I’ve always despised this proverb. Where would humanity be if we all lived by those words? We would never make it to where we are today. The creations of humanity that we base most of our lives on now were not created because their predecessors were fundamentally broken, they were created because they made things easier and better for most. If it ain’t broke… fix it anyway. You might find something that’s better than what you had before.
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Or you might just break it. Seriously l don’t see your point about us merging with the Main Server(That Peanut incident proved a point, that the RP would be more likely to be invaded by numerous trolls and people who like to cause message conflicts)
I am still fully against a merge, and I(and my family and friends) live by that proverb, if it ain’t broke, don’t try and make it better, or you might just break it even more(Reaganomics and Maos Great Leap Forward are really good examples to two people attempting to fix a problem that never existed and broke more things that fixing anything)
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I think a literal interpretation of that proverb might be a problem here. I think “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” means “If there’s no problems with it, don’t try to make it better.” Our wells were not broken due to cholera: but Cholera was a problem. Our immune systems were never broken, but medicine allowed us to remove some of the problems and inherent inefficiencies in our own bodies. I think that is the point Besern and Tem are trying to make. There is no real problem with having two servers, so why make them into one?
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Sorry for slacking, but I promised myself I’d respond to it after a few days of pondering (and helping grandpa on the fields and such). Currently, I think that the forum channels could help bring more structure to conversation. Though I also can see it getting clogged up in multiple similar topics if some of them are automatically archived. It heavily depends on its execution and how well the community interacts with it in my opinion. I can see people getting confused and potentially not caring enough to figure it out which may disincentivize them to participate in discussion.
While it’s a neat feature, it gives a lot more ‘responsibility’ or rather initiative to Discord user to use it properly. I remain unsure what would work best for our community at large. Anyways, those are some of the potential hurdles I see us facing if we proceed to implement your proposed forums channels.
I might be wrong on how certain aspect operate still, but I’ve voiced the main concern concerning them.
We’ve discussed it in this thread heavily, but it comes down to a better integration process for new players to RP and re-centering TSP’s community on a single server, where we can better discuss things that affect RP as it relates to the wider community.
This has been discussed before in this thread, and is not an accurate representation of how a merger would go. Trolls will be handled by moderation, if there is even an influx at all, and message conflicts, if I’m understanding the term right, should also not be occurring in RP channels anyways.
This proposal is nothing like Reaganomics or Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and the comparison is in bad faith. Nobody’s lives will be hurt by a merger.
There is no real problem with having a single server either, and I think it would be better overall to move forward with the proposal, for the reasons stated above.
They can be set to archive after a week of no messages, but I would strongly imagine that the more central posts (like a general Pacifica forum thread) would see pretty heavy use and is not at danger of archiving. Plus, posts that have archived due to inactivity can just be brought back with a message, same as threads.
From my experience, when we’ve introduced forums, there’s a minor peak of “hmmm how do I want to work this” and then things settle into a few normal topics that emerge and get sustained. Some will come and go, but they’re nothing too popular anyways. The worldbuilding forum topic does light up with the new channel notification when a new post is created.
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I think I glossed over this part earlier; my apologies there. Personally, I’d like to see some additional clarification that the channels can be accessible, but ideally not visible by default. As in…
It could look something like people who choose the roleplay option in server onboarding get the roleplay channels added to their channel list to start off, and those who don’t choose that option don’t get those channels added?
That is correct.
This isn’t some profound, world-changing event Dodge. The ‘keep TSPRP separate’ side has been called out for bad points, so I’ll call you out now. How is it reasonable to bring the state of humanity into a discussion about discord servers? It’s a well know and well-used proverb.
Wasn’t increased visibility one of the benefits of the merger that was talked about? Does it not defeat the point of merging the servers if their separate to the point that the two parts can’t even see each other? At that point, the only reason to merge is just organization and a greater sense of “unity” (both sides seem pretty okay with some form of separation between the two parts). It feels better at that point to just keep them separate and put more effort into making it clear that there’s more than one discord
Yes, that’s why I mentioned server onboarding 
Hi, just wanted to poke this and see what the next step is.
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I haven’t been bothering to post here recently since it looks like the server merger will happen regardless, but I’d like to withdraw my statement of opposition to the server merger on here like I did on the Discord server. I don’t really care what you do with it as long as it doesn’t become an impediment to the continued function of TSPRP.
I’ve been fairly busy with RL work, but after this week I’m off for summer holidays .
Any updates on this so far?
I’m going offline for a few days (on a trip with the kid), after that I will finally get around to this. Poke me hard with a sharp stick if you haven’t heard from me by Sunday.
EDIT: You didn’t poke me, but it’s fine because I haven’t forgotten - it’s next on my TODO list.
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I’ve spent some time looking at TSPRP Discord and understanding what the channels are and are used for (and thank you for TSPRP members for answering my questions!). For the most part, Qwert’s proposal for channel topology seems reasonable to me, so I’ve mostly based my proposal on that. I do have some open questions below.
I’m going to deliberately leave out onboarding concerns for now.
Base proposal:
- New category “Roleplay”.
- New channels in that category for each canon, one for OOC discussion and one “worldbuilding” channel, accessible via opt-in.
- Hidden channels for RP mods and map managers to discuss.
- The old conlang channel is revived and put into this category
- The old RP channel is revived and put into this category as the “lounge”
- RP Mod role that can moderate the RP channels
- RP Mods get #announcements access to inform TSP about RP news
- Map Manager role
- Canon-specific Roleplayer roles which are self-assignable in some fashion
- RP emojis are imported
My open questions:
- Each canon currently has two channels, one for general OOC discussion, and one that’s specifically for posting, and getting comments on, more long-form contributions that aren’t yet ready to be finalized and put on the forum (those are the “worldbuilding” channels). I want to pose the question of whether we can restrict it to one channel per canon. If two are needed, that’s fine (and I’ve heard arguments from RPers against this already), I just want to make sure it’s considered.
- Where should the new “Roleplay” category be placed? I’m thinking below “Citizen’s Court” for a few reasons, including that this is roughly how it’s laid out on the forum as well.
- For the visibility aspect, just posing the question, what do you think about having the RP lounge visible but keeping the canon-specific channels opt-in? My reasoning here is to make the “default” view less cluttered while still giving a good view of RP. (This question is for everyone but I’m particularly curious about @Pronoun )
- Qwert requested a “Senior Roleplayer” role as a cosmetic role. It wouldn’t work well to make this a cosmetic role that is visible in some sense, but we can still figure out a way to use this. For example, should it be pingable in the RP category? Convey certain special rights? etc.
- TSPRP loves playing with MEE6 and we’ll have to figure out how to transfer over the “fun” aspects (and maybe even MEE6 itself). I’ll talk a bit more with TSPRP on Discord directly about this, but if somebody wants to give more insights on what they think is important here, I would appreciate it.
Thank you to the TSPRP community for being so friendly, receptive, and helpful as we’re working toward this! Note that there’s no ETA: It’ll take as long as it’ll take, and only in cooperation with TSPRP, but I think we’re probably looking at having this done in a month or two at most.
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I personally think having both channels are necessary. wordlbuilding channels are important for being able to concept lore with the community without disrupting the flow of conversation. Things like charts, military numbers, designs (whether for military, emblems/flags, or other) and many other things could very easily disrupt the flow of conversation in the “discussion” channels, which are for more general discussion.
That’s a good point, that wasn’t brought up yet on the server.
I’d agree with that placement. At least on my display it would be the last category before you need to scroll, therefore prominent enough in terms of visibility without making ourselves more important than we are. The general main server talk channels should obviously be at the top and the “gameside” - being the “original gameplay” of NationStates should probably be above the roleplay.
I think, this could work. People can ask questions there, if they are unsure about which canon to join and can get used to the roleplayer community in general. Then they choose their preferred canon’s role and go into deeper exploration in those channels before deciding finally on whether to join rp or not.
Our “Senior Roleplayer” role (golden player names) is for roleplayers, who have been around for a while, had much influence and knowledge and are, next to the mods, the first people newbies should/can refer to, if they have any questions. They are also people, that might get a little more of a voice when it comes to changes of the meta of a/the canon(s). Personally, I find this role nice to have, but if we need to drop it, it won’t hurt that much. A pinging of those people in particular isn’t needed much. Inviting them to discussions just between them and the rp mods could also be done via private threads.
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I agree with my fellow RPers above.
Placing it like on the forums makes sense.
This is in line with what I was think as well.
I agree with Gianni. Perhaps we can add this as a pingable role later if needed.
MEE6 is mostly used for assigning various pingable roles and for checking posting ranks. If we don’t have MEE6 to help self-manage roles, how would it be done on Main? Like if you don’t join through an oboarding process where you can chose a specific RP canon, but realise later you’d like to get that pingable canon-specific role?
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You can still go through that onboarding again with Discord, even if you’ve completed it in the past. Just click on “Browse Channels”.
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