Spidere / Texts
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I really like the composition here; as one looks closer, the fact that the very center is the only part truly in focus really catches me, as though the picture itself encourages you to focus in on the picture taker.
You are a troublemaker.
...
Keep it up!
Creepy and wonderful.
Where else does advertising mean free stuff for the consumer?
:) I love bribery for a good cause.
I really like the drawing at the end--it seems to capture a nice mood. Shine, little star, and provide a beacon for the darkened path...
In support of adventure and daring!
I just wanted to encourage the administrators to be very careful before changing the points system. I think it works pretty well now (though I've never known anything else), providing incentives for both exceptional completions (through votes) and completing more tasks (through base points), allowing people to stay involved through small tasks, and giving a greater reward for greater accomplishments. I feel like it's often hard to see what incentives you'll end up giving people in a voting system, and to predict what the results will be. (Hmm, I should see if I can do some statistical analysis on the choices people made in the different eras...)
I think that not having points for tasks would make small tasks fewer and farther between. If you're reliant on votes, you're reliant on people seeing your task and voting on it...and I think you'll get more variance, more points due to random effects like being the first to complete a task, or how long it was on the praxis front page. The same, I think, goes for the different voting levels (including the super vote, to some extent)--because people will choose one of those with some randomness (I could see a lot of borderline cases if I have to make that decision), it makes the points you get more random, more based on chance...and that feels like a disincentive to do something (something great as well, but especially something small).
I also don't want to feel obligated to vote for something just because it was technically completed; I like reserving my (albeit unlimited) votes for completions that I really like for some reason...but if there were no base score, and a completion only received points for votes, I think I'd feel like I had to vote for anything that just passed technical muster.
Anyway, I think having base scores is nice, because it gives you an indicator for how easy or hard a task is, and for hard tasks gives a reward for extra difficulty. It helps that extra difficulty feel more real, and I think encourages you to take it seriously. The small tasks which are done in an epic way are well rewarded by the votes they receive. I feel very motivated to make my completions good already; I love seeing that people like what I did, I also see good completions getting lots of points from votes. I don't think you need to remove base scores to have that.
While I'm here, a couple of other comments...I love the epic amazing tasks--they're things that SF0 was made for, things that remind us just how weird and wonderful the world is, because we can make it that way! But I also like the small tasks, the little tidbits of strangeness that you do that move you along. I feel like some people would like to see the little tasks disappear (or tasks which meet the requirement and have something interesting, but aren't spectacular works of long effort). Honestly, I'd like to make sure they stay. I just completed a couple of smaller tasks, while I'm in the middle of plotting some bigger ones, because it's a good way to make sure I stay involved and keep doing things. I know they're not amazing, and I don't expect to get a lot of vote points for them. But they were still fun to do, and I'm glad they were there.
Finally, I like points and I like the levels. It's a psychological motivation effect--that you feel like you accomplish something every time you complete a task, even though they don't really matter. I know it's just a trick of the way our minds work, really--but it's a darned effective one. I think they're a great way to reward people who want to look at points, but not harm those people who want to enjoy themselves and their tasks without worrying about it.
Oh...that said, I do think that the levels would feel more like levels if you really did have to progress through lesser tasks (I felt like I was able to jump up pretty quickly after one task got me a lot of votes...which I enjoyed, certainly--I don't need levels to feel like levels, if that makes sense). But that could easily get frustrating, as the number of lower level tasks you want to do is certainly fewer than the expanse of all possible level tasks (especially once I hit level 4, I felt like just about every task I wanted to do at the moment was open to me)
Wow--only here for a few months, and already I seem to be an SF0 conservative (well, at least in regards to the points system). I suppose I'd better stop rambling and go find a change to support...
Lank, I think that's definitely a part of why I was startled when I realized she wasn't real...that transition of "She looks interesting...oh my goodness, that's a mannequin! What was I thinking?" That strange sensation that you've been assigning various human traits to something which is not at all human...
I think the thing that I would most like to improve about SF0 is making it easier for new people to get involved, both in terms of leading them to complete tasks and also in leading them to make friendships with other SF0 members. I'm certainly not complaining about my own experience here; I think this is a wonderful site, and I've really enjoyed having access to the challenges and the stories that I've seen. Thank you all for creating such a wonderful place.
I do think, though, that it could be easier for new users to get involved with the community; while I've completed a number of tasks, most of the people I've known personally and convinced to sign up for the site have yet to complete even one without me. I'm not quite sure why that is, why it seems so difficult to start doing tasks, or become part of the tasking community. The wrong and confusing information probably doesn't help (though I must confess that I love the flavor of it, and of finding the mysteries through reading task completions and random task commentaries...I'll be sad to lose that, even though I may think it's for the best.)
I think that having a community-edited wiki to update and improve the FAQ and about pages is a great way to fix this, and I think will be a great way to make it easier for new people to understand the community...and once they understand, hopefully take part and make great things happen. I do think that it's really important to make things as easy as possible for new people; the easier it is to be great, the more people will be great.
Along these lines, I really like the SF0 Mentor task. I still feel like I could use some SF0 mentoring, even though I'm now level 4.
Also...while I've enjoyed the tasks and stories tremendously, and I've been very grateful to see people voting for my completions...I also don't really feel like part of the community yet. Part of that may be that I'm new, part that I haven't reached out to try and find other nearby players to complete tasks with, part that there are existing social groups I'm not sure how to break into, part the difficulty in finding other locals. I feel a bit like I've missed a good opportunity to do that, as I'm leaving SF in just a few more days; but I'm also not sure how easy it was to take advantage of that opportunity in the first place. It took me a while to figure out how to find other players "within x miles". In any case, I can see that there is a community of wonderful people here at SF0, one I want to be more a part of...but am not quite sure how to do so. But I'll say more about community on InkTea's suggestion.
I like video games, photoshop, and the person in the glyph. :) The overlay effect and Scrubs quote are extra neat.