can you pretty please explain what you mean by sponsorship model? I might be stupid or out of date because I have 0 idea what that means.

Need to find someone who loves advertising so much, I can bring them on as a staff member specifically as a RP/advertiser person. -Cackles maniacally into the distant void at the thought of someone like that actually existing.-

Not sure if this is one that's been beaten over the head a million times, but I do have a tendency to try and thread with at least everyone as a staffer, even if I end up not enjoying it. It just feels right to if I have the ability to be able to.

oooohhh I getcha. This is kinda what we're doing atm. already have to know someone and want to work with someone in the tiny circle or plots already worked out with certain people in order to join in. though not entirely like that, some are invited at random and have literally nothing to do with rp because we only really just hangout 99% of the time posting bad memes.

However I do think that something like that could potentially work as long as you start out with a decent amount of people that know a decent amount of people. It's basically just private, invite only but with extra steps.

thanks for explaining!

HEAVILY considering switching genres/concepts for this site. i have so many ideas i want to try out now, but it's hard to settle on one and i don't want to keep flip flopping around.

it's time to bust out the virtual coin to decide my fate-

ah yes. the virtual coin flippers. the decider of all fates.

no really.

we use coin flips and dice rolls and t!choose for like... everything. every important plot decision every fork in the road. Sometimes it's best to just leave things up to chance rather than plotting everything out to every minute detail. Makes it more fun that way.

Getting an affiliate request from an established site is such a nice feeling.

Incoming rant because I’ve had a bad day:

I think we make a mistake in calling the people who run sites ‘staff’. Staff implies employment. It implies servitude. It implies that we are there to be at the beck and call of members at all times. It leads people to feel they can treat us however they fancy because we are there to serve them and provide them an experience.

News flash, we are not. We are roleplayers who have decided to create a world we want to write in, and we’ve chosen to invite others to join us in that world. We get to pick the rules. We get to decide how it runs. But we also get to decide who is in our world and, news flash again, players are not entitled to be there. The better term for us would be authors. Authors with our assistants, who are there to create a world, to share it with others, and to write and tell our own stories. Not staff on hand to serve.

In my opinion, these attitudes are why sites close so quickly these days. It’s fine at first. Seems fun. You set up a site thinking an idea would be fun. You create the world, come up with some rules, create some ideas. You invite people in. They have qs. You happily answer. They have apps. You give them a look to make sure they fit your world. Maybe you have a gander at creating a site plot for others to engage in. You come up with some events. It’s all cool.

But slowly, over time, you find that instead of role-playing, you’ve become a 24/7 help desk, putting on a customer service face, trying to settle disputes and questions, dealing with assholes who don’t care about your well-being or boundaries, who get mad at you if you’re not progressing the site plot like you’re being paid to handhold their experience, and it’s like ‘fuck, why am I even running this world when I don’t get to write in it?’

It needs to change. We should not be holding site authors to these standards, and we should not be demanding extreme professionalism and customer service care from an amateur, hobbyist activity. And we should stop calling people who run them staff. Period. Call them authors. Architects. Volunteers. Whatever you fancy. (I quite like architect.) But they are not employees at a player’s beck and call, and they should not be referred to that way. When we open a site, we invite others into that world. Players are not entitled to that access. That invitation should be treated with more respect. And so should site authors.

This has been my grumpy ted talk. Thank you for coming.

I completely agree and sympathize with you.

This is why I've opted to make all of my personal projects moving forward semi-private. My friends are welcome. Friends of my friends are welcome, and so on, because it avoids me from having to deal with people who think like that. It encourages the collaborativeness of people to communicate and work together to help expand upon the world that was initially created.

And if for some reason someone gets invited in who is toxic/not following the rules? Boom. They're gone. I'm not putting up with that shit anymore. I already have to do customer service for my job, I don't want to do it for my hobby too.

Definitely +1ing the word Architect.

My biggest pet peeve is when you have like open occupations or positions for established groups within a world and someone tries to take it, but the amount of years that they've either been around (for a panfandom), or in that position previously just don't line up with what you have in mind. 
I hate to stomp my foot down and to establish that sort of thing so it stops happening but it just... if you're going to be the leader of a group I feel like you should have established yourself within the area or in the job category. No one is just going to give you that position because you claim to know how to do it. That's not how this works, that not how any of this works. 

On a happier note, I'm glad to have established a community where staffers warn their members when a character is up for deletion so someone can save their information before the character is deleted. 
I highly suggest sites start doing that. I don't know how many times i've forgotten to save info for a character and suddenly it's completely gone because no one warned me. 

I don't normally post, but I just wanted to say that I also fully sympathize. I've done my best being a moderator, trying to be as patient and readily available as I know how, yet there will always be people who take every little thing as a massive slight against them and then they'll complain about "professionalism."

It's not a job. I'm not a professional. I don't get paid, but rather I pay into my site out of pocket (Jcink premium, site skin, etc). I'm doing the best I can, and trying to learn from my mistakes; to work on new skills every day to try and accommodate others. Yet, it's not good enough for some people (I say some, because I'd say a good chunk of RPers are a lot more understanding and forgiving while there'll always be those who will use anything as fuel to incriminate staff in some way). They still carry unrealistic expectations.

Then there comes a time where some people will expect a site to be exactly the way they want it when in reality, I - as a site creator - don't even get everything I want from the site I made. Why? Because I have to consider more than just one person, more than just me. I have to consider everyone.

I agree with the sentiment that we built our sites for ourselves and invite others into it. Personally, I do this to meet new people and make new friends. It's my social activity, my hobby, my downtime. When my downtime becomes as stressful (or even more stressful) than my actual job, there's a problem.

I also like architects, but I'm not sure if that eliminates the issue of "we're not paid," because some people will take it as the occupational definition which is paid. Still, it might be better than "staff" on its own. I think some people naturally have issues with "figures of authority," so something like "Architect" might help eliminate that "authoritative" vibe. I'm not sure.

I might try this out, though, as a social project and see if it helps any. If anyone else tries it, I'd be curious to hear about the results.