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For the curious, I brought this subject up on my board and the response was a resounding "Hell no" for a wide variety of reasons. It's been really nifty to see their responses.

Sounds like they are way too much trouble to keep around, honestly. They have very self-centered ideas and obviously don't give a rat's hind end about your site or if it thrives. Putting words in the staff's mouth is a pretty bad offense. I say show them the door, let them know exactly why they are being kicked out, and wipe all of their "contributions" off your board. It always sucks to get rid of people, but sometimes it needs to be done.

Some characters are regular people who I have more in common with. But more often than not they're larger than life figures going on dragon slaying adventures and what not, I wouldn't consider them even remotely close to me. Because if I had to go slay a dragon I'd just refuse and cry in a corner.

Fry that bacon. Fry it so hard in a big pan. Set you out two cups of milk to room temp. Drain that freaking pan until there is about 3tbs of grease left in there, leave those leftover bacon chunks too. (the rest of the bacon is on a plate waiting for the table) Cool it down a little, meaning don't start a grease fire. I like to turn mine to about med-high/med until I get the flower in because I've got scars on my arms to tell a tale. Take you a big spoon full of flower and throw it right on the grease. With a wooden spoon even out the flower so there are not lumps and it is bubbling up. Keep stirring! The trick is to not let it sit long! But do this slow! It helps too if you sing the Seawitch's part in The Little Mermaid to pass the time. This is also the time you salt and pepper it. Yes. I know, clogging the heart as we speak, but trust me. Add the salt and pepper BEFORE the milk and you won't have lumps. Once you get that flower all darkish and a creamy bubble toss that milk in...slowly. Don't touch the heat of the fire yet! Keep stirring! Stir. Stir. Stir, but slow--and with a wooden spoon. It will start to bubble too. When this happens, turn it down to low....like super low stir for a bit, taste it to make sure there is enough pepper and just let it hang out. (this is when I pull the biscuits from the oven and set the table) Once you are ready to eat, move the bacon gravy to a bowl and get that yummy junk to the table.

My version of Kili is my favourite one to write and it caught me by surprise, to be honest as I wasn't expecting it. Until writing him, I'd always favoured original characters over canons because with them being basically a blank sheet, I don't have to write them in an established way. I like writing Kili because he does have a playful side to his nature, but he also has a serious side to it when needed. If I'm having a bit of a rough day, letting his playful side come out usually cheers me up. Contrast that Bild, a dwarf OC I created, I don't like writing her much. It's not because I don't like the background I made for the character, it's more people's dismissive reaction to her - it's an OC, and a female and people assume that she's one of those 'bad' female OCs before they've even bothered to give the character a chance. Since I worked on her background quite a bit recently, I would like to write her more.

First off: DEFINITELY explain to your staff exactly why you've gotten so "anal" with your job restrictions. Second: staff roles that are clearly defined would likely remedy a lot of the "can I do this?" and "Can I do that" questions.

One thing I personally want to say though is I feel the elder audience have something to say equally. In that maybe they may not want to join sites with a lot of younger people on because of the hype - but that's the only thing admins -can- do to try and attract enough people to stay afloat because the older audience tend to be very snobby and don't want to put in on a new site "incase it dies" resulting in a self fulfilling prophecy either way. Either because really the admin wanted an older crowd even if they wanted a PG-13 site because they wanted the maturity of "hey not everyone has all the time to sit and post" or because the admin burns out just trying to keep the hype train going. So realistically I see this as a problem in how the older more experienced generation respond to new roleplays as much as younger people needing the hype machine and therefore being flakey. Because if the older generation who want the more longer term investment aren't willing to invest in a new site?

One thing that I have loved with having friends from Mexico, immigrants here raising their family, is that I get beyond the normal Mexican food. Sure we all have our favorite go-to places, but man have you ever had an authentic street taco? I'm in a small town so we have Taco Bell and few places that just put lots of cheese and serve endless chips and salsa, but this takes it to a whole new level. One of my favs is this one: http://carlsbadcravings.com/chili-lime-chicken-tacos-with-gri And it truly is amazing! It is easy to do, though it does take a good deal of time to prep. If you try it please let me know!

I have done countless Activity Checks and they always bog down the site. The strategy I have tried recently is to not have them, but require that if members start in a major plot (I call them Featured Stories) they must continue with them or post an absence request. If they don't continue with the plot, they get written out of it by the active members. The only characters I maintain an activity check for are canons which is once every 3 months.

Leave me alone with my thoughts too long and a site gets re-skinned.

Thank you guys for your input, it has been very very helpful. Two of them have seemingly disappeared and I doubt are coming back. If they do, thanks to this thread, I know how to handle it. The last one has officially left, they sent me a message, it wasn't mean or anything and deleted all their stuff. Thanks again though, I really appreciate your opinions! Anonymous poster hash: 6509f...b6d

There's a super simple way to look at this. I want to go back to your title because it's beautiful. When you love someone romantically, do you want to change them? No! When you love someone, you love them for who they are, you don't want them to change, you want them, just as they are. But it's okay to want them to brush away their morning breath. ;- ) Now apply this to your situation. You have some members who don't love your board, the love the idea of it but want something else entirely. This is already festering and costing you members and causing you problems - I think it's time to break off this unhealthy relationship that isn't good for you, or anyone else, really.

I agree with a lot of this - but equally I don't agree with 'if you build it they will come'. Because a lot of the time its not so much attracting members, its attracting members that will stay. I sometimes contemplate how much it is to do with how much you can hype up the site - and then the hard thing, Keep it hyped. It's why on We Are Human I've got a specific member group for those who may not be sure if they can commit to join but want to at least read and feel part of the small community. I've got it set up to reward people who don't just flake out without warning but those who do just up and poof I'll write character deaths for them.