What is acceptable lurker behaviour?

[Rowain]

If you want to call me a backstabbing cowardly piece of crap for trading tech X to team B who's at war with a team I have a NAP with then please keep it to yourself.

Absolutly agree.

[Jowy]

If we are talking generally, I think we should also include one other rule which has just cropped up in PB2.

A Lurker must not criticise the teams actions or posts

I say this because it will only ever cause aggravation to those players who are putting all their hard work into their game and their PRIVATE thread. If lurkers have an issue with it, then either complain in the No Player thread or say nothing and look at other threads.

Personally, without spoiling anything, I love that stuff those people post! Bring it, bitches! Seriously though, if the player(s) doesn't approve that kind of behavior then I agree the lurker(s) should post their thoughts in the no-player-discussion thread instead. It's easy to criticize when you know a lot more than the player. What makes perfect sense with the information that the player has, might sound absurd to the lurker. Sometimes some people forget that.

[Ruff_Hi]

bump!

guess it is really time to bring this thread back to life.

Q: What is the purpose of playing civ4 games like this, posting turn by turn descriptions and having lurkers?

Answer that question, and I think a lurker code of conduct will become self evident.

[Cyneheard]

In Pitboss 3, we've mostly been using the forum for intra-team discussions, as an easy way to organize everything that's going on, post screenshots, etc etc. Not all discussions happen there, of course, but it's much easier to write up a post with screenshots than try to e-everything mail around the team, and keep it organized.

Lurker input is appreciated, especially when we have questions about game mechanics questions. Our thread is about 98% team members, so that's been few and far between, but welcome when it's been needed.

The first priority is managing our team's actions, the second is trying to keep the lurkers aware of what we're thinking & what's happening, as well as engaged as much as they wish to be, within the bounds of spoiler rules. We're working on improving our accessibility to lurkers, especially with better clarity and brevity.

For single-player teams, they'll have to answer their own questions on what they get out of it.

Post-game, I really look forward to reading the other teams' accounts of what they knew, how they wanted to handle diplomacy, etc. etc. So the spoiler threads have their purpose, even if lurker activity is restricted heavily. However, when I was a lurker, observing AND also being able to ask questions ("why did you make this decision", "could you explain how X works" are both good questions) were good things.

[sunrise089]

Two thoughts Ruff (though your more abstract approach is fine too):

1) Your code of conduct gets us 95% of where we need to be, though I'd rather people not even need it.

2) RBP1, RBP3, and RBPBEM1 (I'm not really lurking the 2nd PBEM) don't seem to have lurker issues. Not coincidentally Speaker and Sullla are only playing in RBP2. Having celebrities playing simply brings along a Civfanatics attitude to the game.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

2) RBP1, RBP3, and RBPBEM1 (I'm not really lurking the 2nd PBEM) don't seem to have lurker issues. Not coincidentally Speaker and Sullla are only playing in RBP2. Having celebrities playing simply brings along a Civfanatics attitude to the game.

+1.

So what we need is a Jeopardy! Celebrity tournament.

Because so many lurkers are exclusively following the celebrity team, maybe a band-aid fix for PB2 would be 2 separate lurker threads within PB2: one for game discussion, and one for Sullla/Speaker thread discussion. Granted, it would not help with any lurker issues going forward, but my experience seems to agree with sunrise's, that PB2 is really the only game with a significant possibility of spoiler impact.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Having celebrities playing simply brings along a Civfanatics attitude to the game.

I can't quite persuade myself that this is a generous characterization, but I do agree that the circumstances here do appear to be unique.

[sunrise089]

I can't quite persuade myself that this is a generous characterization, but I do agree that the circumstances here do appear to be unique.

Civfanatics is great, it's just a site that doesn't have any limits on what info is to be shared...at least in the strategy and SG forums. All I mean is that we're a pretty specialized niche website, and people who followed RB1 at CFC don't necessarily understand that we work a little different.