In reply to Saudi Arabia (msg # 107):

Again I'd like to ask what others thought of this turns news articles? Is it worth management setting things out with a theme  or is no one that bothered?

Anyone? Seriously, just some kind of indication on if you even like them?

If there's no responses then all we can assume is no one cares, at which point we'll just revert back to the original style because its easier, if less fun for us making it and (I hope) you reading it

Have people found any of the Easter eggs I left around, like Dennis?

Has anyone even tried to put their own comments in the comments sections of pages? Can you do that or did we mess up the permissions for that?

In reply to Co-GM (msg # 109):

Well, it looks really cool, but I'm afraid that this would increase amount of work and would slow down the game, and if it is the case, then I think this finery is unjustified (unless it is real fun for Kelvin and you in making it).

Comments section is not working for me, I thought it was under construction :)

Well. I already did...


I've not tried. I'll do so that we can see it...

Hence me quoting the bit where I asked for any other opinions.






Hmmm... I'll have to double check. Could have sworn we got the permissions sorted though...

Could you please tell us how to post a comment in the news?

In reply to Germany (msg # 113):

When you go on to a page with comments at the bottom, so lets say page 2 you should see in the bottom right hand corner a circle with a pencil inside it?

If you click that you can edit the page, and thus make changes to the comments sections at the bottom of pages?

If that button is not there, then we've not got the permissions set up right.

I'm afraid I don't see it...

In reply to Germany (msg # 115):

You do not see this icon?
https://docs.google.com/viewer...c1NjAxYzUwMDU4YzYwNA

In reply to Referee (msg # 116):

No I don't see it.

Nope.

This link sends me to the Settlement spreadsheet...

If you mean the icon you showed in the HP, no, I don't see it.

Ok, lets try this again:
This is a screen capture of the image
https://sites.google.com/site/...n.JPG?attredirects=0

The site permissions swear that "Anyone (sign-in required) Can edit" I am not sure exactly what 'sign-in' means in this context. In messing around a bit it seems to mean you will not get the icon if you are using Microsoft Edge browser. However, when using Google Chrome browser AND you show signed in to Google in the upper right corner e.g. an orange circle with the first letter of your name, then the icon will appear.

Does any of this work better for anyone?
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:30, Wed 19 Dec 2018.

In reply to Referee (msg # 120):

I can't see it now either, no.

Now that the turn is closed:

Quick answer:

I prefer the older fromat. In fact, IMHO, the best format to keep them easy to read and infomative would be something like the JTAS News Service in Travellr (I asume you know it), that was quite similar to the older one.

Longer answer:

• I see this format quite confusing, as one must (aside from logging in, something you didn't need in the older format, but that's not a mjor issue) jump from page to page to see more news, instead of just scrolling (something you also must do in this format if there are several news in a page.
• I see no point in some of the pages (as obituaries or horoscope) fro mthe game POV, as I cannot think in many articles for them that could really have game impact, but this can be just my lack of imagination.
• I find this new format to be less informative than the earlier one. As (according your own explanation) the first news were mostly color, and the other news are players' (all of them,unless I cannot see some, mine, BTW), there's no information from "neutral" sources.
• This puts most the info we receive from what's going on in the players' actions section, but this ignores the actions done by NPCs (e.g. Italy was involved in Lybia, and we have no news about how is this going).

As a resume:

I miss the info (relevant or red herrings) given in former turns by the news section, and find this new format not worth the effort you invested on it, as I see no advantages (color aside, but, as much as I like color, as my HP show, if color goes against info, I see it a hindrance instead of an asset).

Side note:

Another point is that I don't like in general is this policy to quizz that give response PAs. This might have a maning if it encouraged the players to participate more, but as such it seems to have been a failure (again, as the only articles I can see are mine). See taht if really I'm the only to have sent articles, according the letter of Kelvin End of Turn message, I should have been given a lot of response PAs, as my articles are clearly the best ones, even if only by default, but even I think this would have been quite unbalancing for the game...

Just a question, who'e now playing US right now?

Has Derek retourned or it will be played by Liam for the time being?

In reply to Germany (msg # 123):

Currently it's myself still

In reply to Germany (msg # 122):

>I should have been given a lot of response PAs, as my articles are clearly the best
>ones, even if only by default,
No, that is not the conditions that I laid out in the Feb 3 message. Your articles got 0 valid votes, so you got 0 points.


>Has Derek retourned or it will be played by Liam for the time being?
He promised to return in May. I will believe that when I see it, so for now we are proceeding ahead with Liam change.


Doing final details now on getting the new turn started. A few more days at most.

Do you mean I should have voted myself for the articles, so they would have been the most voted ;)?

Now seriously, as I already stated, this would have been too unbalancing for even myself claiming them.

In reply to Germany (msg # 126):

You could have tried, that is why I had put in the Feb3rd message the words "..the GM will choose who based on..". Everything in the game always happens at the pleasure of the GM.

Everything.

Always.

I would propose to return to the previous way of articles' visualization but make a separate page for each piece of news (there can be a single "root" page for each turn which contains links to all the articles). This would allow to place links in the History page of each nation to the relevant articles at will, and/or create pages dedicated to a certain event with links to the related news (thus "wikifying" the whole site).
I'm sure it is a better and newcomer-friendlier way to structure information.

Do you mean more or less like the NPCs page, but puting the news hadlines as the names of the NPCs are?

I like it, if it's not too dificult to do...

In reply to Germany (msg # 129):

I am considering producing audio content as part of the news, maybe a podcast style thing, or a news program broadcast system wide, or something in that kind of vein.

I've never done something like this, but there's only one way to find out how to! And that's google and giving it a shot.

I have to ask, does anyone have experience in this kind of thing (Podcasting etc)

Would people be interested in contributing their voice to this?

Would people find this fun/interesting?

This would be all be for the fun of doing it and to give us a different way to set the tone of the world.

I'm afraid I cannot help in this, as my computer skill is quite limited and have no experience in podcasting.


Frankly, I find this news system, while very colorful (something I tried to keep since I joined the game), quite  confusing.

In fact, after trying to read them, I have little (if any) idea on what's going on in the world. THe former system, while lacked all this color, gave me the (maybe false) feeling of at least knowing a Little of what's going on and what evnts are ocurrying (aside from player's actions, that now are posted).

I'm afraid this will add more to confusion than to fun/interest.

In reply to Germany (msg # 131):

The problem with the old style of articles was that no one knew what was relevant and what was not and it was a massive info dump for new players - we lost time and potential players to that style of news.

Flavour and player action needs to be differentiated - now we have important information being supplied by the GM in a list of actions, as posts on here saying what NPCs are doing when its important to the world and info given with budgets & orders.

We have separated the actual meat of 'what is going on' and the news becomes more about putting together something that captures the zeitgeist of that turn.

NPCs can only do so much, and story is coming more and more from the players interactions - for this to work we need to remove all the superfluous nonsense we used to publish that just distracted from actual player interaction.

What is happening is covered by your budget and the other resources, what the world feels like to those in it is what we're trying to capture in the news now.

I hope that makes sense?