Posted by Kim on December 30, 2013, 11:41pm
This year has been downright brutal. It's seen myself, the moderators, and even, it seems, a lot of the userbase dealing with an usual level of illnesses and emergencies.When the year opened, it was my goal to make it the year of the group, and get groups entirely out of the alpha stage of development and into a fully released, supported and documented form. Groups did make enormous strides this year, and in some ways aren't even recognizable as their old selves; but I'm still not satisfied! It wasn't as focused a year of the group as I had hoped at the outset. There's more to be done, and more SHALL be done. I still expect groups to reach their fully released state early in 2014.
Given all the life upsets that went down for me, updates came slower this year than they have in the past. Even so, looking back, I have to say this year was a great one for the RPR. Let's take a stroll down memory lane together, shall we?
January & February 2013
January 1st and a special record was reached: 12345 characters stored on the RP Repository! Thanks to Alecia for catching the moment it occurred.
The RPR community gathered together for our first ever official live chats on the craft of RP. Every weekend for almost eight weeks! Check out the resultant articles:Do players have a responsibility to make sure that everyone else is having fun, too?
Is online RP a writing craft?
The definition of god modding
Variations on "normal"
Playing special characters
So you want to start a RP group, part 1
So you want to start a RP group, part 2
Also in February, Sanne set a site record by collecting 100 accolades. She even wrote a handy guide for people seeking to match her record!
March
Jane served up a series of tutorials revealing her tips and tricks for making character profiles extra stunning. Take a trip down memory lane with part 1, part 2 and part 3
While all that profile prettifying was going on, I was behind the scenes installing some neat upgrades to the site.
March of this year was also the first time the fix-it gnome was ever seen scampering across an error page!
April
April opened with the infamous Kudos cleanup occurred, when we finally got our act together to be clear about what the point of kudos were, clarify those policies in the form of guidelines, and enforce them. It was sort of a shake up and challenged a lot of expectations, but we got through it with only a few scuffed knees. And now kudos are pretty darn on-point.
But April also saw us celebrating our third birthday! We released the RP Finder and a ton of new templates like these:
The help section was revamped to make finding articles easier, and a ton of new help articles were added.
We got a first look at our eventual new logo (and a bunch of other potential options as well!)
The now very popular Looking for RP forum was added.
AND the site set a new record for highest sales in a week when we introduced
May
In May, the site got a new set of genre mascots to greet us on the front page.
A huge round of applause goes out to Wizard, Heimdall, Petrichor, Nuttermonk, Highjinx, Ethelle, Degu, LittleBattyLady, Rikelle and Limeface for providing the art this year.
June
For the first time ever, the site held a mid-summer art trade, instead of just the usual winter art trade! This was thanks to the efforts of Loki, who volunteered to run this event, delighting artists everywhere.
July
In July, we celebreated Moderator Appreciation Day.
August
August opened with a bang! In the first week, it saw us replace our old times new roman "logo" that had been at the top of our header for the past 3.5 years with a new and improved actual logo, created by the ultra-talented Lady Noir at Cafe Noir Arts.
Plus, only a few days later, we passed the 7,000 user mark!
Then, the video that Darth_Angelus created to introduce the RP Finder was shown at Dragon*Con.
Our fantastic users rounded out the month by providing us all with tutorials on topics near and dear to their hearts during the rest of August:
Advanced Character Development: Rekindling Stagnant Characters by Ben
The Highjinx method of character development by Highjinx
Lily's guide to running a table top game online by TheLily
Sanne's guide to using the RP Tutorial by Sanne
September
In September, the site celebrated Talk Like a Pirate Day by showing off all our nautically (or air-shippy or banditry) themed characters, and started selling t-shirts and temporary tattoos!
While we're talking about t-shirts -- This is the last two weeks to order them before they go away again for I don't know how long! If you want one, get it now.
And as always, in September the site harassed Kim with ridiculous questions for Ask a Stupid Question Day.
See my answers to questions about the RPR
My answers to questions about me
And my answers to questions about Life, the Universe and Everything parts 1 and parts 2
October
October saw a big giant major update to Groups, and two celebrations!
First, we celebrated Ada Lovelace day by looking at her totally 100% awesome life and talking about female role models in math, science and engineering. Go ahead and read her story, you won't be disappointed!
And of course, the RPR characters trick or treated the forums in October.
November
In November, it was the end of an era: Sanne stepped down from the moderator team after nearly three years of steadfast service. In her place, Ben picked up the mantle.
We also celebrated Who Day, the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who hitting the airwaves!
December
December is the season for The Festival of Being Excellent To Each Other, a traditional RP Repositorian holiday. This is the magical time of year when we pause and reflect on what makes RP truly fun: strong friendships, vibrant communities, and the connection, love and trust that we have for our most favoritest of RP partners.
Check out the articles that were written about strengthening our bonds of RP friendship this year:
Giving thanks for RP
The Heroism of hurt feelings
Being Excellent to Each Other and "Being Nice"
How to leave a RP the right way
Kobayashi maru and you
There was also another HUGE update released, again expanding the functionality of Groups. This time, it was moderation tools, to help keep your subcommunities peaceful and friendly.
Plus, there was a sorely needed update that drastically cut forum and site lag from what it was before. Here's to many more lag-reductions in the days ahead!
Comments
TheLily
December 31, 2013
7:38am
Hurrah for a new year. I look forward to all the great things that will come with a brand new year. Thank-you for all the things you helped put together, Kim and to all the other moderators who helped things go smoothly this year. 
Pineapple
December 31, 2013
11:15am