Skully/cit001

Skully's Guide to Good Citizenship, Entry 001: +Votes & +Noms

Theme Song of the Day: Felt, "Employees of the Year"

Hello citizens of Prospect, and welcome to Skully's Guide to Good Citizenship, as written by Everybody's Best Friend == me! This is intended to be an ongoing series of advice columns that encourage good MUSH citizenship and productive roleplay, so we'll see how that goes.

For our inaugural entry, I'm going to address two of the most basic and important elements of good citizenship: the +vote and the +nom. Folks who have been around when I'm online have likely seen my public service announcements on the topic, so they already know I've got a bee in my bonnet on the subject. But let's go ahead and dig into that, shall we?

You have at your disposal two important tools with which to grant XP to other players. The simplest and easier to use is the good ol' +vote, which is absolutely free to give and is a bottomless resource restricted only by the frequency with which you give it to a single PC. You can +vote twice a cycle for anyone you choose (generally someone who is sharing a scene with you), and if you want to save time you can even +vote/here to get every single person currently occupying the same space as you. People have differing philosophies as to when and why to vote, but here at the Good Citizenship Guide we tend to keep our standards fairly low. If you truly want to be a Good Citizen, it's important not to be stingy with your +votes; instead, consider them a basic reward for someone coming out to RP at all. Remember that for some folks it's actually a bit anxiety-inducing to make the decision not to idle at home and instead go out and engage in RP with others, and since it costs you absolutely nothing to reward this behavior, go ahead and +vote twice for the people around you and let them know you're glad they chose to come out and play. The very worst thing that could happen is that you +vote for someone who doesn't actually interact with you, and considering the relatively small amount of XP generated, that's not much of a downside.

All that said, don't be wholly indiscriminate and simply +vote for every name you see on a channel or +who. It really is intended as a reward for RP, so treat it as such unless you have a particular need to recognize something outside of that definition. I mean... I'm not your boss. You do you. Just... don't +vote for your alts. That's Bad Citizenship.

Now that we've addressed the spare change of social currency, let's get to the folding money; the wonderful +nom. Some folks consider this a Big Deal, and it's easy to see why; it takes effort to write one, it grants a substantial amount of XP, and it requires a member of Staff to process. All of this is true, but being selfish about +noms is also missing the point and preventing Good Citizenship. The +nom exists as a tool to acknowledge contributions to a scene, and doesn't need to be taken any further than that to be considered a good idea. If you RP with someone and the interaction is positive, personal, and productive, then take a minute and write up a +nom. The process seems intimidating but is actually fairly painless; you type up the command here -- +xp/nom <recipient>/<type>=<explanation> -- and start your explanation with a 2-4 sentence blurb about the crux of the scene and how you felt about it, then copy 3-6 of the PC's poses (separated by %r%r please; make it easy for Staff to read!) and fire it off. For Type you almost always want to include Acting and Concept both (never separate), but don't shy away from those Learning or other +nom types if they're appropriate! Remember that the more applicable types you include the greater the reward for that PC, so if it was a great scene and your PC experienced growth and you had a great time, it's worth considering how many boxes you can tick on the checklist.

All that said, a caveat; +nom generously, but not indiscriminately. Standards are important, too, and some scenes and interactions simply don't qualify. Staff is unlikely to reward someone for silently sitting and nodding along with a conversation, for example, nor for a scene of three poses that were mainly "Hello" and "Goodbye". Use your best judgement, citizens!

So that does it for our very first entry in Skully's Guide to Good Citizenship. I hope you were positively influenced and hit the grid with a renewed sense of self-determination and goodwill. Feel free to comment on the Discussion page, if you like. As always, I've been Everybody's Best Friend, Skully. Don't run with scissors!