Staffing Passive Activity Checks

[nyx 164]

Checks...ugh I dread them like no tomorrow and honestly if I could get away with not having them I would. Unfortunately, I have a few claims that have to be kept up with. The most important of them being canons since they are very popular but sadly sometimes they are taken and abandoned. With the player coming back on after an AC email has gone out then disappearing until the next one. So I'm weighing the option of leaving a traditional check to a passive one to help with this issue and  I'm in need of some guidance from boards that run passive activity checks and how you do them. I'm under the impression that you don't announce checks? Due to people coming on just to pass and poof after. Are they better/easier? How often do you run them? 

Edited December 17, 2017 by wicked

[Morrigan 1,826]

I think they are. Passive checks are stated in the rules instead of actively enforced with a post that people reply to etc. You state in your rules "If your character goes X number of days without posts the staff will archive and re-open their position."

 

Then when you feel it's necessary to comb through you do it.

 

Alternatively you can have a strike rule. "Coming back for an activity check doesn't mean that you're active. If no posts are made after the activity check is completed then your character will have officially failed and the character will be reclaimed/archived".

 

Really it's about setting up your expectations properly so members know what you expect.

[Death Kitten 200]

I absolutely advocate passive checks, and I absolutely advocate frequent and transparent communication with your users about it. I have a small site, so I can be very hands on about it: My players know I'm keeping an eye on things because I reach out to them when they're creeping into the inactive territory. Larger sites might not be as easy for such a proactive touch, but I do agree with Morrigan. You *must* establish expectations with your users up front, both as part of your rules and as part of a site-wide announcement to make sure existing users are aware of the change and are prepared for it.

 

It's up to you if you want to be as hard nose about it as Morrigan mentions (you miss a passive check, you're archived right away), or if you'd like to go more chill, like a three strikes rule: miss three passive checks in a time frame (say three in six months, or three in a row) and you're gone. You have to decide what fits your site: both based on how often you want to do your passive checks and what the culture is like. Also worth considering, a tiered check: people with key roles or titles may lose them after failing a passive check, but someone who's playing a low level nobody could get the three strike rules. The only key is the pick something *before* you start, clearly communicate expectations to your players, and then hold to it consistently.

 

Passive checks can also be a lot more work for the site staff, so depending on what your staffing is like now, you may want to look at someone to help you with the passive checks specifically, or pass off some of your admin duties down the chain to someone else so you can focus on the passive checks when it's time.

[Elena 546]

I have always done a mix of active and passive activity checks, as follows:

 

- the passive one, as often as it was needed - reaching with an e-mail the inactive writers, asking them if everything was all right, given their inactivity was noticed, and when they estimate they would come back. If no reply received, silence is an answer and the characters got archived 2 weeks later. (2 weeks are enough time to wait for a short e-mail reply). If they replied, we continued the discussion from there.

 

- the active one, once or twice a year, was combined with a discussion about future plots (which was mentioned to have also the role of activity check, to see that the people who said they would return after holidays were still with us). There were usually proposals for next plots, what would inspire them to write more regularly. And several proposals were combined for a maximum impact, then the other proposals were left for a bit later.

[Samantha 64]

We don't do any active activity checks, mostly for the reason you stated, a lot of the time active activity checks don't really tell you who's active and who isn't. 

 

For our important characters (like leaders) and special characters (like alphas and masters) we do passive activity checks. If we haven't seen some of these characters posted we'll go and look at their posts and see when they last time they posted was and if they've consistently been inactive. If they are we'll message them and say "hey your character is a [insert special thing here] and we've noticed you haven't posted for x days/weeks. We'd like to see their activity go up within the next month or we're going to have to take their special thing."

 

We have rules about the light activity requirements for these types of characters so everyone is aware of it. 

[Dusty 55]

Behind the scenes checks all the way!  We keep a "watch" list of players that haven't posted IC for over 30 days and then decide after 60 days about making them 'inactive'.

We also watch new accounts that fail to convert to an application/ and or New characters that fail to launch. All this is done behind the scenes, with direct contact made on a case by case basis.

This usually avoids the grab and run types that do the ACs and not much else.

We do a traditional AC roughly every six months or so, and that is mainly to open it up for archiving characters our active players don't really want to write for anymore, old threads that we didn't know were done or abandoned, and anything else they want to be archived.

 

[nyx 164]

I think when the new year starts we will do passive checks going forward. Right now the active ones we've had in the past really are a hit and miss. I have a few major canons that need to be freed as we speak and this will give me the chance to do that sooner rather than later. I'm going to put the gears in motion to change the rules and make the announcement about this asap! Thanks guys!

[Gothic 307]

Reading more about passive activity checks makes me more interested in trying it out. I hate how on a lot of activity checks people would respond and disappear, or do the bare minimum. This seems like a more practical method, and less stressful all round. 

[SoulsRPG 15]

On 12/17/2017 at 3:41 PM, Samantha said:

For our important characters (like leaders) and special characters (like alphas and masters) we do passive activity checks. If we haven't seen some of these characters posted we'll go and look at their posts and see when they last time they posted was and if they've consistently been inactive. If they are we'll message them and say "hey your character is a [insert special thing here] and we've noticed you haven't posted for x days/weeks. We'd like to see their activity go up within the next month or we're going to have to take their special thing."

 

That's more or less how we do it, in regards to "special" positions like leader.  We give them a strike system to improve; if they're only improving to escape the removal and their activity plummets again after that, that's no good.  '

 

Otherwise, for "regular" members, we do activity checks once a month.  I'm not sure if that counts as "active" or "passive" - we do the check itself behind closed doors, but we send a PM to each person on the check saying "hey, if you don't post within a week we are removing you".  Our activity requirements are 1 post / month.

[StormWolfe 557]

Activity checks! Haven't thought about those in years.

 

We do not do them. Our philosophy is that we are not running the Daycare of the Damned. If a person joins our site(s), goes through the process of creating a character (our bios are rather involved so it's quite a bit of work), and gets approved, it's down to them to join in the writing or not. We welcome them, we assist, we offer writing opportunities, but in the end, it's up to them to stay active or not. We are not going to chase them down and threaten or cajole them into posting. We are a collective of adults writing a story (or stories). Personally, I assume if someone likes whatever story we're doing at the time, they will participate. If they aren't interested, they won't.

 

After 90 days of no contact, we deactivate their account and humanely retire their characters. 

 

~ Stormwolfe

[SoulsRPG 15]

14 hours ago, Stormwolfe said:

Activity checks! Haven't thought about those in years.

 

We do not do them. Our philosophy is that we are not running the Daycare of the Damned. If a person joins our site(s), goes through the process of creating a character (our bios are rather involved so it's quite a bit of work), and gets approved, it's down to them to join in the writing or not. We welcome them, we assist, we offer writing opportunities, but in the end, it's up to them to stay active or not. We are not going to chase them down and threaten or cajole them into posting. We are a collective of adults writing a story (or stories). Personally, I assume if someone likes whatever story we're doing at the time, they will participate. If they aren't interested, they won't.

 

After 90 days of no contact, we deactivate their account and humanely retire their characters. 

 

~ Stormwolfe

 

Isn't what you just described an activity check?  Even if it's after a period of 90 days, if you deactivate / clean out an account after a period of no activity (whether that's posting or OOC contact), that's still an activity check of sorts.

[Bass 26]

My current setup is that if we happen to notice you haven't been around for over a month, we may or may not move your account to inactive. It depends on how much we actually care, which is next to none. Because of the lazy approach, we do have a rule that claims can be stolen from character accounts that do not have any in character posts for a period of no shorter than 30 days, and should that character return, they must select new claims. We haven't been open long enough for this to be a problem, but anyone who fusses about it will get reminded of the age old classic; You snooze, you lose. My focus for my site is less about having some bustling active rp-opolis and more about being a place people can feel comfortable coming and going as they need, so the method probably wouldn't work well for a site that demands high activity levels. 

Edited December 28, 2017 by Bass

[StormWolfe 557]

9 hours ago, Sunchance said:

Isn't what you just described an activity check?  Even if it's after a period of 90 days, if you deactivate / clean out an account after a period of no activity (whether that's posting or OOC contact), that's still an activity check of sorts.

 

I suppose our way of doing things could be considered a form of activity check. It's just that I view an activity check as Admins or Staff making the actual effort to do a roll call of sorts. Send out notices or require that people check in by responding to a thread or something whereas if we do not hear from people at all, we simply deactivate their account so the character(s) don't appear in the active lineup. They are welcome to return. All we have to do is click a button to put them back in the active queue.

 

I think we're more like @Bass described although we do leave the face claims alone. Of course, we're very small and in a very specific niche so there's almost a zero chance of anyone wanting an already claimed face. Even active members get to choose what main storylines they want to be involved with or can create their own. For us, it's the quality of writing and story telling, not the overall level of activity by each person.

 

~ Stormwolfe

[Deep Sea 326]

Back when I had energy and no life, I manually tracked in-character post dates in a Google Sheet. I set up the date column with conditional formatting so that anyone who hadn't posted in over 30 days would be highlighted in red, and I would go nag them to post.

 

I know a guy who made a Discord bot for his RP that would do this too - I don't know how it worked, but I know it would crawl the thread and return the names of everyone who ever posted in that thread, and how many ago they posted.

[jenneral_jennson 154]

29 minutes ago, Deep Sea said:

Back when I had energy and no life, I manually tracked in-character post dates in a Google Sheet. I set up the date column with conditional formatting so that anyone who hadn't posted in over 30 days would be highlighted in red, and I would go nag them to post.

 

I know a guy who made a Discord bot for his RP that would do this too - I don't know how it worked, but I know it would crawl the thread and return the names of everyone who ever posted in that thread, and how many ago they posted.

 

 

That would.... Bother me.

 

It's extremely controlling and very. What's the word.. Anal retentive? I understand activity checks, I even understand why people get kicked (especially those who are plot important), however this goes above and beyond a normal activity check.