I do still believe that upholding those baseline rules and guidelines is important, but I have virtually none on my public site as is, and it confuses so many people lol. "Can I... Can I even do this?" "Isn't it too much??" Nah fam, we good. Have fun bye. Though there is an opposite effect too when there's just not quite enough structure to things because literally the whole site is built around member plots rather than a site plot and sometimes it brings up "but why?" lol. oh well.

My other sites though, I'm way more strict about, because the plot and timelines are very important and things in that world are really developed. It really depends on overall vibe I think. I want members to be comfortable talking to me and asking me questions. I want staff to feel comfortable explaining lore and upholding rules. I want people to get along and plan things and have fun.

I'm on the side of "Ideally staff should not be normal members."

A normal member is incentivized to do things to please other members and to prioritize their own plots above all. That's normal and fine. A staff member doing that will lead to long term chaos. You have to put the wellbeing of the site above the short-term interests of your friends and that's going to hurt. That's going to suck. And it's harder to do if you don't draw boundaries around "I'm staff"

I don’t really get this situation. I was staff for a pretty big site and carried hard as its mod. Plotting intensely as a member was part of the huge success. I think it was important people saw that i was an ordinary member like everyone else, being immensely active and talking about plots. My actions as a staff was something that brought me joy, because i love the community and was why i worked so hard. The joys of being a member and staff coincide for me, and are not separate where i have to sacrifice one for the other.

There should be a fine line between your community seeing you as staff and seeing you as a member. However I think this varies between communities, as not every one is the same. From the ones I've been staff on, it's a huge fear for me that people will take what I say in DMs when I'm technically "off the clock" and not trying to approach someone about apps or such, as something else. There needs to be a line between the two but there shouldn't be an issue with you running your community and also trying to take part in it, as its a place that YOU created. So why shouldn't you enjoy it? Like yeah, I made this event and I might know what's going to happen but I'm still going to have my characters to participate because I want to have fun. Because I am helping moderate that community to have fun in. 

Ultimately, its up to people and how they want to run their communities, but I don't think you shouldn't be allowed to have fun in a space that you created not just for yourself but for other people. 

Fairly rapidly becoming incredibly disillusioned with the 'no activity requirements' ideal - yes, you can't force people to be active, but I've found when sites have some form of activity requirements, it becomes something of a self-sustaining loop. It's something that is difficult to explain or to quantify, and I think it is often interpreted as a hot take, but the sites that do have activity requirement don't really seem to have people exploding into visceral reactions like you might get if you tried to institute that on a site without them

But generally speaking, if more people are posting, others will also feel more inclined to post as well - for one, people will see bigger/interesting plots moving and want to get in on them.

Though I suppose the confession is really that I've just gotten rather biased against 'casual' lax activity sites, probably because of bad eggs where people take canons/limited slots/plot important roles and then proceed to not post for six months, eight months, etc, and not get so much as slap on the wrist because there are no actual enforceable rules on activity and no one wants to be mean - but even if there were a hard 'one post in two months,' that situation would not exist. (Is one post in two months really that extreme?)

I agree with your post, mostly this snipped section and it made me think about my past experiences staffing and my members' reactions towards canons. In my last attempt, I tried trivializing canon positions and making a lot of canon spots would mitigate the problem (because if there's a lot of canons, they're not really special, are they?) but it still didn't stop the rat race of people fighting over positions. I'm starting to lean on the idea of closing canon positions for the first month or so when my site opens, to get people situated to the plot, and if they really like the site, they'll stick around long enough to consider taking a canon.

Now if someone can also tell me the secret on how to solve the "face claim reserves" issue because I've seen too many pre-launches where folks get salty they were asleep when reserves opened or something and their favourite claim got snatched, bc timezones. 

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Idt that’s your problem anymore tbh 😂 you can’t micromanage people’s reactions. Who has time to get salty over that? And why are people making it a problem for sites to fix? Don’t let such members make you think you have to fix every annoyance they wake up to for them.

I know that's how the cookie (and should) crumble, you're absolutely right. Sadly, I'm a people-pleaser and I can somewhat sympathize because I have one or two claims that I really can't negotiate for a particular character I play in almost every site I've been on.

Not that telling problematic people to take a hike isn't wrong, I just wanna think about solutions to things and wonder how it would work (in practice). If it does, that's awesome and if it doesn't, no skin off my back.

so anyways I was thinking about a lottery system for pre-launch reserves but that seems a bit too much for just claims but ngl the brainstorming part of making it work was fun, i guess. dunno if I'll ever trial it out when it comes to my own site launch in the near future but just something fun for the brain to crunch on.

i see 8)) well as long as you’re aware!

If you don’t mind bending your back for it, You can also allow for people to list 3 fc reserves, arranging it according to what they want the most. So the one who listed the fc as #1 could get priority over those who listed it as #2 or #3. This can also be done secretly and revealed until everyone has submitted their list.

For those with same tiers, you can negotiate to thr members without revealing who fcsd them and speaking with them in private. Or offer if they’re willing to just randomize it

In regards to the prior discussion topic: I find any separation at all between 'player/writer' and 'staff' to be sort of counter-intuitive. Not that the idea is ill-conceived (holding yourself to higher standards,) but I have always found that the 'best' players often make for the 'best' staff, and vice versa.

Seeing an admin/mod who expressly does not write on the site does not fill me with much confidence, and I imagine it can't be anything more than ambivalent at best to anyone else. No one is bowing down and praising someone for denying themselves the pleasure of engaging with the site as though it were some Cincinnatus-esque virtue to do so. More often, it'd logically be seen as someone being 'done' with the site or hobby, though if they were still active in staff duties, it'd be hard to argue that. There are certainly cases that boggle the mind though, of staff members who do no work, haven't posted in years, and do not step foot outside the admin chat, but that's a case specific thing lol

Back to the original topic - perhaps ironically, I find the best sites I've ever been on had frequent accusations of cliques and whatnot. Expressly because those sites realized that the sort of player who is able to make big waves, lead plots, and forms a core part of the story, is exactly what they want in a staff member. As a consequence, all the staff members know each other well, work well as a team, have lots of experience on the site, are intimately familiar with the mechanics and story, and are active.

If we say staff ought to be 'separate' in a way (deny themselves the ability to pursue plots as they would have otherwise,) then what happens to the site when the people with the most experience and 'plot power' are plucked to be staff? Suddenly the site loses out on that drive, which is (when taken as a whole between all members) all that keeps a site alive.

The people with the most stake in a site are, unsurprisingly, generally the ones willing to do the most to ensure it's continued success.

The few times i was staff, i was hella active, loved interacting with everyone ooc and ic, and i can proudly say people were very content with that synergy and said sites turned out to be very active. I was never accused of any sort of bias or being cliquey. At most, i was called toxic/manipulative 🤷🏻‍♀️with that exp and track record, i just don’t see how separation of staffing or being a member works out, and i agree that it’s counter-intuitive. My experience, and the experience of others (ie predormitum, ascension rp) didn’t put themselves through that burden to try to maintain an inclusive image. Imo the more honest you are with your desires, while respecting the desires of others, the easier it is to trust you as a person and ofc, as a staff.

Dipping my toes into attempting to create a site (daring on my part tbh, I'd say), I never realized how hard it is to come up with a name for a site. Like... really hard. It can't just be anything, it has to fit the site's overall theme and genre. It makes me appreciate even the littlest things within the process!