Notice Regarding the RP cleanup

[Alolan Ninetales]

Dear Users,

I made an announcement a week ago, stating that there would be changes to the RP Section. Now those changes are taking effect. I'll be explaining what has been done.

– The Subforums “Start Up Threads” and “Non Pokemon Rps” will no longer exist. They will be deleted shortly.

– The “Sign Up Threads” Subforums will be named the new “RP Archive” Subforum. We still have the old one for finished Rps.

– All active Sign-up threads and Start Up threads are in the main part of the RP forum now. This includes Non-Pokemon Rps.

– The Metronome forum will be where RP Discussions will go now as well as its previous use to discuss new Rp ideas and such.

– Private Rps will remain as they are.

–Any Rps/Sign Up threads/discussions that hadn't had posts in them since February 23rd and on, got archived.


If you have any questions, contact me or any of the RPG staff.

Octy

 

[DestinyOfDeoxys]

Hey! Where am i going to countinue my RP?

 

[Alolan Ninetales]

Hey! Where am i going to countinue my RP?

In the normal RPs section. If it's a private Rp, it will stay in the Private RP Subforum.

 

[Yun]

Well, I think I speak for myself and all GMs when I say: "Label yo s*** right, man."

In all seriousness, though; I think I'll have to now get into the habit of linking my Sign-Ups to my Start-Ups and labeling the titles. Otherwise, we'll be caught up in the confusion.

Oh, and also; maybe asking the staff this? Sticky the general chat thread? So as to keep everything a bit organized on the shelves for winter cleaning?

 

[Alolan Ninetales]

Well, I think I speak for myself and all GMs when I say: "Label yo s*** right, man."

In all seriousness, though; I think I'll have to now get into the habit of linking my Sign-Ups to my Start-Ups and labeling the titles. Otherwise, we'll be caught up in the confusion.

Oh, and also; maybe asking the staff this? Sticky the general chat thread? So as to keep everything a bit organized on the shelves for winter cleaning?

Sure. We plan on making thread tags for Sign-Ups and Start-up threads. You're also able to just start the RP in the same thread if you so choose.

and I'll get to it.

 

[Yun]

@Octy;

Alright then, that's a relief to hear XD Although, I may not be the one to actually start their Sta.U's in the Si.U's. Cleanliness is righteousness, I suppose haha.

Thanks for the heads up, Octy.

 

[Heroic Sociopath]

Gotta say, I'm not loving the change. What's with it? The old layout was good. Everything was organized, and most active threads were on the first page of their categories. It was damn convenient.

But now, if I want to, say, sign up for an RP, I'm gonna have to slog through a bunch of start ups and stuff. And then there's a chance that I'll miss an RP that I would have joined. And if I want to find a thread, it's gonna be a lot harder. The new layout is all cluttered is what I'm saying.

 

[Godzillawolf]

I kind of agree with Heroic Sociopath...It really seems far less organized and convenient here. Feels more like a downgrade than an upgrade.

 

[Yun]

They said something about adding a bunch of tags to the head.

Even then, old was most definitely the best. Hopefully we'll find a way to make due. However, I do think that the structuring and creation of Advertisement threads for RPs should be kept in mind. I'll ask the staff about it. We might need it, due to people having all of their crap cluttered.

 

[Flaze]

We decided to move the subforums to the main section so that more people would be able to see the announcements that came up on the board, we also wanted to unify the section a bit more as it felt a bit divided between those that hung out in normal RPs and those that hung out in non Pokemon more.

Anyways we are still working on things so I'd suggest to be patient before assuming anything.

 

[Fig]

The old design was an unmanageable piece of shit that made the forum look even more dead than it really was. The simple truth is, you don't have enough activity going on in here to justify the bevy of subforums we had all in the name of "organization".

If we want to get RPG back up and running (instead of the undead forum it was), we cannot afford to have it look dead. Or, for that matter, to use categorization that will almost certainly confuse newbies.

(It's but one of a few things that will need to change to get RPGs to be a valid forum again.)

 

[Alolan Ninetales]

Also, we plan on adding tags to threads for Sign Ups and Start-ups. That should help a bit as well.

 

[Heroic Sociopath]

The old design was an unmanageable piece of shit that made the forum look even more dead than it really was. The simple truth is, you don't have enough activity going on in here to justify the bevy of subforums we had all in the name of "organization".

If we want to get RPG back up and running (instead of the undead forum it was), we cannot afford to have it look dead. Or, for that matter, to use categorization that will almost certainly confuse newbies.

(It's but one of a few things that will need to change to get RPGs to be a valid forum again.)

We just have lulls sometimes. It's usually more busy, it's just that we slow down sometimes. Especially around the holidays. People are busy playing their new video games from Christmas. We've been picking back up lately, too.

And how was the organization confusing? Non-Pokemon RPs don't have Pokemon, Pokemon RPs do, and Sign-Ups are where you sign up. It's pretty self-explanatory. We've been plenty busy with the old layout before, just not in the past couple weeks. On the other hand, if I saw an RP forum with the layout we have now, all cluttered and whatnot, I wouldn't even bother signing up.

Also, we plan on adding tags to threads for Sign Ups and Start-ups. That should help a bit as well.

That would help, but RP threads move much faster than sign-ups. It's gonna be a hyuge pain in the butt to slog through start-ups to find sign-ups. Now, granted, merging start-ups and sign ups might help a bit, but it creates it's own problems: It's not gonna be easy referring back to your character's sign-up, and your thread would get very cluttered.

 

[Iteru]

On the forum index you can sort threads by prefixes (its the dropdown box which says "Prefix:"). That way you do not need to wade through forum pages.

 

[Flaze]

If you go with the option of having it all in the same thread then you wouldn't have to go too far to look at your sign up.

 

[Alolan Ninetales]

This is also why we encourage using the same thread for Sign-ups and Start-ups, so you don't have that problem.

 

[Godzillawolf]

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f424/my...ime-*me-hyokamen-brycen-*-136507/#post4193490

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f424/cutie-mark-crusaders-manehatten-branch-*-me-miles-power-*-142835/

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f425/ml...p-between-worlds-*-me-kamen-fanatic-*-125513/

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f431/kamen-rider-ferox-me-gw-99665/

These are all privite RPS me and friends are doing, they were in the nonpokemon section due to a mix up on our part (none of them are Pokemon related), but could they be moved to the Privite section? I know all but one haven't been posted on in a bit, but that's because one of my friends takes awhile to post and the others we alternate between doing them.

 

[Heroic Sociopath]

On the forum index you can sort threads by prefixes (its the dropdown box which says "Prefix:"). That way you do not need to wade through forum pages.

Yeah, but if the point is to make the forum more accessible to newcomers, would they know to do that?

If you go with the option of having it all in the same thread then you wouldn't have to go too far to look at your sign up.

This is also why we encourage using the same thread for Sign-ups and Start-ups, so you don't have that problem.

And doing his would interfere with that solution. While neither of these problems would arise with the old layout.

I'd also like to point out that we got plenty of users with the old layout. We only lost them around November. Now, it's a bit interesting that it's pretty much about the exact time we came out with this:
http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f424/roleplaying-game-rules-november-15-2012-a-142301/

Considering how the board looks now, it's pretty ironic that it's called the cleanup, huh?

 

[Fig]

The activity in these forums was never nowhere near enough to justify the bevy of subforums it had. This was the result of an overly ambitious RPG moderator having zero conception of how to run forums, and little ability to actually bring a project to fruitition before losing interest and moving on to other things.

1)They made the top-level forum unused. This is one of the worst design mistakes possible. The top-level forum should have been used for either start-up or sign-up.
2)They introduced needless split. Splitting start-up and sign-up may have been sensible; splitting pokemon and non-pokemon, outside extreme levels of activity (which this forum was never even close to) was an utterly senseless split.
3)They forced people to shuffle between two separate forum to see active RPs then find out the threads for joining them (for those that still took sign-up. Unnecessary hassle
4)They encouraged a bureaucratic approach to RPing, with ridiculously over-detailed RP sign-ins forms. This is horrible game design.
5)It's not immediately obvious to a newcomers to RPG what sign-up and start-up threads are, so needless confusion.

They were in every possible way a horrible idea. You are not getting them back. Move on.

 

[Alolan Ninetales]

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f424/my...ime-*me-hyokamen-brycen-*-136507/#post4193490

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f424/cutie-mark-crusaders-manehatten-branch-*-me-miles-power-*-142835/

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f425/ml...p-between-worlds-*-me-kamen-fanatic-*-125513/

http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f431/kamen-rider-ferox-me-gw-99665/

These are all privite RPS me and friends are doing, they were in the nonpokemon section due to a mix up on our part (none of them are Pokemon related), but could they be moved to the Privite section? I know all but one haven't been posted on in a bit, but that's because one of my friends takes awhile to post and the others we alternate between doing them.

Sure, I can do that.