Staffing Do you celebrate anniversaries?

[Rune 1,099]

Do you do anything special for your site's big day? What about members?

 

For the site, we generally change the skin, ad, etc. (Though, this might be made difficult this year by my graphics/coding mod being punched by RW) and release a new feature or something similar for the members.

 

For members' anniversaries we have rewards they can use, adding to the special things they can do on the site (rare characters, etc) depending on the amount of time on board.

 

For my WoW RP guild, we host an event a week for an entire month for the server. We turn 9 this year and our shenanigans start tonight! It's generally a good hit and gets other people celebrating with us.

 

I'm curious to see what other people do, if anything.

[CovertSphinx 710]

Traditionally, none of the places I've ever been or hosted ever did anything.

 

Once we TRIED to set something up at the 5 year mark....but it flopped. I don't even remember what exactly we were going to do.

[Elena 546]

In a world where many RPGs are created on a whim, going belly up before their half year anniversary, each new year a RPG is marking is a reason for celebration. Each year, my celebrations sort of started two months before and ended one month after the actual anniversary, which is August.

 

Two months before, I launched contests with prizes:

 

1. Activity contest, going two ways: the traditional “the character who makes 40 posts in this period wins a prize” and “the highest posters (a.- character and b.- player with several characters adding up) win an additional prize”. For this, I counted in a list the number of posts each character had at the beginning of the contest. At the end of the contest, a new statistic was posted, and the results were displayed in the site’s Monthly Chronicles.

 

2. Creativity challenges contest, which is a mix of prompts for writing challenges, with points for each, and various community challenges, which make people earn points (such as answering surveys, being more active in discussion threads, posting an introduction, etc.) The writing challenges are flexible enough to be able to be incorporated in the ongoing plots.

 

3. Art contest, for those who aren’t only good writers, but also good with drawing and/or photomanipulation. All the submitted artwork was turned into a youtube movie for the board’s anniversary, with the due credit to their authors. The art meant, in various years, “Happy anniversary Before the Mast!” banners which were displayed on the board, drawings or photomanipulations describing characters from “Before the Mast” or quotes/ scenes from favourite threads. Sometimes it was a sort of funny posters, paraphrasing famous movies, and this was funny too. In the first year, the well known taverns in our story got signs too, useful for their description.

 

4. Recruiting contest – The idea is to recruit by word of mouth at least one new member to the site – one who will stay and post. (An advertising contest would count here too.) The winner will earn a prize and a mention in the site’s Monthly Chronicles.

 

Besides receiving public recognition in the monthly chronicles and a “contest winner” award in their signature, the winners receive concrete prizes too – e-books, CDs with custom cover and heartfelt dedication, graphics. The most cherished prize is a special anniversary CD (songs pertaining to the site theme, carefully chosen, and a custom cover with a dedication for each winner). Yes, we have already five such anniversaries behind, and there will be, most likely, a sixth in a few months. 

 

For those who had several characters winning prizes, other prizes involved themed e-books (ie swashbuckling adventures at sea, given that the site is Age of Sail themed – mostly Hornblower novels and Sabbatini’s) and graphics for their characters.

 

I recommend warmly to everyone these concrete and easy to make/ offer prizes which are cheap and can turn into cherished mementos. Other people would recommend mainly badges and coloured custom frills to display in the character’s profile, but… what to do with badges? How many people are fond of “shinies”? Besides, it contributes to slowing down the loading of the site. Having a concrete prize, to hold in your hand and to remain as a wonderful souvenir of the story you are writing together, counts a lot and it is more thoughtful. You or any skilled member of your site can make the graphics used as a prize, or the YouTube movie with the graphics you have received as contest submissions.

 

For the e-books, Project Gutenberg is the best source, and you can find lots of free books there you haven’t heard of because they hadn’t been republished recently, but which are interesting and pertinent to the site’s theme.

 

And for the custom CD, it takes songs you have already, either in your computer or on CD’s, to copy in your computer and to give them a custom cover, then to email them to the winner. No money involved, just your patience and love. It takes 10-12 e-mails (each one with 2-3 songs) and the personalised CD cover the last. Then they burn the CD, print the cover and this is it. It is important that something remains to remind them of the achievements and of the community. The CDs comprised, during the years, the site’s two theme songs, some plot theme songs (Alestorm’s pirate-themed worked well, for example.), some of the characters theme songs and place-related songs (Sun of Jamaica, Haiti cherie, Springtime in Nassau, Kingston Town, etc.).

 

One month before, I launched the sitewide event, both used as a celebration party for the site birthday, as an opportunity for characters who wouldn’t interact otherwise to interact, and for some plots to go on. The first year’s was Saint John’s summer feast – during this holiday an engagement took place, the pirates saved their captain from prison, mercenaries reunited and found a new mission, etc. The second year’s was Michaelmas feast, with which opportunity pirates came a-spying, a mercenary learnt that his beloved had been executed for treason, a girl learnt her fiancé got lost at sea, another couple had an engagement, unlikely friendships started upon a drink… The third year’s sitewide event was the New Year Masquerade, which had, ia, an assassination attempt.The fourth year's, Mardi Gras, had lots of intrigues too, including secret negotiations and planning for an unofficial special mission and blackmailing a smuggler into helping the officials... The fifth year's, a May Day peace festival. 

 

Other anniversary themed activities (some by me, some by other sites I know):

• One year, I put also trivia contests about threads and characters.
• Every year I have also a memories thread, where people to remember something from their first days on the board.
• Every year I am also doing a birthday speech, writing a personal note for each member who has been around long enough to get involved into the story.
• Even for sites who don’t have a regular monthly newsletter like us, I warmly recommend to do a special anniversary newsletter, comprising, ia, a few tops highlighting the achievements of the year:

1. Top 5 longest members
2. Top 5 high posting characters
3. Top 5 most viewed bios
4. Top 5 most viewed threads
5. Our members also voted for:
6. Thread of the year
7. Rumour of the year
8. NPC of the year
9. Love story of the year – And some funny awards too (most likely to be rescued by the damsel, most likely to kiss the wrong maiden, most likely to stab themselves with the sword, etc.)

• Have a meet-up! Sometimes it works, and this year I had the chance to be visited by the first member of the site (she’s from USA, me from Eastern Europe), and we celebrated together – champagne and cake with a ship on it included.
• Have a movie watching marathon! Find a week-end where the schedules might allow for it, a movie on youtube (so that it can be watched by people in different timezones at different hours) matching the site’s theme and watch it, then chat and share impressions. It helps with bonding the community.
• Decorate your site for the holiday! A new skin, a new banner, new pips or thread markers would give it a holiday feeling. Some sites decorated the avatars with birthday hats, for example.
• Make an anniversary gift to your site – a c-box or an in character c-box, if not having any yet, a new domain, a software upgrade, etc.
• Have a kind of Secret Santa type birthday presents swap.
• Uncover a new species, or a new territory to explore!
• Update the plot and mark the achievements of the past year.
• A scavenger hunt might be an IC or OOC celebration event as well.

[VirusZero 176]

I try to do something special for each year... Doesn't always work out that way depending on how much time I have leading up to it.

 

For things I've done in the past...

Year 1 - I added a new skin.

Year 2 - I added a: new skin, the chatango box, and the domain name.

Year 3 - I reorganized the forum and compacted things down. Nothing really major otherwise. (I also bought paid hosting for our wiki just before here so I'm going to count that in with this too although I never really mention it.)

Year 4 - We went fully self hosted.

Year 5 - Nothing (unfortunately. I really wanted something big this year since not many make it to their 5th year.)

Year 6 - Post contest for a game. (Whomever makes the most posts gets a copy of the Steam game 20XX, since we're all MegaMan fans and that game is really close to some good old fashioned MegaMan X Jumpin, Dashin N' Shootin.)

 

In year 5 I had intended on moving us to MyBB 1.8 for it, but all the mods I wanted weren't ready yet. Plus I never really had enough time to do the test conversions and remake the skin leading up to the date.

 

Next year? I have no idea what will happen. Haven't really thought that far ahead yet. 

[Cat In Spats 0]

I enjoy marking the big day.  We just reached our 2 year and I gave every current character a special award to mark the occasion.  I also have one planned for some of reaching 50K posts on board.  As for members individual awards we give them one at 6 months, a year and two years to cheer them on for having these characters so long.

[Huskerdust 625]

I like doing something special but I haven't in a long time. One of my forums is private and there's only two of us there so it's kinda pointless. But we did hit our four year mark a couple months back so yay for us! I haven't celebrated anything on PTU at this point. Maybe something when we hit the two year mark? I don't know what yet but I have some beautiful members and I would sincerely love to thank them somehow. They're my core group from Tellius so they've been with me for around 7ish years now? I should definitely do something special for them!

[Morrigan 1,826]

Roleplay wise I don't mind it either way but I certainly think a celebration and large event is a ton of fun to celebrate.

 

Here on DF we celebrate every once in a while. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary a few years ago. I had plans for this year too. Shhhhh, don't tell my members. <_<

 

Really it depends on the culture of the site but i think that it's a good way to really bring your community together especially if you are not only celebrating the site but you are celebrating the people that contribute to it.

[Death Kitten 200]

I just came to ask about this. We've seen some new members since this was originally posted (I'm one of them), so I'm curious what others have to say.

 

My game's one year is coming up in September and I've started talking to my xo about what we want to do. I'm already started chewing on some of the things mentioned in this thread so far, but I'm curious if anyone has done anything else or has other ideas.

[Rune 1,099]

This year we did something a bit different. We did an anniversary shop. We gave specific things to do to earn certain points and by doing so it allowed you to earn things that were either otherwise unobtainable or limited. 

 

We also released a new membergroup.

[Orchid 12]

I've personally never done anything for an aniversary. The sites I've been a part of, have all just done a Skin overhaul and left it at that.