I see a lot of complaining about a lack of activity, but not a whole lot of things worthy of activity. Run something if you want. Run something as big as EoE, and you'll get activity. To say other activities taking time is equal in effort to a major NES is a foolish statement. Even playing in something on that scale requires more investment than many are willing to commit, or have the time to. Defining NES was never an issue, as the subgenres defined themselves, Symphony. Labels don't make games great nor players drawn. Run something people give a half-damn about instead of spending all your effort bashing a dead horse for being in your way. The path isn't blocked. You seem to be, though.
It almost seems tedious to explain the value of taxonomy to you, so I won't. Instead let me illustrate my point by addressing the concern about time investment: why, indeed, does NESing
seem like such a taxing investment? Why is this the case when it is so often the case that all that is really required to "participate" in a NES is craft 15 minutes' worth of orders? How many times were update postponements requested because people failed to do this? And why do moderators feel like it's a lot of work to maintain these worlds?
My theory is that it is because people take the necessary task of micromanagement upon themselves instead of delegating it out in a systematic way. Allow me to use tabletop roleplaying games to illustrate my point. In games like D&D or Pathfinder or GURPS, it is taken for granted that operations are facilitated by a set of standardized rules proctored by a moderator. Participants are able to fully grasp the logic of the game because that very logic is laid out before them in all its naked splendor, and understanding this logic is crucial to making informed decisions in the context of the game world. Why exactly is the long sword different from the short sword? We can describe both of them qualitatively, but it is their quantitative differences that allow us to exercise judgment in choosing between them.
Compare this with a type of roleplaying game with rules that are "simpler" or leaner, like Mini-Six or Savage Worlds or similar. Minimalist gaming, which seems to imply minimalist worlds, but in fact the worlds these games attempt to portray are not actually simpler than the worlds of GURPS - it's that the duty of regulating and divining the logic of the worlds is now distributed among the independent entities participating in it. Without a tome to reference, it is the will of the players and the arbitration of the moderator that dictate the logic of the world. Forget, for a second, about "balance" - I am talking far more fundamentally about knowing that X is X and understanding X's relationship to Y and Z. Thinking players make these queries in every game they play, and when there isn't a manual to reference, they ask the moderator or assume for themselves (using their vaunted common sense) the answer. Having this understanding is
fundamental to all decision making in a roleplaying context.
In NESing, a formal set of rules or descriptions are crucial to absorb some of the blow of the players' query. Without this, the moderator's arbitration is key - and on the scale that NESes occupy, this becomes an enormous task. The time investment goes through the roof. What I am saying is that it does not have to be that way. Sure, if NK is ever-pleased with holding EoE on his shoulders like a NESing Atlas, I don't have any issue with that. But NK is the exception, not the rule. Not all people are capable of managing a world like that without facilitating systems. When I say NES has refused to evolve, refused to learn about itself, I mean NES refused to invent the facilitating systems that would make NESing a sustainable hobby rather than an exponentially increasing chore.
The function of a ruleset or game system is to take some of the tasks of world cipher off the moderator's shoulder. You are right that in a NES there is quite a lot more of this to be demanded than with a D&D played in hourly sessions every weekend, but if anything that should illustrate how much more important it is that we do this kind of thing for NES.
"Well," you might say, "we have made several NES rulesets over the years, all without applying foolish labels to them." We truly have made several NES rulesets over the years:
too many. If you want to learn from the past NES rulesets, you need to go dig through them and analyze them yourself, or ask the person who ran the set what their insights were on them. It truly is research of a sort and I realized personally how tenuous this set-up is when I began interacting with the people of IOT. The creative vanguards of that community are reinventing the wheel in so many ways it boggles the mind. It's not their fault, per se, and in the course of doing so they also uncover bold new mechanics with new value, but the crime here is that it should not be
necessary.
I can feel the thread of my thought unraveling so I'll try to wrap this up and get to the point. No formalization in NESing means that there is no formal way to learn from old NESes or understand why what works for one NES might not work for another. Common sense alone cannot navigate these pathways effectively. And so we continually run the same NES with small tweaks and no improvements on what causes us to fail every time. The sole exception to all this is EoE, a minimalist ruleset that grew to encompass a complex world all through the will of its proctor. For the rest of us, who do not otherwise try to imitate NK, as long as we don't understand what we're doing, we cannot engage in the intellectual exercise necessary to improve it.
This still seems like some sort of overly complex explanation based on metaphysical ideas compared to what I really think happened. Maybe it's my own bias, but I never really cared what an NES is. I frankly don't see why this question is even important. A user posted stuff on the forum and either people agreed to the conditions of the game and took part or they didn't. Sure, we generally had a geopolitical theme going on here, but that was hardly necessary and I don't ever remember anyone being angry about someone else merely for trying to start a game. At worst, a new mod might find his idea under criticism or just ignored.
The question is important (italicized) because of the phenomenon we don't understand (bolded). I've underlined an example problem that we still haven't resolved.
In fact I don't believe you "never really cared" what a NES is. If that were so, why did you keep playing NESes and not, say, something else? This one's a freebie: if you can answer this question clearly, you have already taken your first step towards defining a NES.