NuEnvoys

Enya

I have some questions about the new reporting system, and noticed that there's not a megathread for such questions and comments. Most of the interaction has been on the unofficial Discord, and that can make it hard to assemble a FAQ to stop covering the same ground over and over! So:

Also was it ever answered how much support a report needs to make it past consideration, what qualifies as "enough support"?. Are "support with changes" votes counted as support, or as less than full support?

Is support taken in aggregate for the Report or does a single solution need to have enough upvotes for the report to go through? I.E: The difference between 5 votes for solution 1, 5 for 2; and 10 votes for solution 1, 0 for 2.

I want to clarify something with the Pending stage logistics. You pass consideration stage and go into review stage when you can rewrite the report. Can people still comment on the report during the review stage? Once a report is pushed to pending, can the author still edit it? My understanding is that up until AFTER the review stage, the only people who are allowed to comment on a report are those that have supported it or done a loophole to pretend to support it... if reports are locked before they go to open commenting, that seems like a problem if the only people the reporter has heard feedback for support the report. With that in mind, the best strategy to providing real input appears to be to just support everything so you can comment on it and vote it down in pending, but that wastes everyone's time... 

I suggest that either everyone be allowed to comment on reports without jumping through supporting hoops, and/or more specifically that envoys (that is: org leadership) be allowed more free commenting in general to address issues with not being able to correct facts/etc on reports. 

Enya

Also I suggest that the system should require reports to bear a title before they go through any of the stages beyond draft. 

EDIT: Also can we get a notation on REPORT LIST of which reports we've voted on already? Unlike old envoys the cycle is constantly rolling, so you won't necessarily be able to just go down the list once and trust you're done in future. Having to doublecheck into every report is tedious. It might also be good to have some kind of display on REPORT LIST of how long each report has left until its next stage. 

Xenthos

There is a workaround to the comment and support thing: You can support, then comment, then clear your support.  Note that this was Orael's suggestion: because it exists he is rethinking the requirement to support in order to comment (in initial implementation this was not a thing because you could not clear your support).

Requiring a title would be nice, that blank one I suggested the report writer message Orael to get a title added.

Visual cue on which ones you have voted on is also a great idea.

The "support required" is very vague.  It was even asked in the Q&A thing and got a vague response, basically, they are monitoring and reviewing activity by eyesight to gauge what decent support is, I guess?  Maybe this first set of reports will get official levels determined.  The engagement on the things is incredibly low.  It is worse than Envoys so far!

I am hoping to see that pick up, and maybe a thread like this will help.

Edit: For people who want to get involved, ask on Discord or forum-message me.  If you have an idea I can help set it up for you with commands to submit your proposal and solutions so you can see how it works.  I will add a template here when I get home tonight (unless someone wants to go ahead and do it before then!).

Please get involved, go vote on the things that will improve Lusternia.  These reports take ages to cycle through, so let's get them off to a good start!

Enya

It might also help engagement once actual envoys are going again, if it hasn't already. Frankly, I think it would still be a good idea to have "special envoys" appointed from a pool of people who are INTERESTED in dealing with reports, instead of appointing people who might have zero interest in the reporting system but who get roped in via guild leadership etc. 

Enya

It's a good idea to vote support across the board on any report you like any solution of, even if you do not support individual solutions. It's also a good idea to have every report contain the maximum number of solutions. I'd suggest also just voting option one across the board, not support with changes. Doing these things increases the chances of the solution you do like making it through the consideration phase. 

It's not clear if multiple support votes on a single report increases its chances of passing the consideration stage. Either A) It does help, it does not help, or C) it hurts. In the case of A or B, you should absolutely engage in this practice. C seems both quite unlikely and very unfair to me, but it's technically possible! 

Likewise, "support with a change"  might count as less than a full support vote. The same math ensues. 

This will make it harder for a report creator to go through the review process, so after voting support please do comment to clarify the meaning of your voting. 

Xenthos

Here's a template. I lifted the idea from this thread regarding families:
https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3353/family-system/p1

Note: If you want to use this one, please make sure that someone else hasn't already done it first! We don't need multiple copies of the same report floating around, I'm just using it as an example to make your report writing seem less daunting than it does at first glance.

Step 1: Create your report!
REPORT CREATE. This creates a blank report for you to work with and you are given an ID# to work with.
REPORT #01190601 has been created on your behalf.

Step 2: Give your report a title! Note that the title respects whatever capitalization you enter, so type it out the way you want it to appear for others to read.
REPORT 01190601 TITLE Family Honour Gain

Step 3: Set your problem! You should try to provide as much information here to get the problem across, without adding so much that people's eyes glaze over. This part can be difficult, since you get no formatting, just a single paragraph of text. Something like the following should work, however.
REPORT 01190601 PROBLEM Family honour gain uses an overly complex algorithm to determine how much each tick of honour is worth, which is made worse by not being transparent about what is actually being generated. You cannot see in the logs how much an activity resulted in, but it can be observed that certain actions (like influencing denizens in a revolt) provide essentially no honour at all. Many honour ticks have a base of either 50 or 100 points, but the algorithm that reduces 100 points to approximately 40 when a family has high honour also reduces a 50-point tick down to about 1 point (rendering it essentially meaningless).

Step 4: Whew, that was a long one... now we get to the fun part, writing our solutions!
REPORT 01190601 SOLUTION 1 Change the algorithm for family honour gain to be a flat percentage reduction that increases as the family's honour grows. Base the %age reduction off of the current 100-point ticks (so if under the current system a 100 point tick is reduced to 40 points, that same 40% would be applied to all other honour gains).
REPORT 01190601 SOLUTION 2 Change the algorithm for family honour gain to something more equitable. (Note: This is not the best of solutions because it's so vague, I'm leaving it here as an example, but you can do this for your first stage of a report to invite Support With Change comments and allow people to put in their ideas).
REPORT 01190601 SOLUTION 3 In addition to solutions 1 or 2, append the amount of honour gained or loss at the end of each entry in the family log.

Step 5: Review your report to make sure it looks the way you want it to.
REPORT 01190601

Step 6: If it looks good, submit it for review & comment!
REPORT 01190601 CONSIDER CONFIRM

Step 7: Vote on your report! (I've noticed that a number of people have put up a report and then not voted on their own, you're allowed to support what you put up!).
REPORT 01190601 VOTE 1 SUPPORT
REPORT 01190601 VOTE 2 SUPPORT
REPORT 01190601 VOTE 3 SUPPORT

And that's it. It's a fair bit of work, but this lets you put your ideas forward for review. Make sure to let other people know you've put up a report so that they can go vote and comment on it as well!

While you're at it, go vote to support the other reports as well!

Deichtine

I don't really get or like the weird two stage process either.

Currently if you don't like a report in the first stage your best option is to just ignore it. Voting on it gives it support, ignoring it can stop it from going to the next stage if enough people ignore it.

It makes more sense to me to have it as view able draft then straight to pending, cut out the consideration stage.

I could see a few very good reports just not pass the first stage due to lack of interest.

Enya

That's a lot of why I'd like some clarity on how things work. Right now the exact parameters are up in the air, waiting to see how this first few reports go and that makes sense, but it'd be easier to trust in the system if it was more transparent. 

Orael

I've added some of the changes suggested here and elsewhere to the reporting system. Please consult the latest changelog for those changes.

As far as what 'enough support' entitles: There are two general reasons we're keeping this vague.
 1) It's in flux currently. We want the required support to be reasonable so we're keeping an eye on all the reports currently and will adjust as necessary once we see how much activity is rolling through them
 2) The intent of the system is for people to vote for the solutions they want and against the ones they don't want. We don't want people voting support for solutions they don't want just to move their report forward. Revealing the details of how support works only allows players to figure out the optimum voting strategy to move their report forward rather than what they really feel/want. We're doing out best to remove partisanship and gaming from this system, and this is one of the methods we're using to do that.

Deichtine

Can we look at lowering the required support needed to get through the first stage.

We've had a small number of fairly reasonable and from what I hear in chatter well liked reports get bounced due to not enough support. 

Atm it feels like we're just delaying some nice reports so the writer has to spend more time begging for comments.  

Bairloch

It told me I can't support anything because I haven't been in the world long enough, or something like that. Bair is 123, what's the cutoff?

Ayisdra

Bairloch said:

It told me I can't support anything because I haven't been in the world long enough, or something like that. Bair is 123, what's the cutoff?

You need to be able to mentor (300 hours played time and level 50) and have a vote weight of 5 in order to vote.

Bairloch

must be my "vote weight" whatever that is... Score says I'm able to mentor.
oh, yep, there it is, just 3.

Ayisdra

Bairloch said:

must be my "vote weight" whatever that is... Score says I'm able to mentor.
oh, yep, there it is, just 3.

Vote Weight is how many votes your vote actually counts for in elections. It is a function of online time (spent outside a manse) over X RL days (I want to say it is 30 days, but that might not be right.).

Enya

Is vote weight used in the reporting system at all beyond minimum 5 to participate, I wonder?

Vatul

Hi everyone!

Reports have rolled over, and unfortunately it looks like many of the considered have been set pending! We need more votes and eyes on these reports so far. Please make sure you take a look at things you aren't interested in too.

Many envoys have resubmitted some reports, while others have decided to focus on a new report for more votes and important fixes or changes.

Please let me know if there are any reports you'd like to see written or submitted. I will be on discord available, or by message here.

Orael

Deichtine said:

Can we look at lowering the required support needed to get through the first stage.

We've had a small number of fairly reasonable and from what I hear in chatter well liked reports get bounced due to not enough support. 

Atm it feels like we're just delaying some nice reports so the writer has to spend more time begging for comments.  

We are monitoring the reports as they go through. 

It's important to point out that the purpose of this system isn't to allow every report that gets posted through, but ones that are generally agreed upon by the player base as needed. One of the stated goals is to give a route for players to implement changes, but also prevent us from getting overwhelmed by reports going through. We want to focus on the reports the player base as a whole wants us to implement.

If they really are 'fairly reasonable' and 'well liked' reports, they shouldn't have an issue getting to the next stage.

Shaddus

The system sent me a message saying my report was going to get deleted in two days if I didn't set it to Pending. Was that the wrong thing to do?

Bairloch

What's the intent of not allowing me to vote? I mean, I'm active, I'm playing, I'm always on here talking and contributing, but I can't vote. What's the value add?

Orael

Shaddus said:

The system sent me a message saying my report was going to get deleted in two days if I didn't set it to Pending. Was that the wrong thing to do?

Bug this please - likely just a bug, if you're set to pending, you should be good.

Bairloch said:

What's the intent of not allowing me to vote? I mean, I'm active, I'm playing, I'm always on here talking and contributing, but I can't vote. What's the value add?

There is no intent to not allow you to vote, the intent is to have limitations on who can participate to prevent any sort of misuse/abuse of the system. We set a certain minimum playtime to prevent the creation of new characters for the sole purpose of voting/reporting and we have a minimum vote weight to determine recent activity in order to allow players who understand current mechanics to vote.

Bairloch

Sorry, I phrased that wrong. Thanks for the answer.
I play pretty much every day. What do I have to do to get my weight up?

Enya

It's based on time online in public areas (not manses), so be online for longer stretches.

Stratas

Vote weight also seems to update once a week (weave on Sunday, iirc) so don't fret about why it's not increasing until then

Enya

It also considers a rolling window of the past 30 days so it might take more than a week to update significantly. 

Deichtine

Orael said:

If they really are 'fairly reasonable' and 'well liked' reports, they shouldn't have an issue getting to the next stage.

The conversations I'm getting is that for class specific reports people don't want to comment or support them without direct experience.

Perhaps you could look at lowering the support required for non general skills to avoid this problematic issue we're having with the new system if you don't want to look at a general lowering.

Vatul

Bairloch said:

Sorry, I phrased that wrong. Thanks for the answer.
I play pretty much every day. What do I have to do to get my weight up?

The turnover is based on hours played per week I think? Correct me if I’m wrong. As long as you aren’t in your manse it should count toward your activity. 

Orael

Deichtine said:

Orael said:

If they really are 'fairly reasonable' and 'well liked' reports, they shouldn't have an issue getting to the next stage.

The conversations I'm getting is that for class specific reports people don't want to comment or support them without direct experience.

Perhaps you could look at lowering the support required for non general skills to avoid this problematic issue we're having with the new system if you don't want to look at a general lowering.

Again, to reiterate, the major intent of this system is to allow everyone (that meets the requirements) a voice. If they are choosing not to vote, that is their prerogative but that doesn't necessarily mean we need to adjust the whole system. Again, not every report is intended to make it to the final step, only the reports that a majority of the players want. This is so we can focus our time on the reports that benefit the most players and add the most value. We just simply don't have time to do every change that a few people want, no matter how reasonable or sensible the changes are.

Bairloch

And that is a great intention. But it took me a bit to figure out how to vote, then, when I got the syntax down, it told me I couldn't. And the error message was vague enough that I had to come on here and ask what it meant.
I think it could be more straightforward and transparent. Right now, in my opinion, you're not getting everyone who wants to vote (that meets the requirements), you're getting everyone who wants to vote (that meets the requirements) and who has the patience to navigate the system. Again, just my opinion.

Orael

I'm all about making the system as easy to navigate as possible, so if you have ideas on how to make that system easier to navigate, let me know. I've made a whole bunch of changes based on player suggestions (including from this thread) in order to make it as easy to use as possible. 

If you think there could be a better error message, throw out a suggestion. It's clear enough to me, but I'm familiar with the system. 

Bairloch

I'll try again and get some screenshots and see what i can come up with.

Bairloch

Not quite the same seeing it and navigating it the second time. I was able to actually get to the list and read a few with less confusion. But, you gotta admit, that's a lot of options and, at least for a voter, most of them are unnecessary. They just want to see what's up for vote and place their vote.
Also, "help vote" gets you the Topmudsites helpfile and not this, which is not ideal and of questionable usefulness anyway. "help report" gets you nothing, but that's actually fine since I'm not reporting anything, but if someone knew the command was report and nothing else, that would be frustrating. Help envoy gets you what you need, but that isn't intuitive at all. Especially for newbies who have no idea what the envoy system is/was.
Help report should be mapped to something since it is the command we're using.
You really need a second command and helpfile for the people who just want to see what's available for voting. You can leave this all set the way it is, but there needs to be something more intuitive (like "vote") aliased to this. Maybe "votereport" or some other awkward construction. But, ideally, the voting and reporting should be separate and use separate commands. Then someone just wanting to vote would put in say "votelist" see the list of things they can vote on, and some appropriate syntax, and make their vote.

When I try to vote...

report 01191201 vote 1
You must spend more time in the realms before you can participate.

That's all I get. And, with the difficulty of finding the "help envoy" page I was completely lost. It made no sense to me as my character is over 100 years old. The error should be context specific. For me, it should have said something like "You must get a higher vote weight to participate". Then at least I could have looked up vote weight. For others who don't have the time in game to be a mentor, it could have said "You need to be able to mentor to participate" and they could have looked up mentoring.

More granular, more detail, and better pointers. Hopefully some of this is helpful.