Forums » Smalltalk » Thoughts on Refreshing an Rp Group?

Say you have an old Group, or an out dated one, or it's been quiet in terms of responses, would it be appropriate to refresh it?

What do I mean by 'refresh'? Basic how it sounds, just clean out all the responses and empty the group and start fresh, maybe keep the old stuff in a back log of sorts in case someone from the old group wants to pick it back up again some day.

You'd give a warning about it, of course, so people can be like 'oh don't clean it yet, I'll be back in' and they tell you an estimate of time, but I don't know how long that warning should stand before you actaully clean out the group.

I don't want this to be a big thing, so I want to make sure I hit all bases, and gen just wanna hear other people's ideas on it.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to refresh a group! You don't get one attempt ever at a RP concept. I think you should feel free to fix things up and reboot!

I do think it'd be most polite if you saved old users previous work. A lot of people feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them if they suddenly notice that RPs they cared about are suddenly gone. There's a feature that a lot of people don't know about where you can Archive an old group. You go to the group's settings, then Founder Options and then select 'Archive Group'. This will stop the group appearing around the site, but members can still view their old posts by going to "Your Stuff" -> "Groups" -> "View Archived Groups". Alternatively, you could just create a new forum category called something like "Archived RPs" and move all former RPs there.

I'm actually rebuilding my old group as we speak. I'm not going to delete what people have contributed to it already, but the group's lore and some of its core concept are changing enough to make it redundant now, so it'll be archived.

I'm on the fence about this myself... But ultimately, I know the changes I'm making to my group will make it easier for me to retain my investment for longer. Its core concept will still stay the same, but I'm hoping the changes I make will make it more clear what the group is for and how I would like people to engage with my setting. There were things I did not fully commit to and did not realize it would bother me if I gave people certain options, or tried to adhere to certain things in every part of the setting.

My biggest concern is whether or not it's a good idea to change a group from a 13+ space to an 18+ space. None of its content will change, but the combination of being an older person online with very different experiences, to the way the internet's culture and attitude about kid-welcoming spaces online has changed in recent years, has just made me feel ill-equipped and uncomfortable managing a space with minors in it. It's not really the kids' faults, as much as it is their parents or other adults who like getting sanctimonious about everything, but it's made me feel like I need to walk on eggshells in 13+ spaces and I don't want to feel like I'm being forced to babysit in my own space that I also want to participate in for fun.

Plus, I want to move the group to Discord, and all of those problems become so much worse in live chats.

I have valid reasons for this but I still feel bad if this results in effectively kicking people out. I've never liked gating kids out of places online, but the culture today has made it very clear that you need to do more active work than just not being uncomfortable with age differentials in communities. Back in the day, that was all we needed... Things used to be simpler. *sigh*

Anyway, in light of that, I wonder if keeping posts is actually a good idea if they're by people who can no longer access a group? It would be kind of unfair to them, so that's also a concern of mine. Maybe I could give people warning to back up their posts before flicking the switch, that way the people who care enough would have some forewarning, and then I can delete older posts to avoid an awkward situation where a minor cannot view their post history, but adults can. Something about leaving that up as an archive gives me bad vibes, in that situation.

My experience with my group is it needs a refresh periodically. I simply have an 'Archive' section at the bottom of the forum where all comatose threads go. The main issue has been threads where someone deletes their characters/accounts making a lot of line-outs in them. Also, some leave the group for whatever reason and so if I see something that hasn't been replied to in a long time, I will check the member list to see if the characters are still members. If they have left, those threads go into the archive. I don't delete anything there because if it has been abandoned either by character deletion or by leaving the group, making the thread unviewable, the thread becomes property of the group as part of the historical archive.

As far as the age limit, I have bounced around from having my group 18+ and 21+, finally deciding on keeping it at 21+.
Your concerns are extremely valid as far as adults mingling with minors, and as much as it is good to be inclusive in general roleplaying, one has to look out for their own personal safety as well as those of minors, and unfortunately that usually involves segregating the two.

For this reason alone, I wish we had the ability to copy one of our groups. That way we could easily make a duplicate of it that we could then strip into a skeleton of the group so that the former group can remain and serve as an archive while we have a new and clean base to start out with without having to remake everything from scratch. I do not think we already have that feature and if we do then excuse my ignorance as I haven't been here for a while. Either way I think that as long as you do inform people and make sure you somehow archive all the contributions so far, reusing the concept is not an issue at all!