Friday, April 11, 2014

Proposal: Part of the Precipitate

Times out and fails 0-3. -RaichuKFM

Adminned at 13 Apr 2014 08:52:35 UTC

In the rule “Idle Atoms”, replace “Admins may render themselves Idle at any time, but should make a post announcing it when they do so.” with:-

Admins may render themselves Idle at any time, but should make a comment announcing it when they do so.

A quorum of players once wanted admins to post an entire blog entry whenever they idled themselves. I think ringing a big bell for “player got bored or became too busy to play” is probably psychologically unhelpful, but here you go, consider this an announcement. I shall idle myself after posting this.

Comments

Josh: Observer he/they

11-04-2014 12:07:07 UTC

Didn’t this particular approach flounder last time on the ploy of one player (who I shall refrain from naming accusatorily) (it was Kevan) to hide all his idling and unidling comments of sorry posts from five years ago?

RaichuKFM: she/her

11-04-2014 13:00:50 UTC

against Yeah, pretty much. I don’t see how an admin’s idling post is anymore psychologically unhelpful than the posts you see when anyone idles out. Kevan, if you wanted to change it to a post or comment, I would have voted for, but this is just more bouncing around between imperfect solutions.

Kevan: he/him

11-04-2014 13:49:08 UTC

[Josh] I suspect I just pointed out that a suggested “must post a comment” compromise could be undermined by admins posting these comments in obscure places, I don’t remember it ever enacting. But the current rule is just a “should”, just an “it would be nice if” - an admin wishing to remain silent can simply choose not to post!

[RaichuKFM] In my experience, somebody standing up loudly from a gaming table, mid-game - however politely they apologise - can be bad for morale. (I remember some unhelpful “well, this is a boring dynasty, wake me up for the next one, quorum drops to 6” posts from the old days.) I see no reason for the ruleset to explicitly encourage these departures to be as loud as possible. Sure, timeout idles aren’t great for morale either, but they need to be loud so that the idled player realises that it’s happened and doesn’t carry on voting.

It’s the same psychology of casino machines sounding bells and whistles when somebody hits the jackpot, but remaining quiet when they lose their last dollar. Drawing attention to failure and departure reduces the fun.

RaichuKFM: she/her

11-04-2014 21:30:40 UTC

The point of making it loud is so that its informative; its a should because otherwise it could break quorum’s accuracy if someone messed up. This has already been fought over enough, honestly. And again, making it a post or comment would probably be best, rather than picking one or the other. So I guess I’ll propose that now.

pizzashark:

11-04-2014 22:32:22 UTC

against

Larrytheturtle:

13-04-2014 02:05:34 UTC

against