Should we have turnchats? (Revised)

- Yes, Mandatory (the game session shall nominally require to be accompanied by a chat session).
- Yes, Optional (DP (or other) has the choice whether to hold a chat session).
- Yes, Abstain (Yes on turnchat don't care mandatory or optional)
- No (Official Turnchats are essentially forbidden)
- Abstain

Again, Powers of a turnchat will be discussed later assuming the measure passes.

I used the phrasing

"the game session shall nominally require to be accompanied by a chat session" to allow the possibility to work in later RARE exception.

But to establish as a rule we should make sure we maintain turnchats as the primary session. But allow some relaxation in the results later, in case we want to allow a rare exception.

My fear with pure optional, is we'll get a term free of turnchats and participation may wane.

I like turnchats for the following reason:

1 - "Paper"trail (Pixeltrail?).
2 - Encourages participation. Citizens can see what's going on in the game, and even come to the chat for roleplay.
3 - If the DP doesn't show up, there's no way of knowing if the DP had an "offline session".
4 - And this horse has been beaten until it was dead, and is still being beaten... Allows for advisors to give advice to the DP in special situations. (i.e., another civ builds a city within 2 tiles of where we wanted to build, or we find a new resource and Trade or its' equivalent wants to trade it since there was a prior poll saying we'd like to trade.)

Yes, Mandantory Turnchats

My vote for yes "mandatory" means that I think having a chat should be the default option. I don't agree with categorically eliminating someone from eligibility to play based solely on inability to have a chat going, but would expect to give the citizens the option to allow offline play on a case by case exception basis.

My vote for yes "mandatory" means that I think having a chat should be the default option. I don't agree with categorically eliminating someone from eligibility to play based solely on inability to have a chat going, but would expect to give the citizens the option to allow offline play on a case by case exception basis.

That's why I worked the clarification into the description. If we want to allow certain exceptions we can include those later, but just establishing that if nothing else 95% (random high percentage) of the play sessions are intended to be turnchats.

This one's a Close vote, what happens if it ends in a tie?

All we're doing right now is finding out how the people who are here want the laws initially written. The actual decision might boil down to who gets elected. I guess ties should be resolved by whomever writes that part of the law.

We'll be keeping turnchats, that's clear. Wheter they should be mandatory or not can be determined later.

By the way, I don't know why a demogame should have turnchats, while most other activities here at CFC (like the MTDG) don't have chats, and operate with just reports.

I think the turnchats are one of those things that make the demogame great. It adds another avenue for participation and an additional set of records.

Though granted I may be a little biased since my "rise to fame" and early activity relied heavily on the turnchats.

Without the turnchats I doubt I'd still be here (year long gaps aside)

We'll be keeping turnchats, that's clear. Wheter they should be mandatory or not can be determined later.

By the way, I don't know why a demogame should have turnchats, while most other activities here at CFC (like the MTDG) don't have chats, and operate with just reports.

A turnchat for the MTDGs would be pretty silly because it would be 1 turn long. :p

I agree with Falcon, though; going to the turnchats was a great way of actually seeing the democracy in action and just chatting with the fellow DGers. It's a time when we sort of step away from the discussion and focus on playing the save. That's at least part of the reason to keep them.

Personally my fear with "optional" is we will get too many play sessions without turnchats potentially resulting in reduced participation. 1 offline play session every now and then may be alright, but if we end up getting several weeks in a row or a full term without turnchats I can see participation diminishing.

Excepting the first and last chat - how many people usually are there for chats? My experience is that the majority of citizens don't attend the chats.
Heck, in DG4 I can remember having myself and Rik as the only people at most of my sessions!

For most citizens, what does a chat bring?

-- Ravensfire

DG1 and DG2 we often had 15-20 people attend the chat.

Also, depends on what you man by "most citizens" from my experience at the very least "most active citizen" do attend chats or at least try to.

Anyway, what does the chat bring for most citizens?
1.) A chance to become more involved, better known and seek higher positions
2.) A chance to watch what goes on during the save.
3.) A chance to give input about decisions we can't bring to the forums (Civilization X at start of turn Y asks for Z).
4.) A chance to better get to know the officials and other people in the demogame.
5.) Makes the DP a little more accountable to the people as he has to log everything as it happens in the log.
6.) Related to the above, the chance to make sure the DP didn't miss a critical post/instruction.


As I said before, my attendance of the turnchats DG1 Term 1 as a regular citizen was the reason I became better known to become Military leader Term 2. Originally I had no plans of seeking office until people started complimenting me and nominated me for Military Leader.

If it weren't for the turnchats I feel I likely would have left the Demogame towards the end of Term 1.

I understand the reason you want to make "exceptions" to the turnchats, and I can't say I'm completely against it. But I don't want "no turnchat this week" to become a common thing.

I attended most (maybe all) of the chats in DG3 Term 1. During that first term as a citizen, my insightful comments about the turns, thoughtful questions, and sheer cheek in questioning Chieftess's domestic agenda and advocating something else gave me enough of a reputation to get elected as Science advisor the 2nd term, domestic the 3rd, etc. Simply put, talking in the chat with the "veterans" of DG1 & DG2 is the main reason I successfully integrated into the society and stuck around.

While DP I've had a lot of people in the chat save me from making big mistakes by yelling "stop" right before I hit enter, and asking "did you remember to ... ". I've been the recipient of some very good advice. I've also been pressured to do something wrong and resisted that pressure.

I've found out that Furiey likes cereal and orange juice for breakfast. Others have found out about my kids, and mine aren't the first ones people have heard about via the chat. Remember Shaitan's away status being set to "away - wiping butts"? :lol: We've had people using Elvish (LOTR) terms, discussing the merits of camel spit, and campaigning for office during chats. We've had military advisors suggesting which unit in a stack should attack first, or which city to capture next when the plan is for a 10 turn siege and the city falls in 2.

What does a chat do? It gives us a place to have fun, witness history, influence our civ's destiny, get to know each other, quote poetry, or play a virtual jukebox (remember Rik's "now playing" that eerily matched its titles to game events)?

Why are chats under-attended? One big issue is DPs with schedules which don't line up with the citizens, like my late evening/early morning chats. I think a bigger issue is all the whining and complaining about the possibility that the decisions from the forum will be ignored if we let people talk in the chat. What's the fun in going to a chat if you can't say anything for fear of being villified in the forum?

Let the people who attend chats have their fun. Let them think they influence decisions by being there. If a DP is going to do something anyway but asks for input to confirm it, it makes the people at the chat feel better even if they didn't actually change anything. And if the DP gets input and then decides not to follow it, then the chat people can do the complaining about how the forum has too much power. :mischief:

If we are to have a second poll, my vote changes from yes, optional, to yes mandatory. When I first read it I misunderstood and thought mandatory meant it was not acceptable whatsoever to have play sessions instead of turnchats (with no exceptions.) But seeing as this is a private poll, I can't offer any proof of vote.

If we are to have a second poll, my vote changes from yes, optional, to yes mandatory. When I first read it I misunderstood and thought mandatory meant it was not acceptable whatsoever to have play sessions instead of turnchats (with no exceptions.) But seeing as this is a private poll, I can't offer any proof of vote.

Actually this one is Public..... CT should be able to change your vote without a problem if you ask...

how do i view who voted for each vote then (as it is not visible currently.)

So mandatory DOESN'T mean mandatory?

Falcon, would you please clearly explain what each of the options mean then.

Thanks!

-- Ravensfire

how do i view who voted for each vote then (as it is not visible currently.)

When you first open the thread, it shows the poll at the top. Click on any of the nonzero number of people voting, and it redisplays the poll with captions under each of the bars showing who voted for which option.

how do i view who voted for each vote then (as it is not visible currently.)

click on the number of votes for one of the options, it will give you who voted what.

So mandatory DOESN'T mean mandatory?

Falcon, would you please clearly explain what each of the options mean then.

Thanks!

-- Ravensfire

I tried to explain it in the first point.

Option means it's the DP's or some other's choice completely. So we are open to terms without turnchats etc.

Mandatory means only under certain conditions would an offline session be allowed (to be determined in subsequent polls). In essence, an attempt to ensure that turnchats are garenteed to be the "normal" play type, and that theoretically each term there should only be one or two "offline" sessions if any. One example would be 1 turn games (once in DG1 or DG2 we had a turnchat so that we could just see what was up the next turn), where a full fledge turnchat is unnecessary. It was also my attempt to make sure the Mandatory was open for later adjustment so that it can be somewhat forgiving to those who seek to play a save but can't.

It's basically the difference of DP's whim and meeting concrete criteria.

So mandatory DOESN'T mean mandatory?

Falcon, would you please clearly explain what each of the options mean then.

Thanks!

-- Ravensfire

I used the phrasing

"the game session shall nominally require to be accompanied by a chat session" to allow the possibility to work in later RARE exception.

But to establish as a rule we should make sure we maintain turnchats as the primary session. But allow some relaxation in the results later, in case we want to allow a rare exception.

My fear with pure optional, is we'll get a term free of turnchats and participation may wane.

So to paraphrase, in most circumstances, the session will be in a chat. In exception cases, it is allowable to play without a chat. Such exceptions should not become the norm -- if they did become the norm then we would have defeated the whole purpose of encouraging chats.

My vote for yes "mandatory" means that I think having a chat should be the default option. I don't agree with categorically eliminating someone from eligibility to play based solely on inability to have a chat going, but would expect to give the citizens the option to allow offline play on a case by case exception basis.

Another way of saying essentially the same thing... :)

Edit: And crossposted. lol

Yup, what DS said

I like turnchats for the following reason:
4 - And this horse has been beaten until it was dead, and is still being beaten... Allows for advisors to give advice to the DP in special situations. (i.e., another civ builds a city within 2 tiles of where we wanted to build, or we find a new resource and Trade or its' equivalent wants to trade it since there was a prior poll saying we'd like to trade.)

This is the main reason we should NOT have turn chats. Conditional instructions can be made for all these situations since they are rarely surprises anyway. Any advice advisors want to give should be given in the game play instruction thread where we can all see it. We should give the DP freedom to deal with any truly unexpected things and trust in his or her judgement.

Let's play one demogame as a purely forum based game and see if interest in the game will be maintained. We've had numerous DGs with those blasted chats and they ruin the experience for many of us.

EDIT: So from reading the above posts I see your answer is yes, mandatory does not mean mandatory. This is in keeping with the last constitution where official did not mean official. That's ok, DaveShack, as long as YOU know what you mean it doesn't matter what the rest of us think the rule says, right?

Monkeying with the meaning of mandatory so as to allow for a DP who can't hold a chat while still making them mandatory for a DP who can hold one but doesn't want to isn't right. Either make them MANDATORY or OPTIONAL in the full sense of these words and take the good with the bad in either case.

Well, donsig, the intent was to differenciate between the DP's choice and "legal" exceptions (so it's not the DP's choice, but certain cases will allow offline sessions).

Regardless given the votes at the moment, it's gonna be the DP's (or other's, ie. president, citizenry) choice.

Though I think most people will agree it should be the DP's choice, but that's another poll.

I think it might be easier to understand if we said:

Mandatory, there must be a public turnchat to advance the save.

Optional, the DP may opt to hold a private turn session offline in an emergency or extreme situation.

The wording of Turn Session and Turnchat can make a big difference.

However, that's not the intent of "Optional" at least that's not how I saw it,

Your optional is more so my thought of Manditory (except replace "DP may opt" to "citizenry may opt")
Optional in my mind = DP's choice, even if it's a normal Turn session.

Well, I'd like to help out here so we can figure out what mandatory and optional mean but I'm still trying to figure out what official means. :rolleyes:

I think we are all in agreement that offline game play is not only allowed but desirable under certain circumstances. We certainly do not agree on what those circumstances are. That's what we should be debating and not the definition of mandatory or optional.

I think we are all in agreement that offline game play is not only allowed but desirable under certain circumstances. We certainly do not agree on what those circumstances are. That's what we should be debating and not the definition of mandatory or optional.

Honestly, I think you're right, there has obviously been alot of confusion with the options I selected for this poll...

I was trying to do a general DP choice vs. rule based offline sessions... But, this was obviously too general. I'm going to be opening another thread in the citizen's forum to nail down more specific options for a multiple choice poll.

i am opposed to turn cats, what purose would these cats hold? whos responsability is it to feed and bath said turn cat?

"The only cats in civ are lions and panthers."