I’ve gotten too used to 7.

one day is a really big difference.

http://www.logicalparadoxes.info/heap/

Where do we draw the line? If we go to six, we might as well go to five.

Per Ienpw_III

The issue is how much new stuff the player is going to have to read over and accommodate themselves to.  Regardless of whether there is a ‘right’ amount of time to set this at, from what I’ve seen most people are staying as idle at six days as they are at seven.

Well if we give them seven days, why not give them eight?

My contention is that at six days inactive, most players have given up on the game.  If you find this true with yourself and with typical activity of other players then it makes sense to lower the limit.

Iterative change and calibration is no bad thing.

Further blathering:

I would actually bet money that 67% or more of players who go 144 hours without commenting will be idled 24 hours later.

If we found this were true over some reasonable sample of players, would this change anyone’s votes? 

Or do we even need to find that sample?  Just think about any time you went idle by timing out rather than doing everyone the favor idling yourself.  Were you at all interested in the goings-on of the nomic 24 hours before the admin idled you?  I SUBMIT THAT YOU WERE NOT.

I know for myself, if I go more than four days without activity, it’s game over man, game over!

CoV per TrumanCapote =P

Maybe we *should* go to five, but let’s see how six works. The only reason I can see not to shorten it is that it keeps players from only showing up on, say, Thursdays, but you’d barely get a say in the game if you played it that way. It’s not like we’re going to be unable to stop shortening the time.

“Well, if they haven’t done anything in 29 minutes, they probably won’t do anything in the next 60 seconds either, so we might as well shorten it again…”

Actually, it might be interesting to have a nomic on that time scale, but you’d need a very large player base from all different time zones. Maybe we could steal a World of Warcraft server without anyone noticing…

If only for tradition. The decision is totally arbitrary, really; one amount of time doesn’t seem significantly different than others. I believe I have gone the full 6 days before making a comment to stay unidle, when I was following the game but not interested in the grind.

As long as it does not get shorter than three days. I often have trouble getting on during the weekends.

I actually think 4 is the optimal number. Just for the record, the one time I actually timed out and idled, I had no internet access.

I agree that most people are idle if they don’t comment for about 4-5 days. However, the week gives a nice buffer, and easier to track.

a week is a round number :)

I’d be more in favour of five than six.

CoV

Wak:  Does a week takes more than .05 seconds additional mental exertion to track than some other period of time?  I’ll admint, the reason I’m making this proposal is I don’t think we need any buffer.

Excalabur: Round numbers, schmound schumbers.

Truman: it’s also not clear that not-paying-attention is a losing strategy in all dynasties

What’s with the rush? I’d be in favour of increasing the length of time to vote on proposals instead.

Blognomic is already damn fast.  A week is fine.  There’s generally nothing wrong with having “inactive” non-idle players.  Funny you should mention “This will lower quorum a tad quicker and speed up a proposal here and there”.  I see that as a negative.

I’d actually prefer 8 days, given that 7 days is a typical length of a United States-style summer vacation.