DRII Suggestions

[Finland]

That's right, members dearest. AdFinnistrator would like your input for the new site. Since we're all a family here (and a democracy at that), I want your suggestions to make it a place that's as enjoyable as it can be for as many people as possible.

So, what are some things you would like to see (member/pairing of the month, a music player on the site, more group RP opportunities, etc.)? What are some things that we have/do now that you don't want to see? How could we make this a better place for all? Any and all suggestions are welcome. Everyone's welcome to give their input - admins and new members alike.

There are some things I am not willing to change. Those things, of course, include the rules and site canon. We will continue to have activity rules (they have been revised a bit to be more clear, but we'll get into that when the new site opens) and we will follow the current canon when we make the transition.

Once we have a few suggestions and the other administrators (both current and soon-to-be admins are welcome to participate) and myself have approved of the suggestions, I'll set up a poll. The suggestions that receive several positive votes will be worked on for the new site.

If I receive no suggestions in this thread, I'll assume you all are happy with things as they are and we will maintain the status quo, which is a perfectly fine decision with me. It's up to you guys - we admins are here for you~

I'd like to have all suggestions in by no later than September 26. This should give you guys plenty of time to vote and myself and the other admins plenty of time to work on anything we decide to put into action.

[America]

... *raises hand* Weeeeell...more group RPs sound fun, but I'm kinda worried about them turning out like the Crack RP thing we've been trying here - which has stalled completely due to lack of posting/tons of the original people in the group evaporating. Not that I have any idea what to do about fixing that...

...The other thing that comes to mind is maybe some sort of word count minimum for posts? I know some people have larger posts than others, but being a 'big' post person myself I find it a little frustrating whenever the person I'm replying to spits up some tiny little thing for their responses all the time. Since we're an advanced-literate group, it probably shouldn't be that hard for people to get, say, at least 300 or 350 or whatever number we end up picking words per post, right?

I can think of a few other things I've seen on other sites that are fun, but they don't work for Hetalia so that's all my ideas for right now~

[Russia]

Just wanting to advise against the members and players of the month things. It is really fun I think, but Hetalia sites don't seem to get large enough for it to really work out. Every site I have seen and been on that put those into it was short lived. Plus, it can create bad tension amongst members sometimes if they feel they are in competition for anything. At least, I imagine it could.

Another thing that I have seen kill a site everytime is an IC c-box. I don't know why exactly, and if you wish to have one anyways then it is your call, but every single site I have been on died shortly after getting an IC-cbox. I think it is because people spend more time playing in it than writing posts maybe? Besides, having a cbox where people are free to switch in and out of character with the parenthesis - though confusing at times- for the most part seems to work well.

[Finland]

AMERICA

I understand your concern as far as group RPs go, and no, I suppose there's little that can be done about people leaving. Perhaps smaller group RPs (three or four people) where the players are drawn at random would be better? Someone could come up with a topic and then draw their threadmates from a lot. It would give people the chance to RP with players they might not normally choose, I suppose, and the RPs should move a lot more quickly without anyone getting lost. If that idea flops, that's fine.

I personally am all for minimum word limits. Though we do require a post per week, I don't think having a limit as small as 350 words would add any extra work for anyone. However, enforcing such a rule might be a challenge as it would require us admins to read every thread UNLESS the members take responsibility for each other and report frequent breakers of the word count rule.

At any rate, I think it's a reasonable suggestion~


RUSSIA

Wow, those sites sound intense. xD Alright, '--of the month' sounds like a bad idea. Unless maybe we go with a random place of the month... Find some small city in some small country and get people to learn geography? Pffft.

I've never considered having an IC c-box simply because we allow both IC and OOC interactions on ours. I think the c-box is fine as it is.

[Sweden]

Speaking of suggestions... I haven't been with the group here to have any ideas on how to improve it and such.

But on a graphic related note, anyone have any colours or theme they like/dislike? Just so I can start looking up hex colour codes and stuff and find harmonies and all that artsy fartsy doodad.

So what would people want to see, not see, graphic wise?

[Iceland]

I agree with everything so far. o/ Group RPs, minimum word counts, no X-of-the-month stuff.

Sweden Sweden. Yes. Colors. So I keep my skin on here set to the one with a black text-box background and white text. Anything else is distracting for me. Because for RPing people usually have colored text, and it's kind of eye-smarting to see all this colored dialogue clashing with whatever colored background (I think the other options are green or blue). Particularly apparent in group threads, when there's tons of dialogue flying around. :'D So uh. I'm boring and like neutral colors. At least for main text boxes. Shades of black, white, grey. Shades of beige, sand, khaki. Stuff like that. Colorful trim and banners and everything else is awesome, make it rainbow I don't mind, but I'm putting in my two cents for neutral/ monochrome colors for text-boxes.

Edit:
no. blinking. affiliate buttons.
This suggestion might not even be probably won't be possible, but thought I'd put it out there.

[Finland]

I'm in agreement with Iceland. Black, white and grey are probably the best options for the text boxes. The site title, background, etc. can be colored.

We generally use darker colors [dark green, navy, etc.] just because our site is 'Darker Reflections'.

[North Italy]

Personally, I find that if the area to write on is bright, most people seem to dislike it. But if that part's dark and the rest of the site is bright, as long as it's not a painful searing contrast people are fine with it~

[Germany]

In my experience, most people do try to match each other's post-length, and a natural equilibrium occurs. Joining DR requires a certain level of skill, and everyone I have seen that has what it takes to be accepted here naturally writes at least 350 words or better each post anyway. Not saying a minimum word count would be a bad idea, just that I never found it necessary. If you're going to have one I would suggest 350-400 words for an advanced-literate site.

As for the X of the month things, I have rarely seen those work out for any site with less than 100 members. I don't know why, but they seem to make sites die quicker. Perhaps because smaller communities of writers know each other better and are more tightly knit, so people take it more personally when they don't get chosen? *shrugs helplessly*

As for group RPs, in all my years of internet RPing and stalking forums, I have yet to see a group RP that had more than 4 members ever be completed. Ever.[/i] People are always going on hiatuses or leaving the site for some reason, which really stalls/kills them. Life happens, and when you're counting on so many people I guess it's only to be expected that at least one or two won't be able to pull through in the end, even if they love writing for the thread and really do think they will be able to stay in it.

I always found music playing on a site to be an unwelcome distraction at best, but maybe that's just me. I can't concentrate at all when music is playing, and I always turn my volume off when I land on a musical site. xD Plus, not everyone likes the same kind of music.

Anyway, my quick two-cents on the matter. I don't really have an suggestions...from what I know of the plans involving DR II, everything's looking good. *thumbs up*

[England]

I know I’m not the only person who accesses the site on my phone, so I’m going to second Ice on the affiliate buttons. I know they’re important and if other sites have only the one, which happens to blink, there’s not much that can be done about it. But when half the site’s data download is hordes of scrolling and blinking buttons, it lags getting at everything else quite a bit.

From an objective POV, Fin, I think your idea of smaller random group RP events is a cool one. I’ve never seen it done before, and not knowing who or what is going into the mix is a fun concept. I’m not sure if you meant the other players would be drawn from random or there’d be a site-wide pot people could put their names in, but I think the second would work. That way it reduces the amount of shuffling about if people are busy and/or don’t want to play.

Also, I know we’re moving to a new board with different rules on content, so this will probably be addressed. But I’d like to see a slightly clearer explanation of the ‘darker’ nature of the site and what does and doesn’t fly and /or is appropriate in threads? Maybe even another small sub-section on the profile template or an OOC thread where a couple of notes could go about what kind of things the player is fine with and what they’re not. (I know that can be worked into the character profile itself in part, but I personally see a big difference between that my character might conceive of and what I, as a writer, would be willing to play him through.)

Lastly, please, please, for the love of god, no music xD

[Finland]

The things I listed in my first post weren't actually suggestions, guys. They were just examples of things that are possible to add to sites.


ITALY
I agree. It's hard to look at a white screen with black text in low lighting. And there shouldn't be a searing contrast between text area backgrounds and the wallpaper for the site; as I've said, we tend to stick with darker colors.


ENGLAND [and ICELAND]
Alright, no music.

I've got no problem making the affiliate buttons static. We can't do away with them completely as affiliating is a good method of advertising, but yeah, they don't have to scroll. There's not much I can do about the blinking, as you guys have assumed. I can ask our affies if they have a non-blinking button, but I don't know the likelihood of sites having multiple buttons. If we need to, I can lower the amount of affies displayed on the front page. Would this be favorable?

For the mini group RP idea, I was going to go with more of a lottery situation. I wouldn't want to force anyone into RPing with someone they really didn't want to, so anyone who's fine with RPing with anyone else can submit their name and then lots can be drawn. The players could either come up with a situation on their own or one could be given to them. We could work that out later if anyone actually wants to do that. *shrug*

Our rules and canon aren't changing (at least not the content; some of the wording has been changed in hopes it will be less redundant), but I'll be glad to provide a list of things that are and aren't allowed on our site:
-- We will follow InvisionFree's ToS [[ www.invisionfree.com/tos/ ]] Please familiarize yourself with section 3.1.
-- Our site's "darker nature" stems from the fact that many of our RPs involve subjects dealing with war, murder, genocide, death, etc. Though most of our RPs are little more than historical fiction, if you know anything about Proboards, this makes us seem like a crazy cult of chicken blood drinking skinheads, or something. PB is a little ridiculous about what is 'appropriate'.
-- It is perfectly fine for your character to have opinions about certain events that might not be considered appropriate. [If Germany's player, for example, wanted to have Germany be fully supportive of the Holocaust because the Nazi's opinions at the time forced him to think this way, this is acceptable as long as it is in character.] It is NOT, however, okay to get into debates over such matters OOC.
-- Absolutely no NC-17/R-18 content. No graphic sex, basically. No yaoi, no yuri, no hentai, whatever. This means you cannot RP such an encounter, and you cannot have your character describe such an encounter (none of France telling of his sexcapades in le great detail ohn hon hon.)
-- It's fine if your character uses expletives in their speech, but don't go overboard. Don't use more harsh language in your posts than you would in the cbox.

As for what people are and aren't willing to RP, the members must take some accountability for themselves and discuss such things with their partners before starting a thread. Putting such things in your plotting page is a good idea. If you'd like, I could make a template for plotting pages? (The headcanon threads are also good for these purposes.)

Does this help?

I'll work on an actual addendum for the rules soon.

[England]

Regarding the buttons, I went away and I played around with it, and I think if anything just removing the scrolling affiliates would help loads.

Ah, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that anyone wouldn’t want to RP with someone else, there! I was only thinking I’d opt out of something like that in the near future, so as not to lag things, and then got to thinking it might make the process more complicated in general if people were chosen and then a round of replacement happened as and when people dropped, as opposed to those currently all for it putting themselves forward. But if lottery turns out to be the easiest / best way, I’ve certainly got no complaints. Like I said, I thought it was a neat idea.

Thanks for the run down. It was partly the site’s bent vs proB’s ToS that was a little hard to mesh.

[Finland]

Excellent. Shall do away with scrolling affies.

And what of the plotting page template? Would you like me to add that to the list of things up for vote? It could be something very basic and not strict (no word count or anything, of course).

Perhaps:
-Things you are not willing to RP
-Things you wish to RP (situation + potential partner(s) + brief explanation of why you'd like to RP this situation)

??

[England]

Hm... if the site rules are clear on what constitutes acceptable and 'darker', then in the template itself I guess I was thinking something even more basic, like “How dark do you like your genocide? Any hard limits?"

[Finland]

Alright, guys, just a reminder that all suggestions are due by September 26!

So far, the only things we'll be voting on are:
- word count
- mini group RPs


Because there was such a strong movement against scrolling affiliate buttons, I'll make them stationary without having a vote.

I will update the rules to specify more clearly what types of things are and are not allowed in our RPs.

If Sweden wishes to do so [as she's the one in charge of graphics], she may start a poll for colors people wish to use on the site.