Library publication rejections

Kalnid

Since it apparently needs its own thread.

Orael said:

Kalnid said:

Orael said:

1) Your second statement is false. If you have any issues with the way a book has been handled, you can always email support@lusternia.com. Please refrain from making false claims such as this in the future.

If that's the case, would you mind listing out precisely what issues will cause a book to be pulled, as well as publicly tagging each newly rejected book in future so as to make it clear and serve as demonstration? The continued refusal to make rejection reasons visibly documented causes problems not only for librarians and authors trying to identify standards, but also for future admins when someone three years down the line goes 'wait why was this rejected I can't see anything wrong with this'.

If you want to start another thread asking for this, feel free, but this isn't the place to discuss this.

Lycidas

I'd like to support this notion of there at least being a comment field like designs have to go over the shortcomings or problems the submission had.

Deichtine

It does sound like the rules are not clear for the general populace. More feedback and clearer rules sounds a great idea especially if we're making the library system more important to earning credits now.

Portius

From the bottom of HELP CRITIQUING:

"NOTICE: Any big changes of this system will be posted on Announce, but small ones will just be added
without further notice."

I think this one statement is the biggest problem with the rejection rules. The rules can change whenever the admin want, without telling us, and that can lead to rejections. I think it is impossible to take the library seriously as a competitive mechanic, or even a really playable one, with that in place.

Even if it isn't the intention, that makes it look like you are trying to hide things, or be able to retroactively change rules to reject books. Appearances matter, so even if that isn't the goal, it still has an impact on how willing people are to engage with the system. Even a completely benign but unannounced rule change that leads to a surprise rejection feels awful. No good can come of it.

I have no end of complaints about the requirement for scholarly books to be accurate unless labeled as speculative and the criteria that people use for deciding if a book is sufficiently labeled, but this is probably too early in the thread for a megapost. Don't want eyes glazing over.

Enadonella

This here is my biggest issue, because if there is no reason needed, what is to prevent from bias? To add to this, if the initial reason is unfounded, why then was the book still banned? This anarchy in the library system makes it difficult for new players or players new to the system to navigate what is and is not okay to write about or demand reasonable and fair critiquing, as well as feedback. 

I stand by the Oneiroi's decision to pull the book from the public library. I will specifically withdraw the Oneiroi's reason why and replace it with my own words which I've stated to you several times: We reserve the right to pull writings in the public library in our sole and absolute discretion. Any reason given for pulling a public writing is out of courtesy only and not to be taken as a precedent or a rule.

To add to this, if the initial reasoning is no longer relevant, what is the reason or purpose for continuing to repress the publication of a book? I think it is only right that the playerbase have the right to understand how a system they work within applies to their time and efforts. This is certainly a lot bigger than one situation.

Shaddus

Part of Lusternia that brings in no actual profit is ruled by arbitrary, behind-the-scenes rule changes with little or no actual oversight or explanation?


This is my shocked face.

Deichtine

Shaddus said:

Part of Lusternia that brings in no actual profit is ruled by arbitrary, behind-the-scenes rule changes with little or no actual oversight or explanation?


This is my shocked face.

Well we're making the system part of generating credits so nows a good a time as any to get it improved right?

Lycidas

I think this is the first time I've ever heard there be a call of bias in publishing. Literary works are -literally- anything you want to right about. Want to turn Hallifax into the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? Use their power spheres instead of coins! That's a freebie.

Scholarly has to be founded in fact (game world) and either contain proof of saying fact, or reference to said proof for verification. There really aren't that many rules, and it's hard to say new players or first-time writers can't navigate the system. I submitted my very first work without a hitch. Proper grammar, sentence structure, and clearly defined as being one of the two categories.

Xenthos

Bias has been around for a long time.  There are cases of old scholarly works which had some nasty comments thrown on them despite being fully grounded in in-game lore.

The most egregious example of this was a Nekotai scholarly lore book.  When it was pointed out that the comment was totally wrong, instead of apologizing a bunch of NPCs had their text / lore changed to make the comment "technically" correct.

We lost a lot of Nekotai lore interest from that whole thing.

But really, anyone who knows me know that I like consistency and actual rules instead of going by the gut, so I do approve of actually defining and using Official Rules for something that is important to game competition systems.  Everyone should be treated the same, it should be transparent, and there should be an easier means of review / discussion (perhaps even leaning on the librarians to help when there is a point of disagreement).  Opaque systems discourage risk taking.

Edit: I have to clarify that I have not heard of recent examples of bias, but, I have not been invested in the library system in a very long time either.  Modern bias may not be a thing... but transparency is a great thing anyways!

Portius

My problems with the scholarly rules:

-Science, which is distinct from scholarly, becomes largely non-viable. We do not have the mechanics to do experiments in the game, so we have to fabricate conclusions on most scientific topics.

--But there is an an org and a guild within that org (Hallifax, Consortium) that are focused on doing science as one of their main things. The rulings are in conflict.

-The potential to be wrong adds depth to the game and RP. Look at the history of every branch of research. It's full of things that were both published and wrong! Some published in good faith, some deliberate misrepresentations.

-Being perfectly accurate is good for an encyclopedia. Lusternia is a game. It benefits from making concessions to playability.

-The current rules are a reversal of prior policy.

--That means the library is already contaminated with loads of scholarlies that are false but got published or even won prestige. You can't rely on accuracy anyway!

--Admin used to interact with players and even add things to the game based on books that were entirely fabricated. That was fun!

---People also complain about feeling like they can't influence the world at all. That was one way to do it.

----All together, those two make for a major missed opportunity.

But there is a solution. Just give the admin a stamp to put on books to mark them as canon, and accept everything else as fanfiction. Which was more or less what it was before the current rules, when divine scholar comments often went along the lines of 'good book, but we don't endorse the contents.'

I also have vague memories of a Lusternian Historical Society thing from years ago that amounted to a process to make a thing canon. That sort of longer process could also be a good way to make the writer types like Lusty more and give more material for the lore nerds to nerd at.

Lycidas

Aye, I'll also clarify that just because this is my first time hearing it, doesn't mean it hasn't happened before. But on that note, the example you gave definitely sounds like a shifty reason that caught enough wind to get rectified (if I'm reading that right?). Either way, it helps us more as a playerbase to at least have some ground rules that are visible, because they do exist. Once they're visible, let's hopefully agree that even the small changes are announced. Doesn't have to be an announce post, can be a changelog and I think we'd all appreciate it.

Xenthos

Last time it was brought up (during that last Lusternia in-game q&a with the admin) they said they were going to look into purging the comment.  I have not checked to see if it was gone, but at that point at least it was still a thing (and has definitely stuck with a number of us old-timers).

Enya

Portius said:

I have no end of complaints about the requirement for scholarly books to be accurate unless labeled as speculative and the criteria that people use for deciding if a book is sufficiently labeled, but this is probably too early in the thread for a megapost. Don't want eyes glazing over.

This. Wow this.

 Lusternia is already a game where even the by far most successful players have little to no impact on the actual world itself, even though the story of the game gives them status as massive movers and shakers: Each org leader is the leader of roughly a sixth of the entire world. The story line of the game is pretty much entirely top down with players merely responding according to the scripts expounded by NPCs, waiting around to be told what to do next and complete various busy work obligations to move the story along. This robs all of the game's various mechanical systems of impact, because at the end of the day it just does not matter who is at the helm - player characters do not change the world in any way not entirely dictated and directed by administration. Why then should players take initiative or apply their creativity, when it makes no difference. You can put forth the effort and talent to make your character the best salespreson literally in all of Lusternian creation, but who cares: this won't make your character any more relevant. That sucks, and pulls a huge amount of the fun out of what is at heart a collaborative story telling experience, as all roleplaying games are. This is a throughline in all of my critique, including Economy things.

Though difficult, time consuming, and generally thankless, the scholarly library was the one outlet for expanding the game world that an individual player could look forward to, once the new toy shine wore off. Here alone, the average player could engage in an interactive way with the lore of Lusternia, unlike during events. They could soak up all of the available information, formulate theories, and ultimately expand Lusternia, if they were creative and clever enough. Famously, small things struck upon in this way have been retroactively entered into the game. 

Because of the nature of a text based game, the amount of information available to the players as extant facts in the game is finite, while the amount of information available to the characters approaches infinite. To illustrate this, consider a palette item:

"The oblong piece of wood has shapes cut out to allow gripping between the thumb and 

fingers. Cut onto the palette are globs of bright tinctures, mixed in a variety of colours."

What kind of wood is that palette?The player has NO way to establish this a posteriori, by observation. There is a hard limit of knowledge the player can observe, and that snippet is near the sum total of it. However, certainly the character should be able to go about looking at the palette, testing its wood and comparing it to known samples to deduce what sort of wood it is. To capture this method in our characters, we players must a priori decide what the wood is at some point, and either let it stand or be proved wrong. In this case I might decide that my palette is made of oak, a reasonable assertion as it's one of the three trees harvested in Serenwilde and is the easiest to work with of the three. As long as there isn't any contradiction (notice that the palette doesn't specify what the wood is), no player has the ability to contradict that assertion, and while some admin might drop in and say that it's some other wood through an NPC, that's unlikely. I've asserted something into truth! If I got an admin's attention and made the case, I might even get them to establish it such that players COULD see it by observation (by changing the palette's description). 

Books were that process of getting an admin's attention, the kind of ultimate force that gives weight to all downstream assertions of facts that shade in the world everyone's character lives in. If someone challenged my assertion that the palette was oak, and said "no, that palette must be rowan" and engaged in emotes counter to mine establishing it as oak, how is that conflict (or any other) resolved? At the end of the day, only an admin or administrative stand-in can, in their authority as "Dungeon Master" of the game, enforcing the common rules of the world.

I could write a scholarly book titled "Functional woodworking: a commodity study" establishing the provenance of typical wood used by Serenwilde and its vassals for various projects based on the flow of commodities through various villages and so on. If I cannot a priori establish that my character has made a study of these things, I must first present the completed idea to an admin to then code into the game or exposit as an NPC to establish it as fact, THEN write it into a book and publish it. Instead of just assuming my character sees these things because they make sense and don't contradict things that are already observable and writing them up. Then, if there's no problems or contradictions that make the observation impossible on the order of "Oak actually doesn't exist in Lusternia what are you talking about" or the like, it stands! The other player might write a book explaining how I've had some flaw in my reasoning or observations but I've established that my player has done these things and everyone has to recognize on some level that it really happened. It's become part of the game world, even if my character's theories are actually wrong, or it turns out they lied. You can engage with it seriously!

Tossing scholarly books because the player had to to establish facts on their own and make conjectures is like sitting down at a dungeons and dragon's table where the dungeon master refuses to acknowledge either way on player actions unless there's a rule dictating what happens. It's bad, the whole enterprise becomes hollow. You might not notice it, and it might not unravel everything, but it corrodes roleplay. 

Estarra

If something is canon, it'd be in the world library. Players can apply to have a writing included that they want canon--I think only one person went through the process and there was a protracted back and forth before it was accepted, so it's certainly not easy.

Portius

Estarra said:

If something is canon, it'd be in the world library. Players can apply to have a writing included that they want canon--I think only one person went through the process and there was a protracted back and forth before it was accepted, so it's certainly not easy.

That's the impression that i had before the rules changed! With that in mind, why did the library add the canonicity requirement for scholarly books?

To be clear, I mean this one from HELP CRITIQUING:

- Lack of evidence for scholarly claims (making up lore without labeling it speculation)

Edit: A note about the process to make things canon in a helpfile somewhere would probably a good addition. Both to clarify the canon/noncanon line and make sure people know they can do it.

Lycidas

That was a really long read, Enya, and I get what you're getting at but the example might not have been the best to use. The wood being used more than likely wouldn't be a point of contention, as it can easily just be said, "I'm eccentric, I only use pine! It makes it easier to see the tinctures." or whatever RP reason you wanted. Scholarly works do need to be founded in fact, but they can -also- be research notes. You could be doing an experiment and your journal logs can be published under scholarly so long as it's not trying to assert wild claims.

Bairloch

But her point, if I understood it correctly, was that, at times, you have to assert fact. There is way more going on in this world that we cannot see but our characters can, so you assert it (as long as it doesn't directly contradict something already established). This is based on nothing, but it should be allowed as it is helpful to flesh out the game and isn't really hurting anything.

Lycidas

I did agree to that and stated I understood where Enya was coming from, just explaining why that particular example wasn't the best to use for it.

Estarra

Could perhaps someone give an example of a scholarly book that was rejected for lack of evidence? My understanding is that it is extremely rare to reject a book, that it is more often for being OOC, plagiarized, etc. and that it is never the decision of one person. I also understand that if a book is rejected, the writer is given a clear reason why. So perhaps this is much ado about nothing or perhaps there are books that we need to re-look at, but some concrete examples might be useful.

Portius

Mytheomagical: The Kabbalistic Narrative of Tarot written by Curwa, off the top of my head. I could probably find one or two others.

Enya

I see what you mean, the palette is very noncomplex topic and we can all agree that if it's "wood" there must be some kind of wood. For more complicated topics, the very existence of that type differentiation might actually be the question at hand! 

Basically, it's important that players be able to say both "There's a piece of information missing here" and to "That piece of information is this". It's not necessarily as important to have a ruling on that particular information, what's important is the player's ability to make those statements in a legitimate way. In other words, it's important to be able to "make up lore", even if that lore turns out to be incorrect. The scholarly rule added makes it such that you can't write and publish a scholarly work that makes either assertion, correct or incorrect.  That's how it's like the DnD example, the game world just isn't working right if you can't fill it in. 

Vatul

There was one recently rejected written by Marcella (I used to have a message from an administrator about the specific one) but it was removed from the library. Sadly I can't recall the title.

Kistan

The one about Celest?

Kalnid

Estarra said:

I also understand that if a book is rejected, the writer is given a clear reason why. So perhaps this is much ado about nothing

You're looking at half the issue: even if books are only being rejected for solid and well-founded reasons, those reasons still need to be public knowledge for the sake of visibility, consistency, and future clarity. Right now two people receive the reason, those being the author and the publishing librarian, but that's insufficient.

Vatul

Kalnid said:

Estarra said:

I also understand that if a book is rejected, the writer is given a clear reason why. So perhaps this is much ado about nothing

You're looking at half the issue: even if books are only being rejected for solid and well-founded reasons, those reasons still need to be public knowledge for the sake of visibility, consistency, and future clarity. Right now two people receive the reason, those being the author and the publishing librarian, but that's insufficient.

@Kalnid - When I received the message about Marcella's book, the admin were concerned about the privacy of it being removed - especially for the author's sake. I have had a book removed before and it hurt my feelings and motivation to continue churning out books. It does cause issues, thinking that a publication is something admin would be proud of and then having it suddenly be not.

Estarra

Being as I'm not overly involved in the day-to-day library process, I've reached out to the library admin and looked over some of the rejections. Again, I want to stress how rare a rejection is and for those rare cases when a scholarly book is rejected, the reasons for the rejection are (to my mind) logical and clearly laid out. If something is being presented as scholarly fact and really goes counter to lore or in-game logic, the author and librarian are politely asked to note that the 'facts' are not facts but speculation. For the tarot book (thanks, Portius!),  the response to the author was "While it is clearly a detailed, lovingly-crafted book, many of the claims made in the book have no evidence cited or backup in lore. Speculation is acceptable, of course, but in order not to confuse the canon of lore, divine scholars would like egregiously speculative claims to be labeled as such, speculation. We look forward to the resubmission of your book once the points of speculation have been clearly labeled. Thank you!" I personally don't see this as grossly unreasonable. I'm wondering if a 'stamp' indicating the book is speculation would be more appropriate but it appears to me that the divine scholars are trying to work with the author to prevent something like that.

In any event, what I do know and can plainly see is that books are not being 'rubber-stamped', that they're being considered, discussed and processed in a thoughtful, careful manner. And remember, the people reviewing the books are volunteers, doing it on their own time and dime, for nothing more than preserve the integrity of the game world.

I know some of you will think we should just allow everything, freedom of expression and roleplay, give us the right to make up whatever facts we want, but I believe the admin should be allowed some discretion and oversight for scholarly works for no other reason than to give players who happen to read the book inaccurate or false information. Is it really that onerous to ask to clarify to the reader that what they are reading is speculation? Who knows? Maybe it will be proven true in the future but as of the time of writing it is not. The current rule for possible removal states: "lack of evidence for scholarly claims (making up lore without labeling it speculation)". I'm open to to improve the wording. Keep in mind it must be broad because we cannot possibly think of every specific fact that could be brought up, not to mention some of you are very creative and imaginative so there will bound to be things you think up that we had never considered (who's to say Avechna isn't made of cheese and held together by a powerful forcefield so you can never eat him). I certainly don't want to subject library admin to dimestore lawyering (there's nothing in the lore saying that Lusternia doesn't ride atop a giant turtle). Suggestions?

Enya

No, I don't think it's correct to characterize the argument being presented as being one of players wanting "right to make up whatever facts we want". Quite the opposite, actually!

I think it can be distilled into the idea that scholarship is a description of the method, and not of the outcome - the facts being established (or not). The validation by admins of facts about the lore should be left more clearly to the process you describe of canonization by entry into the World Library, not by the scholarly publication process. That any work that is essentially scholarly, in other words that's not obviously categorized as fantastic or absurd, be allowed to be scholarly without considering either way what the actual facts being asserted are. Just to validate the potential roleplay of asserting facts that aren't already established in the game world and leave aside the necessity of carefully evaluating every project's factual content, though you can still do that and permit a scholarly book with a scholarly comment that the divine scholars think that the conclusions are debatable if desired. 


There should be a line between what characters think is true and what is actually accurate to the lore of the game from a player perspective. Player characters should be permitted to be incorrect but still have access to the project of valid and legitimate scholarly research, pretty much.  

Suggestion is to remove the new line requiring a "factual" basis on scholarly works, shift the reviewing ethos to evaluate only if the methods and observations are reasonable to believe on the part of an educated everyman, and possibly to allow the automatic publishing of any books that fail that test as literary works. This more clearly puts a line between "divine scholars", an IC construct interacting with fundamentally in character books (Which can be wrong or even in bad faith), and the process of validating canonical lore in an absolute sense on the part of ADMINS through the World Library. 

Portius

This is the end of the first page of that book:

"It should be emphasized, however,
that these theoretical interpretations are not in any way proven - these
essay serves more as a pre-registration of my hypothesis in the proudest
traditions of the scientific method, so that none can say after the fact
that I fitted my hypothesis to the experimental results rather than
using the results to validate or disconfirm my prior suppositions. While
I would go so far to assert that they seem plausible and consistent with
the current research in the fields of High Magic and Tarot, I shall not
claim them as Truth until I have seen the evidence myself. (Take
nobody's word for it!)"

That seems pretty clearly labeled as speculative. Still got rejected.

The core problem with allowing rejection on that basis is that it is fundamentally unpredictable. Even if you decide that you're going to allow making up things that seem reasonable, we have no way of judging what reasonable is going to be. So you're gambling every time you write something.

Beyond that, being able to have wrong info in books is a positive asset. It's a good thing! It gives you a topic to interact with other players over. Real research is like that! It also means we can write things that are org propaganda and present them as facts. Which is a thing that governments do. If there's a clear understanding that books int he world library are canon, and everything else is not, then it shouldn't even be an issue for the ones that do want lots of accuracy. Should probably add that to a helpfile somewhere.

Lore is great, but Lusternia is a game. Placing purity of lore over playability probably isn't a good choice for it. If you're really sure that you want to keep it clear, just have an optional review to have admin stamp things as plausible and label them accordingly.

Enya

Pretty much that: because it's so unpredictable and subjective, just don't rule on it at all and side step the issue by reframing scholarly publication. 

Leave the more complicated absolute comparison to "truth" in terms of lore to a World Library application, a much rarer event. Let player characters dispute each other's methods and conclusions on the stage of scholarly publication, allow published scholarly books to be wrong or make a case for themselves. Doing so sufficiently permits for the kind of creation of unimportant/minor evidence as described in the pallete example et. al., which is why it's important.  

Portius

Further thing:

This is a change of policy. There were -years- of not having this standard, and the library seemed a lot healthier at that time. If you'd like, I can pull up books with divine scholar comments along the lines of 'good book, but not factual' or books that were fully fabricated and won prestige. Given that the old way seemed to work very well, I would love to know why it was changed. It seems like there should be a reason.

Stratas

Many years ago, I wrote a book, probably the one I'm most proud of to be honest, about pyrochemantics. Going off nothing more than a detailed review of the flavor text surrounding abilities and the fact that at the time the humoral purgatives were still a thing, I created an entire system whereby pyrochemancers turned their body into their demesne and then essentially used facets of internal organs to create, refine, and use effluvia. I even had a flowchart! Very detailed, hella awesome, 100% made up. I at no point that I recall said "uh, yeah, this is just a theory" because that would have been dumb and counter to my purpose. It was presented as "this is how the Pyrochem do".

It won prestige and placed second in Bardics.

So yeah, y'alls system is borked if you let that through multiple divine reviewers but then look at others and go "not based in fact! Denied!"