This is about Circus Maximus, the mafia part of it. It's not going the exact way I like, so I want to change the way things work one way or another. I'm posting this not because I need help or permission, but because I would like input. I'm aware that the mafia players that have access to this forum can be counted on maybe two or three hands, and among the ones that do play, there's very few upper ranked members.
However, since this is partially about moderation ethics and elitism, I invite anyone to read this post and give their input. There's a lot of smart people here who I would appreciate the opinion of even if they never layed eyes upon the forum in their e-life. In fact, of all the people I've had a talk about this with already, the one who probably gave me the most new insights was Doug, and he definitely never played.
For convenience, the rules as they are now, updated pretty recently with help from Earthworm, the only other person here who I would call an active Circus Maximus moderator. I don't really want to explain them now since it'd be superfluous, but for this post to make sense you will probably want to read them.
Funnily enough, Circus has some problems that shouldn't be unfamiliar for you if you moderate either Firebot or Tournaments. What it all comes down to is: the quality and quantity of games and players. I'll talk about the games first since it's shorter.
At the moment, there's a bunch of games on the waiting list that want to start, but cannot because there can only be three small games going on at once. Like with Tournaments, you don't want too many of them to be going on at the same time. It takes away some of the excitement of mafia, makes it all harder to manage, etc. However, there's waaaaay more demand for games than there's spots. A small game generally only has 25 spots, but often enough they reach 70+ sign-ups, and some people wouldn't mind playing 2 or more games at once. I think the best solution might be to simply up the amount of games going on regardless...I haven't actually talked that one over with Earthworm yet.
But now, about the players. They have the Firebot problem: new users, usually originating from Wi-Fi or at least the Pokémon region. They're generally bad at mafia. Some of them have been given countless chances to redeem themselves but remain first class idiots (Raverist, AlphaBravo), but some of them just need to learn. Which is cool with me, I'm all for giving people a chance, perhaps even a second or a third one. But on the other hand, you want good players in the game you designed to use those cool roles with potential. Hell, even if you leave out the role aspect, a game with skilled players is much more fun to watch and host than one with people fucking up.
The system right now pretty much forces you to let in some new players, though it's also giving you ways to tweak your list such as the reserve system, the recently added handpicking rule, and we have no rules on substitutions yet which means hosts can sneak in whoever they want if they're sneaky enough about it. I think this system is overall pretty fair to new players, but that brings us the dilemma: I want even more games with high-quality player lists. That might sound extremely greedy, but it's also a desire shared by many, many other players. My most recent game had one team ruined by a newer player because he told someone else his last team mate without even telling his own team mates. Very frustrating.
So, that's the situation and why I don't like it. Now here's some ideas I thought up to improve it.
At first, I was planning on making a forum somewhere else. I already use shaym.in (jumpluff's website) for hosting external forum software that's more convenient for mafia hosting (though I still keep the games on Smogon), which is going cool, and I could easily just build a new empire on it. Even if I wasn't an administrator heavily involved with Smogon mafia, I would still have the freedom to do this. But I think it's a dickhead move in a way. Most of the people I talked to about this idea liked it, except Hipmonlee, who thought it was elitist and was against it (most other opinions were neutral or in favor, iirc). This idea does put me in full control of everything, but I also feel it would leech people from Smogon's userbase, and it would perhaps desert Circus Maximus to a large extent. You never know until you try, of course. If I'd do this (I still think there's merit to the idea), I would heavily encourage people to also stay to play on Smogon.
Then I talked to Doug, and he brought up the idea of instead making a new forum outside of Smogon, making a new subforum ON Smogon. Some sort of "advanced player" place with limited, handpicked access, both for playing and for hosting. It's not as convenient in the software aspect, though.
In both cases, I also want to have some more accessible place for discussing mafia ideas and strategies on a forum without being in a game. The Mafia usergroup isn't on the forum index which means nobody is going to notice a new post was made unless they deliberately check it.
I think I'll leave it at this for now, though I don't think I'm done talking yet. Again, I'm fully aware I could just as well get things going without talking it over with anyone, but I like it when others let me know when they're about to make a huge change, so I figured I'd do the same for others.
However, since this is partially about moderation ethics and elitism, I invite anyone to read this post and give their input. There's a lot of smart people here who I would appreciate the opinion of even if they never layed eyes upon the forum in their e-life. In fact, of all the people I've had a talk about this with already, the one who probably gave me the most new insights was Doug, and he definitely never played.
For convenience, the rules as they are now, updated pretty recently with help from Earthworm, the only other person here who I would call an active Circus Maximus moderator. I don't really want to explain them now since it'd be superfluous, but for this post to make sense you will probably want to read them.
Funnily enough, Circus has some problems that shouldn't be unfamiliar for you if you moderate either Firebot or Tournaments. What it all comes down to is: the quality and quantity of games and players. I'll talk about the games first since it's shorter.
At the moment, there's a bunch of games on the waiting list that want to start, but cannot because there can only be three small games going on at once. Like with Tournaments, you don't want too many of them to be going on at the same time. It takes away some of the excitement of mafia, makes it all harder to manage, etc. However, there's waaaaay more demand for games than there's spots. A small game generally only has 25 spots, but often enough they reach 70+ sign-ups, and some people wouldn't mind playing 2 or more games at once. I think the best solution might be to simply up the amount of games going on regardless...I haven't actually talked that one over with Earthworm yet.
But now, about the players. They have the Firebot problem: new users, usually originating from Wi-Fi or at least the Pokémon region. They're generally bad at mafia. Some of them have been given countless chances to redeem themselves but remain first class idiots (Raverist, AlphaBravo), but some of them just need to learn. Which is cool with me, I'm all for giving people a chance, perhaps even a second or a third one. But on the other hand, you want good players in the game you designed to use those cool roles with potential. Hell, even if you leave out the role aspect, a game with skilled players is much more fun to watch and host than one with people fucking up.
The system right now pretty much forces you to let in some new players, though it's also giving you ways to tweak your list such as the reserve system, the recently added handpicking rule, and we have no rules on substitutions yet which means hosts can sneak in whoever they want if they're sneaky enough about it. I think this system is overall pretty fair to new players, but that brings us the dilemma: I want even more games with high-quality player lists. That might sound extremely greedy, but it's also a desire shared by many, many other players. My most recent game had one team ruined by a newer player because he told someone else his last team mate without even telling his own team mates. Very frustrating.
So, that's the situation and why I don't like it. Now here's some ideas I thought up to improve it.
At first, I was planning on making a forum somewhere else. I already use shaym.in (jumpluff's website) for hosting external forum software that's more convenient for mafia hosting (though I still keep the games on Smogon), which is going cool, and I could easily just build a new empire on it. Even if I wasn't an administrator heavily involved with Smogon mafia, I would still have the freedom to do this. But I think it's a dickhead move in a way. Most of the people I talked to about this idea liked it, except Hipmonlee, who thought it was elitist and was against it (most other opinions were neutral or in favor, iirc). This idea does put me in full control of everything, but I also feel it would leech people from Smogon's userbase, and it would perhaps desert Circus Maximus to a large extent. You never know until you try, of course. If I'd do this (I still think there's merit to the idea), I would heavily encourage people to also stay to play on Smogon.
Then I talked to Doug, and he brought up the idea of instead making a new forum outside of Smogon, making a new subforum ON Smogon. Some sort of "advanced player" place with limited, handpicked access, both for playing and for hosting. It's not as convenient in the software aspect, though.
In both cases, I also want to have some more accessible place for discussing mafia ideas and strategies on a forum without being in a game. The Mafia usergroup isn't on the forum index which means nobody is going to notice a new post was made unless they deliberately check it.
I think I'll leave it at this for now, though I don't think I'm done talking yet. Again, I'm fully aware I could just as well get things going without talking it over with anyone, but I like it when others let me know when they're about to make a huge change, so I figured I'd do the same for others.
