The NSFL Media Problem

[37thchamber]

Adding another section in media/forum for personal stories that pay out at a fraction of regular media. What would the definition of “regular media” be? Something that can be read by a group of graders, the media grading team, and a majority of the team can see that the media is league related and required effort in order to get typed up. Things like game summaries, statistical analysis, history of teams or players that talks about their stats or games, sim analysis, and media of that nature would still be considered and graded out like regular media and would keep bonus days from seeming like “personal story time.” Those stories have their place but perhaps in another area where like-minded media can fit together.

I hate this idea.

The majority of my media since I joined has been character driven. That's literally the reason I joined this league in the first place. It's a big factor in why I originally built the wiki (and you'll notice, the requirements for the wiki PT still steer people in that direction).

The fact that sim leagues are basically sports D&D with extra steps is probably one of the major factors in why a lot of people are here, in fact. "Personal story time" as you put it, is a major part of how you personalise your experience. And you're saying we should effectively penalise people who write about the setting and characters in it? Hell no.

If you're suggesting there should be some kind of overarching rubric for written media in general to avoid people putting out silly media pieces... I can understand the idea... I just don't see how you implement one fairly.

Where do you draw the line? I'm not seeing any reason why this wouldn't fall under your "personal story time" category. There's basically no mention of actual game stats etc and it's not really about the league as a whole. It's about two characters, chiefly, with little to no consideration given to their sim performances (because one is long retired and the other hasn't even been created yet).

What about this or this? Both are clearly written tongue-in-cheek and don't really talk about the league itself. Again, the focus is on specific characters, with no real relevance to their performances in the sim.

This is before I even talk about the wiki. Which is mostly character specific writing. How much of that is "regular articles" and how much is "personal story time" ..? How do we apportion the payouts in that case? Currently, non PT wiki writing pays out at written media rate plus a bonus. But based on what you're saying here, a lot of it should be paid out at a fraction of that.

I don't think you can fairly arbitrate with fixed rules how a media piece should be paid out. It's always going to be up to the grader to determine that (as it is with graphics). The best you can do is provide some sort of rubric that touches on the main points expected. Even then, tbh, you'll need to be a lot more expansive than "game summaries, statistical analysis, history of teams or players that talks about their stats or games, sim analysis, and media of that nature" -- because this list, as illustrated above, would exclude plenty of perfectly valid media from a fair payout.

As a general rule, I think if you're implementing rules like you propose, you cannot structure them in a way that effectively limits user freedom. If I can't make as much cash writing about characters (as I prefer to), I'm just as likely to not write at all as I am to write about the sim results or whatever. Surely that's not conducive to user retention, which presumably, is the goal of the league.