We are a community. Aren't we?

[Vexar]

"Power to the community.
Power to the users.
We are the ones who will fix this.
We are the ones who made the site what it is today.

It is our fault.
It is our mistake to fix."
-Vexar

Most of us are aware of several problems within our community. Newer users especially. If you aren’t aware of problems within the community, allow me to elaborate.

• You must immediately learn three mediums to role play with. Chat, Forum, and RPTab.
• It is hard to find something, so you must make things yourself. If you don’t want to do this, you must go through a tough search to find something both open and accepting new players.
• If you are doing something similar to someone else, you have a VERY hard time gathering interest, especially being someone new.
• We lack the tools needed to moderate our own role plays. We must either make them private, or publicwith no way of kicking out problem players.
• The MV is the one popular place to role play, but it is hard to get into role playing there without being ridiculed if you are new.
• People say they will help and do not follow through with their word.
• The number one problem, we rely on the staff to do things; we wait on approval to do things.

We, as a community, need to step up and make this site better ourselves. The staff are just mere tools to help enforce our ideas. They are not police, they are not the almighty word that keeps the community stale and alienating.

We have, unfortunately become that force.

What can we do?
Band together, help eachother out. We need to stop being this anonymous force that the internet has taught us to be and unite under the fact that we all love role playing. Stop being elitist and trashing new people or people who simply don't care to be better. We are here for fun, not to show off how good we are. People try to role play to escape that fact in real life.

What can the staff do?
My biggest suggestion is to kill off one of the three mediums we must learn. The forums. There should no longer be role playing there. RPTabs already have a built in forum, and chat. Why do we need the forums? The only thing the forum should be used for is General chat, OOC threads, and RP Design.

Imagine a home page that would show the most active chat and play by post RP Tabs. Where users could also advertise theirs, and there would also be an easy way to search through other RP Tabs.

On that main page you also have an option to hop right into chat (Through the MV tab or others that you are already in). And then a forum tab to click on as well. When you click on the forum tab you get.

• General
• --Welcome Desk
• --Main Lobby (Discussion)(Help Desk)(Creative Junk)
  
• Role Playing
• --OOC Threads
• --Role Play Design
• --Interest Checks

No random birthday list, no whose online. If you care to know who is online, add friends to your friends list (in your profile) and you can check to see when they are online already. No arena area. Fighting can be taken care of in the RP Tab system, and it should have already been placed there. Public arenas, and private ones are an amazing idea to put the tab to use for.

If you agree with this post in ANY form. Please step up and stop waiting for approval. Help your fellow role players. If you feel things aren't being done correctly, then do it yourself! Bring it to attention. It doesn't matter if you do or do not reply to this thread. I would love to know your opinion, but all of us need your help.

We as users are more powerful than anyone else on the site. Staff members only help reinforce us. We have turned the site into what it is today, we are the ones who WILL change its future AND the future of role playing. So please, stand up, and do something. Don't just reply saying "Yeah! I agree!" Go out and do something about it. Welcome other new users, help out in the help desk. We are a community of role players, and it's about damn time we start acting like it.

[Black]

I totally agree with this Vexar. You make very valid points. I myself have yet to be accepted as a Mentor for the website but I am constantly using my knowledge to help people. A self-proclaimed Mentor. I code profiles for people, review and constructively criticize work I am given, work with members to become better, photoshop and edit images, Co-GM roleplays and help out in them, and most importantly, I am a friend to everyone. I have never held any prejudice to anyone, no matter race, sexuality, age, religion or opinions.

Most have probably seen me at the Welcome Desks, welcoming new members to the site and helping them out in any way I can. It's sad really that some do not take me seriously or consider me worse than the Mentors/Mods for the site. I consider myself to be just as helpful.

I agree slightly about the forums. RPG is known for its chat and tab RPing system. We probably don't need forums, but they are there for members who are wanting to RP but perhaps are confused about the new systems introduced on this website. Besides, one of my RPs are on the forum, it can look a lot neater than having all IC in the Activity Tab. I personally don't want the forums to go. I agree that we may not need them because of the other two systems, but I think they are helpful for those who just don't understand the chat or the RP Tabs. I cannot actually RP in the chat, not that I am wanting to learn, I am an RP Tab/Forum person all the way.

Running a forum of my own (Production Arts forum for my college), I know that the thing saying who is online cannot be removed. As far as I know at least, I could be wrong with this forum, but RPG is based on a forum rather than a website. I could actually replicate the theme on my own forum, minus the links at the top of the page and the systems here. But, my point is that it's not really causing any trouble. Most of the time I do not even notice it. I don't think it really needs to go, it's not causing any problems for me. If you don't like it then I would just ignore it. As for the birthday thing, I am not entirely sure what you mean. I have never once seen RPG tell me that it was someone's birthday. If that isn't what you mean then just ignore that last comment.

We do need to become closer as a community, I am entirely up for that. As I said before, I am always here to help people in anyway I can. Just because I do not have the name tag and coloured name as the other Mentors do, does not mean I cannot help you. Of course, the choice is yours. I have to admit, open Rps can be hard to find on the site. Perhaps having an automated tag system; 'Dead' for RPs which haven't been posted in for at least a month. 'Active' for RPs which are currently running and have been posted in. And 'Open' for RPs which have yet to start but are currently accepting characters. Of course I am not sure about the Open tag, perhaps have something else... Also allow people to choose whether or not to close RPs completely and perhaps have a tag saying that their RPs are Accepting or if they are Full. I personally think this would be a useful feature to the RP system. Also have 'Open' RPs on the front page in one section, 'Active' in another and 'Most Popular' for another. The 'Most Popular' would be ones which have been posted in the most since their start. Have an average number of posts compared to the number of days it has been open, or something along those lines.

Players can actually be kicked out/removed from RPs now by the GM. If you go onto your Roleplays and scroll down to your own, there is a remove feature for each character. You can use this to remove players/characters from the RP itself. I do think that having multiple GMs should be open to normal people too. I have seen some RPs with more than one GM, but most of them are run by staff. Running an RP can be hard work and we all need help from time to time, so it's no surprise when we put a Co-GM on our RPs. Not everyone sees this though, they only see the GM's name below this and thus doesn't take the Co-GM seriously. I think we should be able to add more than one GM to our RPs.

That is all I think... for now, I hope everything goes well with the community and i'll always be here to help out in anyway I can. I'll contribute to ideas and community discussions too. I want to work on making RPG a better place to be in.