So.

I don't know about any other Librarians, but my job's pretty...quiet. And when I say quiet, I mean the only sound is me repeatedly screaming WHY IS NO ONE WRITING ANYTHING OH GOD WHY.

(Occasionally Astraea appears and hands me some gold dust and I squeal and run around for weeks on end. Then I realise one submission alone does not a library make.)

There are likely many things that Librarians/library users think could be changed to help engage people more/reward authors more/generally make it better. If we keep them to ourselves though, nothing will get done - so let's help the admin out by getting some ideas together.

Note, this thread is NOT for discussing/raving about/lamenting/ranting about the recent changes. There is a thread for that already: http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?showtopic=20640

To start you off:

- Book ratings should be visible in LIBRARY INFO.

- BROWSE ALL in Great Libraries should show you what organisation published the text, rather than having to look in LIBRARY INFO for it.

Done the first. The second may require more thought because those tables are already rather crammed with information. I'll see if I can fit it in somewhere.

Whee! Now if only I'd had that when collating all that rating data...turns out my numbers are off (but they're off across the board for both orgs as they only take into account prestige ratings, so oh wells).

I have no idea when/why these stopped, but Divine Scholar comments are/were awesome. Example:


On Ritual and Ceremony written by Nirrti tzya Mor'Wyrd.
Published as a scholarly book on 25th of Estar, 149 CE (1st edition) by The Wyrden Archives.
Access Level: Public
There are 1/1 copies available for checkout.
It will cost 0 gold to checkout this book.
It is stored at the annex: Annex of Wyrden Scriptures
Word Count: 4415 (weighted: 12)
Book Rating: 112
This book contains the following subjects:
RITUAL CEREMONY RITES WARDS SACRIFICE SYMBOLS STRUCTURE MAGIC
Comment by a Divine Scholar:
Extremely well written.
Comment by a Divine Scholar:
Neatly compiled, an excellent table of contents, and structure.
The topic itself is composed of common knowledge, but interspersed
with theories and ideas as well. Excellent read!
This book is a winning prestige publication.


One of Janalon's books got torn apart by the Divine Scholars, in a really insulting way. Like so:

(I did snip out a bunch of useful facts that helped to understand the history and why the book did not capture the subject in the IG context, but then came this completely unncessary tirade. Should have stopped while you were ahead.)

"For an alleged 'scholarly work' this is poorly researched, your facts are bassackwards and, frankly, this reads more like a fictitious variation of what happened in a Gaudiguchian brothel. Not even a revisionist historian from Glomdoring caught up in an okorushi-induced high could pass this for 'history' - nonetheless a potential prestigious compilation. That said, allow us to state that it was a pleasant read, despite the factual errors - unfortunately, it was not submitted for the literary notation."

I'm for Divine Scholar comments as long as they are held to a level of professionalism.

Comments that are insulting to the writer just discourage people from writing. I certainly asked myself whether it was worth contributing to the community after I read those comments. I'm not spending of effort to write something on top of my other RL obligations, then have someone make fun of it. While the comments are entertaining to someone on the outside who didn't spend RL hours putting a work together, to me, it's just a smack in the face. And I didn't even write this book.

I mean, "bassackwards"? Really? Go away.

Ouch. I hadn't seen that one, and wouldn't want to see comments like that happen. They should be there for encouragement, not for destroying the will of someone who's put effort in - even negative comments can encourage as long as you're not an arse about it.

Besides the bassakwards thing, I kind of like the idea of straight up critics looking at the works.

I think it'd be cool to flesh out more on what a 'divine scholar' is IC. Alternately, populate the World Library with npc critics, who scoff at you if you try to influence them, and say snide things when you poke them in other ways. However, they should respond more favoribly to people who have prestige ranks in whatever sort of scholar you are. Kinda like how guardmobs have different reactions to Epic Quest finishers, they (and possibly wandering bards/scholars as appropriate) could have some sort of recognition! Of course, the scholars would make a point of saying that "everything can suffer improvements" or something.

Can you imagine, literary snobs and 'fact' nitpickers? If they make some snide (but amusingly IC, as some of the parts of that response to Janalon's book), you can go malign them back, or commiserate with your comrades on how the snobs up at the World Library are stuck up idiots who are out of touch with the world, without it feeling like an OOC attack.

EDIT: And, poor choice of diction/tone aside, that comment makes the point that if you try to submit something as IC historically accurate, other people may IC mock/disapprove of the work if it comes across as literary/fictional.

There is a world of difference between disapproving of a work and insulting its author, and I think that comment stepped far past disapproving. Having read it over again I think the issue actually arose when they tried to be funny (possibly in an attempt not to be rude)...which to me comes across as far more insulting than just having said "I think there is no basis of fact in your story so whilst I enjoyed it I don't feel it's up to scratch as a Scholarly work", or something similar, which would have made their point without sounding obnoxiously sarcastic.

...anyway, more ideas!

I agree that one can brush off that kind of criticism as some IC example of ridiculousness; certainly the real world is full of critics who are routinely mean-spirited to, and ignored by, creative people. But the game is already full of enough of that from the critics from other nations. If there's one thing that Lusternia doesn't need it's additional sources of mean-spiritedness. And that goes double for writing which is already virtually impossible to motivate anyone to do, and which already has about the worst reward-per-effort-invested ratio of anything you can do in Lusternia.

Ultimately, as much as we dress it up with nation loyalty and credit rewards promised and culture scores, the vast majority of writing has happened because of the player wanting to write, and the rewards at best were a tiny piece of catalyst engaging internal stores of motivation. If internal motivation is almost the entire pie, then comments like that are disproportionately negatively impactful simply because they are pointed straight at the only thing that is getting anyone to pick up a pen in the first place. The desire to write is so, so, so fragile.

Wish I had something useful to suggest to Tacita about how to motivate people to write. Ultimately, my conclusion is that what motivates people to write is how rich, consistent, and inspiring the setting is. About the only thing that's going to make people want to write is to change the world to (or back to) the kind of world that just begs to have more stories told in it, more speculations made about it, and more expressions made in it. That is something that we all can do, but that no one of us can do. Unfortunately, if ten of us decide to do it and one decides not to do it and to take advantage of the other ten, the one person wins. None of us have the power to change that dilemma.

Change the divine scholar into an npc, if he gives you a bad review, then you can go kill him to vent :D

Turnus:
Change the divine scholar into an npc, if he gives you a bad review, then you can go kill him to vent :D

Fun game: write what the deathsight looks like if you try to kill him, and he kills you.

$person tried to convince the critics they were wrong, but failed miserably.

Well, Hallifax is lucky in that it's rp is much more conducive to authorship than any other org. Beyond that, I think we've done well in recognizing and rewarding authors for their contributions. We give out credits to authors based on how many words their work was, and every submission is worth a cityfavour. We also recently held a promotion that doubled the credit rewards that was pretty successful. We're also fairly vocal (and not just myself as the Librarian, but the CL and others) about the need for more books, how it contributes to Hallifax and the personal rewards.

Credit rewards and city/commune favours work well for new orgs, or orgs with large populations of 'new' characters. Glomdoring suffers from the condition of 1) having a relatively small population and 2) having a high concentration of 'established' characters who no longer need credits or commune favours.

With that said, the NPC idea has some merit. Who doesn't like a good compliment here and there.

I think some people are naturally prolific writers, but as someone with 'good intentions' but nowhere near prolific enough to be considered a 'writer', I think the thing that worked for me was catching someone else's enthusiasm about writing, which then transformed into an excitement -for- writing.

From my own experience, it was Sylandra who poked me and got me excited about writing a play, and I think this has happened again with me needling Zyphora (who is immensely talented and I'm ridiculously excited to see her final product, so much so that it's gotten me brainstorming about writing again too) into writing one. So on the small-scale, I think Librarians could get more submissions by getting to know the people who fly under the radar in their orgs, identify those who may just have never considered writing, and then do their best to encourage their talent. For myself, I think enthusiasm/flattery/encouragement is needed more than a newspost saying '30cr for 1st place' or whatever, as that turns into writing for a deadline which is a lot less fun.

To add to Shedrin's comments, on the larger-scale, Hallifax had a pretty long period where nothing was being submitted, and the recent flurry of submissions has largely been down to a combination of having an achievable goal in someone to beat (Glomdoring), having the time to do other things since we're no longer in constant 'defence mode,' and people leading by example. Zvoltz and Isune are also just fantastically great and I think everyone in Hallifax has been buoyed by their presence which provides a ton of org enthusiasm.

Turnus:

Change the divine scholar into an npc, if he gives you a bad review, then you can go kill him to vent :D

He actually is an NPC, who loiters about the Divine Havens. ;)

Eventru:


He actually is an NPC, who loiters about the Divine Havens. ;)

Sounds to me like a sneak peek into the next bashing ground, one weak to excorable that people have been clamoring to get for ages!

Edit: But back on topic, if he makes a come back on critiquing works it would be amusing to let players kill him for a bad review.

Eventru:


He actually is an NPC, who loiters about the Divine Havens. ;)

Demipilgrim hasn't made an appearance in a long time now :(

Hmm, not sure if these would encourage more people to write but to throw out ideas:

- Reward authors with experience/gold on successful publication, amount scaled to number of words.

- Getting a new/upgraded 'He is a Troubadour among literary writers.' honours line (or whatever the line is) to provide an influencing bonus for the next year?

Tacita:

- BROWSE ALL in Great Libraries should show you what organisation published the text, rather than having to look in LIBRARY INFO for it.

You can already sorta do this with BROWSE PUBLISHER

Greleag:

You can already sorta do this with BROWSE PUBLISHER

Mm, I was thinking more in an obvious/easy reference thing. It's not a necessary feature by any means, there are other ways to find out; it's just something that's nagged at me before so seemed worth suggesting.

Ushaara:

Hmm, not sure if these would encourage more people to write but to throw out ideas:

- Reward authors with experience/gold on successful publication, amount scaled to number of words.

I think basically every org library does this already but in roundabout ways because Librarians can't withdraw from org funds, so it would be awesome to have a hard-coded version - maybe the Librarian gets to set the amount per word/rating and they're drawn out of ministry funds?