personally, i wish there was something that actually existed between public and private that was actually given enough support from the wider animanga rpc to be a feasible accepted middle ground.

to put it another way - i'm sure there's a decent number of people who aren't willing to rp with everyone and anyone that may come across their site but at the same time they aren't necessarily opposed to new people if they actually vibe well.

there's also the stark reality that it's a whole heck of a lot easier to go private if you have a larger friend group than a smaller one for a couple reasons. the one you'll almost definitely immediately feel is that if you want to do a plot that no one else on the site is interested in, you're basically never gonna see that plot get played since, y'know, pitching want ads to strangers is already a near-impossible task in a best case scenario, never mind when you're trying to pitch one for a private site on resource sites that aren't really open to the concept in the first place. but there's also the more long-term aspect of it where you're only going to see the community shrink, not grow, as people naturally drop off for various reasons + you've blocked out most recruitment opportunities to replace them.

it honestly really sucks because like. i'd love to be able to finally let my soul rest + recover from various areas of burnout. but i know i'd chafe to go private for all the plots i wouldn't be able to play solely because my friend group is limited + we don't always share brainrots + i hate the mood drop that comes from giving up on a hyperfixation plot to not give it the best chance it has of being fed

in my opinion, no, a middle ground between public + private doesn't actually exist, or at least, it doesn't functionally exist in the current animanga rpc.

what i mean by that is..... we just don't have the rp culture to really support sites that are trying to exist in a middle ground.

if you have a smaller friend group or starting member base, word of mouth invitations is only going to get you so far before you hit your limit of who you can bring in. they're also gonna be p similar to the existing community, which can be good to keep the same vibes + such but also bad since imo you're not exactly gonna bring in someone interested in, idk, threading out a huge tragic romance if you keep sending invites to people who hate rping tragedy.

you can post up want ads or general buddy requests to try to find new partners, but it's pretty rare for them to actually result in anything. animanga just doesn't do buddy requests the way the rl community does + there's just not a culture of taking want ads anymore (imo there's a reason why "if you want a plot played out, give the other half to an existing rp friend" has become conventional rp wisdom). and trying in bigger resource communities tends to be a waste of time too just because the vast majority of rl rpers just don't give animanga the time of day (which is fair, in my opinion, when the vast majority of animanga rpers don't tend to give them the time of day either).

and to advertise the site "normally" to try to bring in fresh blood, you're basically doing all the same work as a fully public site, just with the extra baggage of the "semi-private" label to turn people off + make it harder to actually bring anyone in. and by that point, you might as well just suck it up, take the label off, and just deal with it whichever side of the fence you decide to go with.

in other words, sure, you can slap a "semi-private" label on a site and keep doing your thing. but if the resulting site experience would be basically the same as if it were a fully private one and/or if you're basically running the site as though it were a fully public one, is the site really functioning as a middle ground between the two? to me, that answer is no, and i really wish we as a community could change that, since i think it would be a huge qol change for the community.

you're all good, i'm not getting any antagonism lol c:

as i've kind of been knocking around in my previous posts, personally, i think the only way for us to get that middle ground is for us to have a culture shift in the community that would actively support it (as in doing more than just vocalizing support for that middle ground or voicing dissatisfaction with the situation resulting from the current dichotomy).

the places i would probably say to start would be:

-- support sites that actively decide to use a semi-public or semi-private label by giving them a chance if it's a site you would have taken a chance on if they were a full public site.

-- actually make want ads feasible again (and buddy requests feasible in the first place) by making and taking them (on both public and private sites) to make it an actual feasible growth supplement for non-public sites (and generally improve the public site networking too).

-- move away from the "mega site" domination by joining + supporting smaller sites to shift the ecosystem away from stratifying towards super-massive public sites, small public sites fighting to stay alive, + private sites trying to exist outside of both

-- stop stigmatizing communities and/or groups who do occupy that middle space between fully public + fully private (since imo shaming them just makes it harder for them to both relax their stance in other spaces and exist/make their own spaces to not intrude on others)

i don't think a cultural shift is impossible, just. y'know. a whole lot harder since we'd have to be convincing a huge chunk of the community to all pull together and then keep pulling that way to see the change, and that's a lot easier said than done.