On Rules
One of the most interesting things about Noticings for me is that the rules are always in flux. For example, lost things are currently scoring double points, but that’ll stop on Sunday 8th November, probably to be replaced by something else.
It might be described, loosely, as a Nomic, a game in which the rules are always changing. We’re not particularly democratic about the rule changes at the moment, but we’d like to be. We want people to submit ideas for new rules, and to negotiate changes between themselves, much like we used to in the playground.
Hopefully in the future we’ll have a better way of doing this, but for now the Get Satisfaction forum is the best place for it.
For example, at the moment, I feel that players in city centres are getting too much of a bonus for noticing something near another player’s noticing. And we’ve got a few ideas of what we’re going to do about this, but we’d like your thoughts too.
Of course, there are a few house rules, to give the game some bounds and constraints.
One of those is that Noticings aren’t people. Pictures of people seemed just too complicated to deal with, with too much hidden meaning, and it just seemed safest to exclude them from play.
Another one of the house rules is that your photo has to be of something, and that something has to be visible to others. If it’s not clear in the picture, then some information in the title will help.
We’ve not always done a great job of signposting these rules, but now we’ve got a rules page, detailing these. If you think we’ve got something wrong, please let us know.
Also, now, when we remove a photo because we think it doesn’t meet the criteria, then you’ll be able to see why on your profile page.
I’ll leave you with this terrible pizza incident, by Jason Reidy:
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