I have an idea!

[Westwind]

On 9/24/2018 at 9:59 AM, Big Bad Badger said:

I have an TWP conundrum.  

I am not sure that the requirement to have people post at least once per month is an effective thing for the Hall of Nations.  But we have a beautiful forum and need more activity here.  What can we do to increase activity here?

Once upon a time in a region somewhere in NS......we required all regional officials to post on the forum at least every other day (preferably daily). And an official was also expected to reply to every thread in his/her jurisdiction frequently. 

Activity begets Activity.

The interior official should be posting in interior threads, starting new threads, regularly. Same for Defense, Foreign Affairs, et al. There should be new material in every category frequently. There should never be a category that hasn't had activity in a month or more. Get rid of those categories if you're not using them.

In other words, streamline your customer's experience and provide them value.

Part of an official's duties is keeping up activity in their area of responsibility. And maintaining the pinned threads, make sure they are up to date and relevant.

When officials post regularly, it gives non-officials something of interest to read and maybe respond to. That creates activity. It's really simple.

If they cannot do that for a time (keep up this activity level), they should post an absence notice. If they fail to post in a certain time span (one week?), or fail to post a notice of absence, or fail to appoint a deputy in their absence, they need to be replaced quickly. Otherwise the gears of activity slow and stop, and the entire region suffers.

One official that's slowed down or inactive will encourage the same in other officials. It becomes a snowball of inactivity if it's not addressed.

Today you have Discord, and no one pays attention to the forums because of it. The work needed on the forum doesn't' get done.  (Key disclosure here though - I loath Discord, so I'm very biased. I'm a forum rat, not a chatroomer)

Some questions:

- Is not Customer Service part of your job as a regional official?
- Why should people come to the forum when they are constantly encouraged to go to Discord on the RMB?
- What value does it provide to your customers that they should sign up for yet another offsite venue?  Or should I say....
- Why should players, already being asked to go offsite from the game they joined, be expected to visit multiple offsite venues in order to participate in the game? Or rather said...
-  The more venues, the more you complicate your customer's experience. Doesn't this obviously drive away potential customers (potential active players)?
- Why do you, as a regional administration, require this of your 'citizens'? Join a forum, join Discord, sign an oath...and finally we accept you into the fold as a customer/player.

You're demanding too many hoops for your customers (players) to jump through in order to be recognized as 'one of us with the right to have a say'. The game doesn't require this. Player administrations do, and create stagnant oligarchies over the long term.

Like IRC, Discord is good for instant interaction, and is more accessible for that purpose than the RMB. Unlike IRC or the RMB, it provides you the ability to create multiple rooms/channels....like forum threads...to organize the conversation.  Unlike forums, it does not provide the ability to readily organize and provide easy access to information that hasn't just been posted.  Forums provide a better long term organizational and informational situation than Discord. Information can be pinned for presentation, turned into announcements, archived, reorganized, etc etc. Forums are like a book, it has chapters (catagories) sub-chapters (threads). Discord is like a student's notebook. Lots of scattered disorganized notes and information that only the OP can discern and know it's organization, but of much less use to others and newcomers. 

And yet, the forums aren't being used in their natural capacity.

I just noticed yesterday, there are many pinned informational threads here and there around the forum that remain from my Delegacy. Those should have been updated/replaced several Delegacies (years) ago.  This is slack housekeeping by successive administrations. I'm not even a TWP citizen (sidetrack: I loath NS citizenship oaths. I'm already in the region, I'm already participating, I'm already contributing....don't make me sign an oath to anything just for being here in order for the 'region' to acknowledge my contributions - it's simply bullshit to act as a gatekeeper to who gets to be part of the 'IN' crowd/oligarchy. End citizenship oaths! One does not need an oath to be held to the standards of the region. That's false reasoning.)

Okay.....I gotta run.....

[Elegarth]

Just for the record... During my tenure we USED a standard format for all regional dispatches, which was coproduced by Drachmaland and myself:

I actually used it for the official dispatches (and just recently re-used it):
 

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1022734
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=607754
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=536247

I'm not saying you should use this one, but it has been done before, you can leverage that one or start one from scratch. But I agree with the idea of a common theme.

 

[Dilber]

My main issue with the 1 post per month thing is that as I got older, I really only reply to things that are relevant.  I'm active in the discord, and people know I'm around, but there isn't always a "topic of interest" to post on here.  

 

I looked at the book thread,  but it's only a couple posts long with the last response being in August.  We do a lot of stuff on the Regional board, but it might be worth bringing some of those topics here at the same time.