Warstory "guide"

Benlisted

The amount of less than enjoyable warstories being posted by first timers in Uncharted is what gave me the idea for this fairly simple suggestion, which I only bring up as I don't think it'd be too troublesome to implement.

Basically what I suggest is to have a bare minimum standard or guideline for a warstory, listed somewhere in the rules for the specific forums which this may be relevant to. Nothing requiring specific formatting or in as much detail as the RMT guidelines, but simply setting out what is "expected" from them to prevent the flood of, mostly, inadequately commentated ones. Not really for disciplinary purposes, more educational and beneficial for the quality of the warstory tag in general.

Some potential standards could be: comment upon your thought processes during the battle - why you took what actions you did; format your warstory from the PO log to make it easier to read through (perhaps with percentages and other things recommended but obviously not essential); choose a good battle that others will enjoy your retelling of.

Including a few example warstories as links could be done too.
 
Generally this sort of idea is not put into practice on the grounds that anyone who will read the rules and make the effort will write a good warstory anyway, from looking at ones which went down well and are in the archive. That said, it would be a good idea to have an announcement similar to the one in Stark in Uncharted, which covers all of that sort of thing.

EDIT: dammit Fatecrashers.
 
Benlisted said:
Basically what I suggest is to have a bare minimum standard or guideline for a warstory, listed somewhere in the rules for the specific forums which this may be relevant to. Nothing requiring specific formatting or in as much detail as the RMT guidelines, but simply setting out what is "expected" from them to prevent the flood of, mostly, inadequately commentated ones. Not really for disciplinary purposes, more educational and beneficial for the quality of the warstory tag in general.

Some potential standards could be: comment upon your thought processes during the battle - why you took what actions you did; format your warstory from the PO log to make it easier to read through (perhaps with percentages and other things recommended but obviously not essential); choose a good battle that others will enjoy your retelling of.

Including a few example warstories as links could be done too.
Click to expand...


I see you (we got this)
 
Although I do think this should be implemented, you need to realize that people aren't going to read it. Generally, our response to crappy warstories is to go lurk some more. If they haven't lurked enough to know what an acceptable war story is, they're not going to lurk enough to read the warstory guide. Take RMTs, for example. There's a list of RMT specific rules right at the top, yet tons of people still write RMTs with absolutely no descriptions at all. Just because we put this warstory guide in doesn't mean that people will follow it.
 
>____________________>

On the other hand, I don't want criticism of warstories to be so toxic and unwelcome that they disappear from UT like they disappeared from Stark. If there are no warstories period, then no amount of "lurking" will help.
 
sax king said:
Although I do think this should be implemented, you need to realize that people aren't going to read it. Generally, our response to crappy warstories is to go lurk some more. If they haven't lurked enough to know what an acceptable war story is, they're not going to lurk enough to read the warstory guide. Take RMTs, for example. There's a list of RMT specific rules right at the top, yet tons of people still write RMTs with absolutely no descriptions at all. Just because we put this warstory guide in doesn't mean that people will follow it.
Click to expand...
Also I doubt that many people who write bad warstories (not saying they haven't put in any effort; I tried writing one myself and didn't even think it was worth saving after an hour) will read that article in the Smog.
 
If there were a guideline in place warstories that don't meet it could simply be locked. Most of the "criticism" said warstories get would either be "lurk moar" or "go read the guideline thread" so from that point simply locking the thread and providing a link achieves the same sort of feedback, and saves the poster getting torn apart by the more "toxic" critique as Chou put it.

Is there any sort of system in place at the moment where newer writers can or are encouraged to PM/VM individuals whom consistently contribute high-quality warstories to get feedback? I think it'd be pretty beneficial if there was some sort of encouragement in the "Warstory Guideline" or whatever it'll be called for people writing warstories to actively seek criticism from the more experienced writers. Heck if there were willing volunteers said segment of the guide could feature links so users can directly ask for advice, sort of like the help thread in Rating Basics over in RMT.
 
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