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3 months is pretty lenient! If someone hasn't logged in by that time, they're long gone.

 

We have activity checks every other month and a requirement that canon/leader roles post once a week within reason of their partner responses, but I don't see a point to requiring original characters to be under that same requirement. We kind of know who's disappeared and who's still around way before an activity check and I think it might be easier for us to say "if you haven't logged on in x amount of time we'll mark you as inactive". 

 

We've had a few sign and disappear players and it honestly irks me to no end. If you're not going to show up for 8 weeks but still sign the activity check, I may as well ignore your signature and deactivate your account. When that does happen, we give the player a couple weeks to show some activity, basically putting them on a probation. If they don't start posting within the allotted amount of time, they're out.

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You guys are really giving me some good ideas! Thank you! My site deals with quite a few claims including canons so I have to keep up with them. We're going to delete canons if they don't meet requirements and originals will just lose any special claims they had (face, ability ect..) but they won't be deleted but rather "retired" if the player returns and wants to play them. We're thinking that five IC posts is a good starting point, again we would only hold these once every three months. We do have people post when they will be away so we can take that into consideration as well.

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I'd say your rule is pretty fair, we hold ours every other month. There is a group that you get added to though that you must request to be removed from if you come back in order to post when you do not reply to ours. If by the end of the next activity check your still in that group you're deleted. None of your apps are deleted, just archived in case you come back and want to play that character again without re-doing your entire app.

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We have what I refer to as "passive" activity checks on my site - they are stated clearly in our rules as well, so our members know exactly what to expect. My site is somewhat fast-paced, and we've been around long enough to know that if someone isn't posting in x amount of time without having put up a LOA that they're probably not coming back. Here are our activity check rules:

- You must make a post once every 45 days to be considered "active"

- If your character holds an important position (professor, quidditch player, higher-up in the Ministry), you have 30 days to post or your position will be removed.

- If you join and don't make an IC post within 2 weeks, your character will be moved to inactive.

- If your character is made inactive and you want to reactivate them, you must post within 3 days or you will be moved back to inactive.

 

This saves my coadmin and I a lot of time and headache because we don't have to worry about people showing up and posting in a thread to keep their claims safe - if they really wanted them safe, they'd be active members of the board. So far since implementing these guidelines, we've not yet had anyone get upset for inactivating their character. 

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While I think the rule you have placed in effect is rather fair, I have to say I wouldn't do it. Let me just tell you why are someone who has played on many sites in my time. 

 

The whole point of a roleplay site is to have fun, relax and enjoy oneself. What I feel when I see people that have placed an act check on their site it is telling me that if I don't post non stop then my character will be tossed aside. Sadly there are many different factors that need to be taken into effect when it comes to these kind of rules. One, what happens if I am as activity as I can be but it isn't enough for this rule? What if for some reason or another I can only get on at certain times a month if any but I don't want to not be able to play on this site. I wouldn't join because due to the fact that I would only be tossed out if for some reason i couldn't get on enough.

 

I knew someone who was in the army. they could only get on at certain times of the month if they could get on at all during that month or the next two. so each time they would join a site that had an act check it didn't take long for them to be tossed out and their character pushed into archive. but is that truly fair? i know people want the faces, the character ideas, etc but shouldn't we be more lenient to people who want to play but can't get on because of real life issues or jobs?

 

Maybe that is why i enjoy having sites with no act checks. but again that is just me.

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@Love While I agree that RP is a hobby, and I understand that RL can sometimes get in the way, as someone who runs a site, I gotta come down on the side of the activity checks and I want to help you understand why. Now, I don't always agree with how some people choose to run their activity checks, and when someone comes to the admin team to explain their RL situation I do also support making a reasonable effort to accommodate them... but sometimes it isn't reasonable.

 

The number one reason for an activity check rule, whatever the rule is and however the admin team chooses to enforce it, is to establish a targeted activity level to attract like minded people who have the same amount of time and enthusiasm to commit to the game. The pace and mood of a game where players can only contribute once or twice a month is very different than one where people are writing multiple times a day. If you are running a site that's the latter, and someone who can only pop on once a month comes in and takes a key role within the game, is that fair to the players who joined expecting a very active site and now are stuck waiting on the infrequent poster? Likewise, if a game has the leisurely pace where most players are like your friend in the army, and someone shows up on the site that can post multiple times a day every day and they just take over the place playing with themselves and pestering everyone else to speed things up to their level, is that fair to the rest of the players?

 

Not every game is going to work for every player. Admin teams have to be able to accurately and effectively convey the activity level of a game to prospective players, and they need to make sure that once they have those players, the activity level matches the expectations established. Activity rules and activity checks do that. So, while someone may not be suited to a fast paced game where players are expected to post daily, shouldn't a site advertise up front they're that sort of site so people don't join and get disappointed when they can't keep pace? Or if someone wants to play with a lot of characters but maybe their attention flits between them in fits and spurts, shouldn't they know the activity check requires they make use of all their characters to be able to keep them before joining and end up with half their characters archived at the first check?

 

It's great you know that you prefer sites without activity checks, and I hope you can easily find such site in the topics you like to RP in, but establishing activity and activity check rules (even if it's just to say there are none) is very important to attract like minded players. You even say that OP's rules seem reasonable to you (even if they're not to your taste), but then you turn around and suggest no enforcement. You can't have rules without enforcement, otherwise there's no point in having the rules at all.

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I'm another in favour of activity checks. My site is on the larger side, so it's important to make sure that abilities/positions/faces are being used and not simply hoarded because there could be a much more active person wanting to join who would use those things more effectively. I'm also not an ogre. Our checks are once every three months and so long as a character has been posted at least once since the last check, then they're safe. One post every three months isn't exactly hard to achieve and if someone isn't doing that, then they're not really interested.

 

In the interest of fairness, I never delete accounts or posts, but make them inactive. Inactives can always come back at any time and get reactivated (so long as their positions/faces/abilities) are free! Otherwise, they only need a small adjustment to get up and running again. This system has worked great for many years and stops people from hoarding all the popular slots without any intention of using them.

 

RP sites are a hobby and there for fun, I agree, but the RP isn't going to move if people aren't actively involved in the community.

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I like activity checks to a degree. Some people like to come on once in a while and then get busy for a while. I don't delete accounts for that reason, but may mark them as inactive. A monthly activity check is reasonable and having an absence board is very helpful for people who are going dark for a bit so that they can be excluded from an activity check. The accounts that go inactive are ones that have not posted in over a month and have not posted in the absence board. Accounts can be re-activated at any time. 

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On 6/9/2017 at 6:30 AM, Cyn said:

RP sites are a hobby and there for fun, I agree, but the RP isn't going to move if people aren't actively involved in the community.

 

10000000% this.

This is also the main reason why we do not slow down the site plot because one single major player needs to be/goes inactive. It's not fair to the rest of my active members to hold everything up based on one person. We understand RL is a thing, and we often get sucked into it ourselves. However, why punish the members who want to be there by grinding everything to a halt?

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I like doing a bit of a soft activity check every few months. For the most part, I know who is active and who isn't and will sometimes to just archive the ones I know are inactive or no longer around. But sometimes I like doing a check publicly so that members know that we do keep up with who's active and who isn't. 

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To be completely honest I absolutely loathe Activity Checks from several angles.

 

1) As a roleplayer. I may or may not be super active. I may post all the time, or I may post once in a blue moon. This may be for a lack of connections with the roleplayers, because my muse is dead, because my life is super busy. Whatever the reason, I don't want to be held to some uber strict RP activity thing like I went and signed up for a job. I RP to enjoy myself, not to force muse out like it's a playdough factory. My least favorite are the ones where they post a single thread and within it you have to post with every single character account you have, otherwise you lose said account. Hell, even ones where I have to post in a set amount of time or lose my characters are mildly annoying in my honest opinion. I find them to accomplish nothing but prove that I have an extremely busy life and finicky muse, and make it so, even if I'm not feeling right, I have to force something out like I'm the cashier at a burger king with a cold...still need to serve them burgers.

 

2) As a Staff Member. It's tedious, involved, lengthy, and, to be honest, pisses a large amount of people off for absolutely no other reason than to prove they're inactive. I put very few restrictions on activity for regular characters. This is because these characters were made for FUN. To lay back, escape through your words, enjoy some roleplay. How on earth are they suppose to thrive if I'm forcing them to post all the flippin' time? For two, I don't see, exactly, what it accomplishes to make sure every single character ever made on my site is super crazy active. Makes my site look active? Frees up a FC someone may want some time at some point in the not-so-but-maybe-distant-future? Canons, on the other hand, are a different story. Someone important to the storyline of the forum...a pack leader...coven leader...mayor...police chief...these people need to be active, yes. I'm a lot more strict on these because this is the driving force of RP and the people taking these positions are voluntarily saying they have enough time to support such a role. If they don't, that's fine, but there are others who can handle the responsibility, and without those positions active, RP on the site will fumble to a clumsy halt. 

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I an not a big fan of activity checks on the whole; however, they are a necessary part of running a site. I primarily do them behind the scenes. The expected level of activity is clearly stated in the Rules and the FAQ. 30 days of no IC activity (and no away note) and you are on the watch list. 60 Days of no IC activity (and no away note) and you are marked as Inactive. Your posts are archived, face/job/property claims returned, canon's made available again and abandoned threads removed from the active playing areas. The player then has the opportunity to contact the admins to have their character reinstated. After 90 days without contact, we figure you are long gone and not coming back 

 

The reason we do this is we have had new players join and attempt to plot with the characters of inactive members and they become disenchanted when they don't respond. It makes the site look inactive when there are a lot of threads that have been owed posts for three months or more. It stops new players from taking jobs that would otherwise be available. Pivotal jobs become stagnant, and everyone then has to play around the missing person.  Relationships flounder, other people's characters are 'put on hold', and to the other players, they feel abandoned.

 

On the other hand, I dislike Activity Checks that allow players to come in and reclaim their characters each time (post the minimum to pass the AC) and then return into the abyss of nothingness for another three months.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Yes! RP is a hobby and should be fun. I do like activity checks in the long run  It does allow for characters who have been abandoned to be opened up and playable.  However, I prefer once a month or sporadic to once a week or every other week ones.  I think my site is having it's 2nd and we've been open a year or so.

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We just finished an ACand it went pretty well. All but three did not respond and of those, one of them was no surprise at all.

One thing it did highlight was the how many people don't read things properly. 

We had changed the game year and a good proportion of players needed to age up their characters. It was explained how to do this and where. 

A lot answered YES to the questions and had not done what they had responded YES to.

 

Now the 1st-anniversary activity check is complete, we will go back to the behind the scenes checks (which I feel are far more effective in the long run). 

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