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dear diary (round 7): what is activity?


fishy

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dear diary, 

 

There have been quite a few conversations about “activity” around the VHL lately in a wide variety of contexts. We’ve seen people throwing around “inactive” as a personal attack against members who are involved in various ways with the league (I recognize that this trend isn’t new), discussions about the legal definition of active players with respect to free agency and the VHLE, and three VHL GMs and a (now former) VHL Commissioner sharing that the VHL is playing a different role in their lives than it did, say, a year and a half ago. 

 

Maybe it’s just my Anthropology/Linguistics brain working on overtime (although I will say it’s quite interesting to see how my brain translates information I gathered in academic settings to real-life situations. The world is much more… intriguing when you start asking questions about things that you once took for granted or overlooked.), but I’ve been somewhat put off by the ways in which we throw around “active” and “activity.” 

 

I will go ahead and throw a disclaimer in here by saying that my thoughts in this piece aren’t intended to start a campaign about how we define an inactive user by the rules. 

 

There’s a very specific place in the league for users that we so kindly call “clickers.” While this kind of activity isn’t the optimal, star-studded kind of usage that we typically want to see from members, I think it would be naive to say that these individuals aren’t important. I’d say that most people probably agree with me on that point–we’ve seen that STHS doesn’t like teams that look perfect on paper, end of story. Players who don’t earn quickly and sit on the high-end rookie/low-end of prime TPA values (I’m thinking in the range of 500-650 or so? I don’t know) are essential to the success of VHL teams in the simulator. 

 

The major goal of the VHLM (and, I would argue, the league’s Discord) is retention and community building. We want new folks stumbling onto the site to see the bright and shiny parts of the VHL and get them excited about their player’s development throughout their career. We often measure success in two ways: the amount of TPE earned and the frequency of which a person interacts with the forums/discord. 

 

And this brings me to the conclusion that I’ve come to over the past month or so. When we say “activity,” we typically mean “engagement” … and we have a lot of rules for being the “right” kind of active and the “right” kind of engaged. 

 

To be the "good" kind of active, you have to earn the “right” amount of TPE–cap out, but you have to do it a specific way (i.e., not with job pay + welfare/pension). If you’re only going to earn 10 capped a week, you have to do welfare + all the supplemental tasks because it’s more forum engagement and shows that you care about the league in the right way. To be the best kind of active, you have a job, do a full point task every week, etc. etc.

 

Players who never make it to the forum and couldn’t care less about the league and team discords are considered active despite the fact that they’re disengaged. I think that we should be prioritizing engagement over activity if we really want people to give a shit about the league. 

 

My activity has kind of gone down the drain when you look at my update log, and my league discord activity, while more than usual as of late, is still pretty limited. Despite that, I would say that I continue to be engaged with the league because of the fact that I visit the forums frequently (partially for job requirements, partially for personal interest) and lurk gen chat throughout the day (again, partially for job requirements, partially not). I think that engagement from other users like me is extremely valuable for the health of the league–you don’t have to be a max earner to matter, which just about anyone would tell you. 

 

People like tfong, who happily claims his pension, job pay, and practice facility each week but is super active in Discord, and Garsh, who strolls along with welfare and practice facility quite contently and occasionally hops into conversations on the forums and Discord, are the backbone of the league. You need these people, who don’t necessarily go out of their way to max earn and get every last drop of TPE available but still consistently earn & stay engaged with the league, in order for the league to continue running and be successful. 

 

This brings me around to my last thought in this unstructured little media spot. Why are we throwing around inactive as a personal attack? Like ,,,, what? 

 

I understand that with people who hold jobs in the league are held to a bit of a higher standard for activity because, by holding a job, they assume additional responsibilities and commitments to their players. GMs, especially, are somewhat obligated to at least make an effort to create an engaging locker room and keep their players interested. Engagement with other users is what makes sim leagues fun, and if a GM wants a solid team, they also benefit from putting in the time to actually talk to their players. 

 

When you call someone inactive, all you’re saying is that you don’t see that person’s engagement or that another person's engagement with the league does not match the standards that you set for yourself. You're actively projecting your own goals onto another person and trying to criticize someone else for not meeting them. Just because you don't see someone else's activity or engagement doesn't mean it's there, especially among members, like GMs, who have multiple avenues through which they have opportunities to communicate with each other. 

 

I also think that trying to throw people under the bus for being “inactive” can be extremely damaging for new members. We should be aiming to keep people in the league by making them want to stay, not by proving that we’re going to give them shit or think less of them if they decide that the league isn’t for them or other circumstances outside the league take precedence over their time. Putting pressure on people to meet specific standards is unreasonable, and I don’t think it’s a sustainable way for us to try to get people to stick around. 

 

Being a “clicker” isn’t a bad thing. Is it optimal? No, but the league has been designed to accommodate people of varying willingness and availability to engage with the league. If everyone on the site were to max earn, everyone would probably be awful. Conversely, if everyone were clicking welfare and practice facility each week, the league would struggle to grow and maintain itself because of a lack of content production. 

 

I guess that my point is that we need all levels of earning represented in the league. Do what you can for as long as it makes you happy. If that means clicking two buttons each week and saying hey to your teammates in a team Discord, then so be it. We’re glad to have you. If that means squeezing out every available opportunity to get every single ounce of TPE available, then so be it. We’re glad to have you too. 

 

fishy
 

1100+ words, claiming week of 9/26 and 10/3

Edited by fishy
i will never be someone who posts a media spot and doesn't edit it immediately after idk what to tell you
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39 minutes ago, Jubis said:

I tried to be a clicker but I couldn't do it lol. 

Claiming welfare 4-5 times is as close as I could get. 

I am too competitive 🙄

Total opposite for me lol, I tried to earn as much as I could before and it would kill my interest after a couple seasons, now doing a couple of tasks every now and then makes it more interesting for me.

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9 minutes ago, ColeMrtz said:

Total opposite for me lol, I tried to earn as much as I could before and it would kill my interest after a couple seasons, now doing a couple of tasks every now and then makes it more interesting for me.

A Max earming welfare player isn't too bad. 

Welfare 4 or 5 tpe 

Trivia 2 tpe 

Press Conference 2 tpe 

2 tpe graphic 

Practice 1 tpe 

 

11-12 tpe out of 13 tpe

And avoid writing 500 + words or doing a decent graphic 

 

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