Site Improvement - A Community Project

[Flagmauth]

Greetings. I, your benevolent and all-powerful Supreme Dictator-for-life would like to ask your assistance. I have several things I would like to move on with the forum and I have been having trouble getting around to doing them. In my clearly infinite wisdom, I have determined that the fix for this is to have the community vote on what needs doing, which I will hopefully pay attention to.

Among other things, the items I've been considering are listed here:
Removing the somewhat apathetic other admins :: My apologies to PW and Doom, but there's next to no need for them to have their positions and they really haven't done much with those positions anyhow.
Adding additional smilies and GIFs :: I've been wanting to include more smilies for the enjoyment of members for a while now, as well as animated GIFs that would be amusing.
Changing the forum theme/name :: This is fairly low priority and probably won't happen unless you all push for it.
Basic RPing rules/guidelines :: Some rudimentary framework for people unfamiliar with RPing to use as reference and to establish some common ground among existing members
Titles :: No offense to Doom but the large part of the existing Title system has post requirements that are FAR too high for anyone to conceivably reach and don't necessarily fit with the site's theme. I've already remedied this partway, but still.
Better site formatting :: Re-organization of the site rules and whatnot to be less confusing and more complete.

More to come...

[A Blind Guy]

I"ll vote for the RPing guidelines, lord knows I need them.

[OperaPhantom]

Ditto to BlindGuy

And… it's kind of early to be asking this…but………
Will you be keeping the site alive after May 2014.   

[Flagmauth]

If I have anything to say about it, this site will last until the day I die.  

[OperaPhantom]

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!      
SO MUCH LOVE!

[Flagmauth]

Yeah, if for Opera's use if nothing else I believe I will have to include more smilies.

[President WIN]

Personally, I'd like to keep my petty power. However, I see no need to flaunt it when the forum is this small.

I suggest that until the forum gets bigger, I could disable the visible title of admin, but keep the power so that I can help and such.

That way, Mycro would appear as the owner, and everyone else would just appear equal, but Doom and I could still help out when we're free.

We could switch back on the admin titles when not everyone knows each other in real life, or when we just get a large number of people.

[Flagmauth]

Well, in accordance with this sort of thread I believe my priorities will be forum re-arrangement and rules/guide creation.

Next item: Change the theme of the forum? Yea or nay?

[OperaPhantom]

The Aspergian in me says nay, because I don't want that much of a change.

[Flagmauth]

So, Opera was complaining lately about how the repeated OOC posts tend to derail the storyline (assuming, given the nature of the forums, that it wasn't derailed to begin with). I told her about the OOC forums we used to have, where each category of RP (Standard, Continuity, and Unclassified) would have its own OOC sub-forum wherein every single RP in each category would have an OOC thread, for the discussion of things in the RP that aren't narrative in nature as well as dice-rolling posts.

I ended up deleting them because nobody was using them and they were generally a brass-plated pain in the neck at the time. Thoughts?

[A Blind Guy]

(I never knew of these OOC forums, and it sounds like a pain to manage from your description, so I like the way we are doing it now with () for OOC thoughts.

[Flagmauth]

They're not terribly hard to manage, the issue was making sure that everyone actually used them.

Though I must say that it is indeed a little more convenient to continue doing it the way we are now, so if someone references something we don't have to hop back and forth between threads, and since the whole reason for this is to prevent disruption of the story when owing to the very nature of RPs that's not that big of a deal for the most part it's actually not all that important to me, I just realized. Of course if the majority of you lesser beings valued members decide you want it I'll put it in of course. I'm nothing if not democratic...sometimes.

[OperaPhantom]

I have a new suggestion for site improvement:
A "Suggestion Box" thread.

I know, with a suggestion box people could just be trolls and put down nonsense and just give people a hard time rather than give actual input, {I read the book and was in the play Up The Down Staircase, I know how useless suggestion boxes can be} but it would make it easier for us to give our input rather than  track Mycro down and have him try and change it.
It would also be one specific place for comments instead of millions of individual threads.
[Is that too much for you, Mycro? Thoughts?]

[Sirius Lupin]

Personally, I think that's a great idea. After all, it would give us a place where we could put down our thoughts and feelings about certain aspects of the site, what to change about it, and all that.

[Flagmauth]

Agreed, that's kinda what the Senate forum is for; a place where people can post ideas and receive feedback while getting my attention, so I'm not entirely sure this would need a whole new forum. Plus the fact that instead of trying to track me down in meatspace, you could just send a PM

[Flagmauth]

Anyway, I'm resurrecting this topic (again) for the purpose of seeing if any of you [s]mortals[/s] members have ideas for the title system, which I'm currently reworking [s]when I should be studying[/s] in my spare time. I have so far, in no particular order:

Recruit
Neophyte
Initiate
Apprentice
Enthusiast
Hobbyist
Adept
Virtuoso
Maniac
Obsessive
Nolifer

Note: If you have any idea, any at all, no matter how stupid you personally think it is, I command you to put it in here. I find that these sort of things work best by spewing material and then sorting through the resulting mass of ideas to find something that works, trimming down as needed and distilling it into something great.

Now go, do my creative work for me!

[OperaPhantom]

I'm not creative. I can't come up with titles. Someone else do it, please.

[Flagmauth]

That's. No. Excuse. >

[President WIN]

Actually, it is. However, why she would waste a post just to tell you that she's not going to post, I don't know.

[Flagmauth]

I demand titles

[President WIN]

I sent you some a while ago, though I don't know if they fit at all with anything.

[OperaPhantom]

Another suggestion of unrelatedness:
A way to invite people to the chat. I KNOW PEOPLE NEVER USE THE CHAT!!! But by the time you send someone a PM and post in a forum about you being on, everyone logs off.

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