How do you sort your groups?

[Morrigan 1,826]

So I've seen it done quite a few different ways but how do you like your user groups sorted?

 

By race/species, by IC group, by active/inactive status?

[Jaxx 317]

I mainly prefer to sort by IC group or alliance, and then all inactive characters get lumped into one big "inactive" membergroup. But for more freeform/sandbox sites, or where IC groups don't affect personal or sitewide plotting, I also like characters to be sorted by race. 

[Liannis 69]

I hate when groups are sorted by something that has nothing to do with the plot like movie types or favorite drinks and described by these ‘aesthetics’ like late night walks, bruised knees, the ‘mom’ friend, etc

 

sort by species, neighborhood, or job type.  Something that makes sense. 

[Kit the Human 759]

It depends on what's important to the setting.

 

So on an upcoming site, it's more important to sort by agent/not agent rather than 'race' because agent/not agent is the biggest point of separation between characters. (And agents probably all know of each other at least!)

 

It's important to us to move accounts into the inactive group, because it can then be filtered out from the member list.

 

But on a 'standard' urban fantasy site, it would make more sense to sort by race because that's going to have a greater impact on how your characters interact, as well as letting members know what options are going to result in more connections.

 

Something like say Fallout, would depend on the plot focus. Are factions the focus of the plot? Or is race?

[Morrigan 1,826]

1 hour ago, Kit the Human said:

Something like say Fallout, would depend on the plot focus. Are factions the focus of the plot? Or is race?

 

What if its both? What becomes important to you then?

[Skadi 36]

12 minutes ago, Morrigan said:

 

What if its both? What becomes important to you then?

I would say that in this instance I would sort by race and have a title/custom user field with their faction added to the mini-profiles in a prominent place, that way you can technically have both even if only one dictates color. It also makes it cleaner if you want people to be able to make their own factions. You won't have to worry about 8254032 group colors running around the site and don't have to restrict it either. If that makes sense?

[Mab 58]

On Supernatural sites i do an overall 'race' group i suppose, immortals, mortals and hybrids, sometimes more depending on the site, then there are the sub-race that members can add when they join, so like vampires for immortals, and magic users for mortals and stuff like that.

[Kit the Human 759]

3 hours ago, Morrigan said:

 

What if its both? What becomes important to you then?

 

Yeah, what @Skadi said. Probably race...

 

Unless people are grouped geographically by faction. Like all raiders live together, all Institute live together, etc. Then I'd seriously consider faction based grouping.

[Morrigan 1,826]

NGL, still don't understand nor have an answer on how you lot personally sort your groups or why. I'd really appreciate some more direction and reasons you picked your direction.

[Kit the Human 759]

I don't know how else to answer sorry! I don't have one way that I always do it. I've done it by race, faction, or by just separating player and character accounts.

 

It just depends on where I want the focus to be and what I want to achieve with the usergroups. Basically what makes sense; and what makes sense changes from rp to rp.

[Gothic 307]

For member groups, I have the staff groups (admin & mod), member and inactive member. 

 

For character groups, it is by class. With unsorted (for characters not yet accepted) and Staff NPCs. 

[StormWolfe 557]

I sort my groups as simply as possible! This is easy since both forum platforms I use have great character management systems that allow sorting the characters into groups separately from the OOC groups.

 

My OOC groups are the usual array: Admin, Moderators, Guest, Members. To that we've added Inactive and Players. Members designates anyone without an approved character. It also limits their access as far as editing in the IC forums. They are moved to Players once they have an approved character. This allows them to join in threads that are being written as a series of joint posts.

 

The above groups won't apply the same way on my Gaia installation since you can designate forums as joint post friendly and don't have to do it via the groups.

 

At my IPS sites (a western and a modern day action/mystery) we also sort our IC groups very simply: active, NPC, shared NPC, inactive, and pending (not yet completed or approved). I just see no logic in having to keep up with a huge number of groups. However, that is me and my sites.

 

For my swords and sorcery site on Gaia where we have numerous species, we will have more groups. It will make things easier in the long-run.

 

I understand some sites having more elaborate groupings of members and/or characters. In the end, it is whatever suits the setting and floats the Admins' boats. ;)

[Phoenix3495 16]

I've always sorted the groups by Species, but I've also only run Supernatural genre sites. Way back when I first started RPing, I joined a site that was only werewolves and they were all sorted into Clans so each Clan had a group. Then we moved to another site with a similar concept of the Clans, but it wasn't just werewolves. First we had the Clans, but we had both shifters and werewolves. Then when we added more species we just sorted them into their own groups. We also had rogues too. 

 

I think I agree with everybody here who said it depends on the site and what's most important to that site. Also by looking at your lore you should be able to figure out what groups you need.

[Yona Carlin 44]

When I ran my phpBB site I sorted IC accounts into color-coded usergroups based on their character's physical location. I also had a group for alternate states which spanned young/old versions of characters, werewolf/animagus forms, and other universes. Additionally there were groups for OOC accounts (standard, moderators, administrators, information/acceptances). Then I set up my teampage to display every user in each group.