How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

[Meth Quokka]

If you want a more rapid discussion, I'm happy to host a chat group on discord.

[Lady Absinthia]

@Cynder As far as a tag system goes, yes. An adult or age requirement tag would be great. An entire split sub forum I believe is a bit much.

@Kangaroo I agree there, that was always my rule of thumb when staffing a forum.

Reason for the suggestion though boils down since it is difficult for the current staff to be active, it's harder for you all to know or see who may or may not be a good candidate. The thought alone of having to go through back posts and status updates to clear someone is daunting. I do it just to clear people for Rps, as a mod it would be under going a lot more securitization. That was the main reasoning for the suggestion.

Granted if the mods had someone in mind, they could always put it feelers in the community so people could express concerns over a certain candidate. But that's an entirely different can of worms.

[Mao Mao]

@Garattee, instead of having three casual subforums, why not have only two? Regular Casual and High-Casual. Regular would contain the usual guidelines. High-Casual would be the middle ground between casual and advanced, where users can roleplay instead of picking one side.

[Dion]

For those mentioning the need of 'new blood' mods because the current ones are out of touch should remember the upside that those who have power are mostly impartial.

Also Casual RP could be split into Low-Mid-High casual just for the sake of more space.

@Garattee

I disagree on both points.

I've reported numerous things and never got any feedback or confirmation. An ex-moderator reported 1 thing and got a moderator to send a reply not even 10 minutes later.

Try telling me we are treated equally. For me, reporting anything to the moderators is useless at this point. I'm better off just using my own Hitler-like authority to cuss someone away from my thread. (Not really. But you get the point.)

I also think that if we change anything outside of the names of these subforums it should be that advanced and casual roleplay are condensed into 'dedicated roleplay' to represent the dedication a member of an RP must show, not their skill. The skill should be just a tag like the fantasy, modern, or fandom tag like they are now.

This will create a reason for people to try and better their skills to move up, rather than see these subforums as independent communities.

When you talk about this 'disconnect' that may be true for the community as a whole but not necessarily everyone inside of it. As a mod I pay attention to the way people deal with other's situation to evaluate how I think they'd be a mod. The reality of a new selection process is that the mods can make suggestions but ultimately it's Mahz's decision.

@Kangaroo

Then I suppose all I can say is that I disagree with this method, because Mahz has no clue about who is who, and has no clue about what is playing in the community, due to the fact that he is absent. I'm not sure how else to word it but I just don't see the merit in having a long-since absent admin decide who gets to be moderator. At that point I'm a little confused as to what expertise he'd have on that subject other than 'I'm the boss so I decide' and while I can respect that sentiment from his side it's a little hard to justify in the face of efficiency and equity.

Now there have been a number of plans and concepts which never came off around how to run staffing but again it falls back to this is Mahz's hobby, not his job.

@Kangaroo

Hardly an argument I guess, but again, Mahz' website, his rule. I just think that you should also acknowledge that people will get unhappy if this continues for too long with too little happening.

As to the reporting system - in every forum there is a pinned thread which instructs you to report incidents. If incidents aren't reported, they can't be dealth with. Unless you want mods trawling through every thread on the forum.

@Kangaroo

Well, yes, but who reads the pinned threads. Ideally everyone. Realistically close to no-one. Adding to that, as I am aware for example of that 'report things' deal, I don't report things because I think I can deal with it myself better than I trust the moderators to do it. And in other situations, that has led to harassment off of RPG, because people don't trust the moderators to deal with it adequately. Simply saying 'you need to report things' isn't enough if people are dissatisfied with what happens after you report something.

The status bar is a unique case in that it was sprung on and to be honesy, we never designed a guideline for a live updated status bar. I think you'll find every mod's perception is at least a little different. But is what you expect from a mod team to be constantly refreshing and patrolling a white board?

@Kangaroo

I mean for me personally there were enough reports on my for action to be taken but I wasn't talked to at any point. I only saw a message _about_ me in the Discord _after_ I joined naming me but again, nobody ever told me anything directly, and no action was ever taken. So, is that due to rules not being set out? I doubt it. But I don't think the status bar was the main point more so than the fact that I wasn't warned or had my 'infraction' analysed after people complained. Nothing happened - which is exactly what I'm saying. Why would I come to moderators if, in the past, nothing has happened the few times I did say something to them?

[Dion]

If you want a more rapid discussion, I'm happy to host a chat group on discord.

@Kangaroo

I'd very much like if this discussion happened publicly so that people can see that the moderators are involved. It's kind of the whole point. You guys are invisible. You're visible now that you're engaging us. Moving it to discord would make you invisible.

Furthermore, who would you even want to include. You saw the thread yesterday, so I doubt you'd want to invite those screaming people again, correct?

[Cyndyr]

As far as a tag system goes, yes. An adult or age requirement tag would be great. An entire split sub forum I believe is a bit much.

@Lady Amalthea

I think that both would work equally fine, so I don't see a need to nitpick any specifics. As long as it's solved, it has support from me no matter the organization.

[mickilennial]

To me, anyone who wants to be a mod probably isn't going to do too great in the role

@Kangaroo

See, I agree and disagree with this sentiment at the same time. I’ve actively been on message boards for around eighteen years, so I can attest to certain perspectives around moderation recruitment as I’ve not only been part of that management but also an active witness to several forms of it. People who “want” to be promoted to moderation staff fall into two camps: the first one is to help the site and expand the administration in a cohesive manner, and the other is the one we’ve heard before [with the stories of Guru and others] in that they do it to seek power and to instruct their will on others. If you presume that all people who admit interest or send offers of help are the latter, then you likely miss out on committed and active people who do care about the website.

And if you are looking for the “right fit”, that probably limits your recruitment policies.

Personally, I would suggest looking at RPG’s contemporaries like Iwaku Roleplay and Roleplay Adventures whom actually have moderator application forms that are submitted privately. A system that is very efficient for what they do. Of course, this would require Mahz to be available to give you the freedom to utilize this system as it currently stands you cannot do any changes until he is. But that’s a topic for another matter.

If you want a more rapid discussion, I'm happy to host a chat group on discord.

@Kangaroo

A private forum to discuss issues is a useful option, but what a lot of the regular [active] members seem to want from staff is public visibility above all else. In the preceding weeks RPG has shifted towards anarchic self-policing which has brought a tension between certain groups of people and outside of a single appearance of Sherlock Holmes, the head moderator, to tell people to calm the fuck down we haven’t really seen a lot of it. It would truly be more productive to have more visibility and public interactions [both from a staff point-of-view, and a public/friendly point-of-view] at this point in time due to the chemistry of the userbase.

But is what you expect from a mod team to be constantly refreshing and patrolling a white board?

@Kangaroo

No, because none of you have the time for that shit. But when people report status updates for being out of touch with the rules, they should probably be policied a little and certain members to have consequences for their actions—and I mean actual consequences, not social ones from non-staff.

But just to remind you guys, this shit has happened before so it is a legitimate concern from the community.

@Inkarnate

With all that said, I’d like to mention this bit I stated in the previous thread. There is precedent [and consequences] for these administrative problems that the bulk of the users recognize as issues. What can we take away from the actual points made here and the users who migrated to other sites due to dissatisfaction based on how Mahz has continued to run things?

[skidcrow]

we don't want staff actively combing through threads to hunt down every infraction - our moderator model was always built on responding to requests rather than active hunting. This is the way I personally believe it should be done and that is the way we five original mods decided we were going to do it.

@Kangaroo

see, this is a good idea in theory, but in practice, it just doesn't work, and then leads to the site looking like it has inactive mods. the real problem lies in the fact that if mods don't actively do a sweep (or just look over a couple new/active threads to check up on them), then these sorts of things go unnoticed, as incidents are rarely ever reported. this isn't the mods' fault, of course, but if we have even just one mod doing these sorts of sweeps, then at least incidents don't go unnoticed as much. they don't even have to be frequent sweeps, to be honest. a slow form of activity is better than none at all. i do agree that subforum mods are a dumb idea, though.

<Snipped quote by Lady Amalthea>
As someone who actively uses the 1x1 Interest Check section, I entirely think that a tag to separate smut searches from non-related smut searches is entirely needed. It's a pain in the butt to scroll through three pages of mature Roleplay searches in order to find a fantasy, dystopian, or whatever your taste of Roleplay is. Some people have even avoided the 1x1 Interest Check section because of this while others had made it into a "joke" of sorts.

@Cynder

i completely agree. there are actually some good, platonic 1x1 ideas, but they're all swept away by the insane abundance of "18+! female/male only!" checks. it definitely builds a lot of negative stigma towards the 1x1 section, though, and we really need to remove that, because it's a decent section if you know where to look.

@Garattee, instead of having three casual subforums, why not have only two? Regular Casual and High-Casual. Regular would contain the usual guidelines. High-Casual would be the middle ground between casual and advanced, where users can roleplay instead of picking one side.

@The Spectre

i don't really think you need to split the subforum, just maybe add some extra tags (since the tag system right now is horrendous. we could also do with a custom tag, but that might be abused to shit.)

You saw the thread yesterday, so I doubt you'd want to invite those screaming people again, correct?

@Buddha

my screaming was the loudest. just saying.

[mickilennial]

i don't really think you need to split the subforum

@Grimhildr

This. We don’t need to seregate or splinter more of the community than we need to; eventually we’ll just have “low casual” people saying the same thing casual folks say now about advanced.

“It intimidates me.”

Bad idea, full stop.

[Cyndyr]

Also on a completely unrelated side note, but I saw this mentioned during last's night discussion and I think it was a really good suggestion: the creation of a subforum or tag to filter fandom-based Roleplays from original concepts. Just a thought as it seems that most of the sections here have been swept out by Roleplays with a focus on certain fandoms.

[mickilennial]

I don’t know about that one, Cynder. My perspective lies in the fact that RPG has more cohesive ability when it is simple and concise instead of complex; I thought the general consensus was that we don’t want to be like Iwaku, RPN, or RPA?

[NuttsnBolts]

I haven't read through everything yet but I do believe that maybe we should as a whole venture more into the introduction area and greet newcomers,ask them how they are, what kind of role plays they like, and generally make them feel like they're entering into a positive community.

It's not an overnight solution and wont yield the best results, but it's better than snobbing them and not even making an effort.

[Cyndyr]

I don’t know about that one, Cynder. My perspective lies in the fact that RPG has more cohesive ability when it is simple and concise instead of complex; I thought the general consensus was that we don’t want to be like Iwaku, RPN, or RPA?

@Inkarnate

We already have tags, I don't see what the harm of adding more and being able to search/filter them out would be.

[mickilennial]

We already have tags, I don't see what the harm of adding more and being able to search/filter them out would be.

@Cynder

Yeah, but the expansion of the tag system has been discussed by Mahz before I believe. I’m for a more cohesive and comprehensive tag/search system. Just not sub-forums.

[Cyndyr]

Yeah, but the expansion of the tag system has been discussed by Mahz before I believe. I’m for a more cohesive and comprehensive tag/search system. Just not sub-forums.

@Inkarnate

I don't really care for the method of organization, just that the idea could be beneficial. I would really support either option.

[Dion]

Also on a completely unrelated side note, but I saw this mentioned during last's night discussion and I think it was a really good suggestion: the creation of a subforum or tag to filter fandom-based Roleplays from original concepts. Just a thought as it seems that most of the sections here have been swept out by Roleplays with a focus on certain fandoms.

@Cynder

I'd rather see merging like so:

O Line-for-line Roleplaying (Free, speedposting, 1-liners and low-commitment RP's)
O High-commitment Roleplay (Casual, Advanced, requires a bit more commitment than having an hour to kill on a free RP)
O 1-for-1 and private Roleplay (existing 1x1 and arena get merged because arena is dead and useless and mostly are just 1x1 anyway)
O Nation RP (or just delete this entirely because NRP is as dead as arena, could be merged with high-commitment)

The catch is that these don't really roll off the tongue.

[mickilennial]

Why not just revert Free back to its original title?

Hider

[Dion]

@Inkarnate because people that are new might not necessarily be poor writers if they have a background in other forms of writing.

[Dolerman]

O 1-for-1 and private Roleplay (existing 1x1 and arena get merged because arena is dead and useless and mostly are just 1x1 anyway)
O Nation RP (or just delete this entirely because NRP is as dead as arena, could be merged with high-commitment)

No, I dont think so at all.

Arena is niche but it isnt 'dead' the small but dedicated community who frequent it, wouldn't appreciate it being removed after all the work we put into the Battlegrounds, Tournaments, Multiverse, Ranking etc. I cant speak for Nation RP because I'm never there, but the plan should be to re-energise these sub-forums not remove them.

[Dion]

O 1-for-1 and private Roleplay (existing 1x1 and arena get merged because arena is dead and useless and mostly are just 1x1 anyway)
O Nation RP (or just delete this entirely because NRP is as dead as arena, could be merged with high-commitment)

No, I dont think so at all.

Arena is niche but it isnt 'dead' the small but dedicated community who frequent it, wouldn't appreciate it being removed after all the work we put into the Battlegrounds, Tournaments, Multiverse, Ranking etc. I cant speak for Nation RP because I'm never there, but the plan should be to re-energise these sub-forums not remove them.

@Dynamo Frokane

You could have all of that in the new sub forum. You really want a specific sub forum for the people that open an arena post once a month and then post 4 times and leave again? I don't.