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it would be nice if the choice of experience or dinars (or combination thereof) was up to the recipient rather than the spiffer. Thus, the reader spiffs the number of points (out of 1000) that they award to the recipient, and when the recipient is at a terminal they have one command to "cash" an amount into xp and another to send it to their bank balance. This could eliminate a lot of confusion, since I think that people, by default, tend to choose experience even if you add a discalimer to only use dinars, which creates a problem if, like me, you have a gambling addiction.

There there, Anderr. By recognising your problem, you are half way to solving it! I hear there are some good self-help groups out there.

And this is a great idea, by the way.

I feel that choice of spiffs belongs to the spiffer. It should be up to me to choose to cooperate with someone's wishes or to follow my own.

I'd suggest that the spiffer should decide wether or not to spiff and if so, how much on a scale of 1 to 1000, but allowing people to deliberately give the opposite of what is asked for doesn't seem like a choice worth defending to me, especially if TC is trying to promote roles that rely on spiffs such as reporters etc. in the first place.

Listen up, because I'm defending it. I prefer to choose for myself whether to cooperate with what people ask.

IMO Anderr's argument is another example in a long history of trying to turn all characters into someone else's idea of what they should be or do. I remain opposed.

Ah, okay...

I'm just pointing out that reporters generally only have a need for one of the two reward types at any given time. It is both tedious and also ineffective (in my experience) to include at the end of each article which type of spiff is useful for you. Thus, many people intending to reward a reporter may, by way of not knowing their preferences, inadventently reward them with something for which the writer has no use. People probably do not want to accidentally give a reporter something for which they have no use, and the reporter would certainly prefer to recieve what meets their needs. Posting one's preference is not not only ineeffective in that people often seem to overlook it, but most characters will have different needs at different times, and this cannot be expressed at this time.

Furthermore, only two groups spiff against the author's preference: People who are not aware of the preference or are mistaken, and people who are trying to, for whatever reason, deliberately give the author something that they don't want. It escapes me why anyone would want to do the latter except perhaps as a prank, so in order to eliminate accidental spiffs which don't actually spiff the author, I move that the proportions be left to the creators.

I truly apologize if this is an instance of "trying to turn all characters into someone else's idea of what they should do or be". I fail to see how leaving the absolute power in the hands of the spiffer is any different from putting it into the hands of the creators - either way, someone's character is having someone else's will imposed to some extent. I simply believe that it is more beneficial to all if people choose how much they enjoy the work, and the artist decides how to use the reward. The current system is an example of someone's idea of what characters should do or be - as is any system. I'm just proposing this to increase the effectiveness of spiffs as a reward and to encourage more people to take up Artist, Builder, Reporter, and other such roles.

I think the idea of having all of your spiffs go into a single pool is a good one. It would also be nice if we could see the spiff results for previous works, that way we could see what people like - by way of them giving spiffs - and by what degree they like them as compared to your other works.

I like the idea as well, and here's what an idea to deal with Chiensha's objection: Instead of two boxes, exp and dinars, there is another box which can be used for either exp or dinars at the choice of the reporter.

The default value can be in this new third box (instead of exp being first) so that people who don't read which is requested will leave the decision up to the reporter. This allows people like Chiensha to spiff whatever is not requested if they so choose, where most people will probably spiff in this new "either dinars or experience" box.

So, any problems with this, Chiensha?

I'm confused now by this thread. Weren't we all agreeing a little while ago (Chervil's suggestion) that we were going to do away with spiff boxes? Seems to me that if it works for Cartographers it also works for Reporters. And Builders don't get spiff boxes so it's moot for them.

I'd vote for making the spiff quantities completely identical and out of people's control entirely -- sorry Chiensha. Each page view auto-spiffs the author, say, one dinar and two exp. In the long run -- the really long run -- this'll add up to more than the spiff boxes did and, as Chervil noted, nobody has to remember to do it.

IAWTC!

It would definitely be nice to be able to see which works are bringing more or fewer spiffs.

Sounds good, but I don't see how this works for reporters... cartographers' maps are reviewed many times, whereas most articles are read only once whether the reader enjoys them or not, so I'm not sure that the per-use system is going to give an accurate portrayal of reporters' work in the long ro short term.

But this whole proposal of making the spiffs automatic is regardless of whether the material is useful or enjoyed or not. For instance, a really bad map will still be viewed every so often. Everybody has to view it once to decide that it's bad! The proposal is basically a probabilistic one based on the unproven but interesting idea that over time the better material will be returned to while the not-so-better material won't be. There doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to think that would be different for articles versus maps.

In any case the logs say the articles are read about as often as the maps. Newbies, I guess, looking for background.

I understand your position, particularly if the logs indicate that the articles are read as often as maps. Nevertheless, I would argue that there is (or will emerge) a distinct difference between articles and maps. A map which is less useful will be returned to less than one which is. But when it comes to articles, basing rewards on number of visits will greatly reduce any ability on the reader's part to provide input regarding how much they enjoy it. A map which is enjoyed will be re-visited as a matter of course. An article which is enjoyed will, again, be visited once or perhaps twice by the same person. This will reward reporters who write articles which are in the form of guides or indexes or recipes etc. etc. rather than the writers of stories, interviews, poems, and so on.

I think that doing away with spiff boxes in favour of a per-use system for cartographers in no way ignores wether the material is useful or enjoyed: Good maps will be consulted more often. I would suggest that the result will be to emphasize maps which are useful or enjoyed over maps which are merely numerous.

In the case of articles, I think that it would most definitely ignore (to a huge extent) which articles are useful or enjoyed, and as a reporter, I would much prefer a system with a great incentive to write good material, even if it is not the sort of article which will need to be returned to to enjoy. I will admit that although i enjoy writing for its own sake, the spiffs are very important to me as well. I expect that other reporters may also feel this way, but I leave that to them.

Finally, I can't help but theorize that in the long term maps will tend to be consulted far more often per capita than articles, with this distinction: People will probably tend to read each article about once or twice. People will probably look at each map once, and then, having determined which one they prefer, continue to visit that one over and over. In this system, we can see how maps and articles could be consulted a roughly equal amount of times (assuming more articles than maps) while still not providing what I would call equitable spiffs.

In sum, I think that people need to be able to express a degree of preference for an article beyond arbitrarily re-visiting it every now and then to increase the spiff.
Spiff boxes seem appropriate (to me) as a means of rewarding articles, moreso than a per-view basis. Maps, on the other hand, seem more appropriately rewarded per-use than a one-time award. There may be better alternatives to spiff boxes for articles, but I do not think that per-use is an improvement in this case.

(Sorry for the long post!)

I'm going to have to agree with the points Anderr made here. If I find a good set of maps I will use them everytime I need to look something up. On the other hand, if I read a good article, it is not very likely that I will look at it again - unless it is on the front page and I am looking to see if anything has been updated. This makes my view time for articles I liked the same as ones that I didn't - roughly once. Good maps on the other hand will get viewed over and over again, especially as new areas are added and they are updated.

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