the third day so that the newbies could play on their own using the veterans' advice - and then offered advice on how to improve your play style at the end of the game."

Forgot to add.

There have been four beginner's mafias hosted on my home site. 3 had scum victories and only 1 had town victory. I can't speak for the other three, but I hosted the second beginner's mafia - scum won - and it followed the pattern of "let's lynch the lurkers" because scum weren't the lurkers, so they drove the scum huntings towards that method.