While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

It depends what you mean by "active"

On the first page: Bold is label, Italics is assessment, underline means participation.
NESes that are actually doing stuff lately->Pass update two, not on IV and going strong on its own. Generally will last between 3months-1year and 7-20 updates riding on current enthusiasm.
Sekai (non-traditional)
TerraNES
(Maybe CIEN...)
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NESes that were going strong, but now on IV of public love (Slow update, seeming lack of interest, late orders). When it runs out the NES dies. Note: NESlife's IV is a reservoir the size of the Atlantic. Racing against time here. With update they can easily revive, but without they can also easily witheraway.
TuxLife
CIEN (Maybe)
ZombieNES
GamezNES
PerfNES
DaftNES: The Prophecy
TBNES Tournament
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NESes that are just started recently and have to face the Update 2 bump.<- About half die before Update 2. The rest become mature:see above. Experience here, just experience.
NutraNES
JulNES
Legends of Citana
Absolution 4: Tabula Rasa
From the Ashes
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NESes which are not active, but obviously hibernating.Have lots of people still waiting and hoping. Different from IV in that the difference from a corpse and a NES is contingent on an update; there is little the player can do except write stories (which then might mess up the update).
GalaxyNES
LjNES
NukeNES
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NESes whose hibernation periods equal or surpasses the coroner's patience.*Knock knock*
N3K End of Empires

Maybe if you got the name right I'd update.

End of Umpires! Ender's Empire! Bah, without an update I completely forgot the real name and its correct spelling.

Ender's Empire sounds weirdly cool, though.

If you would like to donate your handy time machine so I'd have free time year round, I'd be happy to update frequently.

Ah! Its in your sig; Its End of Empires!

Anyway, for you frequently would be once a month, which would still be awesome. You can borrow my time machine. Come to Ohio and I'll give you further instructions once you get to the National park

GalaxyNES would update if certain players who said they'd get stories in a week ago would update. In my opinion, it's going strong, and ideally should be providing an update every two weeks.

I'll probably just update with what I've got- being a pure story NES, it's got the benefit of being easier to update when it has less participation, which spawns more participation, which creates more difficult updates... it's kind of self-regulating in that sense.

NES is contingent on an update; there is little the player can do except write stories (which then might mess up the update)

Click to expand...

The difference between IV and Hibernation is that in the case of IV, writing stories might force the moderator to readjust the update-so most players just sit tight and wait. And wait... and wait...

IV means that its on the border between decent participation and dead due to various factors, which might include a slow update, but also some aspects of others and the fact that it isn't dormant at all, just in a (hopefully) slow spot. Hibernation means that it is dormant due to the tension of waiting for the update.

I stand by my analysis. . I say the reason NESes die so much is that so few get over the Update 2 Hump. So few players would show interest or invest in those who didn't, which gives them even less reason to get over the Update 2 Hump, which makes the NewNESes die while the old ones wither away one by one.

Terrance888 said:

LjNES

Click to expand...

... Which I will work blood and spirit not to have lie dead.

What? No flesh?

CIEN is definitely still in the first category.

IMO it is not a good idea to judge such things over major holidays, such as now, as many people are unavailable and many NESes appear to simply be delaying their deadlines until a good few days or even a week after New Year (January 7 seems to be a common date). TerraNES is one major exception (nothing wrong with this, just saying )

Fine.

I'm going to make a Census of 1st page NESes every month to PROVE that NESing isn't dying AND that there are a seasonal flow. (Fall brings Fantasy, Spring brings fresh starts, Summers bring "Projects" and winters bring experiments->My experience).
Levels
Strong-Few Late Orders, Prompt Updates (couple days for mine/EQ, a couple months for NK/others), Good Participation.
Live- One of the above categories weak OR on hold for a few days (bad internet, broken comp, ect) and can be trusted to go back on track.
Weak- Two of the above weak: is it late orders->late update, or bad participation->moderator interest in update? However, it is still moving along and can get back in the flow.
Hibernating- The orders are in, there are (was) participation&#8230; the update isn&#8217;t here yet! This is when the waiting starts, and support fades.
Dead- Move along, RIP.

Please don't judge me on how I judge you. For NESes I'm not in, I might misjudge. If that happens, just throw a PM at me within a week and I'll change it.

Hopefully, it will become a useful resource for the future. The next Census would be the last Saturday of January.

I wasn't referring to this particular holiday period, but rather a general trend. I know I haven't always been active but when I have it seems there are always far more NESes running than the community can healthily support.

Mind, this is not a call to action of any kind. I'm sure the surplus of NESes ends up pulling new blood in every now and again.

On another topic:


Now that is over, I'll like to respond to Nylan/MjM/People because I just have the time, and I'll be DnDing later and would forget this.

If NESes are people ("Corporations are people"), and NESers their friends, about 50% of these people die before they become... adults I guess. (about 50% of NESes die before the 2 Update Hump). If you make lots of friends in the nation of NES, talk with him, go to parties with the friends of that NES and invest time, that alone can make someone step back a bit and ask "Should I really invest all this time, if half the time it won't pan out?"

In the same way, early NES death is mostly due to Bad Ruleset Design or Moderator Lack of Interest. Of course, a NES might be plagued with a lack of players (or just decent players) at the start, but that usually makes the NES easier to bring over the Hump, as there are fewer variables (ordersets) to weave (depending on the resolution of NPCs). Thus, many of our currently "running" NESes are not well received because fear of immenant death and loss of investment.

After a NES gets pass the hump, things start to settle down. The Ruleset is understandable, the Moderator can keep up the interest, the players send orders, GREAT! Or is it? Depending on the NES, settling down eventually starts toning down player participation, even as people join a "stable" NES. There are newer NESes to try out, newer societies to write for, newer characters to develop. All NESes will go through this phase.

After that, it depends on the moderator. Does he shake things up, keep things interesting, let the players interact more often (crucial for fresh-start style NESes), or does he just lit it slowly decline? Watching something you nurtured for about a month or more slowly lose interest from the players can cause a Moderator to quit.

If the Moderator decides to continue against the decline, he must keep the interest level high. Lets look at long-lived NESes from our history. NK's End of Empires let the players interact and brought a historical tone to the update, making it loved and making each update a surprise. EQ's former "Year Long NESes" are, pardon the pun, worlds full of possibilities. Will Sweden ally with Georgia? Will Denmark conquer South Africa? Will Germany use this ambassador incident to declare war on Britain? Other NESes like Das' run on superb updating, while Amon's run on pure speed of the update, making it interesting by the pure overloading of our decision making process. Immaculate designs entire worlds for his players to discover. Now, I know there are many great moderators, just naming a few for example.

If the forum is filled with NESes run by EQ, Das, Amon Savag, Immaculate, Jason the King, North King, Nuclear Kid; maybe then we won't have as fast as a turnover as we do. Maybe their reputation combined with their work will end the NESdeath and heart break. Or maybe not. All Moderators and Player's lives are driven by RL as well. We see this in EQ when the tides of his career also pushes the tides of his NES. We see this in Immaculate where the joyous occasion of the birth of his son put a damper on his NES (we loved him more for it ). We see this, in fact, in nearly every NES.

The thing is, we'll always have more NESes than we can healthily support, because as a population the conveyor belt will always be moving, grinding at the older, mature NESes; shipping away new, promising NESes before they can bloom; Unless we stop RL all together, we have to face this fact and move forward in our unique community. We have to accept that, at any given time, a NES can suddenly die, to be replaced by new ones. We have to accept that our excess of NESes is because most of these running NESes aren't healthy until they bypass the equivalent of 2 updates/1 month of player investment. We have to accept the fact that we are human, and will always trend towards the new and the innovative.

Of course, that doesn't mean we have to accept our overtly high early-NES mortality rate. We can "test" rulesets, especially new ones, with NES experiments to make sure that it isn't overpowered in the short or long run. Moderators can and should check their scheduels (as best as they can), before opening the proverbial bank. We always have a pool of players fresh from a dead and dying NES to go to a new one, but all new NESes should be cherished and supported as a possible future center of our community.

There is nothing wrong in NESing, only human nature. NESes die because of human nature, they live because of human nature, and they survive because of human nature. We invest in them, and we want a return on our investment. The best we can due is to maintain the unique quality of our community while inviting new blood while we balance the needs of this aspect of our lives with all the others. The best we can do is to understand that NESing by itself doesn't out weigh all aspects of life, but that a NES IS important in this aspect, that that many players are relying on our moderators for the update, and many moderators are relying on their players for inspiration.

I'd say, by our self-regulation, we're about at the actual capacity of NESing at any given time. If there are too few NESes, disgruntled players will become moderators. If there are too many, the weaker and older NESes will die off. We can improve, but there is nothing inherently wrong with our system.

Now, if each NES's 50% mortality rate is at Update 10/about 4 months, then we'll be crack'n.

If you are going to make a monthly NESing census/commentary thing, make a thread for it and do it there rather than using WWW.

I'll ask Birdjaguar. Because the WWW is for NESing things that don't fit any thread, while making a thread for this would then invalidate the usage of this thread for that purpose... but until I make such a thread this usage is still valid.

Pm away.

Yes, until you make such a thread, this usage is still valid, as you say. But I think that it would be a good idea if you made a thread if you're intending to carry out a long-term project of this sort, so that people who want to can see your censuses beside each other and can refer to them easily, and discuss them in one place, while other people don't have to see your censuses if they don't want to. WWW isn't a convenient place for this sort of long-term project.

So perhaps one of the things most likely to help keep a NES alive is to have consistent and regular updates, even if not everybody has turned in their orders by the due date. Is a NES where neither players nor mod are to be relied upon doomed to fail no matter how well it is designed?

I dunno, too lazy to research it.

Works for me. . Join my nes and get out of your gloomy cut-rate philsophy.

EDIT: Census of NESing Activity (And Other Useful Stuff) is posted. From now on all discussions, analysis, suggestions, ect, should go in that thread.

I've always been confused about the lack of publicity our FRONT PAGE FORUM gets in comparison to Forum Games or IOT. We've always had our sections removed from the wikipedia page as if we're some kind of unwanted group.