The West PacificBoard

I'm not sure whether this is recruitment or just plain spam, but it's been suppressed.

Giovanniland wrote:

I'm not sure whether this is recruitment or just plain spam, but it's been suppressed.

And the miscreant booted. Nice.

I was walking by the cafeteria and saw a new box with some cheese dip inside. The box was labelled "In queso emergency!"

Cheese is Zoran's arch neme-swiss!

Yy4u wrote:

Good old fashioned platter drive

That's the one.

My data HD crashed, while my OS drive was unaffected. Not a terrible thing, important things were backed up. I put in a new drive with a fresh OS install, and now I have the original OS drive as a plug and play backup. So files are transferring to the new drive, and fresh backups to my USB backup.

Giovanniland wrote:

Actually, it is weird for me to disagree with another Guardian...

*sips coffee.....adds TWP Spiced Crimson Rum....sips again*

The goal of the job is to maintain, protect, and engage the RMB community and conversation without stifling participation. And the job includes encouraging and guiding new players.

I think you've all gone overboard with suppression.

Too often I wonder why someone's post has been suppressed. I click to show the post, and I see that they are new, don't know what's what, and yet they've been suppressed. I feel that's wrong. Suppressing such posts just puts holes in the RMB conversation and breaks the flow. And it certainly doesn't encourage a new player to participate. Give them a chance to learn, and then if they repeat it, then suppress it. If they continue, then launch them.

Trolls will be trolls and must be dealt with quickly.
Spam must be suppressed without mercy.
Rulebreakers must be launched.

But suppressing someone because they posted a stat from their nation? Suppressing someone because they posted a statement by their 'leader' because they don't yet understand where RP is appropriate in NS? I don't agree with those suppressions, unless it's something they are doing consistently/repeatedly without regard to encouragement to do otherwise.

Suppression simply becomes Oppression.

I've seen several lately where someone was suppressed for simply posting "hi". What's the deal with that? If I'm a new player, and I'm shy and don't know what to do, maybe I just post 'hi' to see if it's okay. Then I get suppressed and told to be more substantive. I don't know what you mean by that, I was just saying 'hi'. So I never post again, and logoff NS never to return. What an annoying game!

Good job Guardians! You just lost another potential allstar player. *frowns*

Once upon a time when All Good People was Delegate, I started out vigorously keeping the RMB clean of all non-Karaoke posts on Fridays. And in the past, that was an appropriate policy, given the state of the game and the problems of AdSpam at the time. However, as my Delegacy continued it became apparent that our strict RMB policies needed adjustment, and I loosened those restrictions to allow greater participation on the RMB for those posts that had nothing to do with Karaoke Friday. One portion of our RMB community should not be suppressed as opposed to others just because they aren't interested in the daily event, or are trying to figure out how to participate in the game.

Just my 2 cents. *tips hat*

I think Westwind has a point- however perhaps we also need to look into how to guide new players at the top of the page to help limit this issue.
Even just a link to a post which outlines what to do if youre new to the region, and how to get involved correctly. Then make that link as noticeable as possible. Make it say "CLICK ME" and flashing in neon green. At the moment, yes you have the etiquette and code of conduct links, but they are not noticeable or attractive to a new player, they dont know what the RMB is, why should they look at that?

This message board is the first noticeable and easy to understand interaction a new player has with us as TWP, they just type and click lodge message- it is our job to guide them to where and what they need to know and do, even if it is already stated above. Even if that is a reply to a message saying
"Hello, I notice you are new to nationstates and the west pacific! Please click here to read about our region, rules, and guidance on what to do. As you are new, we will let this message pass, however if you want to speak to other regions in TWP casually, please join our discord!"

Yy4u wrote:

Customers can't read

>_>

We are doing this for the better, and even though lots of people indeed are lazy to read things in an online game we ought to give them some more chances.

Dilber wrote:

That said, the puppet purges will continue.

It's like having a daily fireworks show. Puppets crashing in flames in TRR. (There's a lot of friction in that launch velocity.)

Blue bubble wrote:

...perhaps we also need to look into how to guide new players at the top of the page to help limit this issue.

I agree. There is no obvious "New Players Guide Here!" to be seen. And when I want to post a link to our guide, I have to click through the Master Dispatch to find it (because I happen to know that's where to find it....even then, I have to look around to find the right place to click). It would help me to share it, if it was more accessible (I can get to my own new player dispatch more quickly). And it's more likely to be found by new players if it was in the pinned dispatches. We provide good information for new players, it should be easy to find.

Hello!

I'm definitely with Westwind and Blue Bubble on this whole thing, to the extent my attractiveness and status as an RMB goblin lend my opinion any weight here. My favourite thing about our RMB is the zero tolerance for fascist and bigoted nonsense that lets us maintain a relaxed and safe environment - an impressive achievement in a game that, by its nature, passively welcomes those of any political persuasion - but as for new players? Nothing in our header really gives new players a better starting point than saying "Hi" in the comment box at the bottom. "RMB etiquette"? What's an RMB? I just wanna know how to play this 20 year old Web 1.5 game full of plain text with few visible points of interaction. We have a guide for new players, and given how often it gets posted in the RMB anyway I think it'd make a lot of sense to give it (and other essential links like RMB etiquette and code of conduct) a prominent location in the header.

Easy to bemoan people's laziness, but as it is the most visually prominent thing at the top of the page is an ASCII block of cheese. Hardly screams "two of the three links containing the most relevant info for someone with no reference as to what is and isn't important in this game are in this box, and one of them is behind another, somewhat anonymously-named link* within a distinct section at the other end of said box". And if it did scream that... well, you get the idea.

*So that I don't do the exact same thing I'm taking issue with, I'm referring specifically to the new player's guide being behind the "The West Pacific Master Dispatch" link, which is vaguely titled and relies on a piece of in-game jargon: "dispatch" does not, ordinarily, refer to a webpage containing user-created content. You certainly can infer what it means, but if you're a 14 year old or whatever new to the game (I think I was 9 when I started? I'm sure that wasn't when my most enlightened contributions were produced, but it is when people tend to have the time on their hands to get into obscure online games) it's nowhere near as obvious as if you've roamed Max Barry's nightmares for the past 15 years.

Bhang Bhang Duc wrote:

Actually the only nations I’ve ever suppressed for just saying “Hi” were already persona non grata. It appears bans applied to nations in embassy regions aren’t permanent like an eject and ban from within the region.

As far as I know this happens because the ban list has a maximum of nations that can be there at the same time, so banning new ones will just remove older entries. This is unnoticeable for one-off spammers or trolls since they tend to leave quickly or have the modly banhammer applied to them, but embassy nations that stay in NS are more persistent.

Of course, our actions with those embassy people who have no respect to our rules will still be the same - ban and keep banning if they come back.

A fan of cricket? Or just want to have some fun in role play? Signups for The West Pacific T20 World Cup has now started! Post your intent in signing up as a participant nation in https://www.westpacific.org/forums/index.php?/topic/4047-1st-twp-t20-world-cup-signups-ooc/&do=findComment&comment=82805

The tournament starts on May 10, 2021!

Stay tuned for more details!

Fuentana wrote:

Write haiku about Star Wars, you might!

Or continue to honor Zoran by writing about cheese!

“Cheese is a quick path
To the dark side of the force,
For fear leads you there,

I fear the cheese troll,
Which may soon lead to anger,
Which will lead to hate,

Then hate will lead me
To suffering, which leads to,
The dark side,” I said