Feedback: Dynamic Rankings

[Reddy]

Moderation, please consider locking this thread at least temporarily. The constant exchange of personal attacks here is not helpful and subtracts from the game.I think most of us are extremely tired of this kind of behaviour.

[jamescfm]

Players obviously have the right to express their views on the rankings in an open and honest way, part of that means that in some cases there will be out-of-character issues raised. The recent matter of plagiarism is a good example of this, since it is an out-of-character issue that should absolutely affect the rankings. For that reason it would be impossible to try and limit this thread to discussion of in-character topics. With that said it does not mean that we should be engaging in bickering or a silly tit for tat.

Prior to my appointment to Moderation and to a certain extent in the period since, I have been pretty clear about the fact that I believe there are issues with the rankings as they currently operate. Once again I would refer to the feedback thread that I opened on this subject. In this discussion it was clear that many players have issues with the rankings (especially long-term players) and I share many of these concerns.

Regardless of whether it is deliberate or justified, the rankings have entrenched the position of a certain group of countries as the most powerful in the game world, particularly the countries of the Northern Council like Lourenne, Kazulia, Dorvik, Hutori and (to a lesser extent) Keymon and Valruzia. In most of these countries, there has been a single long-term player who has been responsible for the majority of the country's role-play for as long as several real-life years: Luis, Maxington, Auditorii, Vesica, Yolo and Maisonette. This is a general characterisation and each case obviously has nuances.

At the same time, many of these players have served in positions of authority within the game and have therefore been responsible for determining the rankings (in recent times, mainly Vesica and Auditorii as Moderators). From the outside then it is understandable that players would be suspicious that these countries are linked closely together through the Northern Council and that they are rewarded through the rankings system, especially when they make comments that explicitly refer to using the organisation as means to improve their position.

Now there are other factors that render these facts true, Moderators are always going to be more active role-players than an average player so it is perhaps not surprising that the countries they play in tend to perform better in the rankings. Likewise any country where a single player has invested a significant period of their time is going to have a more developed economy and military. I don't mean to suggest that the rankings have always, primarily or solely benefited these countries, all I am trying to do is highlight why it would appear that way to many players.

The task of reforming the rankings system is fundamentally this: developing procedures that are transparent and robust enough that those making the decisions about individual countries are able to refer to reasonably objective standards when making those decisions, and that they can utilise these standards to provide justification for their decisions when necessary. I don't have all of the answers on this but I think it is something that we should recognise and commit to working to improve.

I am going to unlock this thread on the basis that players limit their discussion to the subject of the rankings and that they do not engage in personal attacks, bickering or other generally childish behaviour.

[Zanz]

Is it within my rights as a player to outright ignore the rankings for purposes of my RP?

If so, great - I think this resolves a lot of my concerns. I'll just ignore rankings and thereby ignore the RP I find to be powergaming, godmodding, rank wank, etc.

If not, however, it's next to impossible for me to ignore this sort of RP because I ultimately have to recognize the outcomes that it leads to. This feels unproductive toward the aims of an RP game. I should be able to RP with whom and about what and using what methods and technologies I wish to use, but I cannot do so if certain technologies cannot be had except by those who RP in ways I find to be illegitimate, and if certain technologies are owned by certain nations who achieved them through RP I find to be illegitimate, etc.

Ultimately, rankings being mandatory means I have less freedom as an RPer to ignore RP I find illegitimate. On the other hand, were the rankings optional, I could ignore as I please and those folks could ignore me and we'd all be happy playing in whatever style we wish to play.

[Rogue]

I get where Zanz is coming from. But i totally disagree. Without the rankings the RP would quite possibly be even more chaotic and frustrating then it is now. While i get that some like to play chaoticly, and thats fine, i think it is not beneficial to the game at all. People that want to play chaoticly can still do so in discussion with others. Without the rankings. What stops someone from simply ignoring everyone else and do their own thing no matter how stupid and disrupting it may be for others? PT Classic isnt a singleplayer roleplay strategy game. It is a game where, despite our OOC views, we try to discuss and work together in order to create cool and interesting RP. If everyone just starts ignoring eachother and pretend certain nations dont exist it would result in a lot of frustration and outright non enjoyable situations. But thats my opinion on it at least.

[Luis1p]

I get where Zanz is coming from. But i totally disagree. Without the rankings the RP would quite possibly be even more chaotic and frustrating then it is now. While i get that some like to play chaoticly, and thats fine, i think it is not beneficial to the game at all. People that want to play chaoticly can still do so in discussion with others. Without the rankings. What stops someone from simply ignoring everyone else and do their own thing no matter how stupid and disrupting it may be for others? PT Classic isnt a singleplayer roleplay strategy game. It is a game where, despite our OOC views, we try to discuss and work together in order to create cool and interesting RP. If everyone just starts ignoring eachother and pretend certain nations dont exist it would result in a lot of frustration and outright non enjoyable situations. But thats my opinion on it at least.

^^^^^^^^^^

[Kubrick]

I get where Zanz is coming from. But i totally disagree. Without the rankings the RP would quite possibly be even more chaotic and frustrating then it is now. While i get that some like to play chaoticly, and thats fine, i think it is not beneficial to the game at all. People that want to play chaoticly can still do so in discussion with others. Without the rankings. What stops someone from simply ignoring everyone else and do their own thing no matter how stupid and disrupting it may be for others? PT Classic isnt a singleplayer roleplay strategy game. It is a game where, despite our OOC views, we try to discuss and work together in order to create cool and interesting RP. If everyone just starts ignoring eachother and pretend certain nations dont exist it would result in a lot of frustration and outright non enjoyable situations. But thats my opinion on it at least.

The nice part of Zanz's plan is that you can freely ignore and not RP with the people that discard the rankings and go fully overboard. In the same way that we can freely ignore culturally open nations that just want to play an English-spoken republic with Presidents and Prime Ministers and four parties with creative names like the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and the Green Party.

If culturally open nations are a thing then I see no reason to make "no ranking" states also not a thing.

[Zanz]

I get where Zanz is coming from. But i totally disagree. Without the rankings the RP would quite possibly be even more chaotic and frustrating then it is now. While i get that some like to play chaoticly, and thats fine, i think it is not beneficial to the game at all. People that want to play chaoticly can still do so in discussion with others. Without the rankings. What stops someone from simply ignoring everyone else and do their own thing no matter how stupid and disrupting it may be for others? PT Classic isnt a singleplayer roleplay strategy game. It is a game where, despite our OOC views, we try to discuss and work together in order to create cool and interesting RP. If everyone just starts ignoring eachother and pretend certain nations dont exist it would result in a lot of frustration and outright non enjoyable situations. But thats my opinion on it at least.

The nice part of Zanz's plan is that you can freely ignore and not RP with the people that discard the rankings and go fully overboard. In the same way that we can freely ignore culturally open nations that just want to play an English-spoken republic with Presidents and Prime Ministers and four parties with creative names like the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and the Green Party.

If culturally open nations are a thing then I see no reason to make "no ranking" states also not a thing.

Kubrick's response largely expresses everything I would.

I just don't agree that the only way to create an organized RP community is for us to give incredible power in determining the IC lay of the land of that community to (expressing an opinion here, recognize that my perception is likely not the reality), ultimately, one or two people OOCly. If I have an RP idea and want to be able to play that out with Zardugal, and if the RP idea needs Zardugal to have nukes, and if Zardic players and I agree that the RP will be fun for us, we should be able to do that RP - plain and simple. We cannot, however, in today's PT, because we've given (again, oversimplified opinion), Farsun the right to say "nope, you can't."

The circumstance of a nuke-based RP is obviously an extreme hypothetical, but I've seen people get chewed out because they post pics of a certain type of airplane that the Mods have said must ICly be sourced to a specific nation, and, honestly, I could give two figs about that sort of nuance - we've swung too hard to the extreme of enforcing "logic" on this illogical game world. And what it's led to is plagiarism (factual observation), repetitive and monotonous RP (obviously opinion), and I'm left with no legitimate ways to opt out, since the rankings are not optional. I have to pretend to care about the RP Dorvik is doing if Dorvik remains a great power in Terra, even if I personally find nothing of interest in the RP Dorvik does. Not trying to throw shade at Dorvik in particular(though I'm confident this will not go over swimmingly), just singling them out because I feel Dorvik most obviously represents the problems I have and because it happens to be a Moderator who's responsible for it.

If you find the game fun with rankings, nothing stops you from continuing to recognize rankings, to continue having them created by moderation, to refuse to RP with Jelbania since we're not going to follow the rankings (though we'll of course remain poor and chaotic ICly) - nothing has to change in your day to day, you just ignore anything you find unhelpful or uninteresting from an RP perspective. In the status quo, however, I'm not able to ignore the NC or anything I would probably otherwise ignore because at the end of the day it's what's going to end up getting people upranked in a system I'm forced to recognize. That's not fair, which I care less about - but it's also not fun, and it's a significant departure from previous PT admins (even those that did rankings) because those ones were either more transparent and more broad in who set the ranks, or else they didn't do rankings at all.

[Rogue]

Again. I get where you are coming from. But making things optional wouldnt improve the situation whatsoever. We all like to think of the PT world as living and breathing. Where stories come to life. Under the current system you are still allowed and in some ways even encouraged to do the RP you want to do. The only thing i think the rankings change to that is allowing more influential and "powerful" nations to attach a consequence to your actions. Zardugal wants to develop nukes? Sure, it can, but it cant possibly expect regional or global powers to sit back, relax and do nothing about it. Action-reaction. Thats what makes this world alive and thats something you will miss when the rankings are not enforced. Yes it would allow Zardugal to develop nukes without consequence. And in the same way it would allow everyone to ignore their RP and then what? They develop a nuke and thats the entire premise of the RP?

The ranking system is meant to not only bring realism to the table (something it has gone overboard with on occasions that i agree with you) but it also makes sure that the world actually feels somewhat alive. And i feel like that is something we ultimately all want.

[Aquinas]

In normal circumstances I would be in the same camp as Mr. God, arguing that whatever the shortcomings with the rankings process, and whatever the perceived biases of those formulating them, we are better off with them than without them. The fact I have moved in to the Zanz camp, and am now arguing for the rankings to be voluntary only, is a measure of just how bad things are.

And to be clear, they really are disgustingly, stinkingly bad right now.

A few of the sordid highlights:

- Players have been plagiarising content from online news articles in order to boost their status in the rankings.

- Moderators have not only been aware of the plagiarising and allowing it, but have actually been rewarding the plagiarism with glorified positions in the rankings, and have been working alongside the plagiarisers ingame in order to boost the rankings of the nations they personally control as well.

- When we asked the Mods to deal with the plagiarism, they responded they did not regard it as a practice they would ask people not to do.

- When we pressed the Mods to fix the rules, they prevaricated, indicating plagiarism could somehow or in some circumstances be perfectly acceptable, and their initial proposal, amazingly, was limited to insisting only that RP posts contain a "majority of original content".

- In the aftermath of the plagiarism scandal, the two Mods who enabled the crisis (Auditorii and Vesica) and two of the plagiarisers (Maxington and Luis) decided to re-form the Northern Council - the very ingame organisation which led to the plagiarism and the powergaming in the first place. Not only that, but they wasted no time in godmodding and in blatantly pursuing an agenda to boost their rankings (and which Auditorii explicitly and shamelessly stated in his RP post I quoted earlier in this thread). One wonders what on earth they were thinking, and just how gullible they imagined the rest of the community to be.

On the forum, the plagiarisers have shown indignation and arrogance more than contrition, and it is difficult to be confident they will not do the same thing again. It is not massively difficult for someone to plagiarise and get away with it if they really want to. Much online content is hidden behind subscription walls/passwords walls etc.. They could easily rely on those kind of sources if they wished to do so, and in such a small community as this one, they could likely get away with it.

In other RP projects, anybody caught plagiarising would be thrown out and the membership would not be having to waste time talking about them, let alone being basically required by the admin team to pay special focused attention to the RP of those players, which is the situation we currently have due to the prominent positions those players are given in the rankings.

It is questionable, also, as to whether Moderation can be trusted to take plagiarism seriously, given that two of the three currently in position have lax attitudes towards it, and even if they did not practice it themselves, have both permitted it and benefited from it in-game.

If anyone doubts my concerns about how serious Moderation is about plagiarism, I would direct them to the simple fact that the plagiarism identified in this thread nearly a month ago has, incredibly, still not been removed from the forum, either by the Moderators or by the plagiarisers themselves. Plagiarisers, by the way, who we are all expected to trust not to plagiarise again despite the fact they are literally still plagiarising at this very moment by still keeping all of this plagiarised content on our forum. One wonders about their sense of priority, when they have found time to write rankings-boosting news posts and even to yell down people on the forum for being critical of their antics...

A message for anyone here who imagines plagiarism on the forum is somehow or okay or does not cause any harm or carry any risks: you are wrong.

Even putting aside the fact it is dishonestly stealing other people's work and cheating other players, having plagiarised content on this forum places not only the writers, but also potentially the forum owner and administrators, at risk of legal action. That risk may seem small or remote, but it is still there - and for all concerned here, it is really, really not worth taking.

I could also remind you that Google and other search engines are de-listing websites for plagiarism all the time, and from what I have heard anecdotally, once a site has been de-listed, it is not always an easy matter to get it listed again. If Particracy was de-listed - and it might potentially only take one employee's observation or one person's report to cause that - then there would be a risk it would cover http://www.particracy.com as well as http://www.particracy.net, considering how connected the two are, which would mean not only Particracy Classic, but also Alpha would be affected. This would not be good news for either the Classic or the Alpha communities, and I cannot imagine Wouter would welcome it either.

In view of the utter shambles and farce that has gone on, and the fact that the plagiarised content remains on the forum after all this time, and nothing has been done about it or seemingly is being done about it either, I feel the most generous thing I could say about Auditorii and Vesica is that now is the time to thank them for their services and let them go. With regards to James, who only joined Moderation more recently, I feel the most generous thing I could say about him is to say I feel he needs to be more on-the-ball so far as this issue is generally concerned, particularly on the need to remove plagiarised content from our forum.

As for the rankings, the situation is too far-gone now to talk about keeping them compulsory whilst somehow "reforming" them. They are devoid of credibility now. My recommendation is to make them voluntary, and only to make them compulsory again once those responsible for compiling the rankings have earned the credibility to do so. It also goes without saying that the Northern Council clique of players who caused all of this in the first place need to be kept a respectable distance away from the process.

[Pragma]

If a major international news website sets about suing a roleplay forum with like 12 active users they're the ones with the problem tbh.

Furthermore, I don't actually know if you can delete your content after a certain amount of time has passed by yourself. I think it's time to let the plagiarism thing go. The offenders have been downranked and Luis especially has shown contrition.

I would ask you, genuinely Aquinas, to reconsider posting these kind of personal call outs. Not because I disagree with all of your points, but because the personal nature of them is increasingly turning people away from constructive reform and towards viewing yourself and even players associated with you negatively.