Bottom line up front:
- I think we should get to work as a community on writing a new set of rules to govern ourselves and our moderation team
- I think we should reconsider the way the moderation team works, specifically focusing ourselves on setting up a system that emphasizes transparency, consistency, and promptness. I offer details below.
Why do I think this is necessary
1. Our current game rules are in a confusing state, a mishmash of rules that were written (primarily) first by Aquinas or Jamescfm during their tenures and then later rewritten by Farsun. Players new to the community could be forgiven for thinking that the Rankings might be mandatory (they are not, but see for example this Discord exchange), that the Oil and Gas and natural resource indexes are mandatory (they are not, but see for example this Discord exchange), etc. The amount of rules that have been added or amended to "reserve the right" for Moderation to act even in contradiction to the rules at their unilateral discretion is a major issue that remains from the Farsun era, in my opinion. Speaking just as someone who is committed to professionalism in the game - the grammar and style of the rules could also use a rewrite. I leave this a bit short because, frankly, I have a lot of specific complaints, and I don't want to list them all. We have had better and more comprehensive rules in the past - James happily shared them again recently here.
2. This is actually my more pressing concern. One of my main complaints against Farsun beyond what I considered to be an abrasive attitude toward players was that he was just not good at keeping up with the administrative demands of the game. I do think this has gotten better under the current administration, but, frankly, I personally feel the bar should be higher than it is, and the current setup is not meeting my expectations. As a recent example, Luis requested a 2nd account on 21st Jan. Our current approach required that the RPC note that it had received the request and would discuss (occurred 7 minutes after the request (excellent response time). However, it then stalled. It was 2 days later that a standard query was made of Luis 23 Jan and Luis quickly responded. The RPC then approved the request 23 Jan, but must now wait for Greek (the Admin) to reactivate the party. That was a day ago at this point. This means that even for a player who presumably is very well connected to the process, it will have taken more than three days to get a very basic admin task done. That's not meeting my expectations. Don't get me wrong, I understand it's a volunteer position and I appreciate the efforts of our moderation team - but I also was a moderator, and I know that, ultimately, a reactivation is literally 1-2 clicks in the system. This is a case of us overengineering a process - and I really think we should consider alternatives.
What do I suggest
1. I will largely defer to others in this space because I know for sure that others have thoughts on how the rules should be structured. I myself fall into the camp of supporting a relatively comprehensive set of rules that focus on 1) outlining what behavior is expected of players in the game and of the moderation team that enforces the rules and, 2) outlining procedures for how administrative work can be requested by players and what expectations there are of moderation for timeliness in responding. Very specifically I want us to give more clarity on the status of things like Rankings (I want to get rid of them, but I am open to discussion), oil and gas / natural resources (I think it's fine to have these but we should make them entirely opt in), and I would appreciate a statement from moderation that the rules (once we write them) are the rules - and that random announcements and postings in various places across the forum and discord will not be treated as binding rules unless also merged into a central rule thread.
2) I think our current approach to how the game is administered is backward. Currently, my understanding of the system is as follows:
RPC team members are tasked with reviewing most of the threads in the Requests forum (any with RPC in the title) and they ultimately consult and make a decision and then any actual in game mechanics portions of the decision is passed to Greek (the Admin, who is solely responsible for enforcing these things and watching any threads with [A] in the title in Requests).
To me, this is an obvious contributor to the responsiveness issue I describe above. Greek is one person, is busy, and everything important runs through him, much of it only after it runs through a large committee of players in various timezones with various activity levels. This is another concern for me (and not trying to point fingers at anyone in particular) - how members are chosen for the RPC is not clear to me, whether they will be rotated out over time, etc... All of these are things I wonder if we could make clearer.
SO - that mostly become more "why", and not much proposal. Here's the proposal.
- Admin: Greek remains as Admin. His primary responsibility is maintaining a relationship with wouter, and he ultimately serves almost exclusively as a liaison between us as a community and wouter. Greek will not be responsible for administrative duties in the game or on the forum.
- Why is this good/better than current state: I base this largely on conversations I have had with Greek. Greek can continue to serve as someone uniquely situated to sync with wouter and can focus his efforts on playing the game as a RP leader and technical innovater, without having to worry about the demands of day-to-day admin. I envision this role in a perfect world as being the person who would grant forum permissions (currently reserved only to wouter) and ultimately this is who wouter would grant the right to resolve any major issues otherwise unresolvable by the below roles.
- Board of representatives: The RPC should become instead a "Players' Board of Representatives" (or whatever, idc what we call it). This board would be 3-5 players who would be elected by the community (probably just using a forum thread with nominations and a poll, but I am open to mechanism discussion) for rotating seats - maybe 3-6 IRL month terms. We'd need to figure out what to do in cases of temporary or sustained absence (maybe an alternate should be elected, too)? I envision these would be staggered terms and players would not be able to serve consecutive terms.
The Board's job would be writing and enacting rule changes, and appointing and removing Executives (see below). Board members are not moderators, do not have the right to make day-to-day decisions in the game, and do not have access to the in game moderation account to do game mechanics admin work.- Why is this better than current state: By explicitly allowing players to appoint representatives who are explicitly charged with keeping rules updated, I think we can get to a place where the rules of our community are more fluid and more responsive to changing landscapes. For instance, a board might have reacted differently to PT's unprecedented plagiarism scandals or AI scandals by coming together and drafting / enacting rules against plagiarism and AI content use. In the Farsun administration, this happened, but the rules that were written were haphazardly written and confusing.
Because this group's only responsibility is rule making and executive selection, having so many members will not be a major impediment to day-to-day stuff getting done promptly.
- Why is this better than current state: By explicitly allowing players to appoint representatives who are explicitly charged with keeping rules updated, I think we can get to a place where the rules of our community are more fluid and more responsive to changing landscapes. For instance, a board might have reacted differently to PT's unprecedented plagiarism scandals or AI scandals by coming together and drafting / enacting rules against plagiarism and AI content use. In the Farsun administration, this happened, but the rules that were written were haphazardly written and confusing.
- Executive: This is a new category. We should empower (at least) 2 players to serve as day-to-day operational people for the administration of the game. These players would be chosen by the Board for a set period (I would suggest 6 month terms, with the Board retaining the right to remove them early at any time. I would personally support allowing executives to be considered for consecutive terms, assuming the Board approves of their work - we should not force the removal of good administrators). These players would be responsible for all administration in the game. To use the example I used before, where Luis requested a 2nd account - either of the two executives would see the request and be responsible for asking questions, approving it, and reactivating the account. The executives do not create the rules - they are charge simply with enforcing them. They do this without consulting the Board - they are responsible day to day. If a player or a member of the board has a concern with the way an executive has enforced the rules, they can ask the Board to review the case and determine whether the Executive acted appropriately. If the board finds that they did, the ruling is final and nothing changes. If the Board finds the executive did not act appropriately, they can reverse the ruling (which the executive must then do or else be removed).
- Why is this better than current state: Having multiple executives will mean more likelihood that requests are seen quickly. Having multiple executives at the same time, and having Greek as an Admin as well, will help make it more difficult for one player to unilaterally seize power as Farsun did. Having executives able to act without consulting the RPC will mean that there is less wait time while we wait for consultation on requests that, frankly, are mostly just straightforward. Having executives be appointed and removed by the board means that players have a clear "who do I talk to" if there's a concern about the way executives are acting. It also allows the community to more directly pick its administrators and so to participate in its own governance.
There's a lot above. I want to reiterate that I think this should be a conversation, and that I don't mean to offend anyone by asking questions. I simply think we need to clean up some bad systems we have inherited from a bad era, and I want us to consider how we can future proof while allowing ourselves autonomy as a community but still setting guidelines for ourselves that allow us to fight inappropriate behavior.
Thoughts?