A FEW ANNOUNCEMENTS, 2 QUESTIONS & MOD APPLICATIONS

[theearth]

Hey, Earthlings! You have no idea how happy I am with our first week. That's what I call an explosive start.

A few announcements, mostly about clean up and clarifications across the game;

• Our FAQ has updated a little to explain a few things. If you think there are questions replied to in the comments that should be on the page proper, tell me and I'll do so. If you have other questions you think should be in there, ask them.

• I have added an expiration to reserves. I personally think it's pretty generous and might shorten it later if it proves to be too much so.

• We now have an info post guide. Take a look, there are some aspects I have made mandatory (but I think everyone in game put them in there anyway).

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A couple questions for yah.

• I want to test the waters on a matter that has been brought to my attention. Specifically, challenge apps. I've never been in a game that allows them (or if they did, I never noticed/have forgotten) and I wanted to ask player opinion of them. At present I'm inclined to allow them once I have other mods to discuss challenges with and only in unreserved applications. Opinions on the issue are most appreciated. I'm not opening a poll on it as such, but I want to see some potential angles I may have missed for or against I might have missed. Thanks!

• As many of you know we have a test drive community, saveyourbrain. It hasn't seen much use yet, but I wanted to see what people thought about having a regular date for a meme to go up to encourage its use and enable people, knowing you lot. I'd probably do it in pairs, an IC meme setting up a scenario of some sort and an OOC meme for asking advice or getting feedback on ideas. Good idea? How often would you like to see it?

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• Speaking of other mods, goddamn my respect for mods has increased at least two million percent just from setting this game up and one week. I am pooped! In a couple of minutes I'm going to open up applications for assistant mods in a separate post so that they can be screened. It'll probably involve an informal interview and everything, because I've gone mad with power. I've been really impressed with player involvement so far, so I doubt I'll be disappointed. At present I am looking for two more mods to ease the workload or a number of deputy mods and there's a good chance that later seasons will require (more) deputy mods to keep this boat afloat, because I promise it's going to go crazy.

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Peace out, Earth.

Comments

[struckout]

Reserves are basically like... putting in your intention to app a character, without having to worry about someone else swooping in before you while you're still in the process of writing your own app. Without reserves, you could have two people writing an app only for one to go find that the other already got there two hours beforehand... and now they've wasted however long writing theirs for no reason. Challenge apps/reserves are kind of the same thing, in that you can still get a shot even if you've been swooped by another person reserving. If that makes sense?

Challenge apps allowed or not, there's kind of the potential for ~drama~ either way- people who are upset that they lost a challenge (especially if the first person wasn't expecting it... or if people disagree with the mods' pick), and people who get upset if they intended to app someone but then get reserve-sniped. Frankly, there's much lower legitimacy in the latter though, because at this game so far, apps are always open and if you want to play someone you should... go ahead and reserve, yeah?

Anyway, I don't think I really put in an opinion for which option I think is better here already, but for the record I don't think challenges are really necessary here unless you intend to keep that long reserve period. So far we seem to have managed to dodge bandwagon syndrome (THANK GOODNESS), and we're kind of diverse and different in premise enough that I don't really see multiple people itching to get in the same character being too big of a problem. The one game I was in that had always-open apps had the second system I suggested and as far as I know it always worked even before the year and a half or so I spent there. Systems with challenge apps in them seem to work best for those hugeliekXBOX games that have app cycles and where it's possible people have already been working on apps and/or making plans with other players before the reserves/apps open up.

/TAKES A BREATH

I'd really, really like to be able to tag the posts my character has been in, though. I know some people don't care, but I do like to be able to go back and find things my characters are involved in without searching through archives or going through another character's tag (after enough time, you may not remember exactly which character it was who was asking about favorite soda pops, but you'd like to go find what you had yours say in response). I don't think there's any need to police it- the main reason is just to make it easier for people who want to find a certain character's threads. When we get to AC I promise it'll make things a lot easier for players to find links if they just have to go to their character's tag and pick out from there what they want to use, rather than scrolling through everyone's posts. Not everyone is anal enough to keep tracking posts full of links and stuff.

Plus you have people like me anyway who tend to check and tag-up posts even if there's no reason to as well. 8|b In fact, I can go back and do it myself if you decide it's cool- the game's new enough that it wouldn't really take too long.

[theearth]

Ah-hah. Examining it from that perspective really does make things a lot more clear. Everything I've seen that has actually explained why they have reserves has always used the 'negates challenges' reasoning so I was somewhat lost. More food for thought. Gathering all I needed to make an informed decision was proving to be the most difficult part of this issue, so I appreciate it.

You and Gail do make a compelling argument. My arm, she is twisted... and in the most pleasant way. I'm thinking of implementing this but with a second tag for replies as opposed to actually the post maker. Like [r]:character name or something like that. With Gail's volunteering and you mentioning you do it sometimes, would you consider undertaking this as an official little job between you two? Because if you're going to do something, we should do it right.

[struckout]

Haha I'm glad my five million words at least make things clearer! And I really appreciate you're willing to take a look and think on it- not just with this but with all the stuff that's come up so far in this rather oddball game, fff. :)

The main tag + reply tag sounds fine to me- exsilium does this on their network with a ~ before the character's names so that the reply tags come after the OP's, so maybe something like that? And making sure posts are tagged is something I can definitely do too! Like I said, it's really no prob at all.

ETA: If you decide to go the route of two tags per character and then decide later that you'd prefer just the one, DW does actually allow you to merge two or more tags together! Just a thought.

[shendude]

I really appreciate the appreciation. Having such a supportive playerbase has made this easier.

Beautiful. All things considered it seems a there's no reason not to at least try it out.

Anyway, I like the idea of a symbol instead and having done a little more research it turns out that there's only like 4 characters that go after letters in alphabetical order. So our options are { } | or ~. I'm fond of {character name}. Like our tag system is giving a character a loving cuddle (or has put them in jail).

[struckout]

LOL THAT IS THE CUTEST. Yes, good.

And, I assume you mean {canon: character name}?

[shiromadoushi]

The trouble with reply tags being different than main body tags is that suddenly, your tag list is double and it gets messy hellishly fast. I find it's best to have both replies and posts have the same tag. Takes a little more scrolling to find just the stuff you posted, but it saves a lot of scrolling through the tags list.

[iaijutsu]

Also, if you really want to find just your posts without mucking around with the rest, there's something you can append to the URL to see that!

(http://commname.dreamwidth.org/?poster=username, if anyone wanted that for future reference.)

[shendude]

I can see where you're coming from and I agree in part, but I think for now we'll go for two tags per character and as Anduin pointed out, we can merge them later if it looks gooey.

I just like having the capability to find character specific posts right away, and although I'm aware of the username option, tags are a bit cleaner.

[dorkytracksuit]

i'm actually with bakura mundane on the preferring them to be under just one tag. it minimizes clutter and i also like only having to click ONE TAG when im searching for specific threads. its a minor issue though so i don't care if it goes one way or the other.

either way I'd also like to volunteer to help with tagging, as. I actually kind of enjoy keeping things tidy in the comm :)

[shendude]

I think we'll go for a two tag system for now and potentially merge the tags later.

Excellent. Another tag tidier sounds useful.