[War_ooc] Activity requirement?

[John Penta]

Okay, I'm taking a deep breath before writing this. For once, I'm not
writing because I'm bored, but because I'm hoping to stop a problem
before it starts.

Activity requirements, in my experience, inevitably leave people
fighting. How strict they should be, how high, etc etc. all cause
problems.

Thing is, they're also necessary. One of the reasons, possibly the
biggest reason, that WAR died last time was simply a lack of activity.
That was really everybody's fault, but the fact remains: Activity is a
vicious cycle.

Thus, I'm going to *propose* an activity requirement, subject to the
consensus of the players. Below will be the "official wording", as I
plan to post it to a WAR FAQ or similar document.

We can argue over this as long as we need to, and what's below is a draft.
---

Generally, WAR has a very loose activity requirement: One post every
two weeks. A post, to count under this requirement, should use proper
grammar and spelling, have a plot, and explore that plot. There is not
a strict length requirement - however, as a rule, a post that (in
Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer) is significantly under one page
is particularly short. With all that said, however: How much you get
out of WAR works in large part as a function of how much you put into
it. Once every two weeks might be sufficient, but is almost guaranteed
not to be enough to really "get into" WAR.

---
What all that means:

Generally, a post is a post. I included the "what counts" in order to
be clear to newbies.

Once every two weeks is enough not to lose your country. However,
nobody currently playing is really a newbie. Every one of you knows
that posting more means you get more.

I'll be enforcing that. Better posts count for much more than weaker
posts, determined subjectively by me, but in the end quantity does
tend to have a quality all its own.

I'll also be tracking it, in a mail to be sent out alongside the WR
optimally but every two weeks most likely.

I plan to be liberal on allowing excuses and the like - WAR is a game,
after all - but with one caveat: Between any particular excused
period, I really want to see posting. Otherwise, it gets into an
endless cycle of excuses and never any posting. If someone looks
likely to be coasting from excused period to excused period, I'm going
to quietly ask them if they can really keep up with WAR.

But in the end, the question is yours to consider;

Should WAR have an activity requirement?

John