May 9, 2020 23:36:00 GMT voice said:

People always preach that RP is more than the aesthetics of posts and skins and yet now people are pushing 'use site templates only to save the aesthetic of our site.'

Some others brought up the potential for custom template issues, but I also think required site templates kind of levels the playing field. People with no, or hard-to-read templates may struggle to find threads - because even though the community as a whole seems to recognize the "aesthetic value over writing/community value" thing as an issue, there are still people out there, and probably not that many less than before it was brought to light who still may not want to RP with people whose posts, which they must stare at for long periods of time, are not easy on the eyes. Conversely, a shiny shipper/wanted ad/even just regular post may draw more attention to a person who wouldn't have had quite so much otherwise - and while that's fine and dandy, others may feel slighted for not drawing the same crowd with similar quality content in the write, not the code.

If everyone uses the same templates (or no templates at all for anything), this becomes less of an issue because everyone's pulling from the same pool. Both are valid options; the latter may alienate those who aren't willing to completely part with templates, and the former may alienate those who aren't familiar with code enough to navigate them, but the principal remains for either one. There's no perfect solution to the issue because not everyone in the community is going to suddenly become a paragon of perfect RPing merit, but there are steps you can take to try to help shorten the gap. Does this help long term? I have no clue. Short term? I'd like to think so, at least. :O