Third match of the year is up. This will determine who is playing in the summer games.

QUIDDITCH Game- HUFFLEPUFF vs RAVENCLAW - SPRING 2023

HUFFLEPUFF vs RAVENCLAW - SPRING 2023 (Spectators)

QUIDDITCH Game - GRYFFINDOR vs SLYTHERIN - SPRING 2023

GRYFFINDOR vs HUFFLEPUFF - SPRING 2023 (Spectators)

Graduation & Potions

As anyone familiar with the Potion System knows, every account is restricted to brewing 4 potions via the system per academic year. This count resets with the end of the IC school year, so on the 1st of July. Any brewing application submitted before then still counts for the current school year (2022/23), any application submitted after will count toward the limit for the 2023/24 school year. You will also not be able to brew potions of your new year before the 1st of July. There will be a post marking the start of the new year in the Potion Brewing thread.

Just under 4 weeks left, get brewing

Forward Dating

As we have a number of players that are choosing to remain first years, their ability to embed themselves into the community has been limited. As such until September 1, 2023, we are temporarily expanding the forward dating for all RP threads up to 3 months. This means that on June 11 you are able to temporarily post a RP forward dated as far ahead as Sept 11.

What is Forward Dating?

The date of a thread is defined by the first post. As such, threads are assumed to take place on the date that the thread has started, within a few days of the thread starting (for example if the thread starts on a Saturday and the thread is taking place in a classroom, it would be on Friday) unless otherwise stated. A player can backdate a thread as far back as they wish and they can normally forward date a thread up to 1 month. Basically it is a declaration that the thread started on a specific day.

What are the Rules of Forward Dating?

A player can forward-date up to 1 month from the start of a thread.

What is the change?

During the summer months we normally expand forward dating for 2 months to accommodate players that wish to "stay behind" or start with the impending school year. With the earlier graduation and players having declared their intend to stay behind as early as the first of the month, there are members in this community that have to wait weeks to have their first Hogwarts roleplay. So we have expanded this to 3 months so that they can start roleplaying right now if they so desire.

Is there anything we should know?

We always recommend caution when a user forward dates. The "first" experiences you have here may prevent you from participating in other group activities. Your experiences are often built off the past and you have skipped over this past. This can make it hard to take part in group activities.

Example: If there is an event or an activity that happens on the first or the second day of school, such as an ogre attacks your common room. Your character might find it hard to fully participate in this activity because there might be other participants that you have "already met" in character weeks later. Your lack of a time turner or a TARDIS will make it hard for you to take part in these group activities.

Another potential issue is not noticing that someone is forward dating a thread. Please make sure that you read the first-post of a thread fully, do not assume that a thread if forward dated (or not forward dating).

Example: is a first year graduating and IC looking forward to the end of the year and summer and starts a thread. A new player who will be in their first year this coming Sept will need to take part in a forward dated thread. That thread maker will need to be roleplaying as a second year or the soon to be first year will not be able to join the thread.

Is this change forever?

No, this is just a temporary extension until September 1 2023. As of Sept 1, all threads will only be able to be forward dated 1 month. Threads already in progress would be able to continue on, but no new threads will be able to be forward dated more than one month.

Head's up to everyone - we are coming up on June 15th, which means graduation! But please keep in mind that this is a manual process - it may take the Heads of House a few days to start/finish. Some houses may be graduated before/after others because of our schedules. Please do not panic when you see someone else has been moved up but you haven't. That said, you can apply for graduation stats and spells when your specific profile title says that you have yeared up.

Over the next few days/week there will be several site and discord announcements regarding summer camp and other end-of-year related topics. Please hold your questions on these topics until after the relevant announcements have been made.

Potions Reminder

Graduation is done and over - shoutout again to our lovely admins for managing all that so smoothly - here's a quick reminder about potion brewing.

As previously announced, you can still apply for all your potions (up to 4) for the 2022/23 school year up until the 1st of July, when the IC school year ends. This is a reminder that you cannot apply for potions that you have only learned by or after graduation. Since many trunks have already been updated since, this is hard for us to track.

Hence, if you apply for a potion that you have learned via homework during the 2022/23 school year, please provide a screenshot of your report card, to show that you had access to this potion before you graduated.

Thank you, and get brewing!

Information about the Potion System and how it works can be found here.

Update to Site Rules: Do Not Impersonate Staff

I have never had this happen in all my years, but here we are. It is an expectation that users do not pose as staff members if they are not staff members. Staff members range from sport captains, to mentors, to Prefects, Professors and Heads of House. When a user claims that they are a staff members, they undermine the trust and relationship the staff and community have.

If someone is caught posing as a staff person, they will be banned without warning.

In case there are multiple victims in this case, I will elaborate:

A new user signed up for the mentorship program and a player (who is not a mentor) sent them an owl claiming that they were their mentor, answered some of the suer's questions, etc. So a short time later when an actual mentor accepted the user, the user was very confused because they had already been "accepted" and taken on by a mentor.

If you are not certain a staff person is who they claim you can refer to the team roster here. If you have been dealing with a staff person that has told you they are staff and they are not on the list, reach out to me ASAP. For the likely question to follow: "unofficial games" are clearly not official games, there is no issue with this. The issue is when you claim to be "official" (an issue we have never had).

Reintroducing the Role of Deputy Headmaster

We are reintroducing the role of Deputy Headmaster/mistress to the site. This role IC acts as a Deputy to our existing Headmaster Solomon Lear, much like McGonagall was to Albus Dumbledore during their tenure. This role OOC will be expanding the admin team to 6 instead of 5. They will have access to the backbones of the site and the mechanics that only admin have. They will be a welcome addition to the team that helps oversee the existing staff team, process admin-specific duties, and support the site in its growth.

This role will be going to an existing admin and Head of House, Hjørdis Jensen. Hjørdis Jensen, also known as "Nora" is our longest tenured admin on site besides Solomon Lear. She has taken on numerous on-site roles in the community such as Prefect, Head Girl, Professor-ship (when it was tied to a Head of House role) and Head of House for House Slytherin.

This leaves an opening for a sixth admin to take over the Head of Slytherin position, which will be posted in our staff applications thread shortly. Please note this role will require past staff experience which is defined as being a former prefect, assistant, professor and/or Head of House.

Applications will be open until July 14.

Advancement Program

This summer (July and August 2023) we are trialing a program that is aimed at users who have been IC held back due to OOC reasons. This means users who fell off index before graduation one year, and have since returned to the site and re-indexed with IC reasoning for why they were held back. This program will allow them to advance one extra year in the summer with the goal of catching up to their peers.

OOC this involves an application process that is available only over the summer. IC this is represented by an exam that Hogwarts students who were held back can take over summer.

This program is being created with the intention to help users that may have left the site at inopportune times or changed characters only to realize they want to stick with their original. This is not meant to be abused to keep multiple high-year characters in rotation, ideally this will be a rarely-used program for users that want to reignite passion for a character they intend to stick with.

The full information of the program and the application process can be found pinned at the top of the Characters forum, in this thread: [link]