Interesting fortknox, but what if some commentators are more reliable than others?

If commentators are being limited, would I be able to bump one if I wanted? By virtue of seniority and ghost rating and stuff like that?

I'm interested in commentating (I probably won't be able to play this time). As a SoW graduate I'm hoping to give some insights on the students thoughts.

if commentators are limited, they will definitely be decided based on rank and reliability. i am interested to hear from more people about their opinions on this.

In the game I was in (#3), the commentating was by Jacob and Centurian only. It was helpful because they were each very dedicated to the game and their reputations preceded them so we knew that what they wrote was definitely worth listening to.

If I was to be on the sideline for a game, I would (a) want to dedicate myself to just that game and (b) make sure that I pose more questions or thoughts than actual statements or comments, because I would leave that to the actual profs. The role I see myself in (if no games need me) would be more of a TA-type thing.

President/Dean Bent...
I would like you to note if you are looking at my current profile two of my games should finish within the next 24-48 hours. I will refrain from entering any other games so I may give as much attention to SOW as I possibly can.
Thanks again for your consideration.

I agree with pooter... maybe get two SoW grads per game (we seem to have enough) who do exactly what pooter said... basically ask the insightful questions that the novices SHOULD be asking themselves... that way the commentators can add more depth to their comments as they go forward.

and though I like fk's idea, I dont think we'll have 7 vets able to comment per game... its going to be really really tough...

though in all honesty, THAT was my idea for the graduate school game. one vet per grad student...

FYI to people wanting to help out with playing the game. It did hit my ghost score pretty hard when Jacob took the game. Something to consider if you are all about ghost ratings...

I think I would like to commentate. I was intially hesitent when approached bybent, but I'm getting pumped.

Perhaps we can decide together how many commentators there should be. I argue there should be two, because there will be a lot to say about the match, and more people would be overwhelming. With two commentators you're more likely to become familiar with the commentator personalities and more likely to trust them. With two commentators you get lively debate, and hopefully a good back-and-forth, but not so much that the focus is ever lost. With two commentators you're more likely to have a conversation, rather than the chatroom effect (you already see this in global in most games) where people talk over each other and without adding much to the conversation.

As such, if I'm invited to comment on a match, I'd like to do so with one other person, and with no more and with no fewer.

i do agree that two professor level commentators is good.

dunecat, how do you feel about having some "TAs" - people who have played in SoW before, and can ask questions of you, etc. would that seem like a hassle? i think it would only be one person per game, or it might get overwhelming. of course, all people are encouraged to observe and ask questions, as it's part of the learning process, but the TAs would be especially dedicated to asking some questions that the students in the game would be asking.

another option, if we have more professors for commentary than we need, is to have some available for that kind of one-on-one advice. now that we have PMs, we could do, for example, a game with Dunecat and Centurian commenting, and Babak as the designated person for players in the game to ask questions of. what do yall think of that idea?

hmm... i like the idea bent... a 'resident expert' I think we had in our dorms back in the day...

and I do agree with Dune... too many is not good, though I'd argue 3 works well still, 2 or 3.

fk... that is true, but the solution is to show the novices how to play by winning ;) or drawing at least hehehehe.

my other concern is that we will experience what happened last time - we lost a bunch of our commentators for a period of time. admittedly, the games also were paused for a while, so that didn't help, but still. i guess we can always keep some commentators in the wings in case someone can't do it anymore.

If you have a lot of people who want to commentate, perhaps two for the early-game, two for the mid-game, and two for the end-game?

I'd be very interested in playing an SoW game. Please sign me up.

@ pyro- no, i think continuity would be best, when possible.

There seems to be confusion over what the commentators would do, and what the professors would do, and how the students should behave. I'm not sure myself how everyone else expects this to work, but this is how I think it would work best:

First, there five categories of users: Students, Professors, Commentators, Observers, and the Dean.

The Dean
============
djbent, by merit of this being her idea as far as I can tell, is the Dean. She's the final authority in picking the students, professors, commentators and is responsible for coordinating all the participants and for establishing and explaining criteria for each. She assigns professors to the students and creates the commentary thread. She moderates the thread and handles any other administrative work involved. In short, she's the boss.

Students
============
Seven willing and similarly-ranked players are selected by the Dean who have established their interest in participating as a student. These users are the ones who will actually enter the moves and play the game in a match commentated by the commentators. Each student confers privately with his assigned professor(s). The students do not participate in the commentary thread but are welcome to read it. The students do not publicly or privately ask the commentators for advice, and they do not ask other students' professors for help. They pony up the points and play, and it is their strategy that is analysed and, hopefully, improved. The students will likely receive feedback from other players on the site in the form of PMs, but are encouraged to consider this advice with the guidance of their professors.

Professors
============
Professors are high-ranking players with admirable on-site records and a desire to help students improve their game. Professors are assigned to one particular student and do not communicate with the other students or other students' professors, but more than one professor may be assigned to a student per the Dean's discretion. A professor does not contribute in the commentary thread and does not ask the commentators for advice, although he is welcome to read it. A professor does not discuss his pupil's work with others except those other users who are also his student's professor (in the case of the Dean assigning two or more professors to a student).

Commentators
============
Two professor-level players are picked to closely watch the game and provide prescient public commentary on the matches. These two players control the commentary thread; others do not post in that thread. These commentators are unbiased and do not favour any particular player; they do not provide advice to any of the players and simply analyse the match publically for the benefit of the observers. This commentary should be valuable information to the students and is likely to affect the outcome of the game presuming the commentary is thoughtful and insightful. Usually, this would be considered taboo, but for the sake of learning it is permitted.

Observers
============
All other users who are not involved in a commentator, Dean, professor or student role who read the commentary thread and watch the game. These users do not post in the commentary thread but are welcome to send a PM to the commentators asking them to comment on particular aspects of the game that the commentators may have not discussed in depth. These users may provide their own advice to the students via PM, but harassment is unacceptable.


Is this a helpful definition of roles? If this is an ongoing event and it works, there can always be new classes with new professors/commentators/students. It may make sense for the commentators to remain from class to class to help the community get to know their personalities and help the commentators practice their analysis.

@Dunecat - thanks. have a look at the blog, and scroll through to see how some of the commentary worked in the past, that might give you a better idea as well. we have played 4 School of War games so far, these will be #s 5 and 6. in the past we did not have the PMs, so this is a new wrinkle to it.

the idea originate with Babak actually, and that is why he is President Emeritus, and gets a say in all the decisions. i believe they did this on facebook diplomacy before raising the idea before. so, in the original round of 4 games, two players with meagre records on this site (Pete U and uclabb) but with impressive records on facebook were included as "vets"/professors.

when we first did this, we have each game composed of 5 newer players/students and 2 vets/professors. we then had additional vets/professors who commented on the games. other people were encouraged to follow along and ask questions in the commentary thread, so that the maximum amount of learning could happen between as many people as possible.

now that we have PMs, that changes things a bit. i have to say, i think it's unlikely we would get 7 veteran players to pair individually with students, so that is why i prefer the 5/2 split, with two additional vets commentating, and additional "rookies" or non-vets who are not in the game asking questions in the commentary thread. this style seemed to work well for 4 games, so i don't see a reason to change it.

lastly, about PMs. now that we have them, we can take advantage. one potentional problem with our setup, is that the students playing the game, while they can ask the in-game professors/vets questions, have to realized the vets are still going to try to win, even though they ought to give honest advice. so, if we have one additional vet who is not playing the game and is not a commentator who can field PMs from the student players in the game, i think that would be good.

the blog, for everyone's reference, can be found here:

http://ghost-diplomacy.blogspot.com/

it is not fully updated, i haven't gotten to transfer the remainder of commentary and EOGS to it, but it still gives you a good idea of how things worked before.

I will probably pop in and do some commenting on game 5. If Babak is in game 6 I'll probably refrain from commenting on that one =)

I'm glad to hear that we'll be keeping it to 2 games this time around. The four games last time made it so there weren't enough people looking at the same game. Less advice and opinions led to less learning I think. I'm even thinking that perhaps we should try a semester where we just do 1 game that everyone follows. This might lead to more observers asking questions. We had precious few questions being asked by students and observers last time around and I would like to see that improved.

so, in short, the roles as i see them:

student players - 5 of them, in the game
professor players - 2 of them, in the game
professor observers - 2 of them, not in the game
student observers - as many as possible, not in the game
and perhaps one professor advisor, who is neither in the game, nor commenting, who can respond to PMs from the student players

"one potentional problem with our setup, is that the students playing the game, while they can ask the in-game professors/vets questions, have to realized the vets are still going to try to win, even though they ought to give honest advice. so, if we have one additional vet who is not playing the game and is not a commentator who can field PMs from the student players in the game, i think that would be good."

yes, there were some rather awkward questions a couple times from fellow players in the game I was playing. luckily I resolved all moral conflicts by simply doing whatever was best for my own self-interest :P

I DO think it would be best if students did not ask the vets in their own game what the best course of action is. the vets want to win too =)

I'm not sure that the person answering questions needs to not be a commentator. I think it would be fine to have the students send pms to the commentators if they want.

I'm not entirely sold on the benefits of having in-game vets anyways. We could just fit 7 students into one game and then assign a vet to every two students and then have the students use pms to ask questions to their vet (hereby known as mentor). That entirely removes the conflict of interest and the private nature of the messages means that other players aren't given the heads up about whatever the question is about. As long as the mentors are quick to respond and all the students follow the commentary thread then I don't see what the problem would be.

Need I point out that the vets (unsurprisingly) did quite well in their SoW games?

fair enough. my concern is that i know vets will keep a commitment to finish a game, but i know we had trouble losing vets from commentary positions last time. if we go with this model, we can probably only rummage up enough vets for one game at a time, i would think.

I think thats a positive rather than a negative. One game at a time is better, that way it becomes a true showcase game.

Interesting twist; I'm not sure that, if professors are going to play in the games, those professors should be considered reliable sources of advice. Major conflict of interest there.

Why not alter my approach (described above) to include five students per game, and add a new category of users: Professionals, and have two of them in each game?

Professionals
============
Professionals are high-ranking users that play in the training games with and against the students. They are not required to provide honest advice or information, but only to try to win. They are, as usual, expected to make and break alliances with the other players regardless of ranking. Their purpose is to compete and to cooperate, not necessarily to advise.

If this is going to be a school, we should maintain the academic integrity and honesty of the whole thing. Competing professionals should not be presented as unbiased players.

Commentators should focus on the commentary and maintain their personal neutrality to the players for the sake of offering better commentary. Think John Madden in the NFL, who had to be impartial to provide good commentary. If the students and commentators are communicating it could violate the spirit of academy; the commentators can affect the outcome of the game so their impartiality must be protected.

alright, other people have opinions on this?

a further refinement - does it make more sense to assign a vet to two players, or two just have 3 vets designated as "mentors" who can respond to any student players question?

as for asking vet commentators questions, i felt like it was nice to have the vets commenting without any inside knowledge of the game, that's something that i thought was good. if some student players but not others ask the commentating vets questions, they'll have extra info that might skew their commentary. thoughts?

@djbent
>>student players - 5 of them, in the game
professor players - 2 of them, in the game
professor observers - 2 of them, not in the game
student observers - as many as possible, not in the game
and perhaps one professor advisor, who is neither in the game, nor commenting, who can respond to PMs from the student players


Wouldn't it be better if each student had his own professor? This might not be absolutely necessary, but one-on-one counseling would be a particularly great aspect of this.

@dunecat - absolutely that would be optimal. but it has two problems:

1) it is hard to round up 7 vets
2) it increases the chance of someone not fulfilling their commitment. then we'd have to worry about seven vets who might flake, vs only two (with the commentators).

i think i like centurian's suggestion best - that a pool of vets are the mentors, like 3 or 4. that seems manageable, we should be able to get that many to commit, and hopefully they would actually follow through on it.

oh, the other challenge is that the vets would have to be careful to not basically play the game for the students, but just give advice.