Posting Guidelines

[Markus Heinsohn]

This forum is intended to list all OOTP 2006 & 2007 online leagues in one single place.

Please post your online league here, along with a brief description, in this format:

- League name
- League URL
- League type (historical, fictional, etc)
- Special league rules
- Number of teams
- OOTP version

Please reply to your online league thread of you have openings available!

Thanks you!
Markus

PS: All threads that do not match these guidelines will be deleted.

[Raderick]

Looks like my idea got implimented!

Will this rule get implimented in the other online league forums?

[kq76]

How do you guys feel about Markus's above rule that threads that don't follow his format will be deleted? I don't think it's ever been followed and I thought it was ridiculous when he first posted it (not that the info displayed like that isn't nice just that you'd be deleting nearly every thread), but after going through so many threads this morning trying to quickly get information on the leagues (it's unreal how little info some people put, some not even a link) I think it just might be a good idea if it was followed or at least tried for awhile. I'd make a more clearly titled warning thread, maybe change the list a bit, and give it a week or so before deleting any threads, but after a little while people might actually get it and follow it. Thoughts? Overall the posters on this board have been pretty good about following it on their own, but it would help if everybody did.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by kq76

How do you guys feel about Markus's above rule that threads that don't follow his format will be deleted? I don't think it's ever been followed and I thought it was ridiculous when he first posted it (not that the info displayed like that isn't nice just that you'd be deleting nearly every thread), but after going through so many threads this morning trying to quickly get information on the leagues (it's unreal how little info some people put, some not even a link) I think it just might be a good idea if it was followed or at least tried for awhile. I'd make a more clearly titled warning thread, maybe change the list a bit, and give it a week or so before deleting any threads, but after a little while people might actually get it and follow it. Thoughts? Overall the posters on this board have been pretty good about following it on their own, but it would help if everybody did.

Agree 100%. Some of the posts are so lacking in information that I often pass on a league that might otherwise interest me. I don't think it's asking too much for people to follow these guidelines. If they're really serious about recruiting owners then they shouldn't mind making the effort to provide the requested information.

[kq76]

I was hoping to get more input than this, but seeing as how what we did get is 100% in agreeance we'll move forward.

Now I don't want to go too far in deleting threads by people who at least tried to meet the requirements, but we should enforce it to a point where if you don't at least try then it will be deleted. Some are probably going to complain regardless, but I just want say that while what gets deleted and what doesn't might seem inconsistent, I'm going to at least try to be consistent. At the end of the day it's about trying to make it easier to match people and leagues up and hopefully that will happen.

What I was thinking was to only judge threads that were started after a certain date (not ones that are bumped up a year later, maybe those should be closed?) and then once anyone (not just myself) has posted asking the original poster to conform to the guidelines they'll then have say 72 hours (too long, too short?) to do so or risk their thread being deleted. Does that sound fair enough?

If someone is a repeat offender, however, they don't get the benefit of the warning and grace period, I'll just delete their threads that don't meet the reqs as soon as I see them. I'll have to keep a list. In fact, I think I'll just issue them a board warning to make sure they get the point. They can be set to expire so there shouldn't be any worry over getting banned over just this.

Finally, I'm not a big fan of Markus's list. While it is short which is nice, it doesn't include a lot of things I think most people look for. My suggested list is below, but I worry it might be too long. The whole point of making people include it is to help online leagues, but if it's too much work it defeats the point by discouraging people from posting at all. So, I'd like some feedback on it and feel free to post your suggested lists. I'll try to include some brief reasoning for each inclusion.

As I'd still like to get some more input/feedback, I won't start checking threads yet. I'll announce it in this thread once I do start. I'd like to start next week.

My Suggested List:

Full League Name (Initials): -you need to easily differentiate and recoginize leagues somehow
Main URL: -why some ads don't include this as a must for an online league is beyond me, even if you haven't started yet
Reports URL: -not absolutely necessary, but personally I find it makes checking a league so much easier if I can easily find the reports, yet some leagues it's near impossible to find a link to them
Boards URL: -not absolutely necessary, but good to see activity and check up on questions you think might be answered in the forum, but, again, sometimes the link is difficult to find
Commissioner(s) OOTP Forum Username(s): -quick rep check and good if you want to contact the boss with questions
Email Address: -necessary to contact for questions, some people like AIM, but everybody uses email to some degree
OOTP Version: (9, '07/8, '06, 6.x, 5) -quick check to see if an ad is posted on the right board, but checking the reports are more reliable as sometimes they don't match
Game Needed: (No, Preferred, Required) -necessary if you'd like to join a league, but don't have the game or if you don't want to be bothered with people who don't have it
Players: (Fictional, Historical, Modern (real current / fictional futuristic), Mixed (other)) -good to quickly check whether it fits what you're looking for
# of Teams: -not absolutely necessary, but some people prefer small leagues, some large leagues
Export Deadlines Days And Times: -not absolutely necessary in my mind, but I suspect other people might very much like to quickly know this
League Time Per Sim: -not absolutely necessary probably most of the time, but some might like to quickly exclude fast or slow moving leagues
First Season: -not absolutely necessary, but in conjunction with the previous and last inclusions it gives you a good idea of how long the league has been running, but some people cheat in my mind by simming several years before starting their leagues and then counting the very first year as their first season; I'm not a fan of saying how many seasons you've been running as that is usually not updated whereas even if latest season isn't updated you can quickly check that on the reports
Latest Season: -not absolutely necessary, but it gives somebody a good quick idea of where in time a league is, especially for historical and modern leagues
Special Rules & Settings: -not absolutely necessary, but I think a lot of leagues would and should include some things that separate it from others
Currently Available Teams: -why don't all ads do this? people should even update their original posts in their thread, not just post an update at the end

I think a list like the above would give someone a lot of info very quickly, but, again, is it all too much to ask advertisers to do?

[Cooleyvol]

I think its too much to ask a commish to do to include all of that information. That information can easily be found by going to the league site if its set up correctly.

Why is there a need to 'categorize' league posts into some sort of form?

In addition, not everyone is going to do as they're 'told', so what happens then? Are you going to delete threads that don't comply thereby creating more work for the mod and more headache for those looking for leagues?

IMO, it'll further drive the online community away from posting here.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

I think its too much to ask a commish to do to include all of that information. That information can easily be found by going to the league site if its set up correctly.

Yeah, as I've said I worry it might be too much, but I think it would help from a looking for a league perspective.

As you said, if the league is set up right then all of that info shouldn't be hard to find, but I think you just might be surprised how difficult it is to find a lot of that info sometimes. What you and I might think of being as obvious stuff you should make easy to find, a lot just don't seem to think likewise.

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

Why is there a need to 'categorize' league posts into some sort of form?

From a mainly just posting ads perspective, I don't think one might see it (I didn't when I just commished and almost never looked for leagues). But if you often look for leagues that fit certain criteria, I think you'd easily see how useful this is. I agree, when Markus first posted that I thought it was a bit absurd to delete any threads that don't meet the requirements, but after recently going through numerous ads and having done it lots long ago when updating the IOLD I did see how useful it would be.

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

In addition, not everyone is going to do as they're 'told', so what happens then? Are you going to delete threads that don't comply thereby creating more work for the mod and more headache for those looking for leagues?

Like I said above, my idea was (for anyone) to post asking them to include it and that if they don't after a certain time then the thread gets deleted (or just closed, but if they don't care about not getting replies then that's not much of a threat). Yeah, it's more work for me, but if it gets to be too much then we can obviously either tweak the policy or scrap it completely. I'm pretty sure it's less work for people looking for leagues, not more. It is more work for advertisers, but the whole point is that that extra work should be rewarded with more interest from people looking for leagues. Maybe everything will be okay; the list just needs to be shorter.

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

IMO, it'll further drive the online community away from posting here.

Possibly, and that's why I wanted to hash it out here first. Thanks for the post.

[Treches]

I understand your point, but most people won't follow those rules anyway. Cooley summed it all up.

[Raderick]

Originally Posted by Treches

I understand your point, but most people won't follow those rules anyway. Cooley summed it all up.

For a long time people were in fact following this guideline until very recently.

[kq76]

Rule enforced starting tomorrow. See: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post2450892

[Cooleyvol]

90 day warning? Seriously?

[treedom]

Wow, a warning? Really? That's kind of...draconian. I thought the point of this subforum was for comishes to advertise their leagues, not to scare them away. I don't get why having threads that don't comply to this format is so utterly undesirable that it requires handing out 1/4 of a banning if it's not followed. Damn. Maybe this moderating thing is going to your head.

Sorrym but I just can't get over how out there this rule is. Wow.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

90 day warning? Seriously?

Seriously. No one should get banned by it. It's just to get people to do it without making others chase after them. Raderick was right: until recently a lot of (most?) people on the OOTP8 board were pretty good about following it all on their own. Now you just have even more reason to do it. Maybe we'll change it before OOTP9 is released to an even sooner expiring warning, but I wanted something that has some teeth to it but at the same time isn't permanent. Again, let's try it. If it fails, we'll try something else or scrap it completely.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by treedom

Wow, a warning? Really? That's kind of...draconian. I thought the point of this subforum was for comishes to advertise their leagues, not to scare them away. I don't get why having threads that don't comply to this format is so utterly undesirable that it requires handing out 1/4 of a banning if it's not followed. Damn. Maybe this moderating thing is going to your head.

Sorrym but I just can't get over how out there this rule is. Wow.

I'm pretty sure I gave ample time for this to be hashed out. Cooleyvol and Treches spoke out. If others had a problem with it, I wish they would have said something earlier. Still, there's time to discuss it.

Here, help me out. Say you're trying to get people to include this list in their ads. Say a lot do, but a lot don't. So you delete the threads that don't include it but there's no warning given out. But, it keeps happening over and over again and some people won't listen (like people posting OOTP6 ads on the OOTP2006 board). What should you do, just keep wasting your time deleting ads or give out an expiring warning so that people actually do it? You could say forget deleting the threads altogether, but some of us firmly believe this helps people looking for leagues. Given that you want to get people to do this, what would you do?

[kq76]

I moved Cooley's latest post and my reply to this thread to keep the discussion all in the one thread.

[treedom]

Originally Posted by kq76

I'm pretty sure I gave ample time for this to be hashed out. Cooleyvol and Treches spoke out. If others had a problem with it, I wish they would have said something earlier. Still, there's time to discuss it.

Here, help me out. Say you're trying to get people to include this list in their ads. Say a lot do, but a lot don't. So you delete the threads that don't include it but there's no warning given out. But, it keeps happening over and over again and some people won't listen (like people posting OOTP6 ads on the OOTP2006 board). What should you do, just keep wasting your time deleting ads or give out an expiring warning so that people actually do it? You could say forget deleting the threads altogether, but some of us firmly believe this helps people looking for leagues. Given that you want to get people to do this, what would you do?

What I would do is remember that, in the end, this subforum is here to nurture the online community, and the worst you could do for that community, worse than having a bunch of threads that don't follow these posting conventions, is to start handing out warnings to the most important members of this community; the ones running leagues. I just see this rule as being close to killing the patient to cure the disease.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by treedom

What I would do is remember that, in the end, this subforum is here to nurture the online community, and the worst you could do for that community, worse than having a bunch of threads that don't follow these posting conventions, is to start handing out warnings to the most important members of this community; the ones running leagues. I just see this rule as being close to killing the patient to cure the disease.

I agree. I'm just not convinced that simple warnings are going to do that.

Well, here are two other options:

b) You get one freebie. After that you start getting warnings.

c) No warnings are given. Threads are just deleted and that's it.

B is what I initially proposed above, but it's more work. C has little bite to it, but maybe the threat of thread deletion really is all that's needed. After all, a lot of people were doing it on their own when threads were never deleted for it. Eh, you've convinced me; we should try C first.

Anything else?

[rem]

Wow!! What a heavy-handed misplaced policy to take.

[English_Ray]

Originally Posted by kq76

I'm pretty sure I gave ample time for this to be hashed out. Cooleyvol and Treches spoke out. If others had a problem with it, I wish they would have said something earlier. Still, there's time to discuss it.

Here, help me out. Say you're trying to get people to include this list in their ads. Say a lot do, but a lot don't. So you delete the threads that don't include it but there's no warning given out. But, it keeps happening over and over again and some people won't listen (like people posting OOTP6 ads on the OOTP2006 board). What should you do, just keep wasting your time deleting ads or give out an expiring warning so that people actually do it? You could say forget deleting the threads altogether, but some of us firmly believe this helps people looking for leagues. Given that you want to get people to do this, what would you do?

You leave all the threads, don't delete any, don't hand out warnings. People should be able to post however they want to advertise their league, and it won't help people find the league they want if half the posts are deleted.

BUT, have a sticky thread, in which each league can have one post, using the template you set out. Its an quick, easy reference guide for people seeking a league, can be constantly updated by commishs etc editing their own posts, and can contain links to the relevent threads in the rest of the forum. And from that delete any posts that don't follow the template.

Seriously, I don't play in any online leagues at the mo, but I cannot think of a worse idea than deleting threads and warning people for not following a template post when all they are trying to do is bring people together to play this game. Loads of people have been posting recently that these forums are dead, and over-policing, thread deletion and heavy-handed warnings are a sure-fire way to kill a thriving community.

My

[Bluenoser]

I think it's overkill on the amount of information being asked for. What Markus posted originally was fine. It just needs to be adheared to.