Thank you for the announce post :)

I didn't personally think you were brushing over the changes at all, just that it had the danger of appearing like a small thing when it has a huge effect. I hope it -does- make people write more, because trying to force people to do so is the worst part of being a librarian (that would be the soul-destroying part that makes a lot of people quit it once they realise their life is going to consist of screaming WHY WON'T YOU WRITE at people who don't really care).

Turnus:

If its a good book people will still keep reading it even after those 50 years. Just because it doesn't have points attached to it doesn't mean its pointless, it seems up to the players to keep those good books alive and read. I get where you're coming from, but just because it doesn't have points attached doesn't mean its suddenly meaningless. I would hope books have meaning because it sparks RP and influences the RP of people being recommended to read it, not because of its epoints.

Nearly two RL years is long enough to have very long-term mechanical benefits.

This. I can't think of anything else that remains a contribution for so long. Even the investment in ascendants requires the ascendant to stick around for the game to benefit from it, but writing a book and publishing it would, in the past, forever benefit the library in some way. This was not true for anything else. Villages eventually revolt, flares happens, domoths flux. Now, written work eventually stop providing a MECHANICAL benefit. They never stop providing an interesting read however. To say that old written works are now worthless is nothing but an emotional appeal.

Iosai:

I'm not against making further tweaks to the Library system, however, this felt like a good first step to take in terms of dynamism and "fairness." That said, I did admit after loading the change that it looked like there were a few bugs, so some points in these posts are a little premature and others will be handled accordingly.

1) The Largest Library should be, and now is, taking into account all books published ever (by weight). This was a bug.
2) I will discuss with other Admin the prospect of having prestige winners always count towards Scholarly and Literary ratings. I agree that an old, prestigious book will never be worthless or unknown. However, that little ditty you wrote about your grandmother when you were sixteen years old that your Librarian sponsored you for as a gesture of good will, probably isn't doing anything for the Library in the grand scheme of things.

Having mentioned point 2, I'm not sure it necessarily needs doing as point 1 already prevents any publication from ever being worthless (and gives extra credit to prestige books).

As far as 'most scholarly' and 'most literary' goes, it would still make sense to look at point 2 in my opinion. Also, thank you! :)

Kiradawea:

This. I can't think of anything else that remains a contribution for so long. Even the investment in ascendants requires the ascendant to stick around for the game to benefit from it, but writing a book and publishing it would, in the past, forever benefit the library in some way. This was not true for anything else. Villages eventually revolt, flares happens, domoths flux. Now, written work eventually stop providing a MECHANICAL benefit. They never stop providing an interesting read however. To say that old written works are now worthless is nothing but an emotional appeal.

I lasted as an Ascendant far longer than two years-- and only 'lost' it when it was upgraded. It also did not magically / mysteriously get revoked one fine spring day.

I'm content with the compromise that Prestige winners are the submissions that don't lose their impact; it makes sense as well that only books which were worthy of receiving such recognition carry weight across time I guess. It also helps ensure that those books on which a lot of time was spent are still recognized.

In an ideal world with an infinite supply of computing power, the ideal thing would be for a book's impact to start at a certain point (based on how well it was reviewed and won prizes) and then gradually "decay", asymptotically approaching but never reaching zero. But that's impractical to code for the same reason that it's impractical for objects to gradually get less effective and then break, rather than simply disappearing on some randomly-selected first or thirteenth of the month. In fact, I'd say that the current approach to the library system is a lot truer to realism and good sense than a ton of other things that the MUD simplifies for the sake of keeping the code manageable, and it's a silly place to quibble.

This is a great solution. And I say this as someone whose books have contributed almost two million power to the nexus over their lifespan, and which are now contributing nothing anymore; probably there's only three or four people who got their impact on the game nerfed as much as I did by this change, most of whom are more dormant than I am, and most of whom I bet would be just as soundly in favor of it as I am.

Cute, but you are irrelevant. As is your argument as it is based upon the false assumption that winning prestige equals a good submission. Winning prestige can be the result of nothing else being submitted for prestige in that category that year.

-- Warning: This post is long. Oh god, it's so many words. Please shoot me now, preferably before you've died of boredom. --

My gut reaction to this was much along the lines that Xenthos has been posting. However, I was also agreeing with a lot of points from the 'other side' of the argument - so I decided to go collect some data to see what changes, if any, could bring the two sides of the argument into a compromise.

I'm going to be talking from the point of view of Glomdoring here, because obviously that's the library I have access to/am responsible for. I do have some things that could help other librarians wanting to do the same thing (namely, a list of every single prestige announcement newspost for collecting ratings). Where I need one, I'm going to use Hallifax as a comparison because a) they're currently winning, B) they're one of the 'new' cities this system change is trying to help make it fairer for, c) they are the most comparable to Glomdoring's library in terms of activity, IMO.

There's quite a lot of data here, so for those who aren't intersted in the wall of text, there's a summary at the bottom.

Preface

Something to bear in mind first of all is that Glomdoring's "Recent" numbers are not wholly representative of 50 years of publications. Between 256 CE and 293 CE, Glomdoring published absolutely nothing for some reason. The librarian was still active because prestige submissions were still being made, but there were no submissions to its library. At all. Therefore, its score would already be higher if we had not have that gap.

In my opinion that makes it not wholly fit for comparison - I'm guessing that Hallifax doesn't have a similar gap. In no way am I saying this is unfair though - it's our own fault for not publishing! - but it does make it a little trickier to judge what is and is not working with the changes when this disparity is present.

There are a dozen things that we can look into to work out whether the changes are good across the board or not. I chose to take Iosai's mention of allowing previous prestige wins to count towards the 'Recent' ratings, and analyse what that would do to Glomdoring's numbers so that it's easier to see what effect this would have and judge it as an idea accordingly.

It's my hope that from analysing this, I (and others) will be able to formulate a better opinion of the changes to the system and how it will affect development from hereon.

Adding Prestige Works: The Data

Glomdoring has 45 prestige winners that were published prior to 50 years ago. Of these, 22 are Literary and 23 Scholarly. The addition of these works to Glomdoring's total would add approximately 1630 rating for Literary and 1490 for Scholarly.

I have to stress the approximately for two reasons:

1) In our library, three works (6616 'Shadow Dance' by Kregarn, 3571 'Shaking the Darkness' by Miryh and 6306 'Considerations' by Skye) are listed as prestige winners but I could not find record of them in the news. This is very possibly my own human error (or they were eaten by newspost gremlins), but between them - assuming an average rating of 70 - they would only account for 140 Scholarly rating and 70 Literary, so there's not a huge disparity there.

2) Of the works published before 50 years ago, four of them were not submitted for prestige until within the past 50 years. They account for 160 Literary rating and 77 Scholarly (one of the Scholarly ones was from that weird year when we all won with 0 rating).

So here are Glomdoring's numbers now:

Recent Scholarly Rating: 699 - Book Count: 21
Recent Literary Rating: 805 - Book Count: 43
Recent Book Rating: 1504 - Book Count: 64

This is what they'd be with those prestiges added:

Recent Scholarly Rating: 2189 - Book Count: 44
Recent Literary Rating: 2435 - Book Count: 64
Recent Book Rating: 4624 - Book Count: 108

Obviously this is a bit pointless without comparison, so I have the best of my resources calculated how much Hallifax would gain from allowing prestige winners to count regardless of publishing date. This is very, very much a guess - because I cannot see so easily when their works were published, though I've searched to the best of my ability and I think the numbers are probably quite accurate.

As far as I can tell, Hallifax had 13 books published prior to 50 years ago that won prestige, of which 8 were Scholarly and 5 Literary. Like Glomdoring several of these (two of each) were only submitted to prestige within the past 50 years, accounting for 151 Scholarly rating and 149 Literary rating.

This would gain them approximately 653 Scholarly rating and 393 Literary.

Hallifax's current ratings stand as follows:

Recent Scholarly Rating: 1448 - Book Count: 58
Recent Literary Rating: 1118 - Book Count: 33
Recent Book Rating: 2566 - Book Count: 91

This is what they would be with the prestige winners added:

Recent Scholarly Rating: 2101 - Book Count: 66
Recent Literary Rating: 1511 - Book Count: 38
Recent Book Rating: 3612 - Book Count: 104

A Slight Curveball

Remember when I mentioned that period of time where Glomdoring didn't publish anything, and how it takes up a good portion of the last 50?

Assuming this is 30 years:

Recent Scholarly Rating: 699 - Book Count: 21
Recent Literary Rating: 805 - Book Count: 43
Recent Book Rating: 1504 - Book Count: 64

Here's a guess at what would happen if we'd published for all 50:

Recent Scholarly Rating: 1165 - Book Count: 44
Recent Literary Rating: 1342 - Book Count: 72
Recent Book Rating: 2407 - Book Count: 116

And here are Hallifax's again for comparison:

Recent Scholarly Rating: 1448 - Book Count: 58
Recent Literary Rating: 1118 - Book Count: 33
Recent Book Rating: 2566 - Book Count: 91

So if we hadn't had that gap, Glomdoring wouldn't be all that far behind (and now you can see the quality of Hallifax's library a lot clearer - fewer books, still a higher score).

Anyone else now wondering what it would look like if the library system only accounted for the past 25 years?

What Does All That Data Mean?

Initially I looked at the addition of prestige numbers and thought well, surely that's much better. The number of books is much more equivalent, so you can properly compare the quality of the library's publications. There's also an argument that over time this potential change would not become pointless or detrimental, because everyone's gaining something from it.

The problem is...I just don't think it's fair. Because frankly? I don't think Glomdoring's library is as good as Hallifax's now.

I don't think those numbers with prestige additions show you AT ALL just how much work their authors put in. When you look through their prestige ratings, Hallifax consistently scores higher than everyone else (Glomdoring has scores consistently in the 70s-80s. Hallifax is almost always 80-90 - whether you agree with this or not is a whole other argument). This is reflected much better in the projected equivalents I mentioned in the curveball section above.

Because if there is a problem with the library system, it is that it does not encourage people to contribute. Here are some of the things I've had said to me/asked of be since I became Glomdoring's Librarian:

- We have a library?
- Does anyone ever read things in there?
- What's the point of it, aren't there easier ways to get power?
- Why should I bother?

So we bend over backwards offering gold, credit and favour incentives and burn out Librarians nagging authors to write. Does this foster creativity and contribution to what is one of (IMO) the best aspects of the game? No, I don't think it does.

I think it's hugely important that the library system is made fairer, because otherwise people are not going to bother with it - and those few people who slog on regardless are going to burn out and stop enjoying it. I've seen it happen to people who are brilliant authors and it makes me sad.

I also, and there will likely be people in Glomdoring who will want to box me about the ears for this - think the current changes are fair. In fact I'd go so far as to say that I like them.

Yes, when I first looked at them I was devastated that we were now so far behind. But the fact is that there are reasons we're so far behind, and given 20 years I reckon we can get a good way to catching up again - and that's exciting to me. I'm hopeful that it will encourage other people, because competition does that in a way that no amount of posts to the commune calling for submissions will ever do.

Summary

- Where Glomdoring vs Hallifax is concerned, adding prestige submissions in doesn't fix anything. In fact it just skews the view of library qualities. It's possible over time that it would become less skewiff, but I don't think it works as a solution.

- The changes ARE huge, and will take some time to get used to, but when you actually look at it in more detail than just the numbers on LIBRARIES, you can see WHY peoples' numbers are so low.

- There are changes needed to the Library system still, and the fact that a step's been taken towards them is awesome. In fact after posting this essay, I'm going to toddle off to the Ideas board and see what other people think.

- I wanted to try and conclude with 'writing should be its own reward' but I think I might get shot for suggesting it. So instead, let's go for 'if people went and visited their libraries more, even old works would still have value - as works of art'.

- I just used three hours of my life collecting data on a game library. Oh god.


~~~

ETA: Now that Iosai has added the ability to see book ratings using LIBRARY INFO, it's possible to get a much clearer picture of things. It's also shown that the numbers I took from newsposts to collate data are not in fact the ratings that these books received.

Whilst this might invalidate the data, I don't feel it invalidates the argument; because I didn't have the 'right' numbers for Hallifax either. If there IS a difference, it will be a small amount and it will be one applied to both - so as far as I can tell the argument still stands.

I could go back and do it all over, but I don't personally see a need to, also I'm slightly burnt out on statistics now.

Removing this post, it was probably due to a miscommunication.

I think Kiradawea's post was aimed at Xenthos'.

Oh, if so, sorry to be snarky unnecessarily. (This is why quoting's a good idea.)

Lendren:

In an ideal world with an infinite supply of computing power, the ideal thing would be for a book's impact to start at a certain point (based on how well it was reviewed and won prizes) and then gradually "decay", asymptotically approaching but never reaching zero. But that's impractical to code for the same reason that it's impractical for objects to gradually get less effective and then break, rather than simply disappearing on some randomly-selected first or thirteenth of the month. In fact, I'd say that the current approach to the library system is a lot truer to realism and good sense than a ton of other things that the MUD simplifies for the sake of keeping the code manageable, and it's a silly place to quibble.

This is a great solution. And I say this as someone whose books have contributed almost two million power to the nexus over their lifespan, and which are now contributing nothing anymore; probably there's only three or four people who got their impact on the game nerfed as much as I did by this change, most of whom are more dormant than I am, and most of whom I bet would be just as soundly in favor of it as I am.

There's not really any possibility for your works to have contributed 2 million power to the Nexus, that's not actually how the library system works.

You'd need to have gotten something like 166 prestige wins in order to have actually contributed that much power (500 power per day for 2 IC years).

You get the culture points directly only from winning a prestige entry. Aside from that, the books are accumulated into 'totals' categories, and if the totals don't compete with other organizations'... they just don't add anything in addition. If it doesn't show on CULTURE, it doesn't actually net any power. Unfortunately Serenwilde's library has been underperforming (as can be seen in LIBRARIES now), so the older books written by Seren's members were pretty much being overwhelmed in quantity and value.

However, what it did do was give Serenwilde a solid base to start building from again if they ever got around to it, something which is no longer possible; all those old works are eliminated as far as the largest library goes. They have to start from, literally, the ground up. Celest is in the same situation.

Edit: Cut something out here because I am clearly too tired and mixing up a couple of systems.

PS: I'm clearly not irrelevant. :P

PPS: While that can happen sometimes, and sometimes a few books win because it isn't even rated... so what? That doesn't invalidate the works that people worked hard for and won legitimately.

Honestly, if you really want it to be dynamic, you cut the window down to like 10 years or something along those lines. Make those books have a very, very high weight, and still count old ones to some degree.

Two real life years (meaning in order to compete from the bottom, you need a minimum of a full RL year of non-stop publications with everyone else publishing nothing during that time) just locks in the library system to a different set of orgs (Glomdoring and Hallifax instead of Glomdoring and Magnagora).