In Jargon and legacy, Mike Holmes said:

Ironically, I didn't have to learn most of this by "jumping in," I've been working on this suff since before there was a Forge. So, apparently my position must be that I've put in many, many years, and so too must others before they are worthy.

Which would be true if it weren't for the fact that I work constantly to try to help poeple get up to speed and accept them after, oh, about a day of work. But, then, we all have blind spots - maybe I'm missing something.

AdamDray wrote: If learning the body of knowledge keeps people from joining the community, then that body of knowledge has become self-limiting. One way to break through that plateau and avoid stagnation is to knock down barriers to entry. Making it easier to learn the body of knowledge is an obvious way to knock down those barriers.

We've sorta got some choices to make here. I'd love to see the theory move forward to becoming an even more well defined discipline, but I'm also pretty sure that many people wouldn't like to see that. I mean, what you're suggesting is that going to cons for seminars, or reading whole books on the subjects here would be easier than trying to read the threads and get people here to help explain the material to you.

I guess I am blind here, beacuse that seems to be just overstating the case. Much like in the Jargon thread, I think we are doing the "instructional" documents. Not enough to satisfy? Well, as I said, there, we're a community - if you percieve a problem, pitch in and help out. Expecting the ten people or so who do the writing currently to do all the writing is just not practical. As much as I'd like this to be my full time job, it's just my hobby at the moment. Same as everybody else here.

Don't like how I inform? Tough. I think I help more people than most here, so I feel no guilt at all in the style that I use to do it. As I've mentioned, and as it happens, the post with Chad was an exception to my style and the general tenor of The Forge, so saying this is a barrier seems ridiculous to me. In any case, I'm just one person, and others teach here with all sorts of different styles. Overall, nobody is ridiculed, or even subjected to all that much pressure.

If you're feeling like it's a dangerous pool to play in, Adam, I can only say that I feel that this is an irrational fear. But, as I've said, feel free to let me know if I'm just not seeing it.

Mike

I agree that people need to conquer their fears, especially if the boogey monster isn't really that dangerous. Nonetheless, I base my feelings about the Forge on three years of data. The general tone of the forums has been barrier enough to keep me and others from jumping in quickly to the discussion. At some point, you have to listen to what I and others are saying: y'all may not be coming across to people the way you think you are, and it's putting people off.

How many students does a teacher need to ridicule before all the students are wary of raising their hands? Generally, just one.

Much of my reason for not raising my hand more often is NOT because of fear of ridicule (though that's part of it). A lot of it is just not wanting to be rude to the group. There's a strong sense of written and unwritten etiquette here about what is expected of people before they ask questions. Know what you're talking about. Know how to phrase your question. Know the history of what people have said before, especially if it's a perennial topic lest Mike belittle you. I'm the kind of person who, as netiquette demands, reads a forum for a few weeks before posting on it.

The Forge makes some pretty high demands of its members, even the new ones. Is there anything wrong with that? No, it's what keeps the quality of the posts so high, but there's a price to pay for that. The price is alienating new people.

All I'm suggesting are ways to help indoctrinate new people better. I am not suggesting changing the Forge rules of etiquette or adding review boards or anything like that.

I believe that we're doing a great job as a research institution and a lousy job as a teaching institution. If all The Forge wants to do is provide a place for people-who-get-it to talk to each other, it's doing that fine. If The Forge wants to continue to grow, it must reach out to new people and teach them. I've already enumerated reasons why I think beginner tutorials are better than trial-by-fire in my first part of this thread.

Mike Holmes wrote: I mean, what you're suggesting is that going to cons for seminars, or reading whole books on the subjects here would be easier than trying to read the threads and get people here to help explain the material to you.

Yes, I understand that the tutorial articles represent a snapshot in time of Forge theory. These tutorials must be living documents. We don't need to update them every day, but we should update them periodically -- every couple months, probably.

I guess the questions I beg are: Exactly how difficult do you want this stuff to be for a new member? If you could make it easier to learn, would you? If a nontrivial percentage of new members are intimidated by the body of knowledge (never mind their treatment in the forums), does that bother us?

Mike Holmes wrote: I'm so glad you think so. And thanks for volunteering.

Well, from about 300 masters to about 50 students at a time, sure. I'm not the only one doing it.

In point of fact, the poster came here without understanding that we'd need him to understand anything before good discussion could begin. So having an even more extensive document than already exists would have done nothing.

You know, when we tell people to "do your reading" we get criticized. When we try to inform people individually to give it that personal touch, we get criticized again for trying to maintain an elitist posture.

We can't win. So I don't have much incentive as an individual to try then, do I.

Adam, your claims that there's some barrier here to your understanding are preposterous. If you'd put as much effort into trying to understand the subject matter as you have in writing this thread, you'd understand the subject matter. You're no less intelligent than, and I'd wager smarter than, a lot of people who already do understand the material because they just waded in.

You don't like my sarcastic tone? Then ignore me. Still leaves 299 willing teachers.

Mike

AdamDray wrote: See, I'd be glad to write these tutorials if I understood the material. But I don't, so I can't. And thanks for nothing.

you're saying that Forge knowledge is passed from master to apprentice

This is the attitude that has kept me and others from engaging the Forge more than we have. This is why the Forge seems elitist.

I say Bah.

What I see is people who don't want to take the time to learn the material, but then feel like they're missing out on something because of all of the positive buzz about the Forge. So we wind up with a bunch of sour grapes wind pissing from them so they don't feel left out.

The material isn't that hard to learn. Hundreds of people have done so. Hundreds more have learned it to whatever degree they desired to help them with whatever issue they wanted help with.

It is neither required nor desired to have every single gamer who's ever heard about the Forge become 100% completely fluent in the language of it. That's never been a part of our mission statement and therefor is not a measure of success / failure of the site.

I personally rather resent the idea that if we don't offer "something for everyone" and we don't present issues so that every joe-gamer who pops in can be up to speed in a manner of minutes that we've somehow failed.

Further I absolutely resent the implication that someone should be able to, in five minutes of casual reading, know everything that we've spent years hammering out and thrashing through.

If you want to understand the material, make the effort. If you don't want to understand the material, don't make the effort.

But I will have ZERO sympathy for people who don't make the effort and then complain that they don't understand the material.

Adam, I'll say this directly to you. You have had AMPLE opportunity to ask whatever questions and seek whatever guidance you'd like to have to help you understand the material. You haven't. That indicates to me that you don't really have all that strong of a desire to understand the material. That's perfectly fine. But I find it completely disingenuous of you to then claim that the material is too opaque or difficult to grasp. You get out what you put in.

Valamir wrote: Further I absolutely resent the implication that someone should be able to, in five minutes of casual reading, know everything that we've spent years hammering out and thrashing through.

And here we find the crux of it. It was hard to write so it should be hard to read. I call bullshit on this,

No one has really addressed the points I made there:

1. Not everyone learns the same way.

2. The "ask questions" method of learning is sometimes discouraged by the behavior of some very active "teachers."

3. As the Forge body of knowledge grows, it becomes more difficult for outsiders to learn it.

I suggested some projects that would help.

Hello,

I'm kind of stuck in the middle.

On the one hand, I think anything can be taught well, if not necessarily quickly or easily. I do like the idea of a role-playing essay or small book that introduces a lot of ideas here in the most digestible way possible. As far as Sorcerer and its particular brand of Narrativist play is concerned, I've tried to do that in the supplements. They're pretty damn light on jargon and apparently do a decent job.

On the other hand, not only is authoring such a thing for all the Forge-ish ideas an incredible bitch to contemplate, but it's had to wait for years as the ideas themselves have been hacked and hammered into some kind of recognizable and meaningful shape. I think they're just about there, but it's been a long and tiring road. "Snap! here's the perfect primer" is ... unrealistic.

Similarly, and to continue with the other hand, many attempts at primers end up becoming harmful caricatures of the ideas they try to represent, and furthermore are treated by readers as stopping points rather than starting ones.

Even if this kind of project gets under way, what are we to do in the meantime? Given that the Forge offers no recompense whatever for the efforts of the people who do teach and mentor here, then I think it's quite reasonable to expect anyone who wants better mentoring simply to pitch in.

Perhaps the single most important topic that comes to my mind when I read over this thread is this: No one learns what they don't care about. I'm completely uninterested in reaching out to people who don't already have their hands outstretched first. Yet gamer culture, and internet culture in general, is full of people in "poke" mode instead: go and poke at a site, and see what it does. "Pokers" usually get their fingers bitten here, pretty hard.

It's to be expected that some folks with outstretched hands feel like they get "anti-poked," and that some "pokers" discover that they really needed the helping hands after all. At present, the success rate seems at least tolerable.

Best,
Ron

Valamir wrote: Not only do I not think the Cliff's Notes version of the theory is doable, I think its completely counter productive. What does it gain to give a large volume of people a superficial understanding of the theory? This seems to me to be a recipie for disastor.

A superficial understanding of the theory is a first step to gaining a deeper understanding. I don't think we can capture every Forge idea in a primer but we can capture the more stable ideas that have survived the test of time and are now part of the firmament.

What will we get out of it? First of all, I challenge the notion that the Forge's ideas aren't for the average gamer. Maybe in their present form they are not, but if polished up I think they would appeal to a wider audience than they do now.

By reaching a wider audience with correct information (even if not the whole picture that the Big Model represents), rather than the often-incorrect notions people repeat on rpg.net and other places outside the Forge, we widen our base of input. Concerns of being swamped by an influx of interested gamers aside, I think more people leads to more ideas leads to better ideas leads to better games.

Ralph, your questions seem to say, "We have enough members. We don't need more. We don't want more. If people are stubborn enough to stick around anyway, fine, but let's not do anything to make it easy on them. It's hard material and we shouldn't do anything to make it easier." Is that how you feel?

Ron, thank you for joining in. I've been waiting to see what your take on all this is. I agree that a poorly conceived primer could do more harm than good, but I think a well conceived primer would be indispensible to the community. A well conceived primer would be careful to impart on the reader its own limitations.

I think the glossary is halfway to a primer. The glossary gives little context for its definitions. Add the context, and you have a primer.

The "pokers" of whom you speak might be people with good ideas who want a clue what the site is about before dedicating the days of reading necessary to join a thread without being rudely ignorant. If they don't find something to give them a very basic understanding what it's all about, they'll probably leave. Yeah, plenty of people stick around anyway and ask questions; I'm not arguing contrary. But plenty of people probably leave, too. And some stick around, ask some questions, and get their heads chewed off by Mike, too.

In the meantime, the mentoring model works. People are usually civil and helpful. I'm not saying that we should stop doing that. I'm just saying that there are some other things that we can do to make it easier to join the Forge community. I think the Forge's theories are useful outside the boundaries of this small community. Unless we figure out how to package them up for the average outsider, the Forge's ideas are just for its members.

Hey all,

Making concepts understandable need not mean turning it into pablum. There is an art to presenting difficult topics in a clear and meaningful way. And although the mission of the Forge is not to go convert the masses to gns-think, there is obvious value in having resources to refer new people to. Otherwise Ron would never have written the 3 essays or the 5 threads, etc. Spending some energy on finding simple clear ways to communicate with new folks will save everybody time--I bet it would add years to Mike's life if we could find some of that. :)

Adam, I think the community has embraced this goal--Jonathan and Chris Lehrich are working on a Handbook that would be a resource along these lines. We now have 2 glossaries, way, way cool. And I know of at least one more project in the works. I'm sure more will come. Especially if we help make it so.


Yrs,
Emily

System Does Matter.

Short, sweet, to the point, covers the bases, mildly outdated but still relevant to the newcomer for whom these ideas are foreign but intriguing. There's your primer. Give it a revision and I think it would be perfect for the task.

Hi there,

Adam, your latest post is much different from your first. It's also pretty non-controversial, and my answer is "Yup," and "Please pitch in."

I should also point out that I'm also working on a kind of "Role-playing Is" book, but it's definitely pitched to a very different audience from newcomers to the Forge.

So the work is under way. The real question for today is what do we do in the meanwhile? And if you and everyone are at least agreed to the principle that we do our best to meet and to mentor, then I suppose there's nothing left to debate.

Best,
Ron

Well, see, that's the thing - I'd agree that it makes for a good intro essay. But apparently Adam doesn't. He's told us that he's read the essays, and they do not suffice to bring some newcomers to the point where they can get involved with the conversation. What he's saying is that they need to be completely rewritten to be pedagogical, rather than research papers.

Do I have your position correct, Adam?

Mike

Hey Adam,
I want to put this gently because I can totally see where you're coming from. On the other hand, I totally see where Ralph and Mike are coming from. (Not like those two to agree on something, is it?)

AdamDray wrote: Unless we figure out how to package them up for the average outsider, the Forge's ideas are just for its members.

AdamDray wrote: And here we find the crux of it. It was hard to write so it should be hard to read. I call bullshit on this

2. The "ask questions" method of learning is sometimes discouraged by the behavior of some very active "teachers."

3. As the Forge body of knowledge grows, it becomes more difficult for outsiders to learn it.

yet the responses I got were very defensive and sarcastic.

I was hoping that the community as a whole would get behind the idea of creating a guide.

Hey! I think people are posting a little too fast in this thread. There was a whole kiss-and-make-up post about two clicks back. Can everyone just, you know, breathe for a bit? Then read over the whole thread again, and then post if necessary?

Best,
Ron

If this thread is still open, I'd like to offer my 2 cents. As one who participated in the early days of the debate, I can say the learning curve/teaching problem has always been a factor in the debate - Even back in the GO days. There is a lot more material now, but I think Ron's most recent Big Three essays coupled with his Glossary are as comprehensive a set of documents as anyone could reasonably hope to have. It's complicated, but it's accessible, and the community has many members willing to answer questions.

New terminology is going to emerge. That's natural. I think, if the glossary gets updated even once a year, the Forge should be in good shape. But Ron is not the only one with a keyboard. I see there are other efforts under way to produce good, instructive documents. I hope all those come to fruition, but people who feel passionate about specific topics might want to write their own documents specific to their chosen areas of interest.

I'm not trying to preach, but Ron is only one guy. He's prolific, but he can't compress 3000 viewpoints into one document that will please everyone. It's just not possible. He's done the best he can to articulate the theory. The documents are long because the debate has gone on for a long time and the theory includes a large body of material. It's not strictly necessary to learn that material to participate in site discussions, except in the GNS forum, but the documentation is better than it's ever been. If it's imperfect, people are imperfect. It's still a damn fine effort.

Greyorm, I know the concepts are complex. That's why I want to create better teaching materials. I don't expect a new poster to be able to get it in five minutes, even with these materials. I just want to ease the transition.

The "discouragement" to which I prefer is what I consider uncivil behavior: anything ranging from an overly terse "go read this thread" (before you deign post a question) to stuff like what Mike did to Chad. I think pointing people at prior threads is fine, if done nicely.

However, myself, I don't find that beahvior particularly discouraging; if a given individual does, I think it says more about them than it does the practice. This is how I teach students in a classroom situation when they ask a question under similar circumstances: have you read the text?

3. As the Forge body of knowledge grows, it becomes more difficult for outsiders to learn it.

But this is true of any body of knowledge.

Mike Holmes wrote: Do I have your position correct, Adam?

AdamDray wrote: Yes, though I wouldn't try to dig as deep in a primer. I don't seem to be the only one who thinks that a separate document is a great way to introduce people to the theories.

Yes, System Does Matter is a great place to start but it doesn't introduce Creative Agenda (as a term) or Social Contract (as a concept) -- two ideas that are fundamental to the Forge's body of knowledge.

Relatively abstract theory concepts like Creative Agenda and Social Contract, however, are fundamental to understanding the Big Model and the other jargon-rich theories and ideas that confound new members here.

Sure, reading and playing some indie games is a great way to experience those theories in action, but it doesn't provide the formal framework that allows a member to discuss those games using the same language that experienced Forge members use.

Essentially, you seem to have changed the problem to arrive at a different solution. I never said understanding GNS theory was necessary for enjoying and playing them. I said understanding GNS theory was necessary for discussing GNS theory. I apologize if I wasn't clear.

Emily Care wrote: Spending some energy on finding simple clear ways to communicate with new folks will save everybody time--I bet it would add years to Mike's life if we could find some of that. :)

Hm. How about this:

Mike's Standard Rant #8: I Am An Asshole

Yes, I'm serious.

Hmmm. I would do that in a minute, Ethan, if it were actually a topic germane to The Forge overall. But I think that perhaps its a bit too off topic for any forum. If I posted it here in "site" for example, then that would be saying that I am somehow key to The Forge.

Hmmm. Maybe Ralph would agree to let me put it in the Uni forum?

In any case, I hope we're mostly settled here. I've apollogized, and hope that the rest of the Forge isn't so bad that it will be required to do so as well. In terms of writing, we agree that making materials as accessible is a good idea, and we'll all do what we can to achieve that goal.

So, at this point, I'm thinking we're back to talking about what makes something accessible. Anybody got any links on how to write less "theory" and more "instruction" oriented texts? Perhaps if we knew more of the difference, we could see better where we're lacking.

Mike

Well, I'm glad that the actual topic really came out, because I couldn't think of a way to bring it up without sounding really rude.

Yes, Mike, I'm sorry to say it, but your particular posting style is, in my opinion, closely correlated with the appearance of all the "civility at the forge" and "how we should behave" posts recently. The majority of the situations where people have been hurt, angered, or offended have been threads in which you were a vocal and boisterous participant. (Now, that may not be a correlation at all, because you're a vocal participant in a lot of threads, but it's there.)

I felt uncomfortable sending a PM to you about this, although I should have. (I didn't feel it was my place to say "Hey, I don't know you, but your recent posts exude an attitude that make me wish to spend less time at The Forge, and I wish you could tone it down some.") But if people are going to call a spade a spade, and say, yes, Mike, the way you post often makes us uncomfortable, then I'll add my voice.

Not to try to turn it into a dogpile -- I mean no rancor towards you -- but to say, yes, it's an opinion that is shared by more than a few posters here.

Hello,

In the spirit of harmony, let's bear in mind that Mike has already responded to comments of this kind. If you really need to add in your voice, PM might be the best way.

Time for the thread to close, I think. This isn't punitive, so much as saying "done deal," and moving on.

Best,
Ron

I've gotten what I need out of the thread -- and that wasn't Mike's apology.

So, closed.

Best,
Ron