What's new
Star Army

Star ArmyⓇ is a landmark of forum roleplaying. Opened in 2002, Star Army is like an internet clubhouse for people who love roleplaying, art, and worldbuilding. Anyone 18 or older may join for free. New members are welcome! Use the "Register" button below.

Note: This is a play-by-post RPG site. If you're looking for the tabletop miniatures wargame "5150: Star Army" instead, see Two Hour Wargames.

  • If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 October and November 2024 are YE 46.8 in the RP.

Community Meeting

In Discord Voice 1
In Discord Voice 1

NTSE Rule Suggestion

Semjax

Semjax

The Cloaked Character
Inactive Member
So I've been talking with a lot of people, and a lot of people agree on one thing:

We don't think that people who just joined the website should be able to, after less then a month of being here, post setting changes.

I have always thought that there was a rule that stopped newbies from posting up NTSE things, but I found out recently I was wrong, and would like to strongly incorporate a rule that stops this. This idea came to me because of four reasons:

  1. This will stop people who have been banned from the site for whatever reason, from coming back and starting to throw garbage at the NTSE. While yes, they can reject it, in some cases it may slip through the crack.
  2. This allows the people to actually -learn- the setting before trying to change it into whatever they want it to be. I'm not going to name names, but there have been 3 cases in the year I've been here that people have thrown things at the NTSE that they don't even understand. They don't know the setting. To change the setting for the better one must know the setting, and it takes far more then a single day to master this setting.
  3. It allows them to get ample RP time in an official plot, or open plot. Helping them learn more about the technology, and the type of things we need as a whole.
  4. It stops wasting NTSE Approvers time.
So I would like to request that a one month rule be added, to where people can't post setting changes. That way they learn the setting, it stops people who were banned from cluttering the NTSE section, and it completely stops people from wasting NTSE time with things that sometimes might not even get approved.

There can even be exceptions that allow for people who've proven that they understand the setting to be able to post. But, again I stress, we shouldn't allow people who have been here less then 3 days to start throwing out submission ideas. Because frankly, and honestly, there is no way that they understand the setting in that amount of time.

I understand why we allow it, but in the end its just not as productive as it could be.
 
I personally submitted things rather early when I first got here but I took a lot of time to sit down and understand what I was submitting and talked back and forward with the actual owner of the faction I submitted for, so I had a leg up on understanding what the setting needs. But I have seen many others come in and try, and most of them did in fact do nothing but waste the NTSE's time going back and forward with articles that were eventually dropped because they lost interest cause the setting turned out to be different than what they thought.

So I am inclined to agree to this. Even if only to keep our already cluttered NTSE from getting filled with things that don't fit the setting in the first place.
 
I think pretty much everyone knows I'm in favor of this, since I'm one of the people who has been pushing this as an unofficial rules for quite some time now. While we get the occasional new person who does a great job of figuring everything out, we get 4-5 others in the same time frame who just haven't dug deep enough to find their options, or to really understand why those options might not be there yet. A month of activity isn't too much to ask for people to start adding to the setting, I think.

This might need to be moved to the Setting Discussion area, though.
 
I was unsure if this was considered a setting discussion since everything I've seen in setting was IC.
 
It might even be better to make it longer than a month as someone who really wants to make something new could always ask someone else who's been around longer to submit and basically sponsor his article if he doesn't want to wait the prescribed time.

On one hand you can hope people that are likely to make pointless and possibly damaging/drama creating articles (which could set negative precedents and could cause the wiki to look more like an awful graveyard of rarely ever used half-baked ideas) get tired of messing around in the NTSE after experiencing repeated resistance and stop and accept they should just get into the preexisting setting and hopefully get more players this way and keep potential long term players longer.

On the other hand you can impress people new and old by setting and enforcing stricter standards that make people feel safe that the things they like that already exist will not be diminished and you can get the people that shouldn't be here out of here faster because THEY don't want to be here based on their inflexible mentalities and own admissions.

Restricting people from immediately making submissions without the help of older members would force them to socialize and possibly learn more about the setting and that's what's most important, getting people to integrate instead of isolating themselves.
 
Last edited:
Let's talk about @Kirkatan, and invite them to this thread that seems rather passive-aggressively about them (invite others!).

Kirk has come up with some tech ideas that seem not only mainstream, but relatively safe. An update to the MCAS? A Yamataian power armor SSW? Some mecha talk? These are harmless. Not the stuff of Vesper, for those who remember him, or any of their modern incarnations.

Kirkatan also is as green as a granny smith apple. Brand new, skipped the intro post, went straight to char creation, joined a plot and away they went! Isn't it precious that the system worked exactly as intended.

As an NTSE reviewer, I have no problem telling a brand-new player, "Hey, y'know, this ain't gonna fly." I knew what I signed up for as a reviewer, so don't worry about me.

The site can make their own decisions about how to view this new player who boldly/arrogantly/naively/bravely stood up and started asking and submitting and being involved in this community of creators.

The site also doesn't need to start public threads that obliquely target these new players. That's not how we should welcome people in this community, especially those who show courage, talent or any combination thereof.
 
I completely agree with Doshii. We have a system in place that works. We don't need to be building new "walls" of red tape. Part of our site's appeal is that anyone can bring their own ideas in to help build our lore. If the ideas don't fit, then we don't have to accept them.

(PS: I did actually cross-check Kirkatan's IP because he seemed to get into the setting so fast that at first I thought he must've been an old member under a new name!)
 
I will point out that Semjax and the others in this community bring up a good point, and its a point shared by dozens of members and one that shouldn't be so easily ignored. We have indeed had newbies suddenly roll in and try and decide how the settings shoudl be 'in their opinion', and never once being concerned or taking the advice of those whom are already here.
 
Doshii it's not just about @Kirkatan honestly. Admittedly that was that finally prompted this post, but also we had @Yoerik as an example and others as well do the same thing. It's great and all that people want to submit things, but what's not great is that our NTSE is already backloged and people want to submit things that don't work. For instance the MCAS core, they want one that can hold Phod Neko Separa'shan and Kodian all alike. 4 Drastically different body types all in the same core? One of them averages like 4 feet one 6ish one like 8 and one over 10, and doesn't even have any legs.

Like I said I submitted stuff very early myself, and I get the want to. But at the same time, if we let everyone submit just whatever they want, it clutters the NTSE with things and it's already backlogged as is. And that's not to say that anyone is at fault for the backlog. But It means the NTSE staff have to go through articles and then suggest how to improve them, and a lot of which get abandoned or totally scraped because the submitter had no idea about what would fit. And that just makes the backlog bigger.

I think there needs to be something to at least filter out things early so the NTSE doesn't slow down even more.
 
But at the same time, if we let everyone submit just whatever they want, it clutters the NTSE with things
Click to expand...
We already let anyone submit (almost) whatever they want, and it's not the new people who are the ones causing a backlog. It's more of a lack of free time among us reviewers.
 
I think the point that's being made there is that letting newer players who just don't understand the process or the setting yet just makes it worse, Wes. Think about how much work is required on a lot of submissions by veteran players. You've always been pushing to speed the process for new players as much as possible, and letting them submit stuff, only for it to take weeks to get approved just doesn't fit that, especially when we're having so much trouble keeping up as it is. So the solution (from the opposite side of the argument from you) is to limit the timeframe in which new players can submit stuff until they have a better idea of what might be needed, and what is going to be expected of them.
 
Wes said:
We already let anyone submit (almost) whatever they want, and it's not the new people who are the ones causing a backlog. It's more of a lack of free time among us reviewers.
Click to expand...
That's my whole point Wes. The work load is already too much for the reviewers when they're working on articles from people already here. Imagine if we throw in articles form people who are new, which are likely to need even more editing because they just don't fully understand the setting yet. We already have things sitting on the NTSE for a week before it even gets picked up, let alone the review finishing. And those are sometimes articles that are already ready without needing edits.

I'm not against new players contributing to the setting. But considering how much backlog their already is and how much time on average articles from newer players take to get approved, it just doesn't seem remotely efficient to let them be submitted without any filter. It sounds brutally mechanical yeah, but it's not like we're saying they have to make any accomplishments or donate to submit. They just have to wait a little so they have time to know the setting so the initial quality of their articles is higher and they fit more into the setting, to reduce the time it will take to get them approved.

PS Look to Yoerik's articles for an example, how many days they went on before being put on hold. One article was in discussion for 5 days, before finally being put on hold May 29 2014, it's been on hold for over a year. Because honestly the article just did not fit the setting.
 
  1. Time is not a measurement of how much a member has learned about the setting and doesn't guarantee submissions will be any better.
  2. The content of their NTSE submissions is a better guide to how much they know. Let them submit and succeed or fail on their own merit.
  3. It is better to occasionally reject a few ill-researched submissions for not fitting in the setting, than to have to block perfectly good submissions by new players.
Adding a time requirement to setting submissions has zero benefits to the site. At he same time, it negatively impacts new players at a most critical time, when they are forming their first impressions of the community.
 
Wes said:
  1. Time is not a measurement of how much a member has learned about the setting and doesn't guarantee submissions will be any better.
  2. The content of their NTSE submissions is a better guide to how much they know. Let them submit and succeed or fail on their own merit.
  3. It is better to occasionally reject a few ill-researched submissions for not fitting in the setting, than to have to block perfectly good submissions by new players.
Adding a time requirement to setting submissions has zero benefits to the site. At he same time, it negatively impacts new players at a most critical time, when they are forming their first impressions of the community.
Click to expand...
While 1 is true, it is also true that giving them time increases the likelihood that they will do more research and learn more. 2 Would be great, if it didn't in turn almost mean that the failures to learn the setting were pushing aside submissions who spent weeks sometimes even months looking things up and working on it to make sure it's right, the reviewers can only review so much at a time. While 3 does help people grow, see 2. And also if the submission is perfectly good and fine, then they can stand waiting a month, maybe getting other people to help using unofficial reviews, so that when the month is over they can submit it right away and it can get approved in a day.

And honestly, if having to wait a month before you're allowed to in essence change a setting that has been running for several years somehow gives someone a bad impression, I'm not sure they're the best for the site. That's just a measure of respect. And while yes this is a generalization both on this statement and the people who this statement refers to; A lot of people, when they see someone trying to submit something after not even being here a month, they get -offended-. Because it doesn't show respect for the setting, trying to change it before you've even really experienced it.

That would be like someone joining a sports club and before they even really participate in training saying "Yeah, I have a better way we can train." Or "I have a better play book we can use." It doesn't come off in a good light to the people already there.
 
I'm not as fast and efficient as I could be. And I'm sorry it has taken longer to get things passed than submitters like. But I like to think I'm thorough and experienced enough to evaluate submissions with a balanced perspective.

Considering, @Kirkatan, your submission was put on hold by your own volition, you're proving to be a wise player. However, you see some of the concerns here. Keep it in mind for future submissions.

The rest of you: I'm headed up to my computer in a few minutes to chew through more stuff. I'll hop on the shoutbox if you need to talk to me.
 
We all understand Doshii, we're not trying to say the NTSE should work harder or anything like that. But rather that we as a site, should stop putting so much burden on the NTSE in essence. There's no need to apologize, just do what you can do, and take breaks when you need to. Last thing we want is to make the NTSE something that feels like a chore or work to you.
 
I'd do NTSE reviews but I doubt anyone would want me. Heh.

I LOVE YOU DOSHII, NO HOMO.
Don't worry about your speed. Just do you.
 
I hate to say it, but NTSE stuff feels like work. I've found that being a tech mod is often a chore to go through, and is also very unrewarding as well. Though I would like to see very low quality articles from new players stop coming in or even be railroaded through, I also believe that simply being able to do so helps to bolster enthusiasm for the setting itself. Having a time period where they're not able to submit setting changes would reduce the workload on anyone in the NTSE, but at the same time, would likely affect our new membership negatively. It's very far from being an ideal solution.

Tossing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks, what do you all think of a 'mentorship' of some sort? One where new players simply talk to NTSE mods or other first to bounce their ideas off of and learn more about the setting from? Even if they join a plot, they're often in a small bubble where they will only see things one bit at a time, but communicating with a tech mod directly would help to deal with that. Plus, the idea looks like it would be less of a burden.
 
Eh. If people think I'm going too fast, then I'll slow down. I'm doing my best to not throw out ideas willy nilly: I don't think this website needs a mad scientist making a new superweapon every week, I'm just trying to make things I think there may be a niche for or that people would be interested in using.
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top