Superstruct,: We're doing it wrong.

I'm gonna take a moment here, out of game, to talk about some game-related things. Most conspicuously, I've noticed that play has slowed down a LOT this week. Collectively, our ping value has gone south. Now, that's a problem obviously, and so the big question is why? And then, How can we get things moving again?

OK, so people are busier during the week. And the initial starting sprint is done, and we're jogging now. But I also think that some of it is people deciding this isn't as fun as they thought it would be. I think there are a few problems, in the way we're playing the game, and in the game itself, that are causing this drift of attention away from superstruct among it's players.

1: We're Superstructing wrong.

I've been trying to figure out why my Facilitators superstruct is so popular and why my Exchange superstruct isn't. This is a big deal for me, because the Exchange is, in my own opinion, my world-changing idea, the big one, and a facilitator is a type of exchange user, someone who makes connections between people. Honestly, I think that facilitators could be replaced by sufficiently well programmed bots. So why did that superstruct get so much attention, when noone wanted to help me flesh out the Exchange?

Foundation recently noted that only 10% of all SEHIs are actually part of a superstrut. I think it's worse than that. I think only maybe 10% of superstructs are Actually superstructs. Most of them, like Zombie Squad or Emergency Permaculture or The Nightsoil Collection Service, are really just structs (I'm sticking to my own contributions so as not to offend anyone else). Now, there's nothing wrong with being a struct. We need structs to build superstructures out of. But we need to recognize the difference, because our goal isn't to flood the site with structs, but to make superstructs from them.

The struct is either a group, like Zombie Squad, or an idea, like The Exchange. Up until now, most of us have been posting our ideas for solutions, and trying to form groups around those ideas. We put it out there, and people rave it, and join it, and maybe start adding little improvements, but once you get your one badge for it, there's little point in continuing to revisit it. Now some of us get attached to our ideas and want to stick with them, but the truth is that everyone else also came to the game with their own ideas, and they want to work on theirs as well. This week I sat with all my ideas out there waiting for someone to come along and work on them so I could start a dialog, and I think a lot of others did too. Oddly enough, it's the ideas like the exchange or emergency permaculture that are the most open to being revised, that are the least attractive for others to work with. If the struct invites or needs a lot of participation, it gets ignored for fully formed ideas. Again, this is because people are inherently more interested in their own ideas, and want to spend their creative efforts mostly on their own stuff.

Now superstructing, what we should be doing, is taking these structs and arranging them in interesting ways. Out of all my structs, only Facilitators is really a superstruct because only Facilitators deals with using other people's ideas. It's still kinda awesome in that it tries to get your to work entirely with other ideas, but even if you are combining your own idea with someone elses, that's superstructing. And a lot of other people have gotten this, because the second wave of superstructs consisted heavily of people creating superstruct aides, things like blog aggregators and irc channels and Wikis, that help people communicate. Facilitators is one of these kinds of superstructs too, maybe the one that started the trend. But I've seen darned few, if any, actual superstructs. That may just be because noone has made one using an Idea of mine, so I hadn't noticed.

2: Lack of dynamic conflict.

Me and a few others were a little dissapointed in the first round of updates. Yes, they were interesting stories, and we enjoyed them. That's why they got so many raves. But what I think a lot of us were expecting were things more like the stories avantguard added later, like assembly12. Now I loved assembly12, which is why I wrote like 3 posts condemning it within an hour. I saw in them something I could react to, strongly, something I would hate in real life. I saw conflict.

The actual updates didn't give me much, if anything, to react against. Or with, or too. They were something good to read, but they didn't suggest more.

This is a GM and Player issue. So far a lot of stories have been self-contained. I know mine have been. The GMs could be providing us with global new information for us to react to. Updates like "REDS has spread to most North american cities," "US makes importing foreign ethanol illegal." or "ReDS victims and Exiles being rounded up into camps." But WE can be making those stories too. And we Should be, and we aren't. At least, not enough. This is primarily a hero vs. environment situation, no real villians, just terrible things to fix. Unless that environment starts reacting to us somehow, there's not much to do.

3: The site doesn't work.

At least, not the way it should to encourage collaborations. I'm not really a site designer, just a user, but here's my problems, in terms of that core issue.

The search function is terrible, and we have no good way to see all superstructs at once. We see 3 or so at a time. This isn't good. Coversations are too disconnected, and the same search problem presents itself. There's no organization to anything. And I'm having trouble seeing WHY this is, when formats exist that you can easily use without these issues. WHY isn't conversations a forum? Superstructures are these kinda semi-wikis, without the full benifits. A lot of superstructs have been made merely to combat these problems, but to make full use of them we have to link to them from the main site, and duplicate a lot of effort.

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What to do about these? Well, in reverse order: I don't know if a stie converstion midstream is possible, but I'd like to see the superstructures pages be actually Wiki-formatted, with a page that simply lists all existing structs, and conversations converted into a forum.

I'd like to see it possible for a single superstruct to earn multiple badges, to encourage people to keep working one them after they've gotten one. Maybe I'm selfish here, I'm kinda upset that I've only gotten 4 points for the most highly rated superstruct in the game.

I want to see people forming conflicts. Either create stories that advance the environment in big ways that others can react to, or find someone with a vision that opposes your own and start a good natured fight. Vinay, I'm looking at you. You've mentioned that DCAR and Guembe could have a great fight, get to it!

And start looking at what ideas other people have contributed, and do something with them. If you have an idea that needs work, don't assume other people are going to work on it. I know I'm going to re-edit the exchange to be a finished idea, that other people can start using in their own structs. Get out there and see what ideas other people have put out there, and instead of joining them, write stories including them.

And for the love of the earth, lets get back to work!