Search the Community

So something I always think about as both a player and an administrator. Activity. Obviously if you want people to be active then the site has to be active. Proven to be true many times over. The question is: Does enforcing it strictly work? One thing as a member that often deters me is activity checks but on the flip side, in certain environments the activity of the member is key to the development of the site. Hopefully there has to be a balance somewhere in there that you aren't losing your members because the rules are too strict but not so loose that no one ever posts. What are methods that you use that you feel works?

So, I didn't know this (obviously now I do), but RP forums host their images on Imgur. Now I knew some friends hosted a thing or two on there or shared images to be from there but I didn't know that sites were fully hosting their layout design images on Imgur. Now, that being said, I guess the amount of people that host their files there is so much that Imgur has actually banned jcink from using their images at all, and I guess that would mean even trying to show a funny image in a thread is out now, due to the abuse. (You can read about it here). Now with the information there I feel I must ask, how many people host images on Imgur (including link banners and sig banners)? What are your thoughts on the massive ban hammer that they threw down? Where are you moving your content to?

I realize that some of us use mandatory templates for character applications and some of us prefer not to. By template, I'm off course talking about specific information fields like "Name", "Age", "personality", "history", etc - NOT fancy smancy layout stuff. Traditionally, I've always set up some sort of mandatory bare minimal because early in the long-ago past I've gotten too many character apps that were so atrociously vague that the member thought they could add any abilities they wanted per thread. But I can also see where there might be some benefits to NOT providing a mandatory app. Which way do you guys do it? And secondly, regardless if the member fills out a specific template or not, is it appropriate for the staff to ask said members to add anything extra once the application is submitted before the profile will be approved? Lastly, does anybody use an "Automatic approval" set up where the member can start posting with that character right away; with the condition that staff may ask the member to tweak a couple of things or be inactivated?

Alright! So I had a bout of nostalgia a little bit ago about a site I used to run. It's been forever and I honestly... sadly... don't remember the name (I must be getting really old). Anyways! I was thinking about a situation that arose and how I dealt with it and I want to see what other staff members would have done if they were in my shoes. Alrighty! So everything is fabulous and all that jazz and we get this member. They aren't a bad person, I think they were a little self conscious and negative (it blurs together a little) but they joined the site. Now here is where everything went a little sideways. I didn't mind the member they were fine, maybe said something a little annoying every now and again but overall they were fine. They weren't breaking rules, they were a little grating but they were active and whatnot. Well, they ended up doing something that did cross a line. I don't remember if it was in a conversation (in the cBox) or a thread I just remember it was in a public place that EVERYONE saw! It was pretty bad and my staff cried for blood, they wanted her banned immediately. Obviously the banning came down to me and my co-admin at the time. We reviewed the situation and the overall behavior and decided to give the person a second chance but a fierce warning. I didn't want this to happen again and I wanted the staff to feel like I had done the situation justice. Apparently, I hadn't done that and I felt like what's her face from "The 100" when she let the jerk guy live after he had killed someone else or whatever. We did what we thought was best and that wasn't good enough as we didn't do what everyone else wanted. To be fair, in my opinion, it's an administrator's job to deal with the hard decisions and while the staff is able to contribute their thoughts and opinions it still falls on the shoulders of the administrators on what to do in a severe situation as this one had become. This is part that I want opinions on. My staff members disagreed with me so vehemently that after a day, while they were still angry and wound up about it, a few of them send me a long PM that basically said, "We're leaving the staff" while they didn't say that it was because of this particular issue it was obvious from the "timing" of it that it was this issue that made them choose to leave the staff. I mean really? What else could it have been. I discussed and talked it out with them but basically I felt like I was pounding my head against a brick wall because they refused to see any reason or even discuss it. In a way I felt they were being immature and unprofessional about it. Putting it in perspective, just because my boss says "you still have to work this Saturday" doesn't mean that it gives me a good reason to quit my job (a little bit different since RPs are volunteer work but hopefully you still see my point). Continuing this story of woe, my co-admin wanted me to salvage the staff even though they were dead set on getting their way on a decision that we made collectively. I felt that salvaging the staff, while it may save face a little bit, didn't actually fix any of the issues and would just continue harboring ill will until eventually it blew even FURTHER out of proportion than it already had. Eventually the decision was to let go of the staff and made them normal members again. I had expressed to my co-admin that I didn't want this sort of thing to happen again and knowing that it happened once was stressful enough for me on my hobby without having to walk on eggshells all the time. My Questions: What would you have done in my shoes? Would you have saved the staff and banned the member? Would you have tried to keep both? What is your opinion on this? Unfortunately there is no tl;dr version of this you will have to read the full story to understand what I am asking! Thanks for the thoughts.

I got the idea to ask from Kieran's thread "What matters most" thread. Mainly as an admin, but also as a member. Which board host do you guys think is the best? Or even your favorites. I've always preferred Proboards myself, but I feel like the ToS sometimes can be a little...restrictive for certain game genres. At the same time, I can't complain about the ease of its skins, its admin areas, etc. Especially that simple-and-quick account switch feature they added with the remodeling a while back.

I didn't put this in the brainstorming idea because it isn't an idea, but a question without an idea. I made a deal with one of my members that if we got 1,000 posts on the board by April 1st, I'd open a new game. This is all with the understanding that a. I have time to admin two games, b. our current game is good and doesn't need 100% of the attention (it currently does) and c. there's enough support. So, it isn't a 'no matter what, there will be a new game' deal. My question to all of you is what would you like to see more? Me personally I'd love it if I had 5 pots of coffee a day and could run all the games I want because I have so many ideas I love, but not enough time/support to play them all, and I have no interest in a panfandom game. So what it comes down to (and I think it's a deal breaker pretty often as far as if a game succeeds or not) is what is lacking in the rp community?

So, As I stare at forums here on DF I am considering adding a forum to split Roleplay and from Coding/Grpaphics as the coding/Graphics get a little drowned out by Roleplay conversations. Obviously a little different than what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about you have a "general" area and a few threads pop up at some specific place (lets call the it a Restaurant named Food) when is that you take and make the "Food" area it's own thing and separate it out of the "general" area. For me it's 10 posts per location (which means the forum would need 10 that would stay and 10 that would go) each before Food would be created. How about for you? Do you choose not to make those areas? I will admit that I like when IC actions tend to create the areas via use. This includes like "Character owned" shops and stuff.

Concerning c-boxes, I don't use them often at sites, and I don't need one for me to join a game. Even so, I always have OOC c-boxes available at my forum games, but.. They never get used much. I'm not worried about it, but.. A question for staff that don't have a c-box: do you offer any disclaimer, an explanation as to why there is no c-box? For players, do you want to see such a thing, or is it not a deal-breaker? For my next game, a work in progress (moving a game from one host to another), on the original host: c-boxes are never used. However, for this particular game's migration, myself and my co-mod @Bonemeal just don't have the right timezones. We have 'boxes at our other games, but we only really use them for quick, random messages. The majority of guests, if not all of them, show up in the box at 2am our time. During daylight hours, we have various real life business to contend with; we're not staff who can chat for hours in the box, but whenever we do spot a guest- they're there for one minute or less and then POOF. What sort of disclaimer can we put up, likely in the FAQ area or something- that would explain our reasoning behind the 'missing c-box', etc?

Does anyone deal with flakes (people who say they'll do things, but don't) as often as I do? Doing the proper admin thing I hit up people and do advertising as much as I can during my free time. Often this involves hitting up old role-playing buddies or making sure members who have gone inactive are doing alright (Although this is more genuine than me adverting. I firmly believe Life > Roleplay and do get personally attached to people I get to know). Often this leads to them assuming I'm there to bother them back onto the forum and they feed me promises of their return. But never do. I'll hit them just for a conversation and as if they feel guilty about not being there, they make sure to mention that they intend to be on site, but as per the norm never do. This is more than one person (been running role-plays for more than a decade so I got a long contact list of people I talk to in order to keep up with old friends >.o). Curious about your experiences with this type of person. The one who promises, but never lives up to it or simply leads you on. How do you handle these people?

So I've found myself in a bit of an odd situation. I've had a domain name for quite a while [April 2014 or so], and at the start of this year I revamped the site that I'd been hosting there and changed it to an entirely different setting when the old one came to an end. I'd been working on this WIP site for quite some time and was close to opening when another site in the same genre [but not a crossover like mine] opened up using the same exact name. Now, I'm not sure if they happened on mine and liked the name/basics or just came up with the same idea, but I'm not sure what to do. I have several people eager to join and I've already put off opening because of this other site. I recently moved us from self hosting to jcink premium since I needed a break from the self hosting stress - I picked bad hosts apparently - one was bought out by EIG and the other failed to communicate when they caused issues that broke things until I reached out. Anyway, I have people asking about the site again and I'd really prefer to keep the name the same - I do own a .com domain for this after all and have had it long before the other site came about. But they opened first and it IS the same genre. I really dislike drama and don't want to deal with it, but I did purchase this domain and have everything mostly ready to go. What do?