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BGonline.org Forums
Nactation: Clarity a problem for some readers, brevity an illusion for most readers
Posted By: Jim Stutz
Date: Friday, 18 June 2010, at 6:02 a.m.
I'm a big fan of Nack Ballard's poetic writing and keen insight -- who isn't? -- but I wonder about the overall efficacy of Nactation. Granted it saves the fluent Nactator a few typing strokes and a few seconds' time per post, but what about the average reader at the other end? My personal experience (I'm new to the forum and re-learning the game after a decades-long break.): I thought I had learned the Nactation symbols, more or less, but sometimes I doubt my memory and have to ponder -- what does this symbol mean again? Even at best I am spending time -- more time than the Nactating author saved, I bet -- translating the code into standard notation and then suppressing doubts re whether I got it all right. Multiply this extra time and effort by the number of readers who share some of my lack of facility with the code, and the end result is orders of magnitude more time cumulatively wasted by the readers than was saved by the original Nactator. No doubt Nactation was conceived as a refinement, and it may well be useful and efficient (and has a certain secret-handshake appeal too, maybe) for the experts who use it regularly, but IMHO it will always be something of an obstacle -- however trivial and benign -- to the average casual player/reader -- the kind of player that needs to be proactively included, not excluded, if the Game is going to grow the way everyone seems to want it to.
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