Frustration... departing.

[Sapphira Blue]

While after 23 yrs of rping at various sites around the net from the old DOS Gateway days till today I have never encountered such a problem getting cleared to play. After all the point of the site is for role playing is it not? Forums are fine, intros are fine, OOC chat is really not my thing. I have done everything that the site asked me to do before I could post in an RP or to begin one of my own. I even sent a mail questioning if I could now be cleared and got a auto reply. I posted yet a few more times in the lobby. And still day four I cannot RP.

This truly baffles me, I have never been to a site which presumes you are a troll or trouble maker before hand and insists you prove you are not before hand. Yet I went with the flow and still I cannot play.

Not a very welcoming format for newcomers I am afraid.

I came in with the hope that this was indeed the place to tell stories and RP for the sake of RP.
It is no wonder that as of yesterday you still were no where near your donations goal. At my age I am indeed capable of making a donation towards the upkeep of the site I participate in. However, who would donate where they are not even able to write??

I wish you all well. However while I was waiting for approval I did check into other places and have found another RP home. One where I can post and write until I prove I do not deserve too.

 

[SedentaryCobra]

The majority of the admins who have the power to approve you are of college age. Do you know what activity eats up almost all time of a college age student right about now?

Oh yeah, finals. You know, that thing they have to pass or spend several hundred or thousand more dollars retaking the course.

The system exists, and its worked well thus far. Apologies you're the first casualty.

And for the record, waving your money around while simultaneously playing the victim card makes you look like a colossal prick.

 

[Silence]

Sorry to hear that you decided to leave.

 

[Pumpkin]

It's a shame to see you go. It was nice meeting you, though. You seemed nice.

 

[Imperatus Rex]

I can understand your frustration to an extent, but this system is in place for a reason. I am sorry you were disappointed, and that we were not able to meet your expectations, I hope you can find a site with a more prompt system.

While I cannot currently recommend a specific alternative for storytelling, check out the list of Top RP sites or perhaps visit the Bay12 forums.

[Edited in light of Tiko's explanation on the approval process]

 

[Tiko]

The majority of the admins who have the power to approve you are of college age. Do you know what activity eats up almost all time of a college age student right about now?

Oh yeah, finals. You know, that thing they have to pass or spend several hundred or thousand more dollars retaking the course.

The system exists, and its worked well thus far. Apologies you're the first casualty.

And for the record, waving your money around while simultaneously playing the victim card makes you look like a colossal prick.

On the contrary, people not being approved has nothing to do with Admins being busy. People are approved daily, but their accounts aren't flagged for review until they meet the roughly outlined criteria that we have posted up for them. In this situation the individual was flagged for review on Saturday night (late, when no one was awake), and marked for approval Sunday. The trophies run on a cron that only runs every few hours (otherwise it would bog the system down constantly rechecking if anyone qualifies for new trophies yet), so the result isn't immediately evident. In this case the user was marked as approved, and then abandoned the place that very same day (within an hour of the trophy notification going through). This wasn't a case of a user posting all over the place and going unnoticed. Excluding their departure post that was made after they were approved, they had made eight posts (which is well within our usual review amount and not an unreasonable length of time or quantity. Accounts are typically reviewed for approval within 5-10 posts of arrival assuming all the outlined criteria has been met). They also sent a PM to myself in which the requirements for approval were outlined to them in the event they hadn't found any of the approval information threads already. This user was not handled any less efficiently than any other user before them.

It is unfortunate they have decided to leave, but we have this information posted everywhere, and an explanation of why we do things this way. We value patience and genuine interest in joining the community (it has nothing to do with assuming people are trolls or trouble makers as the individual in question unfortunately believed, and everything to do with making sure people share our personal values). It's an introduction period for people to take the time to understand the community and to determine if it's a good match for them. I explain this because telling people that they weren't approved because the 'admins are busy' undermines the system and circulates false information. As said above. Approvals are done daily. If someone isn't approved, they simply aren't interacting very much.

That all said, as this user was already marked as approved before they departed, they're more than welcome to change their mind and remain, or to go ahead and depart if they feel that our community isn't a good match for them.

 

[SedentaryCobra]

-You done goofed-.

My apologies. I'll refrain from such assumptions in the future.

Introductions have changed a bit since I was in that same boat. I posted three times in my introduction thread, got approved, and have been posting regularly ever since. I can see why, though, with so many more members in such a larger forum, the introduction period has grown somewhat larger.

 

[Tiko]

Yeah, we used to do everything by hand, but as the site got bigger that got to be an impossible feat without risking missing some people in the shuffle. We set up an automated system to flag accounts that are ready for review so we don't miss anyone on accident.

Since we do approvals every single day there's only ever two reasons that an account hasn't been approved. Either they haven't done their introduction or posted around in the community forums for the system to flag them to us, or they were marked by us to undergo an extended review period due to questionable conduct. The latter of those two has only happened four times since the site opened, so it's almost invariably the former that hasn't been done.

There's no set number of posts that gets people approved either. We might decide to go ahead and approve someone in an initial review after only five posts, or we might decide that they just spammed one word posts into introduction threads and guide them to be more engaging before approval. Best way to get approved quickly is to just get posting meaningful posts.

Hope this clarifies things for everyone