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As you may have noticed there has been an increase in, shall we say less enjoyable, storygames lately. Most of which have been published by trolls, who have not put any work or thought into their stories or have tried to make decent ones.

I don't know if this is possible, but I'd like to propose a change to the site so that new members can't publish stories in the first week (length of the no-publishing period can of course be debated). This measure will on the one hand encourage new members who really want to make an enjoyable game to put some more work into their games and publish them in a week's time; and on the other hand discourage trolls who are just craving attention, since they cannot troll (with games) until a week has passed.

Furthermore, I believe that a member who is a troll and who often publishes really bad games should not be banned from publishing for a week by mods.

But of course, this is my opinion, what do you guys think of this? ;)

That's actualy a very good idea, though the new people that aren't trolls will disagree with this, also, I have another idea, the trolls will not be banned, but they will not be allowed to post on the forums, post stories or(maybe) PM other users.

Might as well be banned :P

I wouldn't agree that new people who aren't trolls would disagree with this. I'd like to see good games too, and I don't think I or anyone else could legitimately write a good storygame in a weeks time.

3J Made Order of the Midnight sun in less than a day.

Wasn't it made in 3 days?

I think the last two days were bug fixing and play testing.

Also, I made this in 4 days (including bug fix) when I was 10http://chooseyourstory.com/story/island-attack~3a-raid

First two weeks. They'll just wait a week and post a ton of storygames all at once. Maybe a limit to 1 game / week? That could be good... I like the idea :D

What about people that want to launch two stories at once? I'm planning to do that... around September....

1 game / 2 day after the first week?

No, I intend the second to be a sequel and I dont want to keep people waiting, so I launch them both at the same time.

2 days is pretty close together... maybe 1 game / 12 hours after the first week limit?

I think you're being Marmlorded, Ford.

Marmlorded? (google comes up with nothing)

Well obviously. He was a member of CYS, not some really popular guy.

He has a blog though...kinda.

I agree with this. Then I won't be tempted to rush in completing my story-game. I rush for some reason and it makes my games turn out poor.

I think maybe allowing a single story to be published until after the 2nd week would be better instead. 1 story during the 2 weeks and as many as you can write afterwards.

I don't like the idea of a waiting period before you can publish though, I feel it would drive more people off than it would gain.

But allowing a single story with enough notice that they have to wait 2 weeks(Unless a mod or Admin approves and unlocks otherwise) before they can publish a new storygame.

This way they can write and publish a story within the 2 weeks that they have and still interact on the forums before the waiting period is over.

 It would be kind of like a 'Indemnity Period' of sorts.

I'm fed up with all of these sorry excuses for games, so I'm all for this. Kind of hoping that there would also be some kind of penalty for having far too many games that are continually rated 1's and 2's after the waiting period ends, but the initial 'indemnity period' would be great.

Can't you just add an option to block trolls instead of this?

They can't implement an IP tracking feature here, they can block as many accounts as they want, but it's not going to change the fact that this is a writing site, for stories, and those stories are lacking in quality.

They can already see IP addresses. They just choose to not ban based off of that.

This would be pretty all but trivial to implement from a technical standpoint.

I'll defer to admins & mods to decide if it should be done.

I wrote The Order of the Midnight Sun in less than a week.

I have always been a fan of just simply deleting the terrible games. Why implement a longer and longer waiting period? That wont eliminate bad games, just delay them. In the end we still have to delete them. Just let them waste their own time, then delete the story/game etc. No questions asked. 

nate

The problem is reliability of a mod/admin looking through all the stories to find which ones to delete...and a month or two ago, that wasn't going to happen. No one of power was active enough to spend time filtering (not meaning any offense, I realize people have lives and things to do other than be here moderating things :P). I guess now that summer is rolling around and many holidays are coming up, perhaps deleting them is the best solution (I'd say it's the best solution whether admins are active or not) - but more probable solution now than then. There's no sense in making a complicated delay system to it. (I don't think delaying them from trolling is ever going to stop them, if anything it encourages them more)

This system of deletion also brings up judgment problems. Say the story has a diceroll whether or not the player gets a good story or a bad story - if a mod/admin only gets the bad story, then they will delete it as a troll story. That would make a few people that got a good story ticked off. Although there are more decisive factors - such as looking at the length of the story; but those aren't always reliable because of fake pages and fake links. It could be a short masterpiece, but because of a few wrong choices - it could be unpublished (which would demoralize the author and they would likely not be creating anything like it again - in extreme cases, they may leave because of the amount of work they put into it, but wasn't up to standards)

There are simply too many variables to account for when there is a personal opinion involved - so how do we get rid of the variables and have the minimal amount of trouble? The first thought that instantly came to mind as I was typing that was 'Have multiple moderators/admins agree for the deletion of the game.' - this minimizes the problem for a random occurrence that the story might actually be good if played as the author intended. As 3J so kindly mentioned on a thread in the news and updates sub-forum, point amount contributes to the strength of a rating by certain people. After 500 points the member is usually dedicated enough that they would know what they enjoy and don't enjoy. Sadly 50%+ active members are not people with over 500 points, and if you count guests and anonymous accounts - it's a much larger difference. So much so that unless someone with over a couple thousand points rates a game (which is unlikely since the people with over 2k points are rare), the anons and new members can out-vote even someone with 5k+ points. Depending on how many people are rating the game in respect to the amount of people with over 2k points - the ratings of a game can be deceiving. (just as a certain member with initials DF made a 1 page game, and out-voted many people with a high amount of points to gain a spot on the top-rated list; the ratio was simply too unfair).

So length is our constant! If we lived in a perfect world. Sadly, we don't; and there are always ways to cheat a simple system that allows freedom. The question has now changed from how to prevent variables and opinions, to how to make sure the system in place can be improved without adding anything complicated - therefore helping the best of both problematic worlds.

There is an impenetrable door that can be easily opened, because the lock is on the outside. It's an easy lock, no key required - anyone can go through the door. So how do we stop people who we don't want walking through the door - while also letting people we want to enter, enter easily. No finger print identification, no electricity even - that would be too complicated and time consuming to set up, what could we do? We could have someone stand at the door checking everyone who goes through - but that person isn't always at the door, and sometimes it's a different person checking people in a different way. Which way is more effective? Who knows? They can work together though! They can each stay at the door limiting the people who go through the door because they are trusted and so they have the right to bare trust upon others. What happens when they're gone though? No one can stand for more than a few days before dying of exhaustion; and no one will stand for a day without feeling uncomfortable or bored. They have things to do, places to be, not standing at a door all day everyday checking everything that can or can't go through the door.

So should the mods/admins take an unfair amount of time out of their life to filter out all of the bad stories? If they do, will they continue to be there reliably 100% of the time? Checking every new story, getting multiple confirmations, rating with the same opinions in mind? Absolutely not (unless, of course, they care so much - not to say they don't care, but other things are of priority). It's simply too much work either way - it would take selflessness AND time to do anything significant, and no one has that much time. (I have the time, too bad I'm selfish xD)

So, are any of the current mods/admins up to the task and determined beyond life to change what isn't a huge problem? Probably not. It's like a mosquito flying around a room where a sleepover is taking place - it bothers most of the people trying to sleep peacefully, but no one is going to get up and try to swat the mosquito - it's simply not worth the effort. In the morning, they may use bug spray to keep more mosquitos from coming, but bug spray doesn't last forever - and it takes quite the bit of work to get everywhere, insuring no more mosquitos will ever come again. Yet that one mosquito still lives. Buzzing around in the dark.

Too long; didn't read - The problem can be fixed with a triangle of determination, time, and selflessness - but one side is always missing; never to make a perfect triangle.

very good points my friend. It is a difficult task to undertake no matter what strategy is used. trolls will never go away. even when it takes effort to make a game. They will still go out of their way to make them. why, alludes me. 

nate

I'm sure there are psychological studies out there somewhere (I assume anyways). "The sensation of messing with people and how far people will go to do it." type of experiments; but they probably aren't very reliable due to human nature. People taking the test for science would still do and answer the opposite of what they would normally - just to troll the study. I wish for less bothersome inconsistencies in the world - that would be nice. *sigh of a dream that will never come true*

http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-lounge/message/11810

Just copy the link of any stories that should be unpublished and PM an admin. Really, just do that as they pop up and we won't have a problem.

Why don't we do a cleanup of this site every 3 months or so. That way ads won't have to check in every 2 days for bad games. During cleanups, users could submit stories in forums. And then all the submitted stories that are really bad and trolling could be deleted together. And of course, any legit stories are marked to be deleted then the author could always say.

I've sort of been doing that.

If this site was bigger then we could implement a Newgrounds.com mechanic, where new stories go through a "testing" phase before they get accepted but I doubt we have a committed enough userbase for something like that.