pugbutter

what can we do to help improve roleplayer guild?

We do need to take note of skill levels. That's one reason I think we still need the subforums; Putting it all together would be extremely fucking messy and despite tags people would still try to join Advanced RP's with short CS's lacking detail, and then complain that they can't do any more.

@Raddum

I think most player problems transcend skill level, tbh. You'll find thread-deserters in Free and in Advanced alike.

Fun fact: if you remove the obvious outliers, here are all the RP subforums ranked with a ratio of posts to threads (the higher the better):

• Nation: 170.300
• Advanced: 161.67
• Casual: 149.446
• Arena: 64.002
• 1x1: 61.940
• Free: 28.141

Obviously I cannot measure how much of each thread on average is OOC compared to IC (not without resorting to a small, randomized sample size), but I found it interesting anyway.

what can we do to help improve roleplayer guild?

@Raddum Yeah, I wasn't naming names but that Intchk is pretty obviously the one I was talking about in my earlier post.

[@Also Raddum] I'm down for a blacklist. If it's willing to acknowledge different skill levels (ie. there's no "this person can't spell and is bad at writing" category), and if it can stay objective in its goal of cataloguing fickle RP-deserters and backseat-GMs and so on, then it might work out well.

We just need to determine whether it can stay here, where it would get more publicity; or if we need to resort to off-site methods to avoid incurring the wrath of Mahz.

what can we do to help improve roleplayer guild?

@Buddha That's the drawback of the freedom which the mods' absence gives us, it seems. We're able to shitpost and infight and not get banned for it, but the cost of this is that we've landed ourselves in a "jack of all trades, master of none" sort of situation. By trying to appeal to everyone, to welcome everyone, the site naturally loses a degree of standards over its community strength, and of course, its writing quality.

I think people, myself included, are afraid to take concrete steps toward solving this problem because the moment we do, Mahz and the mods will come back just long enough to put us in our place and remind us of who's boss. Then they'll fuck off again, having impeded our progress toward self-government but then refused to replace our system with their own. Some of us may be banned in the process, too, another large risk in taking any strong actions toward fixing this site.

I for one am willing to start a blacklist somewhere, even off-site if need be. I've discussed it intensively in the past, with the biggest projected roadblock being that it's probably not Fonz-cool for Guildsmen to segregate themselves and demonize each other for their stylistic differences in RP.

Once again, the site's willingness to accept everyone, and to never really enforce a standard of quality over people's RP habits (joining a thread and then never posting, Free leaking into Casual, Nation drawing players away from the tiny Advanced forum...), is what drives us into the ground in the first place. To rectify this we would need to establish whether Mahz is willing to draw new mods, active ones, from the player pool; and if he isn't, then go about deciding how we will govern ourselves henceforth.

@Grimhildr
>has been here for 6 days
>already planning a coup

kek

what can we do to help improve roleplayer guild?

I would prefer to have user elected moderators. But I fear the outcome would be even worse. But I don't trust the community or the moderators to make that call anymore.

@Buddha

Agreed. This site's greatest draw for me has been that the mods aren't power-hungry. Other RP sites, other forums, a certain anime streaming site, have all been ruined by mods who care more about becoming god in their little internet-societies than about actually making the sites better for everyone. I'd sooner have no mods at all than a force of them who, given Mahz's inactivity, can run rampant without any checks and balances to limit their damage potential. Personally I know there are at least three people on this site who would want me banned just for existing with a different opinion near them. I think I'd be a fair mod but there are people who'd fear for their safety on the site, because they and I have had our spats before, and it's much too easy for players to hold a grudge, especially when the opportunity to retaliate on those grudges presents itself.

But then, @BrokenPromise brings up a good point: if the mods control the rules of the site, then the players control its culture. If we want a certain type of roleplayer (e.g. people who go AWOL on the RPs they've joined) eradicated from this site then it's up to our GMs to enforce these folkways. And if the guilty parties don't like that, well, they're free to make their own RPs here, or to go somewhere else. The absence of the mods only punctuates the idea that we the players are responsible for creating the site which we want to play on: if we want more diverse plotlines then we must be the ones to write them. If we want problematic players to leave then we must be willing to publicly acknowledge them as problematic. And so on.

Waiting for other people to effect the changes we want to see on this site isn't working. As players, and especially as GMs, we must be willing to be the changes we want for the Guild, especially if the mod team make it clear that they're not looking out for us anymore.

what can we do to help improve roleplayer guild?

@Grimhildr There are people on this site who, when they mean to say "bored," instead say "board" and "bord." In the same damn sentence.

Never doubt the depths of Man's stupidity.

what can we do to help improve roleplayer guild?

@BrokenPromise Pretty solid advice, even if I don't like it. (Catch-all rules tend to be a GM's excuse to abuse his power, so I've avoided using them hitherto as a gesture of goodwill.)

Of course, people forget that the GM is already given these rights in the universal forum rules:

• GM Autonomy – in most matters pertaining to the thread, the GM has the final say, as it is their plot and we do not wish to interfere with running RP's. Who is in, who is out, calls regarding the storyline and the rules by which RP's run (including how many paragraphs, post rate and order, etc, etc...) who needs to leave and so forth. The only time the moderators tend to step in is when the rules listed above are being violated, otherwise the GM is left to sort it out and deal with their problem players.

@Guild Mods

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

Does RPGuild Need More People?

Is it productive to create established blacklists though? I get not favoring working with certain individuals, but there is also the need to ostracize them from the community by “warning” directors of prospective RPs. Where is the line of “Hey, this is a problematic player, here’s their reputation.” and “I hate this person, it’s me or them. You need to remove them or else.”?

@Inkarnate

That's the simple part, really. The blacklist's stewards need only demand evidence of wrongdoing: screenshots, and if it's a public (non-PM) thread, URLs.

The difficult part is drawing the parameters of guilt. Some people, for example, would think that leaving an RP for any reason, through any method, earns the player a black spot. I, for one, would argue that if you announce your leave, you're innocent, whereas going AWOL is blacklist-worthy. Others would object to the blacklist itself as a matter of principle, believing that RPers should be allowed to come and go as they choose. We as a community would need to agree on these boundaries before any real progress is in our reach.

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

@Raddum thanks bae

@Mr Allen J There are times when I think it's my fault. Like, maybe I'm misleading people with my IntChk, or I'm doing something egregious in my RP which drives others away. But then, this entire community has commitment issues, so idek.

Does RPGuild Need More People?

What we need is people without commitment issues. Don't fucking post if you are going to drop without a word. If you are going to post stick with it.

@Burning Kitty

This.

We've got the same number of active players as everyone else. At this moment Aniroleplay has about 300 members online, for example. And we're significantly larger than others like rPol. You just feel like the site is smaller than it is because:

• No one posts often enough.
• When they do post, it's in a larger range of short-lived roleplays, instead of fewer threads which last longer.

I do think that we need to start culturally shaming the abandonment of RPs, if not punishing these players officially in some way. As it stands they face no consequences for their actions and that's why nothing ever changes.