Alliance Affairs Thread Title Tag Requirement Announcement

[Alex]

The Alliance Affairs specific rules have been updated, see: 

 

The change made to the rules is the following:

Quote

For an alliance announcement post of the below types, it must be tagged using brackets and the abbreviation or name listed above at the beginning of the title of the post. Posts of a type not listed below do not require tags. You must tag your post in the beginning of the title if it falls into one of the following categories:

• [DoW] Declaration of War
• [DoE] Declaration of Existence
• [Treaty] Treaty between two alliances
• [Bloc] Bloc treaty between more than two alliances

 

Essentially, if you're posting a treaty announcement, start your title with "[Treaty] {Announcement name here}" and similar for the four designations above ([DoE], [DoW], [Bloc]).

The forum moderators will start enforcing this going forward, so please tag your new threads appropriately. Note that you're allowed to make announcements other than the ones listed above, and if you do, they do not require tags. The point of the tags is simply to make the Alliance Affairs subforum easier to navigate and understand.

If you have any questions, you're welcome to ask them here. This thread will remain pinned temporarily until everyone is adjusted to the new norm.

[Dio Brando]

Yes, I have a concern. This is horrible for purposes of creativity, and makes alliance threads look incredibly sterile. That people have found clever ways to name their announcements and threads should be encouraged as it adds taste and flavour to the game. 

A far superior method of accomplishing organization would be to give players the ability to add forum tags to threads, like so:

 

E: Surely you mean 'Thread', and not 'Threat'?  

Edited July 19, 2019 by Dio Brando

[Adrienne]

Why not use the tags feature instead of trying to make it included in the title? It distracts from the announcement else.

Edited July 19, 2019 by Nizam Adrienne
Smh, Dio, beating me to the punch.

[Alex]

I don't believe there's a way to restrict the IPS tags feature to just this subforum. And in the end, it would just do the same thing.

A brief tag in brackets at the beginning of a thread is very minor and won't impact the "creativity" of browsing the Alliance Affairs subforum. When this was first suggested a few months ago, I posted a demo here: 

 

[Dumb]

thank you alex

[Dio Brando]

I am aware that this thread does not exist to entertain my back and forth with you, but let me ask you this. What purpose does it serve? If you believe it to be a solution to disorganization, additional text that needs to be read is just ungainly. What Adrienne and I have put forth will ultimately allow people to sift quickly through all threads with the same tag, and will occupy no space in the thread title itself. 

It is not a particularly big change, and I fully expect someone to come in a few posts down complaining about me 'whining', but I don't want to add [tag] when I can achieve exactly the same purpose with something far less obtrusive and far more useful.

Thanks for actively working on the upkeep of forums, by the way. I appreciate that. 

Edited July 19, 2019 by Dio Brando

[Alex]

Just now, Dio Brando said:

I am aware that this thread does not exist to entertain my back and forth with you, but let me ask you this. What purpose does it serve? If you believe it to be a solution to disorganization, additional text that needs to be read is just ungainly. What Adrienne and I have put forth will ultimately allow people to sift quickly through all threads with the same tag, and will occupy no space in the thread title itself. 

Thanks for actively working on the upkeep of forums, by the way. I appreciate that. 

I'll admit that I haven't used the IPS tag system, but when I looked into it, it appears enabling it will enable it everywhere on the forum. I don't want it enabled everywhere, just in this specific forum.

While the sorting functionality would be nice, who is going to use it? How often do you want to filter for only DoE posts, for example?

I know that I struggle when looking at obscure threads with weird meta names that I don't understand. Often times I open something in the AA subforum and I have no idea what it actually is, it's just a bunch of inside jokes / memes and unclear to anyone except the people directly involved unless they post an explicit tl;dr at the end. Having the tags will make it easier to understand what the purpose of each thread is.

[KiWilliam]

1 minute ago, Alex said:

I'll admit that I haven't used the IPS tag system, but when I looked into it, it appears enabling it will enable it everywhere on the forum. I don't want it enabled everywhere, just in this specific forum.

While the sorting functionality would be nice, who is going to use it? How often do you want to filter for only DoE posts, for example?

I know that I struggle when looking at obscure threads with weird meta names that I don't understand. Often times I open something in the AA subforum and I have no idea what it actually is, it's just a bunch of inside jokes / memes and unclear to anyone except the people directly involved unless they post an explicit tl;dr at the end. Having the tags will make it easier to understand what the purpose of each thread is.

Understanding that back & forth meme meta is the purpose of having a game specific political culture. Could it be better? For sure. But is this the best way to encourage that?

If it's not too off topic; why can't tags be used in the rest of the forums? I enjoy tags myself because it makes it easier to look up posts that you don't remember all the details about but you may remember one aspect of them (such as a DoE). Now most people won't use tags fully, but more information is always better than none. I've done this countless times to find a specific post to make a point or laugh at something years later. Because the ideal hope is this game lasts for years and years, and eventually memories fade; but tags are forever.

[Adrienne]

7 minutes ago, Alex said:

I'll admit that I haven't used the IPS tag system, but when I looked into it, it appears enabling it will enable it everywhere on the forum. I don't want it enabled everywhere, just in this specific forum.

While the sorting functionality would be nice, who is going to use it? How often do you want to filter for only DoE posts, for example?

I know that I struggle when looking at obscure threads with weird meta names that I don't understand. Often times I open something in the AA subforum and I have no idea what it actually is, it's just a bunch of inside jokes / memes and unclear to anyone except the people directly involved unless they post an explicit tl;dr at the end. Having the tags will make it easier to understand what the purpose of each thread is.

The sorting function is not what's important about this feature. The majority of the active player base does understand the inside jokes/memes and we like it - it's a part of the community/game culture - and having to add an explanation to the title kills the flow of the post in my opinion. If the explanation is wanted, why can't it be in a tag? What's the harm in enabling the tags feature?

Edited July 19, 2019 by Nizam Adrienne

[Alex]

4 minutes ago, KiWilliam said:

Understanding that back & forth meme meta is the purpose of having a game specific political culture. Could it be better? For sure. But is this the best way to encourage that?

If it's not too off topic; why can't tags be used in the rest of the forums? I enjoy tags myself because it makes it easier to look up posts that you don't remember all the details about but you may remember one aspect of them (such as a DoE). Now most people won't use tags fully, but more information is always better than none. I've done this countless times to find a specific post to make a point or laugh at something years later. Because the ideal hope is this game lasts for years and years, and eventually memories fade; but tags are forever.

I believe this is the best way to encourage that.

What tags would you use on posts outside of the Alliance Affairs subforum? I don't see a need or benefit to enabling post tags everywhere.

4 minutes ago, Nizam Adrienne said:

No one really cares about the sorting function but the majority of the active player base does understand the inside jokes/memes and we like it and having to add an explanation to the title kills the flow of the post in my opinion. If the explanation is wanted, why can't it be in a tag? What's the harm in enabling the tags feature?

I disagree that the majority of the active player base understands everything; only the people who are regular users of the forum are going to get it. It's an unnecessary increased learning curve for new players or people who don't keep up with every forum post.

Tags don't serve a purpose for the rest of the forum, and they're fundamentally no different than a tag with brackets at the beginning of the title. Once it's the norm, it won't look different / change anything.

[Adrienne]

Just now, Alex said:

I believe this is the best way to encourage that.

What tags would you use on posts outside of the Alliance Affairs subforum? I don't see a need or benefit to enabling post tags everywhere.

I disagree that the majority of the active player base understands everything; only the people who are regular users of the forum are going to get it. It's an unnecessary increased learning curve for new players or people who don't keep up with every forum post.

Tags don't serve a purpose for the rest of the forum, and they're fundamentally no different than a tag with brackets at the beginning of the title. Once it's the norm, it won't look different / change anything.

Then no one will use them outside of the Alliance Affairs subforums and it doesn't matter if they're enabled for the whole forums. Also, the active forums users are telling you they don't like this idea being in the title only and are offering an alternative suggestion. We're not working against you here. We're asking for a compromise.

[KiWilliam]

22 minutes ago, Alex said:

I believe this is the best way to encourage that.

What tags would you use on posts outside of the Alliance Affairs subforum? I don't see a need or benefit to enabling post tags everywhere.

I disagree that the majority of the active player base understands everything; only the people who are regular users of the forum are going to get it. It's an unnecessary increased learning curve for new players or people who don't keep up with every forum post.

Tags don't serve a purpose for the rest of the forum, and they're fundamentally no different than a tag with brackets at the beginning of the title. Once it's the norm, it won't look different / change anything.

I respectfully disagree fully. You only limit your community when you constrain them. Tags would only allow additional ways to use the forums and contribute to the community.

I'm not going to list the hundreds of legitimate and useful tags that could be used across the forum. This conversation also is not about enabling them across the rest of the forums, but simply allowing one forum feature to accomplish what you wish to accomplish in this specific subforum.

The majority of the active player base *does not* understand everything. For this to be a political simulation, you have to accept that not everyone sits on the same level playing field. What you call "an unnecessary increased learning curve for new players" I see as the interesting aspect of the game to understand and contribute to its evolution. Players that already read the forums, can understand when a thread is a treaty announcement. And if they really do not, then they need to learn that aspect of parsing English, or sub-cultures, to better themselves or their enjoyment of the game. The people that already would read the forums, will put in that extra effort. The people that don't, will not flock to the forums en mass because they're clearly labeled.

Tags don't serve a purpose for the rest of the forum? Then don't enable them on the other subforums if you feel that strongly about it. And if they're the same thing as a tag with brackets at the beginning of the title, then why not use a forum feature that's already included and more useful?

[Dio Brando]

I had a more elaborate post written up as to address the - somewhat valid, honestly - points you made, but my clumsy fingers deleted all of it (and then reloaded, so I can't even CTRL+Z, rip). Sorry for the delay. 

There seem to be two primary concerns you have:

• That (primarily new) players who frequent the forums are unable to understand what threads in Alliance Affairs are about,
• That tags will be used in other sections of the forum.

While I agree with the idea that the integration of new players in the overall Orbis community is a good thing, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that, most, or even a significant amount of, threads are confusing. If a player were to read the first post, and then the few posts that come after, you would find no shortage of explanations with regards to the content of the thread. Moreover, some threads are intentionally confusing, and forcing players to add tags in their thread title - which, I suppose, is your prerogative, as is my duty to argue for what I believe in - simply make the point of those threads (to confuse and bedazzle) irrelevant. In my opinion, threads that are confusing to new players will largely seem so because they lack in-game knowledge and/or context, not that they aren't clear in their message. 

Let us look at the past, hm, 15 threads in this subforum.

1. This thread is announcing the cancellation of a treaty. It says so in its first three lines.
2. This thread is announcing the existence of a new alliance (it gives a tl;dr too) and the posts that follow make that point abundantly clear.
3. This thread has some flavour content in the beginning, and explains what it's about in the last line of the post.
4. This thread is Inst being weird Hyperion announcing their 'bonds' program and giving a somewhat lengthy explanation of what that implies.
5. This thread, while somewhat hard to understand due to - presumably - the OP's level of mastery of the language, announces fairly clearly that they are recognizing a state of hostilities with BK and are confused as to why this happened.
6. This thread is a DoW and contains the target's name in the first paragraph.
7. This thread wouldn't fit your rules anyway, but I am including this to highlight my point about cultural references and why confusion will persist unless players actively attempt to integrate themselves within the community. It's a log dump that is fairly straightforward, however.
8. This thread explains its contents in the title, anyway.
9. This thread very clearly explains its purpose.
10. This thread, yeeaahhh, we weren't  too sure what was going on here either  (It's a collection of inside jokes and memes that have gone for too long to explain just by the use of a tag, and is meant to be confusing) 
11. This thread says what it's about in the title. It's also meant to be 'confusing' (if anyone checks the alliance affiliation it would be clear as to what happened).
12. This thread, while yet another part in a very long sequence of inside jokes/memes, lays its jokes out pretty clearly. This is the sort of funny thing that would be marred, not going to go so far as to say it would be ruined, by the usage of title tags.
13. This thread was just click-bait. It didn't serve any purpose, as was explained a few posts down.
14. This thread is hilarious and adds cultural flavour because it's "confusing" (it says exactly what it's about, people just need to read). Also, if you scroll down below you'll see further explanation. 
15. This thread is Sketchy posting Polaris' failure in guarding their bank. It provides an altered flag, a screenshot of the bank loot, and text to... explain it.

My point is, the vast majority of the threads that people are 'confused by' are either spam, meant to be confusing (when in reality it takes only a bit of inferring to understand what they're about), or abundantly clear, they just don't say it in their thread title. If new players are confused with what is being said, they should, well, read the posts that come after the OP. More often than not it explains the thread's purpose quite clearly.

As for the second concern I laid out in the beginning of this (now somewhat lengthy) post, there are three possible outcomes to tags being used out of this subforum:

• They spam tags, in which case a one minute edit by mods is all that is needed to remove those tags,
• They add one or two tags, which... isn't actually a problem. Why would it be?
• They don't use the tags, which is fine.

Anyway, my point with this all is that it seems like artificial spoon feeding that won't accomplish anything but actually remove the one incentive players have to integrate themselves in communities (to understand what the frick is going on in Orbis).

 

Edited July 19, 2019 by Dio Brando

[durmij]

Then take my DOW out of orbis central and put it back where it belongs!

[Alex]

6 minutes ago, KiWilliam said:

Then don't enable them on the other subforums if you feel that strongly about it.

As far as I know, there's no way to do that. We can either enable tags universally (the same tags universally as well, meaning you'll be able to tag your forum report posts "DoE" or whatever) or we can't have tags at all. If I could selectively enable the IPS tags feature in the Alliance Affairs subforum, I'd be all for it. If you know of a way to do just that (without enabling it everywhere) let me know and we can try just that.

3 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

I had a more elaborate post written up as to address the - somewhat valid, honestly - points you made, but my clumsy fingers deleted all of it (and then reloaded, so I can't even CTRL+Z, rip). Sorry for the delay. 

There seem to be two primary concerns you have:

• That (primarily new) players who frequent the forums are unable to understand what threads in Alliance Affairs are about,
• That tags will be used in other sections of the forum.

While I agree with the idea that the integration of new players in the overall Orbis community is a good thing, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that ,most, or even a significant amount of, threads are confusing. If a player were to read the first post, and then the few posts that come after, you would find no shortage of explanations with regards to the content of the thread. Moreover, some threads are intentionally confusing, and forcing players to add tags in their thread title - which, I suppose, is your prerogative, as is my duty to argue for what I believe in - simply make the point of those threads (to confuse and bedazzle) irrelevant. In my opinion, threads that are confusing to new players will largely seem so because they lack in-game knowledge and/or context, not that they aren't clear in their message. 

Let us look at the past, hm, 15 threads in this subforum.

1. This thread is announcing the cancellation of a treaty. It says so in its first three lines.
2. This thread is announcing the existence of a new alliance (it gives a tl;dr too) and the posts that follow make that point abundantly clear.
3. This thread has some flavour content in the beginning, and explains what it's about in the last line of the post.
4. This thread is Inst being weird Hyperion announcing their 'bonds' program and giving a somewhat lengthy explanation of what that implies.
5. This thread, while somewhat hard to understand due to - presumably - the OP's level of mastery of the language, announces fairly clearly that they are recognizing a state of hostilities with BK and are confused as to why this happened.
6. This thread is a DoW and contains the target's name in the first paragraph.
7. This thread wouldn't fit your rules anyway, but I am including this to highlight my point about cultural references and why confusion will persist unless players actively attempt to integrate themselves within the community. It's a log dump that is fairly straightforward, however.
8. This thread explains its contents in the title, anyway.
9. This thread very clearly explains its purpose.
10. This thread, yeeaahhh, we weren't  too sure what was going on here either  (It's a collection of inside jokes and memes that have gone for too long to explain just by the use of a tag, and is meant to be confusing) 
11. This thread says what it's about in the title. It's also meant to be 'confusing' (if anyone checks the alliance affiliation it would be clear as to what happened).
12. This thread, while yet another part in a very long sequence of inside jokes/memes, lays its jokes out pretty clearly. This is the sort of funny thing that would be marred, not going to go so far as to say it would be ruined, by the usage of title tags.
13. This thread was just click-bait. It didn't serve any purpose, as was explained a few posts down.
14. This thread is hilarious and adds cultural flavour because it's "confusing" (it says exactly what it's about, people just need to read). Also, if you scroll down below you'll see further explanation. 
15. This thread is Sketchy posting Polaris' failure in guarding their bank. It provides an altered flag, a screenshot of the bank loot, and text to... explain it.

My point is, the vast majority of the threads that people are 'confused by' are either spam, meant to be confusing (when in reality it takes only a bit of inferring to understand what they're about), or abundantly clear, they just don't say it in their thread title. If new players are confused with what is being said, they should, well, read the posts that come after the OP. More often than not it explains the thread's purpose quite clearly.

As for the second concern I laid out in the beginning of this (now somewhat lengthy) post, there are three possible outcomes to tags being used out of this subforum:

• They spam tags, in which case a one minute edit by mods is all that is needed to remove those tags,
• They add one or two tags, which... isn't actually a problem. Why would it be?
• They don't use the tags, which is fine.

Anyway, my point with this all is that it seems like artificial spoon feeding that won't accomplish anything but actually remove the one incentive players have to integrate themselves in communities (to understand what the frick is going on in Orbis).

I understand your points, but I just don't see the harm in enforcing a few tags for specific types of posts. Let's try it out and see how it goes before we say it's an awful idea.

[Nokia Rokia]

I believe most insiders jokes are from discord as discord Server's dedicated to talk show's and Orbis News exist all over banks as well for a active player the community is all that Matters I understand most forum posts from my convos in dm, alliance servers, and Orbis talk shows or maybe some random group chat I made

[Xonera]

If DoWs need to be tagged, will RoHs need to be tagged as well?

[Smith]

Is this something a lot of people have been asking for?

[Rossiya]

At present announcements are rarely informative and often the meaning is lost in memes and inside jokes, never mind that sometimes they are written to be purposefully annoying to be read. If that's what people consider to be creativity, then fine, you can still be creative. A tag would be a short and meaningful expression useful for those who only wish to know what's happened, while allowing those who are into memeology to try to decypher the announcement content itself.

[Majima Goro]

Dumb question but where is the tag for this thread.

 

[Adrienne]

1 minute ago, Rossiya said:

At present announcements are rarely informative and often the meaning is lost in memes and inside jokes, never mind that sometimes they are written to be purposefully annoying to be read. If that's what people consider to be creativity, then fine, you can still be creative. A tag would be a short and meaningful expression useful for those who only wish to know what's happened, while allowing those who are into memeology to try to decypher the announcement content itself.

Have the tag if you want. No one is protesting that even if we don't think it's necessary. We're protesting the way he wants it done, which detracts from the post.

[Artifex]

I'm torn. 

 

On one hand, the needless and nearly nonsensical announcements are annoying, and I would like them to stop already. 

 

On the other, I do enjoy the occasional spiced up post. 

[Lucifer Morningstar]

While we're at it we may as well have another tag for micros. But let's face it, this idea is kinda unnecessary especially when you take Dio's point into account. The amount of spam on this subforum is miniscule and last happened when RyanK last posted here.

 

Overall this is pointless since the mods do a good job at locking down spam threads

[Horsecock]

Finally. The shitposting spam in this forum has become unbearable lately. Thanks, Sheepy!

[Migraine d'al Braskia]

ALEX, YOU CALLED US FOR THIS!?