i used the term "baby's first rp site" as a quick shorthand to cover a lot more ground than simply "someone new to rping" since, for example, people who come from other platforms (like discord or tumblr) or are returning to the forum rp community after a very long time often require a similar amount of hand-holding + gentle correcting for "basic" things that is super time-consuming and exhausting to handle, even if they may have a general idea of rp etiquette or navigating forum software; they're also tons more likely to show up on a site than someone who is brand new to rping, in my experience, so not including them is doing a huge disservice to the spirit of the original scream into the void sentiment i expressed in the op. (and, plot twist, i very obviously don't use that phrasing on my site since it's not something i would use out of context + only used it here on pixel in a staff confessions thread for the purpose i just explained + with enough context to be understood.)

but also the situation is actually a whole lot more messy than "just say you're not a good site for beginning rpers but there's lots of other sites that are accommodating". while that's a good way to handle it privately on an individual basis after the member has started the application process, it's definitely not something that's going to work to put in a site's rules section or description area for fairly obvious reasons.

however, using labels like "literate / semi-literate" or "intermediate / advanced" to try to convey that message instead also gets messy between esl rpers often feeling like it targets them (which it often isn't meant to), regular rpers taking it as a red flag that a site staff are elitist jerks (which it may not necessarily be), the labels not really getting at what they need to (since most people don't realize returning rpers or platform-hoppers are often in a similar boat to beginning rpers), and people just generally not realizing that they would fall into that beginner category (since imo most people don't tend to think of themselves as beginners, even if they recognize they're new to this or might need a little more help than someone more familiar with the format + culture).


tl;dr, it's really hard to communicate that a site isn't really a good place to integrate someone who isn't generally familiar with current forum rp culture + norms when the labels we try to use to communicate this often get interpreted as a red flag by people it's not meant to be catching and interpreted as not applying to them by people it is, and boy howdy does that make me want to stare into a void every time i then have to have the staff discussion of "do we need to be talking to this person privately or are we just gonna deal with it?"

for the sake of the conversation, i'm personally going to be defining a "beginner level" rper as someone who is not reasonably familiar with the general systems + navigation of the rp format and/or the general norms and culture of the rp format. this then separates beginners out into two different categories:

1) people who are actually brand new to rping generally as a concept
2) people who have been rping for a while but not on forums (ex, discord rpers or rpers who took years-long hiatuses outside the community)

the reason i separate the two out is because it distinguishes between people who know the majority of rp culture (with the basics being "don't control other people's characters" + "don't immediately know the deepest darkest secrets of characters that yours only just met" and the more nuanced stuff being things like "most sites have a grace period for app reviews of at least 3 days" or "forum rp all exists in one continuity so don't ship with multiple people if it's not actually a poly ship") vs people who don't. and this is a pretty big distinction to make since while there will be some social norms you'll have to be teaching for the second group, you won't be having to teach them the bare bones basics.

while i've not dealt with someone in that first group in a very long time (10+ years to be precise), i do deal with the second group around once or twice a year, on average, since i've dabbled with tumblr + discord rp and sometimes try to bring friends over for stuff, making me their primary point of contact for "how do forums" questions. (this is why i speak pretty confidently about including this group in the beginner level while also separating them from the first group as well as why i don't consider switching software providers, like going from proboards to jcink, to be a significant enough initial barrier of entry to put someone in that second category.)

they've definitely been a little more work than the average "intermediate level" rper who knows forum rp norms (as a simple example, that most forum rpers reply to threads within a few weeks, not a few hours) and general forum navigation (as another example, where most of the quicklinks to important threads is located). but they've also been very good in regards to making the process easier to integrate them by making the effort to try to solve their own problems or find their own answers to stuff before they ask questions (typically privately to me, as their first point of contact, as opposed to generally in the help channels). they also have an established connection in the community prior to joining + were thus able to come at a time where i have the time + energy to integrate them, as opposed to showing up from the wild with no community connection + at a time we may not be able to really give them the support they'd need, and both of those factors make it a lot easier to help integrate them too.

while i do agree that "everyone's gotta start somewhere", i do also think it's fair to add onto that "but no individual person should be obligated to be someone else's somewhere if they don't want to be", if for no other reason than that expecting them to be is pretty much going to guarantee that the experience turns out to be a negative one for literally everyone involved. at the end of the day, this is a hobby we all volunteered for, and i don't think it's unfair of anyone to say that they don't want to obligate themselves to something they didn't agree to (or bow out of an obligation they no longer want to meet), provided they're willing to accept the consequences of that. in regards to beginner level roleplayers specifically, i don't think a site should be advertising that they're willing to take them on if they're not willing to commit to the additional work (time + emotional labor) that comes along with helping these members integrate and to honor that commitment for the vast majority of beginners they may get.

(that's largely why i say my sites are typically not beginner friendly. i work full-time on-site during the week at a job that overworks me to the extreme on top of running a household largely on my own, so i understandably don't always have the time or emotional availability to help integrate a beginner forum rper onto the site, especially if they're not making the effort to help lessen that burden by trying to be more self-sufficient, being patient with staff to get back to them, and otherwise getting support from the community with their onboarding. i don't mind doing it every now and again, both with my own friends and with the friends of people currently in my community, but without that pre-existing site connection + attempts at self-sufficiency, i'm not going to be able to accommodate what they need from me as the primary staff member unless i'm in a particularly good place at that moment in time. so because i can't always honor a commitment to help them in the capacity they need, i actively try not to commit to it, since i don't think it's fair to them or me for creating the kind of site experience that i want for a member of my community.)

i have more thoughts about this, but this is also.... enough of a ramble of thoughts that i think it can stand alone and generally be fine. so. yeah.

i mean. you literally asked what you think we should be using as criteria to define a beginner friendly site, and i gave my answer of "a site that is willing + able to commit the time + energy needed to orient the vast majority of incoming members towards becoming passably familiar with the norms + culture of forum-based rping and to follow through on this commitment in the long-term", explained why i reached this definition via my own personal experiences and opinion as someone who originally voicing how the existing labeling for this purpose sucks, and then gave an actual real-life example of how the new label would work by giving an example of where it shouldn't be applied (because there wasn't the ability to follow through on that commitment every time with the majority of members it would apply to, which is kind of the point of the label in the first place). but okay.

i'm glad that there are sites out there like yours that are willing + able to take the time to create + provide resources for "beginner" rpers, as well as offer the long-term support they need community-wide to be able to grow into themselves and get further into the hobby. this is a good thing, especially given that forum rp is a much smaller community than it used to be + it has a much higher barrier of entry compared to other forms, and as someone who had an absolutely horrible experience on the first site i ever joined, i'm always going to support that not being the default experience for new + returning forum rpers.

but not all sites + communities are willing or able to be in that position, and i think it's super crappy that rather than try to better equip these sites with the tools to try to help these sites nudge these incoming members away before they leave a negative impression, a fair portion of the wider community judges them for their labeling + their rationale. it's setting them up to be the bad guys, either for being the elitist jerks who look down their noses at others simply for trying to use what few tools they have to properly label themselves or for creating negative experiences because they felt pressured to include demographic they never intended to try to court + they couldn't do a good enough job disguising the social + emotional labor it took for them to do so.

there's also an entire tangent to be had about how you see sites label themselves as intermediate / advanced all the time but you never really see any labeled as beginner or even beginner-friendly. and like. maybe we should change that????? it might not do a lot of good, since i imagine a lot of new + returning players aren't gonna be aware of what's happening in the wider community, but it would also start breaking down some of the stigma across the board, for everyone, the same way that the slice-of-life / sandbox labels started creating the character-driven and plot-driven labels and creating their own ecosystems that, by and large, we don't see a ton of people bashing each other over for preferring one over the others anymore.

but that's my two cents and apparently it's unpopular so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what're you gonna do lol


also hi pixel staff, i'm sorry for responding + making this worse, i just didn't feel comfortable letting it be without responding when the like system is definitely contributing to a sense of dogpiling without having someone needing to reply, still very sorry, i know this will probably disappear into the void along with most of this conversation + i accept this punishment given how this particular convo has gone both tone-wise and site-reference-wise, i promise i'm not gonna say anything more on the topic because i really don't have anything else to say about it that i've not already said by this point