Important We are phasing out the Social Group feature on TCF

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For the remaining Roleplay groups - each has been notified of their options: to consolidate to 1-2 threads and be moved to the new Roleplay section; to archive their group to the wayback machine; or simply be removed. We really haven't heard plans from any of them as of yet. We hope they will not wait until the last minute to make a decision.
As an addendum, each RP has been given a reminder that there are only two weeks left to get things archived.
 
For an update on Social Groups, Adult Swim at this time has been fully migrated into Mature Discussions. Due to this, the Adult Swim Social Group will disappear soon. It is not possible to create new Threads in this section yet, but this will open up in the near future. We are currently in the process of reviewing and getting new guidelines in place for this section. After this process is done, you can expect Mature Discussions to be open to post Threads in.

Due to the nature of holding more controversial & hot button issues in this section to be discussed a number of things that will take effect include posts in Mature Discussions not appearing in recent activity or new posts. Additionally all Threads created in this section will require Moderator approval before being posted, after we review Threads created this way, they will be posted if appropriate, otherwise we may contact members if we need to reject a Thread for any reason. Just like Adult Swim, this section will be moderated more strictly compared to other sections with similar rules in addition to new ones.

Roleplay social groups have been notified as stated here:
As an addendum, each RP has been given a reminder that there are only two weeks left to get things archived.

Overall in a little over a week, Social Groups will be completely phased out. There are roughly 8-9 days left for members to backup and save or move any content they value that are still in the remaining Social Groups.
 
We have completed the first phase of the removal of Social Groups. Members should no longer see that section on the forum index page.

To recap where major sections of Social Groups ended up:

Next steps:
  • We will be working to remove the plug-in over the next several days. The Social Group tab on member profiles will still be there until the plug-in is disabled/uninstalled; it has not worked correctly for some time now anyway.
  • Members who had a significant number of posts/likes from Social Groups will likely see those totals drop. This will NOT cause anyone to lose a trophy/title that has already been earned.
  • We have a couple of plans in discussion for proceeding with general forum upgrades, and we hope to be able to share that with everyone soon.
 
Hey there.

Sorry for the lateness on saying anything about this, I only found out about it a few days ago. Admittedly it feels a little weird thinking about this again - you know, I'm not saying 'I'm mostly done with TCF' in some kind of 'Wow I'm mad at this site!!!' way at all; I just mean, like, it was a lot of time that I'd enjoyed but a lot of the things that've happened to me recently have meant I've had to start again in a lot of ways, so I had to put away a lot of the things which I used to as well. Don't mind me if this seems a little stilted as I'm kind of unused to writing on forums and stuff.

Anyways - I don't know who/which people re-archived the archives, but I'm really thankful for that. It's sweet to look over them again. Massive gratitude as well to Chasm Guardian who made this beautiful complete Sliver archive site, which is honestly a lot more than it maybe deserved and certainly that I could've hoped for. Again, really nice to go through considering my mind's been a little hazy lately. x

(We have a lot of other Google Docs and web archives for other RPs, ask me about them if you're reading this and you care c': )


From what you've said it looks like you propped up social groups for a lot longer than you probably should've, so thanks for that. Something which is kind of a hot-take from me but which is true at least to how I was then was that back in 2014 as TCF was just going-up I thought social groups would be abysmal for roleplays compared to the basic format of just having a section with a free-for-all of threads. I suspected it might make it more difficult for roleplays to recruit (seeing as it's more difficult to just peruse threads you might like to get involved with) and might make the hobby more clique-y among some other smaller things. Both of those ended-up being partially true, but social groups also did help a lot in fostering new friendships - outside of RP writing, it was an easier place to talk and joke around than the old usual which would be to have a PM convo for general chat between RPers.

I wouldn't have changed anything about it, but I also don't think going back to the TO-like system will kill anything. It looks like the torch has kind of been passed-on to a new generation (for want of a better word) of RPers here, so I hope they keep on going for quite a while yet and enjoy themselves while they do.


Probably too late to give suggestions, but just for the record -

OOC threads: a limit of one is just fine. With it being an open section now having 5 information threads for each new roleplay would obviously be a nuisance, it'd crowd-out ongoing roleplays. What would be good though if perhaps something could be done about the auto double post merge in the section. I only say that because the main motive for my creating information threads to begin with was that if you're a loudmouth like me then putting the distinct chunks of information one after another creates hideous run-on posts until you finally hit the per post character limit (this'd also allow people to reserve posts in the OOC which is pretty common practice in RPing so that you can put new information as you write it in a place everyone can easily see).

It's not exactly a killer, it's just ugly. You can ask a friend to help you out by posting every other piece on your behalf as well which helps, although copy-pasting formatting is a nuisance.

IC threads: I'd say that realistically it makes sense to let people create as many as they can actually, like, make genuine use of. You can obviously bust someone if they're abusing this, but it's not particularly likely to be abused given that as an RP creator in an open section you're incentivised to create as few threads as possible. Dividing all of the IC posts you get into less segments means your IC thread(s) are on the front page more (or all) of the time, which makes it easier for you to catch the eye of new players and keep the ball rolling.

Even though the social group system was technically good for doing location-based RP (i.e: each city in the setting gets its own thread), only a few ever tried it - off the top of my head, Path to the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven and Fragments of Civilisation: Silocroft. Sixth Heaven did pretty well but all but two of the locations' threads got totally mothballed - location-based RP is only appropriate if your RP has like, over a hundred concurrent players. And even for them a lot of the areas in your world will still be as dead as a dodo.

It'd probably be something that self-regulates because people have a vested interest not to spread their writing all over the place (it'd also perplex those they're writing with), but I can understand a non-rule rule probably doesn't sound too hot. In which case, I'd consider giving everyone two IC threads since historically (apart from The Island which had those natty group adventure threads) that's the most a single RP has truly kept active at one time. Latruncularius and Sliver both had a third IC thread but those were soon about as active as my social life; however, the two rivalling threads which had their events occur at the same time IC-wise did keep a good pace (and ultimately were a bit of a godsend given that it would've been quite confusing to have a post from someone messing-around in class to then be followed immediately by people trudging through a marsh on the other end of the country).


Then again, I don't really write creatively anymore. That's just what I'd think, but I don't know how relevant it is to the new roleplayers on TCF, having the option might not be a big deal to them, they just wanna write. But, I figured seeing as I spent like, four years rambling IC and OOC - it'd just be odd if I didn't bother now. x

Anyways, probably one of the last posts I'll make and almost-certainly the last long post. So, take care anyone who skims and thanks for all the good times.
 
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