I noticed a lot of people will post one wide message in the general forum to announce their being gone for long periods of time and similar subjects. Maybe there should be a specific spot just for that to make finding those sorts of messages easier for others on the forums.
We discussed this a few years back and still haven't settled on an "official" position for this... My personal opinion is that "Away" topics don't belong on the forums at all, as many hundreds of people visit the forums every day and it's unlikely the "away" announcement will be relevant to more than 12 of them. It's also a crapshoot whether the dozen people it's actually useful to will ever even run across it, and I imagine this problem would deepen if we had a whole forum that was nothing but people saying they were going to their grandma's for the weekend. Seems unlikely people will venture there every day just for kicks!
My current thinking at the moment is to require that if an absence is going to be shorter than a week, that you find some other way to let your RP partners know about it, such as putting it on your profile, making an OOC post in the actual RP thread, or PMing the people involved directly. When we first talked about this in 2013, I was talked out of making this a requirement because the PM system was badly in need of updating and it could be hard to type in multiple user names. I no longer believe this is a real reason any longer, so it's probably time to re-open this debate and maybe come up with an official policy.
My current thinking at the moment is to require that if an absence is going to be shorter than a week, that you find some other way to let your RP partners know about it, such as putting it on your profile, making an OOC post in the actual RP thread, or PMing the people involved directly. When we first talked about this in 2013, I was talked out of making this a requirement because the PM system was badly in need of updating and it could be hard to type in multiple user names. I no longer believe this is a real reason any longer, so it's probably time to re-open this debate and maybe come up with an official policy.
I've been pining for some sort of settlement on this matter for a long time because it's so disheartening to see so many of these topics appear, and often end up lost in oblivion without even a single response to it.
Soooo if we're opening the debate again (I'm assuming we're starting fresh here?) this is how I envision the system!
I don't see any reason why an absence of less than 2 to 4 weeks needs a topic at all, to be honest. I think a week is still too short of a time frame for this, as a lot of people go on casual AFKs for that long without posting about it. I also think there's a good chance people will say they're gone for a week only to return a few days later due to a change of plans and then the issue of topics flooding the board will still exist. My personal preference is that anything under a month can be dealt with perfectly in PMs, especially with the PM revamped and super accessible. But I can also see that being really harsh, so 2 weeks could work too.
Anything that is titled along the lines of 'To my RP partners' shouldn't be a topic at all regardless of the time they'll be gone. After all, they're specifically targeting only a dozen people or less in most cases, and it makes no sense to me to post it to thousands of members. Like I said at the beginning, a lot of these posts don't even get a single reply, so I'd like to see these topics disallowed as a whole. If they want to address their RP partners, they can do so in their RP topic or through a PM and make 100% sure their RP partners actually see it.
That's just my view on it. Maybe I missed something that would make this unrealistic, so I'm really curious to see what other people have to say!
Soooo if we're opening the debate again (I'm assuming we're starting fresh here?) this is how I envision the system!
I don't see any reason why an absence of less than 2 to 4 weeks needs a topic at all, to be honest. I think a week is still too short of a time frame for this, as a lot of people go on casual AFKs for that long without posting about it. I also think there's a good chance people will say they're gone for a week only to return a few days later due to a change of plans and then the issue of topics flooding the board will still exist. My personal preference is that anything under a month can be dealt with perfectly in PMs, especially with the PM revamped and super accessible. But I can also see that being really harsh, so 2 weeks could work too.
Anything that is titled along the lines of 'To my RP partners' shouldn't be a topic at all regardless of the time they'll be gone. After all, they're specifically targeting only a dozen people or less in most cases, and it makes no sense to me to post it to thousands of members. Like I said at the beginning, a lot of these posts don't even get a single reply, so I'd like to see these topics disallowed as a whole. If they want to address their RP partners, they can do so in their RP topic or through a PM and make 100% sure their RP partners actually see it.
That's just my view on it. Maybe I missed something that would make this unrealistic, so I'm really curious to see what other people have to say!
Sanne wrote:
Soooo if we're opening the debate again (I'm assuming we're starting fresh here?) this is how I envision the system!
Yes, I believe that is what we are doing!
I guess my main concern, personally, is finding the line and how to phrase it.
If someone is going to be AFK for a week because they're getting married or going on their first book tour to local coffee shops and book stores, probably more people than just the ones they are RPing with want to hear about it. But I agree, if it's "to my RP partners," then send it to your RP partners, there's more than 2000 people checking the forums every month.
Clearly, though, if we just ban topics with that title, people will just title it something else.
That is true!
I suppose classifying something as 'mundane' is too gray of an area to make it work. I consider things like "I have home/schoolwork/after class activites/sport clubs to tend to" or "I'm going out of town to relatives" to be of the 'probably only your RP partners will want to know about it' type. As it stands, they also appear to be the most common absences on the board. Maybe we can use those as a starting point? Cons, family situations and so forth are more related to the community as a whole rather than individual RP partners and are less frequent, so I don't find those as big of a problem. Chores, school, activities and being out of town on the other hand happen very frequently.
I suppose classifying something as 'mundane' is too gray of an area to make it work. I consider things like "I have home/schoolwork/after class activites/sport clubs to tend to" or "I'm going out of town to relatives" to be of the 'probably only your RP partners will want to know about it' type. As it stands, they also appear to be the most common absences on the board. Maybe we can use those as a starting point? Cons, family situations and so forth are more related to the community as a whole rather than individual RP partners and are less frequent, so I don't find those as big of a problem. Chores, school, activities and being out of town on the other hand happen very frequently.
I've never really given any thought to any of this. I see the away messages, but I don't really pay attention to them, since they don't apply to me, especially on people who have anon characters and rp with me on those characters. No idea if they are going to be gone, so the easiest thing for them to do in reality would just be to pm everyone they rp with, since the pm system has a way to massivly message other people, it really should not be a problem to pick the 10 people you rp with and send them that message at once.
But for certain things I think it would be good, like Sanne said. A convention or a serious family situation that leaves you with a blank window. That would be something worthy of posting to a 'away' board. Since you could maybe get help and or find people who are going to the same board to meetup, but then it boils down to telling people what is important and what isn't important. For some that week gone to go to a zoo is pretty important so everyone's gotta know about it, for others, not so much.
But for certain things I think it would be good, like Sanne said. A convention or a serious family situation that leaves you with a blank window. That would be something worthy of posting to a 'away' board. Since you could maybe get help and or find people who are going to the same board to meetup, but then it boils down to telling people what is important and what isn't important. For some that week gone to go to a zoo is pretty important so everyone's gotta know about it, for others, not so much.
Blackito wrote:
For some that week gone to go to a zoo is pretty important so everyone's gotta know about it, for others, not so much.
Yes. This. What qualifies as an important life event in one person's mind is going to be super duper different in another's. Which leaves me with the need for writing very careful language when crafting the guideline.
If someone is looking for support or for people to meet up with, in my mind, that's a totally different topic than just saying "I'm away" and to me is perfectly acceptable for a smalltalk board!
I think maybe we gear the policy to draw a line at the subject of the post. If the subject is "I'm going to be away" then we change it. But if the subject is "this super awesome / super sad thing is happening in my life" and there is a P.S, I'll be away for a while, then that's a post that's fitting with the community.
Weird how something so incredibly simple ends up being really complicated on a person to person level.
Ben wrote:
I think maybe we gear the policy to draw a line at the subject of the post. If the subject is "I'm going to be away" then we change it. But if the subject is "this super awesome / super sad thing is happening in my life" and there is a P.S, I'll be away for a while, then that's a post that's fitting with the community.
I like the idea of what has the ruling theme in the post. If the focus is on the event, then there's no problem with it. But if the focus is on being away for x days without little other info, then it becomes only relevant to a bunch of people.
It's like saying "I'm going to a con this year, is anyone else going, what cons have you been to etc." with "I'll be gone during these days" in it somewhere, then that's very different from "I have homework to do so I'm not going to respond to RPs until next week, just letting you all know".
Edit: In my (heat) exhaustion I didn't even realize I was just rephrasing your post. Whoops! I didn't mean to do that, I just agree with you.
Still can't promise anything, but for the sake of discussion... Draft of potential guideline, to be stickied in the smalltalk forum:
Quote:
Remember that many hundreds of people check these forums every day. Please help us reduce topic clutter by delivering messages meant for a few people directly to those people!
If the primary purpose of your post is to let your RP/chat partners know that you won't be around for awhile, don't post it! Private message your RP/chat partners directly instead, or post a message in your actual RP topics where you can be sure your partners will see it.
Of course, if you are making the post to announce a major life event (getting married, going on a book tour for your first novel, etc.), you're looking for members to meet up with at a convention, or anything with wider relevance, and there's just a PS that you might also not be on the site, that's a different story.
Be aware that as of _______, moderators will delete AFK topics on sight.
If the primary purpose of your post is to let your RP/chat partners know that you won't be around for awhile, don't post it! Private message your RP/chat partners directly instead, or post a message in your actual RP topics where you can be sure your partners will see it.
Of course, if you are making the post to announce a major life event (getting married, going on a book tour for your first novel, etc.), you're looking for members to meet up with at a convention, or anything with wider relevance, and there's just a PS that you might also not be on the site, that's a different story.
Be aware that as of _______, moderators will delete AFK topics on sight.
I really like it!
Kim, I feel that that is very well phrased and ready to go. Personally have no suggestions for it, except maybe to mention (in case people still don't know?) that you can mass-message your RP partners in one PM. Otherwise it's pretty much perfect!
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