damned_lounge | Activity Check Discussion Post + Contact List Update

Hello, everyone!

While the game has been trucking along pretty nicely (I hope the military arc has been enjoyable for most of you!), recently there's been a lot of talk about people's waning activity. I do think that Damned is a place where you can afford to be slow at times, where you don't have to post to every shift -- this isn't meant to discourage people who aren't lightning taggers like some of us. It's already been mentioned a number of times, but there's little I can do as a mod to make people post faster, and yet there are a few changes that can be made to possibly work through this problem. I definitely want to encourage people to put their all into the game when possible and to play out some awesome plots, so here goes.

This issue was brought up over on the suggestions post, so this is mainly just meant to be a continuation of that. It was mentioned there that this is something that should be talked about by the game as a whole, and so this post is basically an open forum for people to give their thoughts and talk things out. Whether you're one of the people who's frustrated or someone who is on the slow side and looking to explain your side of things, feel free to reply and comment around!

The two solutions which have been brought up are as follows:

a) changing the requirements for the activity check
b) adding a "Posting Speed" section to the plot post form

The second option there would mainly be a way for people to know from the start what to expect from potential thread partners. It's not much of a change, but it would allow an open line of communication to be present from the start.

Changing the Activity Check requirements is something that is going to require some more thought, and so I'd like to start by polling you all on if you think it's something that needs to be revised.

[Poll #1781912]

So go ahead and fill that out, reply here with your thoughts, and we'll see what we can do about this! I'm sorry there's not more I can do, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Additionally, some changes have been made to the Contact List in order to make communication easier for everyone. There's been a spot added for people to list their plurk names if they wish. It's in no way required, but if you are open to people contacting you/conversing with you through plurk then please feel free to list it. More importantly, a Preferred Method of Contact section has been added so that other players can know how you would like to be contacted. I'd like to ask for everyone to respond to the contact list with their response to that section if possible! Thanks a lot for reading all this, and have a nice night, everyone.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Important: I want to emphasize that my point in this comment is not to offend. If I do offend, I sincerely apologize. It is not my intention to offend. It is also not my intention to accuse or point out specific people or make personal attacks. If it sounds like I am, I'm sorry, that's not how I intended it to sound. I do often seem to fail at conveying my points accurately in words, so I apologize for that.

I've also been one of the people who has stayed out of this discussion for a while, though I've read some of the discussion threads here, as well as some of the plurks related to this, and the anoncomm thread that first brought this up. I also made a plurk with disabled responses a day or two ago about this, though I regret that I cannot link it, since my plurk is private, but I have nothing against friending anyone here! If you would like to read this plurk, here is a link (http://www.plurk.com/p/e4ymyx). You may friend me if you wish to read it! The main points I put in my plurk will be put here as well. Also, many of my opinions are similar to what E wrote in her contribution to this discussion.

So first, I want to state that I am a slow tagger. Not as much today (though still slow and inconsistent), but definitely, definitely yes when I first started. Granted, I did have a lot of RL circumstances that really didn't help the matter, but I've been here since November of last year, with several hiatuses in between. But the fact remains that I kept a lot of people waiting for tags and went long periods of time with no contact because I was scared of having to apologize and not being forgiven (or at least, given a chance to be forgiven) and not having enough self-confidence to even guarantee that trying to make up for my failures would work at all. My mental state wasn't at its best then, clearly. But yes, I do tend to write tags very slowly and make my threadmates wait anywhere between a day and several days for them. Back when I started, it could go something like weeks. And I am not proud of it.

Moving on. To be perfectly honest, I don't think we should look at this issue as something to take sides on. Reading some of the discussion about this, (not just here, but on plurk and anoncomm as well) it seems this issue drags up a lot of hurt feelings. Anger, it depends, since tone is hard to decipher from text on a webpage and people's interpretations of text can differ, but there are certainly people who have felt as if they were being accused of not being good enough or have felt uncomfortable because they recognize that the sorts of 'slow-taggers' that are being described here seem to be describing them. I think this is being referred to as the 'us vs. them' mindset that has been cropping up.

Before I address this, I just want to point out that, even if this feeling wasn't intended and the emotions that some words conveyed weren't what those words were meant to convey, we are all different people who are affected by different things. You can say afterward that you were not targeting specific people and that you did not mean to make people feel uncomfortable, but reactions are things that sometimes can't be helped. And I think it's important to acknowledge the fact that different things upset different people. So please be careful to consider the many standpoints in a situation like this and think about what you saying before you say them. Anything could offend anyone, but if we were all a little more mindful about how words could be interpreted, the chances of a bad misunderstanding would be lessened. It's okay to not understand how someone could be offended by something, but if they say they are offended in some way, then the fact is that feelings were hurt. Offense is a very instinctive reaction, something that seems to come to you immediately, and while reason can quell the instinctive nature of feelings, often, feelings are much faster than reason. Just like sometimes, one can't help but immediately get angry, sometimes one can't help but get offended over something that might not seem very reasonably offensive. It's just like fears; sometimes, you can't explain it logically, you just fear it and that's what it is.

With that in mind, I mostly am concerned about the fact that people are getting this feeling of 'sides' in this issue as a whole and that this will create a rift in the game: one where everyone feels unsure about talking to other people and interacting. Because, let's face it, everyone in this situation feels frustrated or upset or uncomfortable in some kind of way. It will be hard to find a solution that will work for everyone. I'm not even sure a solution exists that will make everyone happy. But I think something to definitely remember is that we are all here because we love the game and want to continue playing in it, and are having this discussion because we are trying to find a way to optimize the game experience for as many people as possible. Yes, there will be consequences and people who aren't quite satisfied. But I think that, beyond that, it's also very, very important to remember that we are a community that strives based around a collective love of RP in this particular setting. We need one another to have this community in the first place. If we're making people feel alienated or unwelcome, I think that in the end, we'd all be losing. If something like this starts breaking people up, there won't be a community to enjoy, much less try to improve.

I'm not against any of the suggestions that were stated here, though I do think some would probably work better than others, but I think that the most important bit is about encouragement and working together. Slow-posting is a problem and not contacting a threadmate about anything that is making you lag immensely isn't considerate, but at the same time, I think it bears mentioning or reminding that slow-posting can definitely be a psychological problem or, as E said, a disability. I myself have this problem. A lot of the time, the reason I lag a lot and am afraid to contact people about my lag is because of several psychological reasons: depression/moodswings, issues with time management, perfectionism, lack of self-confidence, etc. But at the same time, I'm still here because I love playing with you all and I'm trying my best to meet expectations and enjoy myself at the same time. Slow-posting isn't always an indication of laziness or an intentional show of inconsideration. It can be just as painful and frustrating to the slow-poster as it is to their threadmates. It's a very individual problem and it's also something that requires a lot of patience, open-mindedness, and support.

So I think that, instead of focusing so much on finding ways to change things to make AC requirements tighter or things like that, I would like to suggest that we, as a player-group, focus more on improving communication and helping those who are more unsure about tagging and RP to become less insecure about the way they play or the speed at which they post. Slow-posting can be improved, but it requires the individual person's will and the support of others. The ratio of these two isn't always the same for every person, either, but I think that if everyone worked to support one another rather than finding ways to change mod regulations that might alienate some people, things would work out better.

Finally, I did end up voting 'yes' on the poll, not because I think that it will help against slow-posting, but because it will make it less frustrating for people with inactive canonmates. And that's pretty much my only reason for voting yes. For me personally, I also think that perhaps a small change in the AC requirements (such as a post within the past week, as opposed to the past two weeks) would help me remember to post more often and would perhaps ultimately help bring up my tag consistency. For others though, I can't say the same. But I do see an AC change as something that would help prevent character squatting and the like.

AND FINALLY-FINALLY: FELLOW SLOW TAGGERS, YOU ARE ALL BROS AND WE STILL LOVE YOU. NO REALLY. WE DO. HECK, IF ANYTHING, I LOVE YOU ALL. ♥~ LET'S LEARN TO BE AWESOME TOGETHER, ALRIGHT?! WE LOVE THIS GAME AND ARE STILL IN THIS GAME FOR A REASON. FIGHT AND WINNNNNNN! WE CAN DO ITTTTT~~~! ♥♥♥ I think we should all talk to one another and work together to win. c: Keep up the awesome, Damnedites!

Activity Check Discussion Post + Contact List Update

1/2 whoops, tl;dr 2-cents essay contribution.... (unsure)

2/2 + MESSAGE TO ALL FELLOW SLOW TAGGERS.