Dion

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

@Kratesis I consider it more of an appeal to 'I go there, so don't decide for me!' when it might not be in the best interest of the rest of RPG to maintain that section.

Admittedly I'd rather see arena as a sub-forum of another forum. Kinda like how we have 'casual roleplay' and 'casual interest checks' are their own tab?

It'd look like this:

O One-for-one and private Roleplay
O 1x1 roleplay
O 1x1 interest checks
O Private (invite only) roleplays
O Arena interest checks
O Arena roleplay

It's just a bit more organized to move it into respective subfolders, especially because nobody uses arena RP. Proof for that above in the screenshot.

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

I am going to go ahead and put my two cents in and say HELL NO!

I am also going to guess that you probably DON'T roleplay in the Arena. But believe you me there are still people that is use. Me for example. And the last thing I want is to go hunting down the only RP section I even use on this site.

@Xavier Bloodbayne

You opinion is a P.O.S and so are you.

@Xavier Bloodbayne

Learn to English, you nonce, vacate my thread, and don't get my thread locked. Bye.

@Buddha The metaphor that comes to mind is 'rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic'. Now I don't believe the Guild is doomed, or even in trouble. I just don't see how rearranging the places in which one has to post will increase the number of posts or how it would increase the number of posters.

@Kratesis

Maybe not. But it'll remove the clutter and make other forums that are currently low on the list (guides comes to mind) appear more towards the top. I'm prepared to go over the backs of few to satisfy the many.

Also, this thread isn't about arena RP, so let's not let it devolve into that.

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

<Snipped quote by Buddha>

If you dont post there I'm not sure why it bothers you. I started out in the Arena, and one of the things I liked about it is that like a long distance game of chess, it doesn't need to be active. You can pause a match for a long while and pick it up easily whenever you'd like because of the simple premise of combat.

And yeah its slow, but at the moment we have a new tournament sign up, so that thread in particular has been quite active. Arena is very specific, its more than just a 1x1 story. I'm not saying the Arena couldn't do with a jump start but for the people who do post there wouldnt want it removed or merged with 1x1 just because its less popular than other sub forums. I assume Nation RP and Tabletop Regulars feel the same way.

@Dynamo Frokane

You raise a good point. Tabletop and nation RP should just be merged, too.

I'm not saying to disband arena RP. I'm saying to have it be merged with something else. Like advanced and casual would be merged in my ideal world. Which evidently isn't going to happen, but I'd still like to put it forth.

One of the common things I hear about fighting in RP's is that people are scared of messing up. That could be a reason as to why arena is doing so poorly (and, if we are being frank, has always done poorly compared to the other RP sections). You're obviously an arena roleplayer first and foremost it seems, so you'll understand that when I say merging it will create new opportunities to 'advertise' arena roleplaying. If arena is merged with 1x1, it will become more accepted to advertise your arena concept in 1x1, so to speak, and as a result you will gather perhaps more attention than in just the arena RP section, where nobody really comes anyway.

You'll also agree with me that the disparity in 'last posts' in arena is pretty fucking big.



I mean you really can't argue otherwise in arena. And the point that you can pick it up at any time is pretty fine and dandy but the same could be said for any other RP really.

I'm sorry but I just don't see the pro's outweighing the con's in this case. It's my opinion that arena (and tabletop now that you've mentioned it) are better off merging with 1x1, and if NRP proves to be continuing to lose activity and consist of purely failed project after failed project, we might as well move that into 'high-commitment roleplay' too.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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?

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

Okay, I'll start off my saying I closed the last thread early because it was trending away from the right topic and after the spam event, I felt it was better off to restart the conversation.

Now to give my personal opinion of the situation.

There are deficiencies with mod availability, I will freely admit that. We're all busy people and how we effectively moderate is through mod reports - whether by PM or DM on discord. As to needing extra mods, from our discussions every one of us is in agreement that we either need more mods or people more available, however a bad previous experience with a mod makes mod selection very important. As to the claim that we perhaps don't care about the site; I can see how that would come across but again it's a factor of time. I've personally offered a few times to resign my modship for a more active user if Mahz didn't want to increase the number of mods then he could use the spot I occupied.

I think subforum mods are a bad idea; 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.

There are problems with the server infrastructure, however at the end of the day Mahz does pay the bills and self-funded this site despite not using it for a number of years. I can understand the desire to see other people to work on it to progress it but as I understand the hesitation is over what happens if one of the coders leaves/goes rogue and then there;s a really big mess to clean up. I understand that it is frustrating to see a community start to wither, I've been on here since 2009 so I do feel an attachment to this place.

@Kangaroo

Alright, first off, thanks for taking the time to reply. Given the attitudes in the previous thread, I feel like not replying as a moderator would've been a bad step forwards and, admittedly, I wanted to force at least some reaction.

a bad previous experience with a mod makes mod selection very important

I have heard this a few times and I'm aware of this situation that arose. Furthermore, I'd like to add that mod selection is always important, even if this scenario hadn't occurred. Me personally, I don't feel too confident in the current moderators to pick a new moderator that would be good. Partially because as it is there is already a gigantic disconnect between the roleplayers and the moderators. How are you going to be aware of who is best suited to be a mod?

But I also don't feel confident in 'us' to elect new moderators, nor do I feel confident in Mahz to pick new ones because he's been away for too long to comfortably pick someone. So what are we left with? Nothing. So I'm curious as to how you/the moderators see this process taking place.

I can see how that would come across but again it's a factor of time

Perhaps true, but perceptions are more important than your real intentions here if your intentions are not communicated. Which as you said yourself in discord, you cannot freely discuss everything. This forces our (the roleplayers) hands in assuming and when there's not a whole lot of activity on-site coming from you and the others, there is a distort, because we are lead to believe that you guys aren't doing anything, and because we can't see that you guys are in fact doing something, this slowly turns into 'how it is' for us.

Which is why I spoke about community engagement because frankly speaking I only know you by name, I only know Hank from my interactions with him about whatever infractions I have incurred and I know Mag because he's the only moderator that was frequently active in RPG chat and that I occasionally spoke with outside of moderator business. And I think that it might be wise to have a bigger level of engagement with people.

I think subforum mods are a bad idea

They are. But they still exist. I had no idea who Rilla was until yesterday when I had to ask someone who the hell Rilla was because I sure as hell never heard of him. And I found out then he was 'moderator' in name only as he was essentially a subforum mod for arena (a dead forum, really). I'm sure he does more than just that. But, de facto, that is kinda how it is from my understanding.

But yes I'll agree that subforum mods are a bad idea.

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.

Then I would advise to regain some trust from the community. I'll use an example here:

Some time ago I know there were complaints about my activity in the status bar. I might be shooting myself in the foot here but I was never warned individually nor was I ever warned officially. Perhaps acting in cases like that might've made your case stronger but to be fair, all I can say to your above point is 'okay, who cares' because at the end of the day, there's not really that much to show for this approach as far as I am aware (and again, perception is very important when it comes to that).

I will not touch upon server infrastructure because I don't really believe we need a 2nd co-owner or a coder. I'm fine if the guild stagnates function wise as long as current features are fixed and no longer broken as fuck. I can even deal with the server shitting itself every 2 minutes. All we can really do is wait for Mahz to return from his job in Mexico and I'm fine with that, as long as other issues are addressed in the mean time. How is communication with Mahz now that he's working? He only shows up when the server dies. Is that intentional?

I might contact you about a community project in the future once I figure out how I want to tackle it.

vasdfgh

@Buddhaapparently ;) I wanted to see if you got any kinds of additional powers with making the thread but apparently... not really

@Kreutzer

You can edit the stuff in the title and stuff but it ends about there.