Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Absence topics

Hi,

Recently I have lurked the smalltalk forums a lot, but I'm finding it less and less fun to go in there. I appreciate people taking breaks and letting their friends know, but the number of 'back in a few days' or 'not going to post for a week' topics is staggering. Wouldn't it make a ton more sense to send a private message to the people you roleplay with and let them know what's up? A note in your profile helps a ton more too because who's to say the people you play with look at the smalltalk forums first to see where you are?

I find myself avoiding smalltalk because every other topic is one that's not relevant to me in any way and I'm sure 8,995 other members don't find most of these brb topics that relevant either, as nice as the intentions are of these topics. Hiatus topics are not what I expect to find in a smalltalk forum to be honest

Maybe this is little more than a small rant but it's become so bothersome to me and some of my friends that I felt the need to speak up about it. I don't mean to hurt any feelings, I just find it really really hard to see the point in creating a whole topic because you're gone a couple of days and are letting less than half a dozen people know about it

Thanks for listening and I hope something can be done

I would much rather want to be able to post my status on my profile page so only my friends know that I will be gone. If we were able to do that, it would most likely change the view of the Smalltalk forum.

We've been debating adding a rule along the lines of "If you're going to be gone for less than a week, do not post about it in Smalltalk" because the number of people saying they are going to be out for a day or two is really astonishing, and that kind of info should really go directly into the topic where that person was RPing to better guarantee that their partners will actually see it in a timely manner.

@SpilledInk: I assume by "want to be able to post my status on my profile page" you mean doing so in a way that results in a notifications feed update? Because you are of course a able to write any such information already.

I understand your frustrations, but I RP with over 7 people on a daily basis, so to send a PM to that big a group is really hard. I also am frequent in a dream on Furcadia that has several players that frequent RPR, so that adds another 10+ to my list of people I would need to alert to absences.

Instead of making a rule or forcing people to PM, I would suggest that a way to handle this situation would be to add a separate area (like we have areas for RPS, smalltalk, creative games, etc) for absences to be posted. That way it doesn't clutter up the Smalltalk page, but yet it isn't forcing RPers to message a whole bunch of people. Because if they are going to be absent, players aren't going to have the time to look up all the names and put them all into one PM message.

I agree with Celestina. I feel like each time I post a 'break' topic, like recently I did, I'm cluttering the thread, but I just don't know how else to let people know in a way that I'm not leaving anyone out. Since a lot of people is getting busy, or is having problems, I also consider a space solely for that would be very helpful

I feel a forum of its own would be inefficient though. I wouldn't be checking a forum like that every day just on the off chance my RP partner(s) might be away for a few days. The issue is more likely finding an effective way to reach the people you RP with/talk to often, and posting topics on any forum has a really high chance of it being overlooked. Not to mention you're posting in a place aimed towards thousands of players for the sake of a handful who might not even get to see it in time. Most of these topics also have the exact same titles, like "To my RP partners" or "Those who are RPing with me" or "Taking a break", so we'd have a forum with the same titles used constantly to add to the confusion!

Personally, I would prefer a way to limit it to our friendlist through a notification of some sort. Putting a status at the top of your profile that gets sent to your friends' newsfeed means that

1) everybody who needs to know is told of your absence
2) it's visible to the public whenever they look you up
3) there's not an extra forum for moderators to worry about
4) the update doesn't get lost in the dozens of other updates out there

I don't want anyone to be stopped from letting their friends know what's up, but these topics are becoming so frequent it makes me dizzy. A bunch of my friends are too timid to speak up about it, but I know it bothers them a lot. I'm glad we're getting a chance to discuss it and look for a way to make everyone win.

re: profile updates

My fear here is putting ourselves in charge of something facebooky, where people can post abstract status updates that then need moderator attention. There are a zillion scenarios where moderators would have to intervene, policing every player on the site:

• Swearing, abuse, hurtful vague booking
• Preventing people from RPing directly in their status updates so as to not completely flood friend's notifications who are not directly playing with you. And seriously, who wants to be in charge of STOPPING RP?
• There's probably so many people we couldn't police this in any effective manner, and that makes me nervous.

And then we run into concerns of privacy permissions. Would we have to create "friends" only type notifications? Notifications only for certain types of friends? This would without a doubt be requested immediately and often, further complicating the system.

We could switch to a fixed list of options for status, such as "Available," "Away" or "Busy," but this is pretty close to meaningless. If someone is "away," are they away for the next 3 months while they tour India, or are they away for the weekend to visit their grandparents one town over? Do we really want to see someone switching themselves from "Busy" to "Available" and back again every day when they leave for school and return home from school?

Which makes posting in a forum the preferred option for most, because it 1) generates a descriptive notification for their friends ("Too busy to play") AND lets them write further information in the topic itself that elucidates when their availability will return. There's almost no way around this without creating an entirely new system, or simply mandating that people place these types of AFK messages directly into their RP threads or send PMs to their RP partners.

For people who do not use RPR but still need to be informed of someone's absence, as in the case of Furcadia players, I question whether there is any difference between simply putting the information directly into one's profile or posting it on a forum; non RPR users are equally unlikely to find it in either location, as they won't be getting notifications either way.

A third option comes to mind, which would be a button along the lines of "PM everyone I'm RPing with" that would go out and find all of the names of people that have posted in IC threads that the both of you posted in the last month. It creates a little bit of complexity in terms of figuring out which characters to mail (anonymous and non-anonymous create challenges in terms of not flooding a person with a ton of anon characters with the same message over and over, but whittling it down to one char per person has the potential of revealing the identity's of anon chars, etc.) but this is surmountable. The main tripping point is people who RP in PMs, it would be hard for the system to determine what was an IC message and what wasn't.

Still, this type of button would remove most excuses related to finding typing a dozen or so names separated by commas too time consuming or difficult, would prevent all issue with Mods having to deal with swearing in a new public space on the site, put a stop to zillions of AFK topics that don't apply to 99% of the people who see it, and rely on already existing systems. What it does not address is the issue of off-site people who need to be told; but again, I seriously doubt that just writing it in your profile is any worse for those people than it is to put it in a forum.

What about making an option that is ONLY "Away/Unavailable for x days/weeks/months"? Rather than treat it as a regular online/offline status that is bound to change multiple times a day, it can only be used for one reason, and that's being unavailable for a set period.

There's no message to moderate, it can go on someone's profile really easily (so it covers RPR and non-RPR members), and it serves a purpose for both IC AND OOC absences rather than limiting it to RP absences only. It's a simple toggle for the user to announce a day or longer of absence, and it sounds like it would be a simple option to toggle for members whether they want to receive these updates in their feeds or not.

You can always update your profile with the reason why you're absent. The notification can link to the profile as well. It would be the same thing as posting a topic in that sense.

Is that a good idea/something that could be achieved without too much trouble? I find all other ideas to sound like more effort than they're worth, both for you to implement and for users to figure out in the long run.

I really hadn't realized until now that this bothered people, so anything that is easy to code will work, really. I could just put in my profile that I'll be absent, but I'm not sure my rp partners will see it, so the option Sanne proposed sounds like a pretty good solution if it can be done

why don't you guys just add your friends to imo or skype or something

then you could talk to them on your phone while you're gone

Yes, I agree with this. When you have a lot of partners, it's especially difficult to let everyone know and NOT miss anyone. Especially anon-characters.

Not everyone has Skype or imo, and not everyone can access internet on their phones or have a phone.

then send a telegraph I guess, unless they're Amish

Ross, the offbeat sarcasm isn't super helpful right now, we're trying to have a serious discussion of policy and the jokes are derailing things and minimizing the various conundrums that people are trying to solve.

@Sanne - It's not impossible. It adds another UI puzzle for unraveling, of course!

I really did offer an easy solution, though. It's 2013, most people have smartphones by the time they're 3, and imo is free

Many people (myself included) do not want to give every single person they RP with direct access to themselves, though. If all the hundreds of people I have ever RPed with could text me or call me whenever they wanted I'd never get anything done, and many I was simply not that close to. That is a level of personal access that's impractical for many. Plus, given the complexities anon characters cause on the site, it's hard to imagine it would get any better when smartphones enter the mix.

ok yeah, the anon thing pretty much throws a wrench in it. silly anons

I have to agree with Kim, there are very few people I know online that I don't know in real life who have my phone number. Privacy and whatnot. Not saying anyone is a creep, but there are scary people lurking online. I also do not have any internet access on my phone, and I use Skype on my computer very rarely. Also if the whole point is that you are too busy to be able to be on, then that would apply to other media as well, such as Skype or imo.

I really like Sanne's idea of the toggling 'away/busy/whatever' for x amount of days/times and such. That is a clever idea and I would like it very much! I suppose for anon characters, they might have to stick with a method of PM. I don't know what could be used for them that could be sensible and easy enough to put in.

The influx of topics concerning people being away from rpr or busy with life outside the computer is fairly mind boggling. On the one hand, the off topic section is there to be JUST THAT: a place where you can go and basically post whatever you want to (which us why I lurk there so much); however in its current state it is basically a graveyard for players saying "BRB GAIZ!!!1" and hardly anything else. Any topics that actually are interesting or innovative get pushed down the list and to the back pages within a day.

Personally, I like the idea of having a separate sub-forum for this, but I agree with everything that's been said about it (no one would check it, it would just be another thing to clean up and manage, etc), so maybe just posting in the topics you have going or sending a pm to who you are doing with - a drop down list of members would be good for this depending on how eager someone is to sift through around 8500 members. I haven't rp'd much here, if at all, but don't mistake that as some sort of lax, uncaring attitude. I think we just need to break down what would be simplest to do and attack it that way.

Forgive any typos, I sent this from my phone.

A quick one on this note:

If such a thing was implemented, perhaps it could detect which members you might be looking for when you start to type their names. So if you begin with mine, "Cop" might get you a few things, but "Copper_" will nail you my full username, which you could then pick and have it automatically add to the recipient list. Surely remembering the usernames of your friends and RP partners is worth it, yes?