Board Clean Up - Coming Soon

[Ikoma]

A few days ago, I had a few minutes at work and decided to scroll down GG.com and check out a few games in action, lurk a bit, and bask in the quality roleplaying that we have here in this fine forum.  I normally rely on the "Show new replies to your posts." link to get me to threads I am following or simply browse the General Discussion board.  So I was a little shocked by how many games are listed and how many of them seem to be inactive below that General Discussion.  Some of the users haven't been active on GG.com for months.

I am officially announcing that we do a little trimming.  Here is the plan.  After a reasonable period (say 4 weeks - approximately Dec. 15^th), inactive games get moved off the front page.

By way of explanation, I would say an active game meets one of the following criteria:

• has had a post within the past six months; or
• the GM has contacted me with a PM or email

The games will NOT be deleted.  Instead, they will be moved into an inactive games folder.  If a game gets moved accidentally, we can certainly move it back.  Additionally, if a game comes back at some future point, nothing will be lost.  This is an organizational move designed to make the main forum page be a little more readable and browsable, not a move to permanently trash games.

Any comments?  Suggestions?

[Ski-Bird]

  Setting the recency limit of six months sounds fair. 

  I wouldn't go much lower though, I've often let a week or two (alright... months  ) pass by without a single post on the games I run.

[Frostchilde]

You guys are way too nice.

I would put unfinished games, by GMs/DMs who just stopped posting to their own games, without a word of explanation, in a Hall of Shame folder and refuse to honor their requests for another board, pending a period of proving themselves dependable and consistant posters. 

[reefwood]

I think this is a great idea and it makes me wonder about (server?) space and the end of games.

What is the space situation on GG?  Does it have tons of space?  Unlimited space?  Running thin on space?

I like browsing the boards once in a while to read a game where I am not a player or GM.  I have thus far just done this with active games, but I guess there's no reason why I can't read a game that is already completed, but it would be bummer to start reading a game I enjoy and then have it disappear.  Are completed games usually deleted?

I know there is the Hall of Fame for the "best" games, but there are only 3 games in there, and it doesn't have games with some of the rules/settings that I would like to read.  Plus, how many games are actually completed?  Although, it would be nice to start reading a game knowing that there will be an end.

I actually have a completed game here that was finished months ago and is just laying dormant now.  I meant to inquire what to do about it, but then, thought that I might just use the same board for a new game, but now, I don't see myself running another game (aside from my other existing game) on here anytime soon.

If there is plenty of space, maybe there should be a Completed Games folder?

Anyway, going back to the idea at hand...

Six months seems like more than enough time.  Especially if the game will simply be moved to an inactive folder.  Will there also be a time frame for inactive games being deleted?  That might be something to consider if space is an issue, and if it is, I'd rather have more completed game to read than dead games floating around.

And what will it mean to be in the inactive folder?  Will the game be locked (i.e. no posting)?  I have seen games go quiet because the GM is busy or just disappears, and sometimes the GM will post in the OOC thread when s/he is ready to start things up again.  A locked game would not allow this, but that might not be a bad thing.  Maybe it would be good for a GM with an inactive game to contact players directly with a PM first to see if it can even become active again.  Of course, it could be annoying if the GM (or a player) wanted to work on the game in the meantime.  But I guess then it could be made active under the second caveat ("the GM has contacted me with a PM or email").

One other thing that comes to mind is that sometimes people post long after a game has been inactive.  Usually I see it when people check in to see if anyone is still around, so the last post might be from 4 months ago, but that game hasn't actually been active for 7 months.

[reefwood]

You guys are way too nice.

I would put unfinished games, by GMs/DMs who just stopped posting to their own games, without a word of explanation, in a Hall of Shame folder and refuse to honor their requests for another board, pending a period of proving themselves dependable and consistant posters. 

I'm not sure about a Hall of Shame, heh, but some sort of probation might not be a bad idea.  Though, maybe only for repeat cases and perhaps based on other criteria as well, but there is at least one person on here who I've seen set up games and join games several times only to vanish without a word after a month or so.  I totally understand how that can happen when an emergency comes up, but it seems more often to be people just being flaky and doing it over and over again.  It would be nice if there was a way to help it so they didn't keep wasting other people's time.

[Ikoma]

I don't believe storage is an issue.  I could be wrong.  I was originally motivated by organization.

[Bobitron]

Yeah, storage isn't a problem. There is a (very high) limit in place on attachments/avatars/etc, but we'll never have an issue with normal text.

[Ikoma]

Okay, Board Clean Up '09 has gone off without a hitch.  NOTHING HAS BEEN DISCARDED -or- THROWN AWAY.  If you have a game that you have not made a post to in the last 6+ month but you are planning on getting back to, just post a note here or PM me and I will put it back.

This was done for two reasons.  One, to clean up the front page.  Two, to make admin tasks a bit easier.

[reefwood]

Thanks for tidying up!  Looks better already.

Will this be done periodically?  Once a month or seasonally or something else?

[Ikoma]

I am imagining seasonally.

[Sacremas]

In theory I'm at some point going to start up Mythos, so following that theory I wouldn't mind still having it out. I even got the entire intro thing for all the characters written down and saved away somewhere, starting that game up would take all the effort of pressing Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.

In actuality over the last year at least I've been flaky as hell, I've just lost some of the zest I had for PbP games in general, even found myself going a week or longer without checking the forums. Hell there was a time not too long ago when a few hours without checking the forums would have been too long!

So for now, as long as you don't delete Mythos entirely I can live with it being in the unfinished folder until I get my shit together (whenever that happens) and think I can actually maintain a game rather than just start it up to have it die off within a few weeks...

[Ikoma]

Absolutely, Sacremas!  I would never just delete creative output from anyone without a serious amount of notice and forewarning.  You stuff will be there (barring some meltdown that takes out all of gg.com and then it would have hit it even it was stored somewhere else) when you get back.