> What is your general view of advertising Agora? > Where is it appropriate to advertise Agora? What kind of fora? Any specific sites? > What kind of things would you say in a message to possible recruits?
My thoughts on recruiting follow: - Don't be annoying - We don't want an influx of players who register and don't do anything else, inflating quorum until they are forcibly deregistered - While it seems the majority of Agora's players are math/CS types, I think it has appeal to people with other interests too. For instance, while I am interested in math and CS, I'm an international relations guy and this kind of thing is right up my alley. Political scientists, linguists, lawyers.... > Why is Agora so terrible at gaining new players? And why is Agora so terrible at retaining players? Agora is boring. I'm actually playing this time around but there's still not a lot to actually /do/. Sure, I can make proposals, but unless they have only minor changes I'm very doubtful that /anyone/ but me would vote for them. Keeping track of administrative stuff is fun for some, I'm sure, but it's not my cup of tea. I have an app to play Go on my smartphone. And I don't have the time to trawl through a sixty-page ruleset to try to find or discredit scams. Maybe I'm just playing the wrong nomic but it seems like there's so much potential to appeal to all kinds of different players. Additionally, there's no real incentive for me to do anything or even check my emails beyond keeping from being hopelessly lost. In Blognomic, for instance, if you neglect the game for too long you're going to be at a disadvantage for the rest of the dynasty. I'm not saying Agora should pick up the pace, I guess what I'm getting at is that it doesn't feel like much of a game. And I would like to STRONGLY agree with Machiavelli's comments on the ruleset. > What can Agora do to improve its record at both of the above? The first thing that comes to my head is to be less restrictive and protective of the status quo. We don't want to irrevocably ruin the game, but it seems like there's a culture of disliking anything new. Now, novel mechanics and applications of existing mechanics do pass from time to time, but from what I've seen over the last few years they all seem like variations on the same theme. If I were to propose, say, a rule that randomly altered the power of random rules, there's no chance in hell it would pass. Which is all nice and responsible, but Agora would be a lot more fun if things like that weren't discouraged. > Would you support defining an FAQ document in the rules, to be tracked by some officer, which would be sent to each new player? Yes, and to me too please. > What about a newbie friendly ruleset format, with the rules defining gameplay at the start and abstract definitions further back? (Take a look at this http://agora.qoid.us/alr.txt) Rather than a differently-organized ruleset, I'd like to echo the suggestion of a (non-binding) newbie friendly rewrite of the rules. As others have said, the rules are terribly opaque. I have a lot of trouble figuring out how anything works without asking people on IRC, and that's a problem. > What would you think of a newbie "tutorial" system? E.g. The Promotor helps each new player write a proposal, the Assessor encourages them to vote, etc. within the first month of them registering. > What about a "mentor" system, where each newbie is assigned an Elder to show them the ropes? The mentor could get an economic bonus for each month the newbie is still an active player. This kind of thing could work in IRC. Personally, I'd feel more invested in the game from something as simple as people encouraging me to do things. Also I'd like to point out that I'm an Elder but I still don't know much about the figurative ropes. > Do you have any more suggestions or comments about recruiting and retaining new players? There's a common theme in my responses, I think, that I'm not articulating very well. My favourite things to do in nomics are a) breaking things and b) proposing interesting rules and seeing how they interact together. There's got to be a way to widen Agora's appeal without sacrificing what we already have.
