vsoocannounce

[vsoocannounce]

Hey guys! I meant to make this announcement a few days ago but between being sick and such, I’ve put it off. I hope everyone is doing well, I’m loving you guys using the player notices channel so well so we all know where we’re at. As always, if you need anything, please message me!

I’ve noticed most of the RP hasn’t messaged me about the status of their pairs yet! As I said, I’d like to hear from everyone from within a week. This is to ensure that if any of your pairs have left the roleplay as well as not communicated with you, I can know, and we can move forward. So, this is a reminder to please let me know what’s going on with everyone’s paired threads via the main, as message on Discord for me gets easily lost. Like I said before, even if you guys are just still plotting, etc, I just need some communication. For the new people who’ve come in, don’t worry about this too much, if you’d like to participate in paired threads let me know, but there’ll be more opportunity for it in the future.

The likes on everyone’s intros are better but definitely still varying. I’ve decided against messaging people individually as I realized that can be very anxiety provoking, and instead from now on will do a roundup of intros that need more love. I’ll @ everyone in the Discord as well as place the list on the main when I post these more in the future.

As we’ve had a few voice chats in the Discord, I’ve and a few others have noticed it can be quite hectic with some people left out as well as talked over. Obviously this is going to happen when you have several people talking together, but, to ensure that it doesn’t happen excessively, we’re going to be utilizing the mute button on people a lot more. This sounds vaguely scary, but it’s just going to be when we notice someone trying to speak up who isn’t being heard, so to assure they are. Since we don’t have a talking stick I can pass around, this is the next best thing.

As you’ve noticed, we have a quidditch channel! If I’ve forgotten anyone who’s character is playing Quidditch, please let me know.

For new people, we have a few channels that you may not be aware of though you can find more information about them in the updates channel! We have a Secret Society sort of group ( more can be found in the groupwide headcanons summary channel ), a newspaper forming, and a family tree chat ( that will be turned into a page soon ). If you’re interested in any of this, either come to me via message or @ me or any of the other mods in the chat. If anyone who’s been here for about two weeks or so wants to take the OOC Survey who hasn’t yet, let me know and I can link you to it as any feedback would be helpful.

Lastly, I’m debating on when to end the event – I know there are a good amount of people who haven’t participated in it yet, but I don’t want it to seem to drag on or anything like that, so please let me know your thoughts in the groupwide ideas chat. We may decide to instead go into an AU week as to be able to wrap threads up from the event as well as prepare for the next timestamp, but, it’s still not determined for sure what the course of action will be – only that we have plans.

Thank you guys for reading, please like this when you have, and I hope you guys are having a lovely weekend!

[vsoocannounce]

Happy One Month everyone! May more months ( and years ) to come! The RP has grown and developed more than I really imagined it would when we first opened ( when I made the RP for that matter ) and I’m so grateful y’all are so interested. We have 30 members, which is amazing and fantastic, something I didn’t even realize until the other day. Thank you for being here and I hope you’re enjoying the RP as much as I am.

My first announcement is that I’ve asked from some help around the discord and regarding making decisions about the group, etc. especially considering the size of the roleplay. I’ve asked Jane, Mar, and N to help me out, I hope that this can keep me fair as an admin as well as help pick up any slack, anything I may be missing due to different timezones as I’m unfortunately not able to catch everything going on. I value their perspectives greatly, trust them, and I hope if you guys need anything and I’m not around you can go to them because they’re pretty great people as well as fantastic, fair, understanding people to help me as an admin. It’ll mostly be me on the main still, but they have control & permissions over all the channels and have authority in the Discord. They’re all in separate timezones, so someone should be around to talk! 

Secondly, I’m going to introduce the family tree channel! We’ve found a few PSDs that make up some great family trees but until then, I think it’s imperative we get everyone’s family history in one place as things get missed in the chat & intros.

Lastly, there was some talk of a gossip blog as well as an incorrect quotes blog, because I worry about inclusivity, I’ll put the gossip blog on hold but I think a newspaper sort of thing could be a good element to introduce into the RP! If someone wants to run that, please come to us, I have some specific ideas already about it that I’d like to run by anyone interested. As for the incorrect quotes, I think it might be good as a channel for everyone to suggest things as well as submit things to a blog, as I’m not great with making those quotes unless using the quote feature!

I think that’s it! Happy One Month, I wish I had some champagne to shower on y’all. Remember to like once you’ve read this ( if you’ve reacted on the Discord, don’t worry about it )! If you need anything, we’re all here to help and listen. 

[vsoocannounce]

OOC SURVEY/ADMIN EVAL #1.

We do a lot of things well. Everyone is so friendly with each other, we talk about a lot together, and overall I think everyone is pretty talkative with each other in the OOC. I think it’s a lovely place to be, the majority of the roleplay agreeing! I want to thank you guys for your lovely comments on my adminning that nearly made me cry ( happy tears ). Reading the results, almost everyone agreed the environment was friendly, welcoming and something that surprised me – fast paced. For me, this came as a surprise – but I realized, though the dash is not always fast paced – the OOC Discord is. So, I think activity here is very much partly dependent on the OOC communication, if you’re around, participating, talking character headcanons etc. I definitely see why it’s fast paced, so, I’m going to maybe try to stretch out timestamps more, maybe even lengthen our activity limit, etc. I know it can be overwhelming when you’re not around to jump into the RP, so I will definitely try to be better with the summaries channel, but please know you can take your time and there’s no rush. 

A few things that I’ll note that I’m not going to change, there was a very small minority that didn’t like the different channels, felt they didn’t help the OOC, and since a large majority didn’t agree ( as well as myself ), that isn’t going to change. If you’re extremely concerned, please come to me directly and we can definitely discuss it! The people who people had problems with have either left, been kicked out, or talked to. But overall, there weren’t really any which was really good to see.

Overall, I think that we all are trying, we’re all here, I think there’s something really solid here as well. Over 85 percent of you guys felt that based on the OOC environment this RP would be long lasting, which is so fucking amazing! Like wow! I’m still shook.

But just like Our Lord and Savior Shuri has said ‘"Just because something works, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.“

The overall theme of the things we need to work on is communication. from what I see as well as have been told, there’s a lack of it between everyone. Though we all talk with each other, there’s a lack of communication between where we all stand, what’s going on, and plotting . I want to preface this by saying, the reason I’m so strict about these certain things ( and my rules ) is because I’m very lenient regarding other things. In order for the roleplay to be successful OOC, the rules in place need to be followed, so that leniency is something I’ll be able to grant. There’s a certain idea and sense of community in this RP I’m trying to foster, communication being an important factor in this. There are people who feel ignored, people who feel the RP is hard to break into, and over half of the RP feels the RP is cliquey. Even though most they also think the clique(s) are welcoming, some feel they are hard to break into. I don’t think ANY of this is on purpose, but I can’t ignore what I’ve read & how other members are feeling. I’ll explain more below, but no matter what, it’s not acceptable & something we’re going to work on.

One thing I have noticed is the way each intro seems to have a different number of notes, which was something that I noticed early on ( I didn’t think it posed an issue then because it wasn’t that major ) which then drastically change., This denotes to me that they’re not being read or at the very least, liked, as a way to be welcoming and archive it for later. I could be wrong in this assumption, but as it’s a rule in the rules, from now on if I don’t see everyone liking intros within a week or so, I will send out messages individually. I know it seems extreme but no one in this roleplay’s intros should have less than ten notes at least & that’s being generous. There’s over 20 people in the roleplay. The numbers are off there. There is nothing that makes me feel worse than coming into an RP, posting my intro, and seeing multiple people on / around in the chat but none of them liking my intro.  A quarter of the RP have not been approached by at least three people to plot  and with all of this, these two things combined I’m most disappointed about. Because no matter what, there’s absolutely no excuse for these rules to be broken.  I’m going to be pairing everyone up for threads that they must communicate the status of within a week. Whether the starter is up and you haven’t replied, your partner hasn’t replied to your IM, you couldn’t get a starter up you’re still plotting, etc. I need you guys to communicate with me and each other.

Like each others intros. Reach out to each other to plot. Seriously.

The tags are there so you can go through them, check out everyone’s info, creations, self paras, moodboards, etc. – support each other with it. I’ll try to be more proactive myself in not only reblogging each edit on the main, but putting it into our Edits & Pinterest channel. To ease some people’s minds I’m going to make a player updates channel where everyone can put whether or not they’re on hiatus, what’s going on with them, the status of their activity & PM answering, etc. so we all know where we are with things. I think a good chunk of the miscommunication in this area can be solved with a channel like this. This is a group RP, so please try to interact with the whole group & learn about their characters because it’s only right. This is something I stress in the rules as well because no one likes to feel like them or their characters aren’t important in an RP – something a few people have been feeling.

When you talk about a headcanon that might pertain to another person’s character, @ them in discord! Another thing someone mentioned was the lack of follow up via messaging. While I completely understand not being able to have the concentration to reply to PMs as opposed to a group chat, this person was extremely discouraged by the fact that they’re plotting messages didn’t really go far, their messages unanswered after over a week, while seeing people plot with each other in the main chat & talk about plotting with each other via PMs. Something I’ve also seen, something I’ve also done, which I apologize for! This isn’t acceptable to me. We do all have lives, yes, but just make sure to communicate what is going on. A simple ‘I’m busy, slow, and having issues with reaching out at the moment to plot so I’ll answer this as soon as I can’ can really go a long way. I think these thread pairings with the player updates channel would be a good start in turning that around.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a lot of talk of things that are from other roleplays, other experiences, that are shared between groups of people that are often talked about in the general chat. What I mean is: I see a lot of talks of other roleplay experiences, characters not in the roleplay, that while I know you don’t mean to exclude, I don’t believe anyone in this roleplay would, it can be intimidating and come off as very clique-ish. In fact, this is where I think the perception of people thinking half of the people in this group are cliquey are from.

This was one thing that reflected in the survey that seemed to be spilt down the middle – half of the roleplay felt that the group wasn’t cliquey while the other half felt it was as well as either: hard to break into it ( minority of this half ), or it was but still friendly ( majority of this half ). While I know everyone is willing to explain these past experiences that are shared together to anyone who ask, it’s intimidating to come into a group with people who know each other who then talk about private things. I’ve indulged in this too ( I’m sorry about that! ), so I’m partially to blame for allowing this, but please watch talking about things not related specifically to this roleplay as it can make it seem as if you’re clique-ish. It’s intimidating and makes other people not want to approach and especially discouraging when a few people mentioned they felt their characters aren’t important or that their thoughts weren’t cared about. So, unless you’re willing to explain enough of what you’re talking about to other people so that they get it, then don’t talk about it as it makes people feel excluded. Inside jokes between people who know each other are going to happen, but try to remember that there are other people who might feel excluded due to you talking about those experiences in a group setting/chat. If you were in there position, watching a bunch of people talk about their character connections from other RPs, it might feel excluding as well.

To some of the people who do/might feel excluded, one thing I’ve noticed is the lack of just jumping into conversations – which is understandable. But I highly encourage you to try, engage with other people in the chat when you can, ask questions, offer things to talk about. Ask about their characters. Read up a bit in the chat if you can to see what is being said & talked about before jumping in, respond to others, engage with them the way you want to be engaged. The people who are talking with each other in the chat have put in effort & time to talk with each other, plot, they didn’t always know each other if they did, but they had to put themselves out there first & foremost. I know I have both anxiety and social anxiety so it can be hard, but we are in a group roleplay where communication is key within the group – so I do think an updates channel will be helpful so you don’t have to constantly remind or let people know but there needs to be an effort from your end as well. So, if you see a conversation, jump in!

Those are the points that I’d touch on most, and really, I know that all of this was not of any malicious intent or trying to be excluding at all, but it’s how some people have felt and some of the things I’ve noticed that I think we can really all improve on.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk and please like this when you’re done reading it! Any feedback on this survey I would appreciate off anon via DM/PM or in the group-ideas channel! Thank you!