MAY Activity Check + HMD

[godsoffortune]

Welcome to another Activity Check + HMD!


The AC will run from May 26 through June 1 ending at MIDNIGHT EST. If that's confusing for you, just look here. **Extended to June 2nd at Midnight EST

In order to pass AC, you will have to provide TWO proofs of your activity. What counts as a proof of activity? Simple! Any one or more network threads consisting of ten (10) or more comments from your character OR one or more log threads consisting of five (5) or more comments from your character. To make AC easier for you, we've created a nice little flowchart for you to follow. Remember, comments must be from May in order to count. That means anything from May 1st through May 31st will count towards AC.

There is now an additional requirement to passing AC!

Everyone is sent an approval email when their application is approved! We now require you do ALL of the following items from your approval email as part of your first month's AC with a new character.

1) Reply to the mod approval e-mail with the username that you will be using

2) Request to join these communities: thenearshore, thefarshore, takamagahara New characters will not be granted access to the comms without having completed step #1

3) Fill out these forms and post them on your journal: permissions, god/shinki info

4) Make an inbox for your character and post it to your journal

5) Your application is posted on your journal as well

6) Reply to the Taken Character and God/Shinki Info pages, as well as the Tag Request post

Please copy the appropriate code, fill out the necessary information, and paste it in a reply to this post.

○ For Characters Accepted In May:
<b>Player Name:</b> <b>Character Name:</b>

○ For All Other Characters:
<b>Player Name:</b> <b>Character Name:</b> <b>Proof One:</b> <a href="LINK">Proof [##]</a> (copy as many times as necessary) <b>Proof Two:</b> <a href="LINK">Proof [##]</a> (copy as many times as necessary)

This month will also have our mandatory bi-monthly HMD.

Comments

Nick | Adrien Agreste

[purr_ince]

[Hiatus and tag speed aside that is.]

Aisu | Piccolo

[shutupnail]

Lin | Izumo Kusanagi, Lavi, Son Gohan, Jae-Ha

[pirateofdragons]

[pirateofdragons]

Player Name:
Character Name: Izumo Kusanagi
Proof One: Proof 01
Proof Two: Proof 02

Character Name: Lavi
Proof One: Proof 01
Proof Two: Proof 02

Character Name: Son Gohan
Proof One: Proof 01
Proof Two: Proof 02

Character Name: Jae-Ha
Accepted in May

[futhark]

Player Name: shuu
Character Name: Caster (Cú Chulainn)

This was a hiatus month for me.

shuu | Caster (Cú Chulainn)

[futhark]

I also have a HMD set up on the journal, if you prefer that one. Here's the link

Hina | Mai

[waitingforhope]

(All I ask is to not take current tagging speed into account; the end of the school year is upon us and I'm swamped with RL responsibilities until mid-June)

[waitingforhope]

Player Name: Hina
Character Name: Mai
Proof One: Proof [01]
Proof Two: Proof [02]

Lita | Aymeric de Borel

[onedrinkwithme]

[onedrinkwithme]

Player Name: Lita
Character Name: Aymeric de Borel
Proof One: Proof 1
Proof Two: Proof 2

[kagenonadeshiko]

Player Name: Alice
Character Name: Ayumu Yamazaki
Proof One: Log
Proof Two: Log

Alice | Ayumu Yamazaki

[kagenonadeshiko]

[corvidiocy]

Player Name: Stark
Character Name: Qrow Branwen

Proof One: Proof [1]

Proof Two: Proof [2] (copy as many times as necessary)

Stark | Qrow Branwen

[corvidiocy]

Love | Shizuo Heiwajima, Judar & Chise Hatori

[kuroi_taiyo]

[fortunesmiles]

+1 to this, and I feel as though the info pages for gods and shinki have similar issues. I know I am constantly in agony whenever Ken gets a new vessel name and I have to go digging for that kanji reference page; I generally have to pore over three or four different pages, scanning for links in the text because it's in one specific place that I always have a hard time finding. A possible suggestion for updating the info pages - perhaps put a list of relevant/likely-to-be-regularly-referenced links (like, as mentioned, the kanji reference link) at the top of the pages, so that people looking for them can find them more easily? The links can still be embedded in the text, too.

Callie | Ken Joshima, Nagito Komaeda

[fortunesmiles]

StarSeed | Sousuke Yamazaki

[takenwithhim]

[Journal HMD ]

[takenwithhim]

Player Name: StarSeed
Character Name: Yamazaki Sousuke
Proof One: Proof [10+]
Proof Two: Proof [5+]

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! I'd like to open by saying Elfnein's a very fun character - some of her character traits can be hard to pull off together, but you do it quite well. However, I've noticed your tags almost always have very little to them (dialogue only, or dialogue and minimal narration), and I often end up feeling a bit like I'm carrying the thread setting- and mood-wise when I thread with you. Which is a shame, because I do like threading with you otherwise! I just wonder if you couldn't use Elfnein's scientific side a little more for capturing setting in terms of thinking about what's around her, or describe her moods and motions rather than just leaving it to her icons to do, because I think both could go a long way.

[subtract]

I have some concerns regarding mod response times. For most things you guys are pretty good, but more than once I've had questions/proposals/PMs go completely unanswered for weeks to months at a time. I actually already left a comment about this on a previous HMD, but it appears to also have been overlooked since it never got a response.

No player should have to PM the mod account multiple times to get a response. When someone posts on an official page such as the FAQ, canon updates, regains, etc., they should be able to trust that the mod team will see their comment and respond to it in a timely manner. If player comments and questions are being lost, overlooked, or ignored for long periods of time, then there is clearly an issue with how those comments are being received that needs to be addressed.

I think a dedicated post for contacting the mods over using PMs would be a good start. The existing mod contact page could simply be updated to screen comments and the text of the post could be updated to encourage commenting over PMs. PMs can get lost among all the other comments in the mod account's inbox, but a dedicated post is something that could be checked directly without having to sift through notifs. I know player activity for follower/EXP counts is tracked by the mods, though I'm not sure if the mod account/mod email itself is used for this purpose or if a separate account is in place for that. Either way, I think a contact post would be much easier to check at a glance over PMs, lessening the chance of an important or time-sensitive comment getting missed.

I also think it's worth considering the possibility of reducing the number of pages that players have to comment on. We have separate posts for updating the taken list, player contact, hiatus, drops, deaths, tag requests, location updates, god info, and shinki info. There are also separate posts for suggestions, prayer suggestions, prayers/missions, regains, canon update requests, and the FAQ. That is a lot of different places to hunt down player comments. A lot of these could easily be combined for better organization, which would be easier on players as well as the mod team. Fewer places to check means fewer places to forget to check, and it also means players can get more done in one place over the current system.

Here are some sections that I think would be easiest to combine:
- Hiatus + Drops. Most games I've been in did have these two combined, and they serve a fairly similar purpose when all things are considered. When AC comes around, you only need to check one spot to see which players are exempt and which have decided to drop. It also makes for a convenient spot for players to check and see which characters are currently around or might be out of commission for a hiatus or whatnot.
- Tag Requests + Taken List. Tags are something that should probably just be done and out of the way right when someone gets accepted. A small form for how they want their tag to look could be added to the end of the taken form, easy peasy. There's no need for a whole extra post for this when it's part of the acceptance process anyway.
- God Info + Shinki Info. I recall that this has been suggested before, but I still think that it would make things much, much easier to combine the two spreadsheets into one link with two pages, or to at least link to both spreadsheets on the same page and accept requests for both of them there. Any update to shinki/god info is very likely going to need an update to the other spreadsheet anyway. This would also potentially cut player comments down by half in a lot of situations, ie. if a shinki is going Nora then instead of one comment for the god to add the new shinki and a second comment for the shinki to update their vessel/name info, it could be streamlined into a single comment listing both the new shinki information and which god is claiming them.
- Suggestions + Prayer Suggestions. Suggestions basically is just stuff being suggested to the mods, so really it would serve the same purpose as mod contact if the post is adapted to be an actual form of contact... but, suggestions are also used to suggest events and other fun ideas that may not necessarily be time-sensitive or important to the player. Prayer Suggestions is just a more specific version of the same thing. I'm not sure how often prayer suggestions gets used anyway since it's screened, but maybe it'd be better to have one post dedicated to prayer/mission/event suggestions, and then for more important matters there would be the mod contact post? This way there would still be a dedicated post to collecting fun ideas from the playerbase without splitting it up between two posts or mixing it in with more critical suggestions.

These are just my ideas, though, so maybe there's a better way to cut things down! But regardless of how it's done I do feel like there's an excessive number of posts across the mod account that may be adding to this mod response issue. Bookmarking each post and checking them manually every now and then is also something that should help with this a great deal. Notifs are handy but when you have this many things to keep track of they're not the most reliable method. Emails can get lost, DW can break down and fail to send notifs out for awhile, etc. A manual check only takes a few seconds per page to see if something got missed. Doing this every couple of days or even just once a week would ensure that every comment does get seen in a reasonable timeframe, so no one has to hassle the mod account for an answer.

Lavvy | Add

[subtract]

Personal HMD is here.

[subtract]

Player Name: Lavvy
Character Name: Add
Proof One: Proof 1
Proof Two: Proof 2

[(Anonymous)]

I've had a lot of fun playing with Suzaku so far, you've done a really good job combining his servile and determined aspects! I just have one thing I've noticed in threading with you that's given me a little trouble; you have a tendency to drop grammar in a way that makes your tags a bit hard to parse. For example, grabbing this (https://thenearshore.dreamwidth.org/284044.html?thread=66117004#cmt66117004) first comment off a flatview of the training log, that first bit of dialogue looks a bit like it's running into itself written like that ("I'm not, it's just..." flows a bit more naturally) and you've dropped the full stop at the end of the second dialogue line and done it again in the narration of the tag after this one in the thread. And this one might be more just me personally finding it odd to read, but you tend to comma splice a lot (splitting with a comma what should be two separate sentences) while other times not breaking up a sentence with commas when it would make it flow better. I'm guessing there's some kind of reason for it, and I still really like threading with you regardless of it, but I think changing up the grammar a little could go a long way towards clarity for your thread partners.

[swordofzero]

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will make sure I proof read a lot better- I'm dyslexic, which is why the grammar is weird in the first place, but that doesn't excuse me rushing and not double checking things. (Like the dropped full stop- that's just me being tired and missing things!)

As I say I will work on being better at this in general but if you ever do recieve a tag that is difficult for you to parse don't hesitate to poke me- I will never be offended and would much rather rewrite than have someone struggle to read and respond to what I'm writing.