Activity checks-Do you do 'em and how often?

[Josie 198]

It's good to have activity expectations and protocols on how to deal with inactive characters. It's also good to make those expectations known in site documentation, because how else are your prospective members meant to know these things?

 

But I don't think activity checks are necessary. I can think of alternative ways to deal with the issues typically associated with/used as justification for activity checks.

• If the site is an original RP, what are the chances that someone else is going to want that same exact name? Encourage someone to spell it differently, or use a different name.
• If the site is a forum with canons, why can't an asterisk be added to the account's name to free up the name? Already did that? Add another asterisk. That's the great thing about them, there can be as many as you need. Don't like looking at asterisks on dead accounts? Easy:
  
  CSS

  .inactive-accounts {
    display: inline-block;
    color: transparent;
    width: 0px;
    height: 0px;
    overflow: hidden;
  }

  HTML

  Steve Rodgers<span class="inactive-accoutns">***</span>

• Have leadership positions that need to be freed up? Have it get dealt with ICly, and leave the inactive leader account alone. That actually generates posts, and conflict, and plots, and even opens up the potential for more of all of them if the inactive player decides to come back.
• They do not stop people who cannot meet the activity requirements from joining the site. If they did, then activity checks wouldn't be necessary to begin with.

The thing about activity checks is that they don't generate genuine activity.  It's like putting a gun to someone's head and then clapping when they do whatever they are told to. Of course they are going to do what they're say, so long as they want to live. Therefore, the end result is manufactured and is not genuine.

 

I disagree that calling activity checks "dehumanizing" is hyperbolic. 

• Someone went through the time and effort to set up an account on the site.
• Most of the time, they were at least marginally active and devoted their free time to playing on the site.
• For one reason or another (which, truthfully, is no one's business), this person was unable to meet the activity standards. The metaphorical gun is put to their head and they are given an order, which they may or may not be able to/want to comply with.
• If they don't comply, their existence on the site is demolished, the only trace of them left being the posts they've made in threads which have now, likely, become dead. On some forum hosts, this might break the mini-profile and thus it becomes difficult to learn anything about this character without having to ask someone else on the site about them.
• If the player's account isn't deleted and they want to come back, they have to ask for it to be taken out of inactivity, and may or may not have to redo all of their additional content, like plotters, wanted ads, trackers, etc.

If you were that player and cared about that forum, even if you went inactive on it for one reason or another, how would that make you feel?

 

Some people might not care. But there are plenty of people who would care, and just because their feelings are different or inconvenient does not mean that they are invalid and should not be considered.

On my sites, I don't do activity checks. If I know someone's left or hasn't been around in a while, so long as it isn't a canon I don't do anything with the account except maybe mark it as inactive. If it is a canon, I'll put an asterisk on the username to free it up and mark the count as inactive. I mark accounts as inactive if I'm adminning a site where it's important to me to keep faction numbers up to date, such as on sites where there is a lot of conflict between the different factions and it's encouraged that the faction members wound/kill their enemies (seeing the count go up and down motivates people to make more action happen!). I may also archive wanted ads and plotters and the like. However, the way I do these things is different than the way most other sites do them: people can move themselves out of the inactive group on my forums without needing to contact staff, and they can also unarchive their own threads without having to ask staff. It puts the responsibility of activity almost entirely on the member instead of on me, and gives the member more control over their own things.

[Bro 89]

Every two months (or more around the holidays), we have an 'activity check' where you post that you're alive. We give users 2+ weeks to do it, and if they haven't responded close to the end, we tag them again. We only do this because some of our species are 'limited' per the books' lore, and having a whole bunch of inactive accounts taking up those spaces isn't fair to new people or people who are more active. Same with our face claims. Having accounts taking up the claims isn't very fair either.  If we didn't have limits like that, I imagine we'd probably do even less, maybe a once-a-year cleanup of inactive accounts. 

Edited February 4, 2019 by Bro

[CalicoCorsair 13]

I'm not personally a fan of activity checks - as a former admin, it was not only a good deal of work on my part (setting up the check, making sure I post it everywhere so people don't miss it, then having to deal with responses and time limit, yadda, yadda) but it definitely doesn't make people continue to post more, I have never ever seen that on any game I've played. Most people simply show up and make a post randomly in some old thread they've been neglecting to say "hi I've been here!" and then continue to do what they please. xD

 

Both of the sites I've been admin / owner of did not use activity checks. If I was really concerned, I manually did a search on my admin CP by "last date active", and then just inactivated people that were over whatever number of days I felt was an issue. Then, if they came back and found they were inactive, well all their stuff is still there so they can just let me know and I'll activate them. I think I even had a maintenance thread for that? 

 

And on canons / face claims on sites - well, you should have something in the rules about activity on those. So, follow your rules. *shrug*  If the rule is "canon characters must post icly at least once a week" and you realize they don't . . . inactivate them and free the canon back up or whatever. That should be in the rules though, so people know what they are getting into. 

 

Mostly it boils down to: either people are active, or they aren't. Make sure your site has a rule in place for those things if you are concerned about "wanted" names/face claims or canons. Then, you just carry out said rule. Easy enough. 🙂

 

/tangent - this reminds me of the very first wolf rp I ever joined, like 12-13 years ago. I became a pack alpha and had to take responsibility for making sure high ranked characters were active enough or they got bumped down. There was no activity check, I just looked for their last posts. I might have been the first person to really do it like that cause I remember people being weirded out about it. I was always like "well if they come back active, they just re-challenge for it?" LOL ah, good times. 😄

 

[Dun 68]

I’m totally anti “activity check”, in the sense that I don’t want any situation in which players have to regularly post to tell me they’re in the game. It’s an unnecessary inconvenience for them, and I’m all for handling the organization myself. It can be quick and easy.

 

The thing is, I just periodically (about once a month) scan through and sort players who haven’t logged in for the last month into an ‘inactive’ member group. I sort their characters, file their bios away— it’s about clearly indicating which players are present and ready to play. No one loses posting permissions (they can hop back in immediately). It’s about who’s readily available and interested, not who’s posting in a thread over a week or so after I’ve prodded them and threatened to take their toys away.

 

I’m just trying to make it easy for folks to know who’s available and ready for fun. I’m not trying to force people to start a new thread just to meet a posting requirement while their writing partners have stalled. I’m not trying to force them to actively write every character every week. I’m not trying to make it all about face claims or something, and I try to avoid any games that engage in those shenanigans.

Edited February 10, 2019 by Dun

[jordan 23]

I have an every other month system. I run 2 activity checks a year and 4 interest checks. Just lemme know you're still interested in your characters. This allows me to easily weed out people that aren't active, and it also opens up face claims all over again for people to use. But it's also not an every month "didn't we JUST do this?" kind of thing.

 

I don't mind AC's I just hate MONTHLY giving people 1-2 threads per character to show that I am active on the site. Sometimes muses suffer or sometimes you don't like having a bunch of threads with one character. It just greatly depends on the situation.

[Libby 100]

We don't have them. Not because they "Dehumanize" (wow dramatic) But because Admins have better things to do than waste time every month doing stupid AC's. Not only that, but they almost NEVER work how they are supposed to. You log on, do your AC and then vanish for the rest of the month. It doesn't encourage activity, its a chore.

General rule, if you haven't posted in the away section. We haven't seen a post out of you in a month. We will reach out to make sure everything is ok. (usually, we know well in advance because we talk to our players regularly on discord) if we get no response there's no big ceremony or drama. We'll archive the characters and move on. If they return, its as easy as unarchiving and updating for current plots.  Easy peezy!

[wonderlovesyou 13]

We have official AC's twice a year - Jan and July.  Our members know full well the timeline of them.  During the AC, we require members to link to an IC post made within the last 30 days for each character.  If they don't have one, then they need to make one.

 

In January, we started a post percentage initiative due to members having 30+, 40+ characters but posting like 1-2 times total a month.  We've had numerous current, as well as potential members, bounce due to lack of available FC's and coveted positions from active members but those who weren't using the characters.  So, to try to combat that, and to encourage members to only bite off as much as they could chew instead of hogging claims, we began requiring that members strive to post "50% of the time."  Basically - if you have 10 characters, we anticipate that you should be able to post 5x in one month with any combination of those ten characters.  Posts are tracked via a master spreadsheet and percentages are communicated with members each month, so they know where they're sitting if they aren't tracking it already on their own.  After 3+ months of failing to meet 50%, then we'll chat with them privately and encourage them to drop a char or two to help their posting-to-char ratios.

 

The rollout of this caused some anxiety and unrest among our members, and a few people decided that they wanted to leave over it.  Which, quite frankly, adieu -as a staff AND a member, I'd rather not have plots AND claims all tied up.  We started "unofficially" tracking the percentages in November, and save for a small handful of constant offenders who honestly aren't surprising to pop up on the list (our, "I should post but I'm going to just chat about how I should post instead" people LOL), everyone else is mostly surpassing the activity requirement - which, of course, we want to reward, so we give 1 "point" for every % over 50%.  So, if someone has 10 characters and posts 20x in a month, that's 200% - so they earn 150 points to spend in an activity points shop for things like extra special ability slots, etc.  

[Bowie 25]

Exciting update! 

I actually convinced my fellows of the value of activity checks being ableist, and offering exception policies to any self-identifying as incapable due to any mental, physical (or even job) reasons, without any sort of penalty for making them play like 'lesser' characters. 

I thank this thread very much for helping me decide that re-think needed to happen.

[blinkster 20]

Never 😮   

 

I just obsessively compulsively keep an eye on user activity dates and when they've not been around for a month I'll send them a private message to ask if they okay, then if I get no response after another month I will send another message to them say I'm sorry we've lost them, and that they're welcome to come back - then I archive their character so they can always return. Easy done. It's the way I've always done it and I don't really have a reason for doing it this way but it works for me. 

 

I've found that activity checks, like roll calls, just make people turn up to have their name taken and doesn't actually make them come back to post. But hey, each to their own 🙂

[Karebear 20]

First few boards that I either Modded or Adminned had activity checks but yeah. As I grew *coughs*aged*coughs* the demands of reality are more important than logging posting once a week or making sure that people were on for an activity check.

Now, I'm all... post when you can but you will be skipped over so you're not holding others up if you're in a thread with multiple people. I'm way relaxed now.

 

And I wouldn't say they drive people away or dehumanize people. Sometimes they're needed for canon characters. Just set up a guideline for activity for them and clearly state what is expected.... but I'm rambling a bit. 😉

[Rugs 63]

My site used to do a monthly (I think it was monthly?) roll-call activity check way back in the day where members would have to post what characters they were using and so on. That eventually fell off in favor of just checking every now and then to see if people were around.

 

These days we just do a check at the end of the month to see if members have logged in. If they have, we keep their characters active, and if not we just inactivate them.