what can we do to help improve roleplayer guild?

[Mao Mao]

The only suggestion that I could offer is hiring more staff members, replacing the ones that are inactive, and hire some damn admins. It has been awhile since this site updated with something new.

[SleepingSilence]

...I don't even know where to start on this...here's some scattered ones.

1. Mods actually have to be active.

Biggest thing to make a forum run, is starting at the top. If next to nobody is doing anything, like enforcing basic forum rules. People will realize this and take advantage of it. If the mods are gone, make more of them. Preferably people who haven't attacked or harassed other users before and are actually active users themselves.

2. If you're going to even have forum rules, actually enforce them.

Self explanatory. Ban users if they break the rules more than once, even temporary bans do more than wagging your finger at them. Don't need to be ban happy, give warnings first, but if they literally break those warnings in hours later. It gets to the point where their testing the waters. Give them that leeway, they'll get worse.

3. Have a community that does not tolerate bullshit, and help point out those who don't follow the forum rules.

If you see someone breaking the rules, unintentionally or on purpose, inform them immediately. New users will feel far better if they actually see people defending others from harassment, if everyone just rolls their eyes and goes "trollz lul." New users won't fucking bother.

4. Community Stuff (Wouldn't hurt.)

Like someone already suggested contests would make it feel more like a community and maybe get more people involved. I've been dabbling in a couple ideas myself, though not really sure if it would be worth committing. But I thought of possibly creating a forum podcast of sorts. Try to get different people on the forum on, and discuss games or different subjects, something not overly controversial. That and possible game streaming nights, where someone hosts jackbox games or something to that effect, make a discord and get people VCing, get people involved. Just stuff to make the forum more lively as a result...

Also if not reviving the chatbox, at least make it more aware for newer people that there is a discord...like have people mention that in introductions, usually a mod or bot would do something like that...

One thing I disagree with is having a karma system. Because I have a feeling as lawless as this place currently is, as someone mentioned. It would be abused to no end.

Also this isn't really site related but while I'm on a rant and suggesting things to improve the site, unfortunately this stuff is more individual based.

5. Don't become a GM, if you don't want to commit.

Ignoring variety. I've never seen a role-playing forum where the creator themselves quits before anyone else does, as often as I do on here. A single player going away mid-game, if I was a GM I'd be able to compromise with minimal problems...the RP is dead permanently, if the GM quits. I can't think of a more defeated purpose of wasted time. (don't get me wrong, non-communicative players suck too.)

5. As a GM try to have rules that actually make sense and need to be there. You probably don't need to make a rule where users go in an alphabetical order. (a made up example.) Don't have a few simple rules if you're also going to use a bunch of pointless restrictions anyway...As a GM you really should be able to handle what people throw you're way.

6. This is for everyone. Deal with pointless continuity problems in the IC, not the OOC. Previous forums I've been on for years, I've never experienced people getting in squabbles over free/single sentence style rps before.

7. Don't be an asshole. Like really, if not for your own sake or the ones your being assholes to sake. But the lurkers that browse the site and wonder if they should go here...yeah if I saw some of the stuff that's happened here before I joined, I probably wouldn't of. Because I left a toxic/bad site in search for something better, most people that look for sites like this just want to have fun, and the majority of people do not find people being assholes, assuming or interesting. ^-^' If you actually care about a site you're participating in, try to respect the rules yourself and do you're best to follow the rules you'd expect/set for others.

[BrokenPromise]

- Having someone come in and finish all of the WIP features would do wonders for the community. Like seriously, we can't even delete PMs. Have you EVER not been able to delete PMs?

- More strictly enforce the rules. You don't have to ban someone over every little squabble, but having a mod PM you is definitely a wake up call to those disturbing the peace. I personally don't like the idea of strict rules, but there are enough people who insist on reading into that vague comment and starting a flame war on it.

- Better than stricter rules would be for everyone to be a little more understanding and not let emotions fly so high. But this is the internet, and self restraint is dead here.

- As an actual community, we could communicate better. Just spending a little bit of time to let people know if you're going to be late on a post, leaving, etc, would do wonders. You don't need to flood the OOC with a 4 paragraph story, you can just be like "I got busy, I'll post next week." Or something.

Here are some things I DONT think would work.

- News: We're an RP forum. Aside from new features, I'm not really interested in anything in the newsletter. Sadly, new features are never added, so there's not really any reason to have a newsletter. Having my roleplay featured would be really cool, but it doesn't really affect my bottom line. I'm here to write an RP, have armchair philosophy about writing, and shitpost.

- Guides: We actually have a lot of nice guides already, the problem is that people don't read them or don't understand them.

- Contests: Again, we already have the twelve labors as well as some contest RPs. You could draw more attention to them, but I honestly feel that there's enough competition with each other as it is.

- Chatbox: It will never be as good as discord, and live chat services aren't for everyone. They are especially unnecessary in my case where almost everyone is in a different time zone.

[Lady Absinthia]

There are a lot of things code wise that could help with the over function of the forum but until Mahz gets on them, I don't see any of them being put into play. He has a long list of things he is planning to do but isn't around enough to do them. (Which is a shame. Granted this is just a side thing for him but I am sure from the advertising this place does pull in some income. If he could code things and fix some issues, it would probably profit him in the long run.)

But anyways. The big thing would be an enforcing of the Fonz Code. I've had both positive and negative dealings with the mod when reporting things. Though I will admit the last time I reported something the result made me go "Why bother anymore" so I haven't since then. Only thing I go to a mod anymore for is if I need a post deleted. Which to me is sad, this forum doesn't really have a lot of rules. Not compared to most I have been on, so it isn't much to enforce but in the end it just isn't getting enforced and if it is, not reliably. We need a more active mod staff. (Personally I believe this could take care of a heavy percentage of the issues.)

In general though, I think the forum is pretty damn good. (At least in comparison to most I have seen over the past decades.) The organization of the forum I will admit is one of my favorite features and what initially made me come here and has been one of the main factors of me sticking around. Having OOC, IC, and CS's all in tabs is really ones of those luxury things I adore.

I know there are many things people as individuals could do to make their little slice of the forum better but in the end it comes down to preference. Some Gm's are more discerning than others and expect more. Some just roll with it. From the Laid Back Larry's to the Evil Gm Overlords. Each person on the forum gravitates to certain types of GM's. Cliques are a part of life. Sure be open to new people but cliques are there for a reason. They are the group you understand and get along with. Doesn't mean you aren't open to new people most of the time, it just means you are comfortable with them.

Overall, I think if we could get some more active mods who enforce the Fonz Code and at least get the starter tutorials moved or pinned so new people can find them faster instead of having to dig we would knock out a big chunk of the negative.

[Dion]

derived from a question asked by @cynder on this thread, i wish to ask you all: what can we do to make roleplayer guild better? now, though i am willing to hear about site-based suggestions (changes mahz can make to the site in order to improve it), i'm more interested in how the community can change in order to further itself and the site. compare to other rp sites, criticise current roleplays (preferably without dropping names; i don't want the mods knocking on my door), just spitball about what your thoughts on the community are - whatever you want, so long as it is relevant to the topic of this thread, do it! i am honestly really curious on a) what others think and b) how well we can take constructive criticism and learn from our mistakes.

(also: if you're gonna disagree with someone's point, don't be like me - either do it in a polite and civil manner or take your passive aggressive ass to pms. i don't want this to devolve into a shitstorm, like most other off-topic threads where scary opinions get involved. cheers in advance.)

@Grimhildr

The answer is to simply put move away from advert based income. I don't really think that the problem lies in the community (let me rephrase: I don't think the problem with the guild declining has anything to do with the community) more so than the way the forum is built. Because let's face the facts here: 40% of traffic (this is a made up estimation because I don't think there's any way to check this) is probably coming from people that want to roleplay smut and/or write smut. There are other sites that are better suited to that (bluemoonroleplay allows it in public, for example) and thus I feel like we miss out on people roleplaying here.

Besides that, there just isn't enough here to draw people to this website specifically. I like the layout. I like the way to forums are divided into OOC, IC, and char bins. But when you look at what RPG has to offer to people and contrast it to other websites, there's not a whole lot that makes RPG attractive to roleplay in. I've stuck with RPG and not any other site because I like the site, and I like how the community behaves here (but I'm a toxic shit, so that's probably negative) and I think overall you'll find many roleplayers that I'd say are ''good'' roleplayers (whatever the fuck that might mean).

The problem with me with the community has been that OOC shit seeps into the IC/OOC of roleplays. That's why:

I would also like to see a reputation system added when you can anonymously give people positive, or negative karma depending on your opinion of them as a roleplayer. So a prospective gm, or fellow roleplayer can look at their profile and see that they have a large amount of good, or bad karma stacked up. Alternatively a way to at least block/black list people from forums you post due to the performances in other roleplays.

@vancexentan

this idea is retarded. Because this would mean the end of roleplaying for me. I'd never get another roleplay again, period, and that's not because I'm a shitty writer. This system would kill roleplay altogether if it were implemented.

A blocklist seems to be the way forward but even then, if a GM accepts someone on your blocklist, what are you gonna do? Leave?

---

Now when addressing the community itself I have no real problems with how people act on here. I've had my share of arguments with people, always in the offtopic, roleplaying discussion or spam threads, never in OOC of a thread except when I'm GMing and I want people to behave like adults under my authority (what can I say, maybe the people that call me Hitler are right after all). I don't think there's anything wrong with that and to be fair saying that we should stop being involved in arguments is unrealistic and hides reality. Because arguments will exist. If I don't have them here, you can bet your ass I'll do it on discord. I'd rather do it here, in the open, so that everyone can read and criticize me/the other. That's how it should be.

The real problem has been and will always be community engagement. And that's a big, big issue for RPG. There are moderators but they are barely ever active. Replying to a report, question and/or even a statement takes them forever. And I realize that they are people. But becoming a moderator is a commitment, even if it's voluntary. They don't get paid for this. I get that. But if you can't spare the time needed to be a moderator then don't become one. It's as simple as that. And I used to tremendously respect the moderators and I still respect that they're doing this thankless job. And I'd say 'I appreciate everything they do' but honestly, haven't we reached the point at which I can already say that they won't even read this, so what's the point in saying that?

Also, the enforcement of the rules is rather shit. I've reported things to the mods before and nothing happened, no feedback, no reply, just nothing. Maybe that's a point to consider because to me that says 'okay, guess that means I can do whatever the fuck I want too then'. It's entirely unacceptable to me to let off-site things slide because 'well they are offsite so it's not RPG, so I as a moderator don't have to care about it' and then warn other people when they react to off site harassment on RPG itself. I just don't get that. Like really, you have evidence of people actively trying to get people banned on RPG by harassing them into saying something stupid but that's OK? Why? Where is that OK? How is that Fonz cool? It isn't but it happens so I don't feel like I have to follow those rules either. It's really that simple.

Adding to that which I find most important perhaps is that moderators should not solely moderate. They are the face of RPG in the absence of Mahz (god bless that man, but he's been absent too long and the site is stagnating). Not engaging the community in meaningful ways is a lack of acknowledgement from their part when it comes to that.

A potential fix for this is something simple like an update bar on the top of RPG's website. When you enter the site, it's the first thing you see. And moderators and Mahz could update the update bar every day and add something on there. It could be something simple like 'The moderators of RPG wish you a nice day' or 'happy roleplaying!' or 'We are aware of issues with spambots and are working on a solution!' or something dumb like that. It shows activity from the moderators that currently just isn't there.

And we as a community need to pick up the slack when it comes to that. I've thought about hosting a RPGuild Giveaway Contest. That's still on the list of things I want to do. But I need to come up with a contest thing that everyone can participate in and honestly that's harder than it seems. And I don't have the best reputation (entirely my own fault but fuck that, I love it) so are people even willing to participate? I want to include everyone. Chances are that won't happen.

Then there's Mahz' absence. I can't blame him since he has work and he hosts this shit for free as a hobby or whatever it is to him. But I don't get his modus operandi. Why is he creating a system for arena shit, but not allowing us to delete PM's? Why is the visitor message system still broken as fuck? Between that and RPG crashing every month due to reasons unknown, I'm not sure how attractive it is to RP here. Why am I even RPing here? There's nothing keeping me here function wise that I can't get in other forums. It's literally just the layout and aesthetics of RPG that make me stay here and when I'm fed up with the site, that's not much of an argument in the end.

Maybe somewhat unrelated but something I feel would definitely help - diversification of RP topics. You just get a lot of fandom. In the past it was my little pony, anime, highschool/college, Marvel/DC, etcetera, and I get that these fads tend to move along with time. But it's kinda disheartening for anyone looking for a RP about a fantasy kingdom to find that it's literally just the same 30 RP's over and over. But that's not something we can nor should control. It's just something I think would help.

[Carmine Celica]

More complicated captchas to help discourage the spambot plagues that occasionally descend on the guild like the goddamned flu virus.

[skidcrow]

here's a big issue that i have: how'm i supposed to be fonz-cool when i don't even know who fonz is?

(will start reading through and responding to most of these posts when i get onto the pc. shit's hard on mobile, yo.)

[BingTheWing]

I highly doubt that there is anything the community could do to fix this, but it's worth a shot to see if there's a genius out there who may have a solution: finding a way to separate interest checks looking for sexual content opposed to those that are not in the 1x1 section.

@Cynder

Iwaku has already done this, but the said site asks for your age when you register an account since the subforum is age-restricted.

[Rai]

Just a dream not a real suggestion. But expansion. Conventions. I know that text roleplaying is usually done anonymously and in dark places. But so was anime now it has got huge conventions year round.

[Lady Absinthia]

here's a big issue that i have: how'm i supposed to be fonz-cool when i don't even know who fonz is?

(will start reading through and responding to most of these posts when i get onto the pc. shit's hard on mobile, yo.)

@Grimhildr

Actually that is simple - it is explained in the Fundamental Rules of the Guild topic Pinned in the News section at the top of the forum - roleplayerguild.com/topics/150080-fund..

[Dion]

<Snipped quote by Grimhildr>

Actually that is simple - it is explained in the Fundamental Rules of the Guild topic Pinned in the News section at the top of the forum - roleplayerguild.com/topics/150080-fund..

@Lady Amalthea

And in saying that you highlighted another problem. Nobody reads that stuff. When really they should. And even then the rules of what is 'Fonz cool' are blurred when the moderators don't take action on it.

[skidcrow]

<Snipped quote by Grimhildr>

Actually that is simple - it is explained in the Fundamental Rules of the Guild topic Pinned in the News section at the top of the forum - roleplayerguild.com/topics/150080-fund..

@Lady Amalthea

see, i've read that plenty of times before to remind myself, but when the entire rule is chalked down to some simple catchphrase, it ends up becoming incredibly vague and forgettable. and when "fonz-cool" is basically the only rule ever mentioned by mods or users, it also becomes easy to forget the other fundamental rules.

[Lady Absinthia]

@Buddha Oh agree with you there. The fact the mods only pick and chose what to deal with is a huge problem, as well as their inactiveness. (Which frankly is maddening...) With the amount of people on the forum, we do need more mods and ones that are active. They need to be changed out if they are inactive. It probably wouldn't hurt for Mahz to implement a Mod Staff Leader, who for lack of a better term - Mods the Mods. Those that aren't doing the job are demoted. When we need more, they take care of that. (Which actually it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for this topic and topics like it to be tagged for Mahz and the rest of the mods. With as little as we see some of them, it needs to be brought to their attention that people on a larger scale see this and notice it. For all we know, most of them don't even have an idea this is going on because it gets lost in the shuffle and when they show back up nothing is being said.)

On a side note - I would love to see the forum get away from the Free, Casual, Advanced sections - Those really don't work. Everyone has their idea of what needs to go where and while it was probably good to start, the paragraph layout for what is what just isn't enough right now. All Rp's I host are in Casual which really throws a lot of people off because of the amount of time I put into each RP. (The layouts, the cs's', paragraph requirements, the rules, etc.) But I keep them in casual because I look at my Rp's as more of a mid level teaching experience. Rp's for people wanting to improve. It's a place to screw up and learn. All though be it harshly at times, well who's kidding who; most of the time because I'm an Evil GM Overlord.

So as long as people are learning and wanting to put in the effort, I remain in the casual section. - Tag based for me would be better. Even the table top and nation areas need to be bled away just because there is so much cross over. Right now I am developing two new Rp's. One would be considered Table Top: A Shadowrun RP that will use stats, dice, and the Handbook for character creation. The other one would be considered Nation: Viking Village Rp where you control villages and try to expand your territory, make alliances, fight wars, and actually deal with the lores of the Gods. Where will they go? Casual. Why? Because they will still be run as a learning experience RP and will be character driven.

Okay, went on a tangent there - but yeah. We need in general just a good group of active mods that enforce things.

[Cyndyr]

Iwaku has already done this, but the said site asks for your age when you register an account since the subforum is age-restricted.

@BingTheWing

I mentioned this in the topic that gave birth to this one - I have no problem stating my age if it gave me the ability to hide sexual content and allow others to avoid writing adult content with minors who can easily (and have) lie about their ages.

Just a dream not a real suggestion. But expansion. Conventions. I know that text roleplaying is usually done anonymously and in dark places. But so was anime now it has got huge conventions year round.

@Rai

It is just a dream right now, but Mag and I have seriously spoken about the possibility before. It has crossed some of our minds!

Oh agree with you there. The fact the mods only pick and chose what to deal with is a huge problem, as well as their inactiveness. (Which frankly is maddening...) With the amount of people on the forum, we do need more mods and ones that are active. They need to be changed out if they are inactive. It probably wouldn't hurt for Mahz to implement a Mod Staff Leader, who for lack of a better term - Mods the Mods. Those that aren't doing the job are demoted. When we need more, they take care of that. (Which actually it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for this topic and topics like it to be tagged for Mahz and the rest of the mods. With as little as we see some of them, it needs to be brought to their attention that people on a larger scale see this and notice it. For all we know, most of them don't even have an idea this is going on because it gets lost in the shuffle and when they show back up nothing is being said.)

On a side note - I would love to see the forum get away from the Free, Casual, Advanced sections - Those really don't work.

@Lady Amalthea

I strongly agree with ALL of this.

[vancexentan]

@BuddhaI would greatly appreciate not having my idea being called retarded thanks. It's rude, and unnecessarily hostile. If you must say something say 'I disagree', and or 'I believe this is a bad idea and this is why'. If a GM accepts someone on your own block list then there's nothing you can do but leave, or not join the roleplay which is what you'd probably do anyway. In a good system it still should say that the person whom you blocked has posted in the thread that you have. I'm tired of having players in my own roleplays repeatedly try to enter new ones that I make and have little choice but to accept them or have the whole bloody interest check look bad because I have to actively be hostile to the one poor roleplayer that has shown up.

[Todd Howard]

This page of the Improvement Thread was brought to you by the question:

We have mods?

[BrokenPromise]

I'm tired of having players in my own roleplays repeatedly try to enter new ones that I make and have little choice but to accept them or have the whole bloody interest check look bad because I have to actively be hostile to the one poor roleplayer that has shown up.

@vancexentan

Wanna know a really cool way to prevent people you can't stand from joining your roleplays right now, without a cumbersome reputation system?

you add this as a rule on character sheets:

~ A character sheet can be rejected for any reason, including your behavior and grammar in other RPs.

@BrokenPromise

Emphasis on "any reason." And before you ask, no, this did not stop the 10+ people from initially joining the RP. In fact, I just got a request to join last week.

[vancexentan]

@BrokenPromiseAlright I'll try adding that stipulation in the future. However that does sound rather domineering and unwelcoming making it come off like I'm trying to force people to make characters that strictly apply to my own character, or what have you. I'll trust you on this one since it seems you've had success with it on your own.

[Mao Mao]

We need a new face of staff members since most of the time barely do anything. Check with the current staff members to see if they still care about the site. If not, then they will be stripped of the title and privileges. If they still are, then they should be expected to be active on the site by dealing with every issue. Since there is going to be room, the staff members (still interested) set up applications for mods. Maybe have two mods per subforum (casual, advanced, 1x1, nation, etc.). Then, there will be four mods that keep running the entire forum smoothly.

Once we have the mods, there should be another admin while Mazh is working his job. We need an active admin that can finally update the site and fix the problems.

But, I feel like all of this is worthless and the staff will just pretend to care. And then, everything will go back to normal and this thread will be long forgotten like other threads that talked about the current state of this site.

EDIT: Also, maybe a donation button would be useful. I will be willing to donate money to keep this site running.

[Dion]

@vancexentan i disagree with your idea because its retarded. it's an attack on your idea, and i explained why. if i wanted to attack you instead of your idea, i'd have called you retarded. i didn't. because it's your idea. your idea is retarded.

i hope we have reached a deeper level of understanding here. if you're going to get upset with the word retarded, then i have news for you, that must've meant there was nothing else to get upset about. karma system is stupid. it's retarded. it'd be a bad idea. it'd be really, really bad. i dont know how you came up with it but i literally see no pro's to that idea. ever.

i agree with your sentiment though, i hate having people that i know are gonna leave/drop the RP instantly apply to my RP.