Planned Changes: Newbie Game Deadlines

[Plotinus]

I like Nexus' idea of a 7 day timer that doesn't start until all slots have posted. Also agree with 10 days for day 1.

I haven't played in a while and it will probably be a while before I play again, but I'm not sure I could do 7 day dayphases as a player. But it's worth trying anyway. As a mod I don't think this change would make things any harder.

I'd handle weekend V/LA in a few ways (basically the way I already handle it but shrunk down a little):

• if you're not V/LA then saturday and sunday already count as one day towards the prod timer, so with a 48 hour timer if you post at noon on friday you'll get prodded at noon on monday and replaced at noon on tuesday.
  
• With a 24 hour prod timer if you post at noon on friday you get prodded when i woke up on sunday and have until noon monday to respond to the prod before replacement.
  
• If you are V/LA then you get nudged instead, which counts as half a prod and you don't get replaced if you don't respond to a nudge.
  
• I currently do prods at 2 days and nudges at 3 days. I guess if I were doing prods at 1 day I'd do nudges at 36 hours.
  
• If you would be nudged a second (fourth, sixth) time, you're prodded for real instead. This is what "half a prod" means.
  
• If you haven't posted game advancing content in 7 days (on 14 day deadlines) or say 4 days (7 day deadlines) you get replaced, even if V/LA.
  
• The bar for game advancing content is only a little bit higher than "sorry i'll read this later." a naked vote or a half sentence waffle will do.
  
• If you haven't posted in the last 24 hours (14 day deadlines) / 12 hours (7 day deadlines) before a deadline, you need to reply to the nightstart PM so I know you're still here.

[Plotinus]

If you haven't posted game advancing content in 7 days (on 14 day deadlines) or say 4 days (7 day deadlines) you get replaced, even if V/LA.

I have an issue (in general) with this idea. I think that it's not the game moderator's job to say if you're posting game advancing content, because that's overstepping the bounds. If a player wants to just prod dodge then it's a valid tactic and it's up to the rest of the players to decide what to do with that.

I implemented it after a micro i modded where there were 3 town slots who had posted nothing but "I'll get to this later" every 47 hours for weeks on end so i couldn't replace them. It was really frustrating.

I hear what you're saying though and I think it would be really easy to overstep, so I try to be really really lenient with what counts. naked votes count. unvotes count. saying "x is kinda scummy" counts. answering a question or asking one counts, even if it's not a satisfying answer (that would be overstepping). most (probably all) ways of interacting with another player count.

You can still prod dodge in my rule set. The easiest way is probably a post like "i'll get to this later but I think i'm still happy with my vote." or "Got prodded; Plot is scum." and then later if they want they can say "oh that was just a prod dodge, I didn't really mean it." You can be a minimal content poster and skate by just fine.

Since I started paying attention, I've found that most of the time when someone posts "i'll get this later," that post doesn't count for activity but they still wind up posting something before they get into prod range, so it doesn't come up.

I've been using this ruleset for over a year and the only complaints I've gotten were that I was too lenient (counting an unvote as game advancing, for example). I think it's had a positive effect on the games I've modded, it encourages people to be more active.

[Plotinus]

What matters is the newbies not what the regulars here think.

yeah, this.

in the last game i modded i had a few replaceouts that were probably due to the longer deadlines or due to boredom (which might be because of the longer deadline)

it's worth a try anyway. if it doesn't work we can always go back.

[Plotinus]

I've never specified the criteria as to what counts as prod-dodging and what doesn't, and I actually do tolerate it to a certain extent. (My rule is that two prod dodges equals a prod, and if you get prodded due to a prod dodge, you can't prod dodge again until after you post content.) What I have found is that you really have to be trying to actually get prodded by my prod-dodging rule. Furthermore, I've never had a player complain about it in any game I've hosted. (At least, so far I haven't.)

I don't specify it in my ruleset either; I'm vague about on purpose because I want people to read it and just try to be as active as they can, not read it and try to game the system, but I do have a pretty objective system in my head that I use that doesn't take into account player's alignment or require them to advance the game very far or in any particular direction.

I don't remember if I said this last night but I've hosted players that I expected would have difficulty with the rule (either due to low signal to noise ratio or to just being low content players in general) and been pleasantly surprised with their play. For example, in a recent game I modded, at the time I counted, about 80% of Not Mafia's posts were game advancing. Of the rest, most of them were posted close enough in time to game advancing posts that it didn't matter. He didn't come close to being replaced at any point and his contributions to the game were valuable and directly contributed to the town win.

[Plotinus]

If we get into weighing whether a replaceout was legit or not and only replacements that aren't for good enough reasons are punished, then that leaks some information about the nature of the replacements. For example, in the last game I modded, two players were replaced because one posted their role PM and the other saw it before it was hidden. One of the players was banned -- but this wasn't announced until after the game, of course. The other player was allowed to start a new newbie game right away because he shouldn't be punished for his honesty. If we had a strict rule about replacing out that was enforced, then the fact that the other player is allowed to join a new game without punishment reveals something about the nature of the replacement.

If we expand the definition of legit to allow for stuff like sudden illness or whatever then players are forced to disclose something they may consider private or we have to figure out where we draw the line -- sudden serious illness is ok but not sudden headcold? sudden grounding from the internet by angry parents? final exams coming up, which couldn't have been anticipated because how was any student supposed to remember at the beginning of May that finals would come at the end of May?

In the last game I modded, a newbie replaced out because they were bored. It was kind of a lame reason because boredom is transient and is an easy problem to solve: just do stuff to make stuff happen, interact with other people more, start a conversation, suddenly you're not bored anymore yay. Also, with 2 week deadlines, if you're bored you can go do something else for a day and come back and find something has happened. But on the other hand, part of trying a new activity is figuring out if you like it or not, and sometimes you realise a few days into it that you don't. You tried a new thing but it's not your thing. You only have 24 hours each day, no more and no less. You only have so much free time. Should you spend your free time doing something you have realised isn't fun? Why? And, furthermore, suppose we have a system that punishes people for replacing out. The person who has realised mafia isn't fun and replaces out of their newbie game, closes the browser tab and never comes back, do they notice that they have been punished? Do they care? Does it have any deterrence? This is like telling a child who doesn't want to eat his broccoli, "if you don't eat your broccoli, you can't have any more broccoli tomorrow!" The child is going to say "uh, okay, great!"

We already have a system in place to punish people who only replace out of scum slots or whatever. We already have a system in place to punish people who excessively join and replace out of games. If you read the ban thread you'll see the listmods do that when it gets egregious. I don't think we need a system to punish ordinary levels of flaking, especially in the population of people we're trying to retain.

[Plotinus]

Spoiler: length

If we get into weighing whether a replaceout was legit or not and only replacements that aren't for good enough reasons are punished, then that leaks some information about the nature of the replacements. For example, in the last game I modded, two players were replaced because one posted their role PM and the other saw it before it was hidden. One of the players was banned -- but this wasn't announced until after the game, of course. The other player was allowed to start a new newbie game right away because he shouldn't be punished for his honesty. If we had a strict rule about replacing out that was enforced, then the fact that the other player is allowed to join a new game without punishment reveals something about the nature of the replacement.

If we expand the definition of legit to allow for stuff like sudden illness or whatever then players are forced to disclose something they may consider private or we have to figure out where we draw the line -- sudden serious illness is ok but not sudden headcold? sudden grounding from the internet by angry parents? final exams coming up, which couldn't have been anticipated because how was any student supposed to remember at the beginning of May that finals would come at the end of May?

In the last game I modded, a newbie replaced out because they were bored. It was kind of a lame reason because boredom is transient and is an easy problem to solve: just do stuff to make stuff happen, interact with other people more, start a conversation, suddenly you're not bored anymore yay. Also, with 2 week deadlines, if you're bored you can go do something else for a day and come back and find something has happened. But on the other hand, part of trying a new activity is figuring out if you like it or not, and sometimes you realise a few days into it that you don't. You tried a new thing but it's not your thing. You only have 24 hours each day, no more and no less. You only have so much free time. Should you spend your free time doing something you have realised isn't fun? Why? And, furthermore, suppose we have a system that punishes people for replacing out. The person who has realised mafia isn't fun and replaces out of their newbie game, closes the browser tab and never comes back, do they notice that they have been punished? Do they care? Does it have any deterrence? This is like telling a child who doesn't want to eat his broccoli, "if you don't eat your broccoli, you can't have any more broccoli tomorrow!" The child is going to say "uh, okay, great!"

We already have a system in place to punish people who only replace out of scum slots or whatever. We already have a system in place to punish people who excessively join and replace out of games. If you read the ban thread you'll see the listmods do that when it gets egregious. I don't think we need a system to punish ordinary levels of flaking, especially in the population of people we're trying to retain.

I don't think replace-outs or judgement about their legitimacy should ever be alignment indicative. Maybe a rule enforcing that would help to make that a non-issue? The "don't talk about replacements" rule is a thing on nearly every other site I've played on and I really like it.

I don't think that punishing replace-outs is for the newbies in the queue, it's for the SEs mostly. And I feel like you might be heading towards territory where the listmod is making personal judgements about the people or their character. In my mind, none of that is really part of it. I don't think the listmod or mod should have to consider personal reasons. That's really not something that someone in an anonymous game environment should have to evaluate and it's not something that the player should have to reveal or talk about. If someone replaces out for personal reasons, I think they should just be aware that they may have to sit things out until the game ends and they can join a new one again. (And if they're unwell then the restriction I suggested shouldn't affect them I don't think? What do you think?)

But if someone replaces out for reasons that are related to the game itself, the listmod or mods can evaluate that, and I don't think toxicity is related to alignment, so I don't know if that will really be a big issue? It's a little bit problematic, yeah, but everything is always going to be problematic in some way and I think the current situation is more problematic than that.

I hope you don't think this is about demonizing replacing out as a thing. For me it's just making sure that people know that they are expected not to replace out haphazardly or thoughtless or excessively and to make sure they don't over-commit themselves. When I first started on this site, I replaced out of a ton of games for bad reasons (sometimes for good reasons) and I think it would have been good for me as a player to have rules pushing me to not do that the way that I did.

Replacing out is an important thing to be able to do, sometimes you're not enjoying a game and it's driving you mad and you just can't deal with it anymore, sometimes life gets too much and you can't give what the game needs anymore, there are lots of reasons to replace out of a game, but at the moment I think there's a bit of a culture where replacing out is something you can do kind of flippantly and I don't think that's good. I think putting restrictions in place to counteract that is a good thing, even if it might be inconvenient for some people who aren't part of the problem. I don't really know, though. It's hard to think about this stuff and it's really hard to balance it all.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding anything that you were trying to say, or talking past you, or just being stupid or ignorant about something. Please let me know if you don't feel understood, or try to convince me of your opinion more if you just think I'm wrong.

My point is that every replaceout is legit from the perspective of the person replacing out, and that trying to enforce special rules punishing replace outs would be ineffective. We already have rules about excessive replacing out that are enforced across the site. We don't need to punish non-excessive replacing out.

I've modded about 8 newbie games in the past year and I can't remember a single SE/IC replaceout that I thought was egregious or should have been punished. It's possible that I'm failing to remember something but I think if it was egregious it would've stuck in my memory and I would've talked to the listmods about it at the time if it bothered me and I definitely would remember something like that. I

I think that if an SE or IC replaces out and the moderator thinks the replaceout was alignment indicative (against site rules) or that the player has a problematic number of replaceouts, the moderator should contact the listmods about it. Or if you're playing a game and you think another player's replaceout was egregious or that they have a pattern of replacing out too much, talk to the listmods. But as a player you might not have all the information about why they replaced out; a few games ago a player replaced out because one of the other players was harrassing him via PM but in the game thread when he asked to be replaced he said he was tired of being bullied. The other players in the thread thought the player was being a bit of a baby because the in-thread content hadn't really been that bad.

I don't think we need a blanket rule against replacing out. I think the rules we already have are enough.

[Plotinus]

Searching the ban thread for "excessive" shows the rules we already have about excessive replacing out of games and how it's dealt with.