This is a short rant, and not in any way aimed at any character or player in the system. It is rather written with the goal of making sure that next year's ref team can produce a living, breathing world for the players rather than a series of arguments, five fully-fleshed-out downtimes a week and a bunch of one-line answers. A controversial downtime takes up all the refs for a quarter of the ref meet.
I reckon I have wasted - and I mean wasted, because nothing constructive emerged - six to twelve hours of my life arguing with the other refs over six-odd downtimes. As a conservative estimate. So why is this the case?
Length, as in, number of actions performed
We regularly receive downtimes of over a thousand words. Fantastic, the players are interested in the setting and system and want to do things! Great! But if those thousand words consist of closely-typed bullet points detailing every detail of your character's life, your job, your investigations and your researches - and all of those points involve plot, needing us to respond to every single one of them individually and remember them when dealing with other downtimes - then it slows us down somewhat.
I know that some people's characters have day jobs that are in effect 'Plot Hound Extraordinaire to the City and Environs'. I would rather, however, have downtimes containing "I do my job competently, taking into account [factors and interesting things]" than long long ones which basically say the previous statement with more words and more ref time required.
I love long downtimes that are works of art and detail in great detail things that we just need to nod through. I love long downtimes all about interesting things your character has done or intends to do in uptime. And where there's a specific reason for a downtime with many actions as opposed to doing the same things in uptime (I'm thinking of the illicit priests here) - well, in exchange for a character who enriches the world by existing, you get more love from the refs.
So what do I actually want?
I know that sometimes plot dictates you must be long and accurate about your downtime. That's not a problem. Doing it every week is excessive. We are running an uptime system here. With the exception of deep dark secrets that would be very damaging if found out, and metaphysics (cause I really enjoy writing that), we do not want plot that does not come back into the bar or linear. We want to know what you are trying to achieve by your downtime. Unless you're really plotted over the head, this should fit in a short bulleted list. We mean what you, OOC as well as IC, are trying to achieve. Please do not ask a series of leading questions. Silly buggers is not a game we wish to play, Nomic is not a game we wish to play. If you describe your downtime in great detail you will not do things you did not say you did. If you describe your downtime in less specific detail you will get what the refs think you ought to get. The latter is more how I would like things to be. Ideally I would like your downtime to be shorter than the answer to your downtime, unless the extra length is fluff. I would like to see more players having different goals from their characters. It's so much more fun to get something like "OOC, I want this endeavour to fail in this, this and this way" in a downtime. There may be more here.