announcements and RULE CHANGES and slapping words onto OOC
Hey guys! The bulk of holidays are finally behind us, and we're closing in on the end of the year. There's a few things on this agenda, so strap yourselves in for olesia's textbook loquaciousness.
First: I want to offer my continued heartfelt gratitude to Tobyfs and Alex for their hard work in coding up the comment pages for us! Without them, we'd still be using awkward cramped gray thing I threw together. ♥ Thanks, you guys.
Second: I know a lot of RPers and other games are batting around discussion to move to Dreamwidth, or to some other clone site in the wake of LJ's latest problems -- I know I've seen snippets of discussion from our playerbase as well, both on my flist and on plurk. As such, consider this the official announcement on the matter: at this time, the modteam has decided to take a stance of waiting to see how this affair plays out. Considering the size of C&C, the number of players, characters, journals, and overall effort that would be needed to uproot and transplant the entire game, we are hesitant to make plans for anything that cannot currently be accomplished. Though we will be backing up the communities when it becomes possible, that is not and should not be taken as evidence of a concrete move.
Further discussion of whether we should or shouldn't stay hosted on Livejournal is being tabled until later next month. At that time, we will return to the topic, and like as we did with the activity rules change we will have multiple discussion posts. The first will be a screened post where you may freely share your reactions and feelings with us in confidence, and a second where comments will be publicly visible to encourage civil discussion between players. This is not that post. Please do not turn this post into a debate of the pros and cons or about this or that sites development team or what features are offered where. Comments such as those will be screened and disregarded. This is because this post is really about--
Third: ACTIVITY RULES STUFF. That thing I promised you earlier this month, but between holiday family and unexpected employment, I never finalized! Sorry about that, everyone! I'm just going to quickly cover what the changes will be here in bullet form; the Activity FAQ / Rules pages will be updated within the next week or so to reflect these changes. These will take effect starting January first -- not the activity check that covers December! You will be sorely disappointed if you try using these rule changes to clear your activity for December.
Those changes are:∗ capeandcowl "Joint Posts" will count as activity for all tagged participants if they meet the following criteria: all characters tagged to the main post have demonstrated presence in both the main body of the initial post as well as in the comment replies.
∗ Any entry that wishes to qualify for the above will need to carry the !joint post tag, as well as include all appropriate character tags. Misuse or abuse of this system will result in getting scary messages from the moderators telling you to knock it off.
∗ capeandcowllogs Comment Minimum Quota: For participation in someone else's log post to count -- regardless as to whether it is a closed log or an open free-for-all -- the character must make at least 3 comments in a single thread. Therefore, a thread between two characters would need to reach a minimum of 5 comments; this number would increase as more characters are added. (Tagging two or three separate threads in a single log and not having any reach this minimum would not count; it MUST be one continued thread.)
∗ If a character is on warning status: A 15+ comment thread can be used for one count of activity of the total three, and one count only. (That is, you may not use two or three comment threads.)
∗ If a character is on warning status: Solo logs and news posts will not count towards a character's activity. Joint posts as posted by another character will not count on their own; they will only qualify under the comment thread rule stated above. This is to prevent a character from being "saved" when they have not exerted effort enough to do so.
∗ If on more than one occasion a player makes a character post to either community, "abandons it" (ceases replying to anyone after a comment, or never replies to anyone at all), the mod team may choose not to count such abandoned posts for their subsequent activity; if this occurs, the player will be informed of this reasoning.
∗ If a player fails activity check with a character two months in a row and that character is dropped, and this has happened more than once PER PLAYER, a one-month hold period will be placed between when their character is auto-dropped and when they can reapply for that same character. (Since auto-drops are not finalized until the 11th of a given month, that means the player will not be able to reapply for that same character until on or after the 11th of the following month.)
∗ If this happens a third time, not only will there be the one month hold, but players will be expected to update and expand their character applications to include their character's growth in-game.
∗ If this happens a fourth time, I will punch you in the face.
∗ Hiatus rules will not change. However, if it seems as though the total number of exempting hiatuses far exceeds the months a character meets activity requirements, moderators may choose to discuss the situation with the player.
OTHER THINGS:
∗ Though the vote was nearly fifty-fifty split, we won't be implementing the tags for comments in main entries. We feel there isn't enough community support to warrant such a labor-intensive change.
∗ News posts will continue to count as activity, regardless of comment count.
∗ Solo logs will continue to count as activity.
∗ Logs completed in IM/Email and then posted to the logs comm will continue to count as activity; however, IM/Email logs have to be of equivalent quality as ones completed in comment threads.
∗ A post or a log that receives no comments will continue to count for activity, as we are not aiming to penalize players who make the attempt. However, if a player's posts frequently garner no response, moderators may choose to speak with the player about the situation.
Sorry for the delay on getting back to you with this! And once again I'd like to thank everyone for their input and support over the past few months in getting this adjusted. If there's any final questions or requests, please let me know.
First: I want to offer my continued heartfelt gratitude to Tobyfs and Alex for their hard work in coding up the comment pages for us! Without them, we'd still be using awkward cramped gray thing I threw together. ♥ Thanks, you guys.
Second: I know a lot of RPers and other games are batting around discussion to move to Dreamwidth, or to some other clone site in the wake of LJ's latest problems -- I know I've seen snippets of discussion from our playerbase as well, both on my flist and on plurk. As such, consider this the official announcement on the matter: at this time, the modteam has decided to take a stance of waiting to see how this affair plays out. Considering the size of C&C, the number of players, characters, journals, and overall effort that would be needed to uproot and transplant the entire game, we are hesitant to make plans for anything that cannot currently be accomplished. Though we will be backing up the communities when it becomes possible, that is not and should not be taken as evidence of a concrete move.
Further discussion of whether we should or shouldn't stay hosted on Livejournal is being tabled until later next month. At that time, we will return to the topic, and like as we did with the activity rules change we will have multiple discussion posts. The first will be a screened post where you may freely share your reactions and feelings with us in confidence, and a second where comments will be publicly visible to encourage civil discussion between players. This is not that post. Please do not turn this post into a debate of the pros and cons or about this or that sites development team or what features are offered where. Comments such as those will be screened and disregarded. This is because this post is really about--
Third: ACTIVITY RULES STUFF. That thing I promised you earlier this month, but between holiday family and unexpected employment, I never finalized! Sorry about that, everyone! I'm just going to quickly cover what the changes will be here in bullet form; the Activity FAQ / Rules pages will be updated within the next week or so to reflect these changes. These will take effect starting January first -- not the activity check that covers December! You will be sorely disappointed if you try using these rule changes to clear your activity for December.
Those changes are:∗ capeandcowl "Joint Posts" will count as activity for all tagged participants if they meet the following criteria: all characters tagged to the main post have demonstrated presence in both the main body of the initial post as well as in the comment replies.
∗ Any entry that wishes to qualify for the above will need to carry the !joint post tag, as well as include all appropriate character tags. Misuse or abuse of this system will result in getting scary messages from the moderators telling you to knock it off.
∗ capeandcowllogs Comment Minimum Quota: For participation in someone else's log post to count -- regardless as to whether it is a closed log or an open free-for-all -- the character must make at least 3 comments in a single thread. Therefore, a thread between two characters would need to reach a minimum of 5 comments; this number would increase as more characters are added. (Tagging two or three separate threads in a single log and not having any reach this minimum would not count; it MUST be one continued thread.)
∗ If a character is on warning status: A 15+ comment thread can be used for one count of activity of the total three, and one count only. (That is, you may not use two or three comment threads.)
∗ If a character is on warning status: Solo logs and news posts will not count towards a character's activity. Joint posts as posted by another character will not count on their own; they will only qualify under the comment thread rule stated above. This is to prevent a character from being "saved" when they have not exerted effort enough to do so.
∗ If on more than one occasion a player makes a character post to either community, "abandons it" (ceases replying to anyone after a comment, or never replies to anyone at all), the mod team may choose not to count such abandoned posts for their subsequent activity; if this occurs, the player will be informed of this reasoning.
∗ If a player fails activity check with a character two months in a row and that character is dropped, and this has happened more than once PER PLAYER, a one-month hold period will be placed between when their character is auto-dropped and when they can reapply for that same character. (Since auto-drops are not finalized until the 11th of a given month, that means the player will not be able to reapply for that same character until on or after the 11th of the following month.)
∗ If this happens a third time, not only will there be the one month hold, but players will be expected to update and expand their character applications to include their character's growth in-game.
∗ If this happens a fourth time, I will punch you in the face.
∗ Hiatus rules will not change. However, if it seems as though the total number of exempting hiatuses far exceeds the months a character meets activity requirements, moderators may choose to discuss the situation with the player.
OTHER THINGS:
∗ Though the vote was nearly fifty-fifty split, we won't be implementing the tags for comments in main entries. We feel there isn't enough community support to warrant such a labor-intensive change.
∗ News posts will continue to count as activity, regardless of comment count.
∗ Solo logs will continue to count as activity.
∗ Logs completed in IM/Email and then posted to the logs comm will continue to count as activity; however, IM/Email logs have to be of equivalent quality as ones completed in comment threads.
∗ A post or a log that receives no comments will continue to count for activity, as we are not aiming to penalize players who make the attempt. However, if a player's posts frequently garner no response, moderators may choose to speak with the player about the situation.
Sorry for the delay on getting back to you with this! And once again I'd like to thank everyone for their input and support over the past few months in getting this adjusted. If there's any final questions or requests, please let me know.