Adding on to Colin’s suggestion with a role we already have that currently isn’t in use.

We could add to staff with a headboy/girl, to do what prefects do ooc, and do what the job description is: training new prefects.

EDIT: after scrolling through past suggestions, I saw the idea of house ghosts from Logan Baird, which could also be used.

Oo, I was wondering if you guys had Headboys/Head girls. I was looking for them. I think this is a really good idea, to add more staff members. I think that it's also about who's willing to put in consistent effort, because it's easy to get discouraged by a lot of responsibilities. Maybe more people can be Ministry of Magic workers, or staff when it comes to the other schools

Edit: at the mention of the house ghost, there can be the poltergeist and talking paintings too. People can be delegated small tasks that easy up the load

The main thing for me is, what is keeping you from doing those RP's? It is not, in any site rule, that you can't write an RP leaning a spell with a upper classmate. You can make those plots, you can put that request for RP in the RPG request thread, on discord...simply by owling people, asking politely if they're interested in roll playing it with you. So, in terms of character development and characters interactions that problem doesn't really exist. So ultimately it seems to me, you're trying to create a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. You both need to have those spells and potions in your trunk to be able to RP with it and that's the only conditional. Even if you want to create an instance when this leads to an IC funny encounter for detentions is possible with the current system.

This would create the need for those RP's to happen in a specific area/forum of the site, to be moderated, and with that would actually create more restriction in players' creativity. We know we all tend to think in the most well intentional behavior of the players, but mind you that it is not the case in many situations. Ensure the safety and fairness of the site is also our job and responsibility.

Hogwarts is a school, classes, homework, professors are essential in this world building, other way you would have homeschooling system, parents teaching their kids...but it wouldn't happen at Hogwarts, or in a Hogwarts RPing site. It's not a matter of not having enough staff members in my opinion, but there is no need for this and actually it wouldn't make sense.

You say this: "A big reason I came up with this idea is because I feel that the plotting opportunities are limited for students. Or rather, the kinds of plots players can run feel limited to me." It sounds to me, you are limiting yourself and not actually the options at your disposal. What is keeping you from plotting with other players? I'm a professor for a short time (I'm Melisande Lennox btw.), but I'm open to help, plot and thread with students as long as it makes sense. Have you tried reaching out to other professors too? Yes we are busy fellows but, and here I speak for myself, we are in a RP site because we like to create and to write as much as the other players. Maybe the replies are slower, but doesn't mean people has to feel they can't reach out to us, this is not at all what is intended.

This is just my opinion of course, but as a new staff member these are my thoughts and feelings about all you said.

We have a staff of 12 professors, 4 assistants, 16 prefects, 4 HOH 1 deputy headmaster and 1 headmaster, 8 captains for quidditch, 8 captains for broom racing and 12 captains for dueling. We also have newspaper writers and mentors. I want you guys to grasp how large the group is to manage the site, it is huge. To take on this addition, we would need a sizable addendum to the team.

When someone comes or goes, there are hours put into finding their replacement. With each addition to he team there is a risk that the person we add will be garbage (I have worse words in mind), you have friends in your DMs that trash people, cheat, lie, and manipulate. Well, we need to make sure they do not get on the team and sometimes (often) their friends cover for them. We spend conceited hours trying to prevent this. Investigation, research, voting, the collection of applications and the dissemination of rejection letters is not automated. Every person that comes and goes costs me (everyone spends time) at least 6 hours of my time. And that is assuming someone else onboards them, onboarding is another 2. And sometimes we miss something, we add a monster and the integrity of the community is at risk. I cannot quantify the hours spent due to this, I have had former staff members spend years (this is not me making this up) harass myself, members of staff, the community and have led the path to poor policy decisions that we spend months if not years in their wake dismantling.

But let's humor thing for a moment. What if this addition was worth the risk? There was a significant improvement to the quality of life in the community and it needed to be staff-driven. We did add a new HOH (deputy) for this expressed reason: in consideration of the adult system so that someone can manage their needs. We spoke for over a year on this. Well, we needed to either have adults considered and managed or players auto-lost their PC at graduation, so it was needed as we had two options and chose the one that kept the character. As few make it past y7 but this number will grow and we have several idle 'adult' characters. So this role requires at this time (1) person, in the future we anticipate (years from now) this requiring additional assistance in the form of a second body as back-up. What you guys are asking for is not something that can be satisfied by -one- person. How many people do you guys think that this would require? How many players do you think will take advantage of this? Let's stay conservatively 25% of the active members make use of this. That would be 16/4, so 4 staff people to just manage the core. The additional work and burden on the other teams: index, admin and captains would be measured in additional work/time burden. Would there need to be additional assistance, additional delays in creation, other duties that would need to be delegated to manage this. The answer is yes.

So with the work burden discussed, Now let's talk to the benefit and loss ratio. This addition to the site that would make the professors past efforts (classes) less valuable, negate one of the major benefits of a player ability, and make it harder for sport captains to verify spells, Index members to verify trunks, admins to verify trunks when working with iNPCs. But this would give players an RP opportunity that can be satisfied by the post written by Fang Hui-Ying.

Solomon Lear wrote: 21 Aug 2023, 11:27 We have a staff of 12 professors, 4 assistants, 16 prefects, 4 HOH 1 deputy headmaster and 1 headmaster, 8 captains for quidditch, 8 captains for broom racing and 12 captains for dueling. We also have newspaper writers and mentors. I want you guys to grasp how large the group is to manage the site, it is huge. To take on this addition, we would need a sizable addendum to the team.

When someone comes or goes, there are hours put into finding their replacement. With each addition to he team there is a risk that the person we add will be garbage (I have worse words in mind), you have friends in your DMs that trash people, cheat, lie, and manipulate. Well, we need to make sure they do not get on the team and sometimes (often) their friends cover for them. We spend conceited hours trying to prevent this. Investigation, research, voting, the collection of applications and the dissemination of rejection letters is not automated. Every person that comes and goes costs me (everyone spends time) at least 6 hours of my time. And that is assuming someone else onboards them, onboarding is another 2. And sometimes we miss something, we add a monster and the integrity of the community is at risk. I cannot quantify the hours spent due to this, I have had former staff members spend years (this is not me making this up) harass myself, members of staff, the community and have led the path to poor policy decisions that we spend months if not years in their wake dismantling.

But let's humor thing for a moment. What if this addition was worth the risk? There was a significant improvement to the quality of life in the community and it needed to be staff-driven. We did add a new HOH (deputy) for this expressed reason: in consideration of the adult system so that someone can manage their needs. We spoke for over a year on this. Well, we needed to either have adults considered and managed or players auto-lost their PC at graduation, so it was needed as we had two options and chose the one that kept the character. As few make it past y7 but this number will grow and we have several idle 'adult' characters. So this role requires at this time (1) person, in the future we anticipate (years from now) this requiring additional assistance in the form of a second body as back-up. What you guys are asking for is not something that can be satisfied by -one- person. How many people do you guys think that this would require? How many players do you think will take advantage of this? Let's stay conservatively 25% of the active members make use of this. That would be 16/4, so 4 staff people to just manage the core. The additional work and burden on the other teams: index, admin and captains would be measured in additional work/time burden. Would there need to be additional assistance, additional delays in creation, other duties that would need to be delegated to manage this. The answer is yes.

So with the work burden discussed, Now let's talk to the benefit and loss ratio. This addition to the site that would make the professors past efforts (classes) less valuable, negate one of the major benefits of a player ability, and make it harder for sport captains to verify spells, Index members to verify trunks, admins to verify trunks when working with iNPCs. But this would give players an RP opportunity that can be satisfied by the post written by Fang Hui-Ying.

I was going to address Fang's points but I think I taste frustration in your post, Solomon. So let me be clear: I am hugely appreciative of the work mods do here. Without them volunteering their time, without you volunteering your time, this site wouldn't function. I did not know the staff was this large already, nor do I have a grasp of what the workload on staff currently is. Those numbers, the hours being put in, are both impressive and a bit scary. It sounds like a lot.

For what it's worth, I've been on your side of the isle. Can't say I've ever moderated a site this large but I do know that modding an RP forum is more involved than most users think. Correct me if I am wrong, but what I am getting from your reply is frustration that I or others who put ideas on the table don't get how much of an impact such changes would have. Is that a fair assessment? If so, it was not my intent to be dismissive of the work involved.

Forget the original idea, by this point I already know that it's not going to happen and that's fine, I'm not so attached to it.

Where I can help is with automation, moderator tools to help speed mod work along, to cut out the menial work that's being done manually. I won't say I can offer a magical technical solution for every timesink task that staff currently has to do, but I am quite sure that I can make a dent - provided you're willing to take me up on it (you are of course free to decline).

Going back to what moderator experience I have, on those RP sites a lot of manual work was being done and people didn't even realize it was possible to automate. Now, I don't know what the grunt tasks are on here, but just to give you some idea of what is technically possible:

- Stats integrated into the site. Meaning players have a page on their profile to manage their stats. If they have stat points left to spend, they can adjust the stat numbers (upward). If they've got nothing to spend, they can't edit it. This way there is no possibility for cheating and therefore no need to check stats either.
- Trunks integrated into the site so the Game Master trunk updates are no longer needed. Player can just request a change, moderator gets to see a before and after and hits an OK button to approve or cancel to reject with or without a reason provided.
- Simulating the outcome of a round of Quidditch, Duelling or Broom racing. No need for moderators to do dice rolls, check abilities, brooms etc. This isn't necessarily *easy* to build, but it is technically feasible.


Again, this is completely unrelated to the idea I tabled about p2p teaching. What I am saying is that while I respect all the time being put in, I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of time that is being put in could be cut down on with additional programming. If that's the case, I'm here by offering to help.

Maverick Castle wrote: 21 Aug 2023, 13:40

Whereas the ideas you mentioned above all look good (and I personally thank you for the time and energy you have put to come up with them), there is only one hiccup to implement them.

I'm no longer a staff member but I happen to know that programming is something that would be very difficult to change or implement at the moment. And, all of the great suggestions you mentioned are related to programming/coding.

Why would it be difficult? Because this site is fully coded by one person, its founder Zachary Winslow. They created it out of love and even translated everything to English (from its original French) so most people worldwide can enjoy it. For years ever since it first ran in 2018, they has been making sure that the site stays advertisement-free, fast to load, and also can be enjoyed by everyone without having to pay. Zachary volunteers to improve the site when they have time, something that seems so simple to our naked eye may cost them hours to code. This site is not their full-time job, and programming will take time to be implemented.

You misunderstand, I am offering to do the programming.

I don't even have access to the core. If you can convince Zach, go for it. As polite as I can be, I would not trust a stranger with the core without years of trust but maybe he has blind faith in people.

Cheers, I'll give that a go.

The base code of this forum, phpBB, is open source, anyone can read it and expand it, there is public documentation on how to do so online. The programming Zach added I don't have to know about to add new functionality. Modifying existing functionality is a different story though.

So yeah, for new functionality, trust isn't required. At the end of the day I can just post the code I developed in the technical forum or owl it to him, and he can vet it from there. But yeah, I'll check first if he's open to additional functionality in the first place.