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

[Foxypaws 44]

I've been having a bit of a debate with someone about this lately. My site has activity checks once a month. If you don't participate in the activity check, you get put on an 'inactive' list. If you don't answer by the next month, your account is deleted. However, you may always return even if your account was deleted.
This rule, for me, is to allow new people to claim a character name that would otherwise be blocked up and to keep an accurate IC census.

The person I am debating with though says that activity checks drive members away and make them feel dehumanized. What do you think? Do you do them or not?

[Kit the Human 758]

You might find this topic interesting. I know that you're not dealing with a 'cheater' but it's got some pertinent points for you.

 

Personally, I think that feeling dehumanised is a bit of hyperbole and if the activity checks are part of your rules, than people know what they're getting into.

 

I dislike activity checks that make me post in a thread, but I don't avoid them. I don't like them because I think that you can just, check for the character's last activity and deal with it appropriately. I'm not sure if your site software lets you search for accounts that haven't posted in the last month? If not, and if your site is a bigger one, I can appreciate why you would not want to manually go through a member's list.

 

Your actual requirements, 1 post a month? Technically 1 every two months since you have a leniency period. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

[clipsed 231]

Our staff take on the AC 100% ourselves with little to no involvement from our players. We conduct them once a month, and have a master spreadsheet of how many posts a character has. We go through the Character Directory the first Saturday of each month to update this, and any account with no new posts that month (we require one IC post per character to stay active!) and no absence posted is made inactive. We also deactivate characters not on the CD.

 

We don't actually deactivate accounts, so you can bring Inactive Joe back any time! You just risk losing occupations/positions, face claims, and characters if canons or want ads.

 

We actually find this works really well for us, as it runs behind the scenes, essentially, while still allowing what we want an AC to accomplish: freeing up things not actively being used.

[Kazetatsu 263]

On my sites, I don't really bother with them. I'm not fond of any sort of check in mechanism, such as posting in a specific thread, nor in messing with people's accounts after they've put work into them. if you are paying attention to you member's posting patterns, its not hard to get an idea of who is active or not.  If I did do cleanouts, I'd only delete empty(no ic posts) or bio,-only character accounts, and put anything else into a 'inactive' member group, about every six months, or once a year but not more often than that, especially since I know there will always be active seasons, and dry seasons.

the only real reason I see for checks is for official positions or needed canon characters. ocs, and common jobs can be countless but for cannons and high ranks, only few people can get the spot. in these cases the activity standard could be stated up front, and if a person falls out, they lose the position, not the character if its an oc.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Kazetatsu

[Arceus 1,081]

I do mine manually. Basically I can see when they've last posted quite easily, and when they last logged in. Usually I won't get more than 3-4 individual players on my sites, maybe 5-6 if it's a real hit, so keeping track of who's done what and who's not doing what is something I just, know, because I pay attention. I do have activity requirements, but they're excruciatingly loose (lol) because mostly I don't have the time or the patience to be chasing people about being active. That usually doesn't motivate them to be active, and sometimes a site just doesn't work out, no harm no foul. So I just let them do what they'll do and tidy up behind them. Might lose a leadership position someday, but unless it's a canon, probably not the char or the FC. Chances are nobody'll wanna use the same one.

 

Anyway, that's a really weird argument. Dehumanising? I can almost see it and then... nope, sorry, what? lol I mean I guess it could feel that way, like they're just numbers to you, so I guess if I stretch my imagination... personally, I don't like strict activity checks that require posting in a thread somewhere to say hey I'm active, because I can't be arsed to remember to do it. Basically. And... some month, I promise Imma miss it, maybe for two; it's not rare that I'll disappear in a coding tunnel for three months straight and emerge and go "Oh yeah other sentient beings exist," so it really just kinda gets to be both a pain in the butt, and embarrassing, to crawl out of the tunnel and have to ask for my character(s) to be moved back/reregister them, not once, but repeatedly. >> But that's me. I also don't, like, join those. Because I know they don't mesh with me.

 

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Kind of sounds like your person here's just decided a rule doesn't work with them and instead of not joining or whatever, decided to try and make you change your site to suit them.

[StormWolfe 557]

If I am on a site that has some kind of activity check rule, I try to follow the rule.

 

However, on my sites, we do not have activity checks. We're not school kids that need to answer a roll call. I check activity behind the scenes and if someone has not posted or left an absence notice in over a month, I send their account to our Inactive list. Ditto on their character profiles. If they have not ever posted, everything gets deleted after 90 days. I will not delete accounts / characters that have posts attached to them out of respect for the absent member's hard work.

[Elena 546]

7 hours ago, SithLordOfSnark said:

II don't bother because I simply don't have the time or patience anymore. I do member clean ups around every 6 months to remove people who haven't been seen at all, but other then that, I don't do ACs any more.

 

This is my case too. Besides, I have learnt that no matter what activity rules exist, they won't make people who can't post, more active. They aren't an incentive to post. Just an incentive to lose members with the constant sweeps.

[Prophetess 137]

I have the loose (yeah not overly enforced until recent) post once a month rule. I get that life happens and don't go too overboard about it. Someone leaves or moves on, their stuff is archived unless asked otherwise. If they aren't active or haven't been in a while again I just archive and move on. I've been on places that have AC checks and while I wouldn't say dehumanizing, (that's a strong way to put it to me) most have it in their rules so you know what you're looking at. It can be stressful and create a stressful environment for some. Especially those with busy lives and schedules. Hence my rule. If folks check in with me, I'm pretty loose about it. I have a busy life too. If I don't hear from someone in a while though, it is time to move things around and free up things for new folks that might want to join. That's how I look at it though.

[Icewolf 258]

It's reasonable if you aren't wanting a person to post a large amount every week or so. On some twitter groups, I found that some of them expected people to make a set number of posts daily and it was quite excessive. (You did know before joining the group, but it was easy to see why they died or didn't take off.)

 

A couple of posts a month isn't hard to do, however, so I don't think it's a bad thing. One piece of advice though - if your site does have them, make sure that your staff are making the posting requirements as one site I was on once decided to introduce them to try and stimulate activity. It didn't really work since not all of the staff and neither did the owner keep to it, so it just looked like they weren't abiding by their own rules. They can be tricky, though to deal with 'cos you want people to post, but implementing them when the site doesn't have a lot of members can drive people away and you don't want to lose those members. It might be a good idea to look for other ways to encourage people to post as well, so not as much focus is on it. (Could you keep the account by renaming it slightly? Do you need to delete the account if its a non-fandom site as people won't want the character if it's not a canon one.)

[Huskerdust 625]

I do not do them because I am lazy and hate doing anything resembling work. I pretty much just let the west go wild on my sites. Heathen! 

[nyx 164]

I've always hated AC's and if I could get away with not doing them I totally would. We have canons so unfortunately, that's not an option. I do passive AC's and it's made things a lot easier. We check the canons about once a month and originals every two. One post per character is cool, we just want to see signs of life ^^

 

If they have an away up we'll pass over them until the next AC but if not we proceed to clean up. Canons are the only ones that get deleted whereas originals get retired. Before we delete a canon though, we save their history in a member directory in case they come back and want it.

[StormyWays13 91]

I honestly have never been a fan of activity checks. I don't usually join sites that make you post in a thread to make sure you are still active once a month. On my site, we don't run them. But I think every site is different. As long as the expectations are laid out for members before they join the site, they know what they are getting themselves into.

[Rhindeer 217]

Ain't nobody got time for that.

 

Well, at least I don't.

 

Every year or half year or so, we'll clean up accounts that haven't been logged into in like...a year. But other than that, nah. I hate them, members hate them, so I don't bother.

[Zahhy 130]

We don't do activity checks where you have to "check in". Every 4 months I run through the forum and if an account hasn't posted in that time I archive their profiles into an "Inactive Player Account". They keep their accounts and can still log in any time, but they lose access to their faceclaims, names, etc.

 

If we have an active member but their ranked characters haven't posted every other month as is required, I inform them of the loss of their rank via Forum PM. Generally, the player comes back, worried to lose their rank and they don't get archived.

 

I will admit that until recently I've been terribly lax about it and generally do not argue with the players about their inactivity, but if I were to argue, there wouldn't be a stone for them to step on. The inactivity rules are clearly stated and I've reminded them kindly via our site announcements often as well.

 

I will say flat out that activity checks don't dehumanize people. It might keep someone that knows they won't make that activity check regularly away - but if that's how you're conditioning your community there's no problem with it. If someone is upset that they gotta take away from their writing every once in a while to drop in and say "Yo. still alive" you don't want them on your site. And if you DO want them on your site - just reconsider the forced activity check-in via post, and do a soft one where you just check their log-in dates!

[Bowie 25]

I have mixed feelings about them. My site requires 4/month (1/week) per character but like. Activity checks ARE ableist. I've been debating arguing we should allow lax checks for those who've self-identified with anxiety around that sort of thing, so that we can not be exclusionary?

It's a weird balance. We want a strong push of story, and so urging people to not just sit on canons is important. But at the same time...