Thar Shaddin

So I was wondering. What with half of us being crazy, half of us being jerks, and half of us being unable to count fractions, how many "good writers" do you all think we've gone and scared away from the forums?

I'm sure I've upset a few with character application reviews. I mean, there's some responses there in the old/unused characters bin that I'm sure make me look bad. And I'm not saying the crew here is anything but the best I've ever seen... But I'm sitting here, mildly inebriated, and I had to ask...

Also, this is a good way to test the poll system. I can already see it's totally messed up and needs fixing. Black on red? Who's idea was that?

Well, I certainly do not want to be pretentious by discus in community affairs even before my acceptation. However I thought that since I am a 'potential member whom you can scare away' my opinion might be useful.

I have read through about fifteen old/unused character threads after reading your question.
I think that you (as in the staff/community in its whole, not just you personally) has indeed scared away people, no doubt. However you (have to) do that in order to protect the almost unique level of high quality writings on this board. Your high standards are rather distressing but you also have a great community and brilliant writers.

There are of course always possibilities like having "trainee areas" or "trial boards" but I think you neither want nor need that. There are tons of other RP boards out there and a lot of them barely have any requirements at all, but they tend to lack quality too. If people do not want to proof-read their writings then they will have to go to boards which do not require them to; yet those who do respect language will find a place here.
That is a win-win, and if not, ah well, you still have your neat board :-).

As a community, I think this is the best I have ever seen, no doubt. Frankly, the high writing quality IS intimidating, and that much is unavoidable. The commaraderie we have almost resembles a family in some strange way, which may make newcomers nervous.

What I would say is we are perhaps less proactive in attracting new members. Rather than thinking "What can we stop that pushes them away?" think "What can we do to help them come in?"

Actually scared off? I would tend to think not very many. Boards like this will probably always have an attrition rate: people get busy with other things, or forget about it, or get distracted, or whatever. I don't think it has anything to do with people being scared, in most cases.

Some people might not care for the community or the posters, but I would think that's more of a taste issue than anything else.

As for the standards? They can't be that high. You guys let me post.

So I would tend to think that, while obviously people do leave, it's probably not out of being scared or intimidated.

I agree with Lylessa. Most people leave because of other stuff. I've had to come and go quite a lot lately myself. As for the "scare" factor, no I think most ppl just laugh and shrug it off. Get annoyed? Perhaps, but it seems to be ( for the most part ) for a good reason and to keep everyone honest. I'll admit I've been annoyed ( and annoying ) myself but I realized that it's for the good of Thar-kind

Railtus Anstrun wrote:What I would say is we are perhaps less proactive in attracting new members. Rather than thinking "What can we stop that pushes them away?" think "What can we do to help them come in?"

As to this I would also have to agree. Getting more talenteds in would be a good idea

Pfft, Ya haven't scared me off. "I tell you what" lol
My first character Jaesin had some problems fitting in due to the storyline I had originally had planned for him, so what?
Me and Railtus sat down and worked out some issues with Devon, and hopefully he gets approved. Ofcourse I had to not let him be a vampire, but hey, whats one less blood sucker in the world right? (for now)
No offense to Bela or Jenica ofcourse. Haha.

Lylessa Uluki or something like that wrote:As for the standards? They can't be that high. You guys let me post.

She has a point. Why do we let her post? I mean, I personally have banned her at least a dozen times. I don't get no respect.

Honestly, you don't want me answering this question, cause I generally find I don't like people of late. No offense.


On a serious note...

She has a point. Why do we let her post? I mean, I personally have banned her at least a dozen times. I don't get no respect.

That isn't true at all.

You don't get any respect. A double negative is a positive.

Honestly, you don't want me answering this question, cause I generally find I don't like people of late. No offense.

Yes, please don't shatter my fragile ego.

Well, it's kind of hard to tell. Any people that are truly intimidated by this community and have half a brain probably don't apply in the first place, which makes it nearly impossible to gauge. As for the ones that have less than half a brain, they normally leave because they get pissed when the every-other-word-is-illegible profile for their immortal demigod character is rejected repeatedly. As for the one's that get accepted and leave, they usually leave for some other reason, but if they are actually scared off they didn't need to be here in the first place.

I agree with the point about high standards. If I refer back to the "Grammatical Errors" thread, we can see how high the standard of English / American practised on this board is.

A lot of people find this difficult to impossible to achieve. Those people either never apply or get turned away at the door.

Personally, I'm glad for it. I'd rather play in a smaller community like this one than be innundated with members who write like a blindfolded monkey with a banana somewhere painful.

Well, I really like you guys, and I think that this experience will help me "flesh out" Devon for my book. So, in that sense, please forgive me for my grammatical errors every now and then. I get too relaxed sometimes.

I'm late!

Fashionably late!

Go me.

Anyway, I like the way the board is set up. You do scare away people but it's a good thing. I've tried to get my writing friends to join, but they don't stick with it and were scared away. But if they can't keep up, oh well. They're not as busy as I am, though. They just didn't feel like they could write as well.

I don't want sucky players to join because they aren't fun to rp with. Granted, a few of you will remember when I first joined I sucked at writing. I got better though, and now I can stand somewhat equally with everyone here. A training area might be a good idea, but I would say it should be a separate but sister board. "Learn from the masters!"

Interestingly, I think the small community size is actually a scare-off factor.

I nearly got scared-off myself because it was difficult finding a quest I could fit myself into.

There's a small, actively posting community, and most of it is engaged in these incredibly long and complicated quests where you have to PM to ask to get involved and then feel like you need to read through 10 pages or so of RP, 6 or so pages of character backgrounds, and ~30-50 pages of OoC communication to truly understand.

Or.. that was my impression of it.

I don't think the length/complexity of the quests is necessarily a bad thing (in fact, it shows a great deal of dedication and forethought), but I just wanted to bring that up as a member of the 'new guard.'

That is actually a really good and valid point, Daq. It's very hard for a new player to start because everyone's already involved in threads/plots.

I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a list of INactive characters for the newbies to glance over and see if there's anyone they would like to play with. Obviously these would all need to be characters the player would want to play if given the opportunity. What say you guys?