Community Vote: Optional Profile Forum Accounts

[MrKill]

In the CBox, some members want the ability to create more than one forum account, which is currently prohibited. We only allow one account per user, however it's come to the staff teams attention that some members would like too have the option to make a forum account for each profile they have.

For example, I use 'MrKill' as my primary account.

If this is vote is positive, I could then go make 'COL. Killinger', 'ADM. Klix', 'blah', 'blah'. Essentially, I'd make a new forum account for each one of my characters that I've created.

There will be a rule, however. Since we do want to keep things organized, we'll require people to post the original character template on their primary non-character linked forum account. So if I were to make a new character, say a Prophet, I'd have to do so under the 'MrKill' tag before creating a new forum account to RP that character. This keeps the characters linked to one alias, rather than spreading them around to dozens of profiles.

The vote will end on the tenth, so lets get voting!

Remember: This is optional, you don't have to do it!

[MrKill]

Jan 8, 2015 17:07:32 GMT -6 @tracker said:

I don't get this.

Yes I recognise it's optional but it's more work, for both staff and members, it sounds far more complicated than what we have now and just sounds confusing. So I obviously no.

But it really isn't.

It's not our responsibility to keep track of the members accounts, just their profiles. Hence why there will be a rule that all character templates are posted onto ONE profile.

Go to Llau's into the wasteland RP, you'll see what I mean.

[Llau]

Yeah. I don't keep track of member accounts over at my site, just their profiles they make. It's not that hard, even though there's not many profiles unlike over here, but it'll be the same.

[Frazer]

I remember when last tried to do this and it failed.

But alas Im not too bothered if members want to make more than one profile. Although it would give the site a false sense of members and look really clustered.

[BetaWülf]

Honestly, I'm all for this. It sounds fun to me, and with the rule in place it wouldn't be disorganized or anything.

[Cute Huragok]

Yeah I'm for this as well, as you could put your avatar as your character, and have your ooc name in parenthesis as your display name after your character's name.

[Samuel Murray]

I want this so much

[SuperCommando]

I don't like it. Everything a member does should be on one single account.

[BetaWülf]

Jan 8, 2015 23:44:47 GMT -6 SuperCommando said:

I don't like it. Everything a member does should be on one single account.

Only their posts would be spread across their various accounts at their own discretion and choosing, they'd have all their profiles on their primary account. And it isn't a matter of should or shouldn't, it is a matter of will I or wont I, since nobody has to do this if they don't want to.

[John]

I am conflicted between saying yes, and saying no. On the one hand, it'll make things nicer, but on the other it'll make me have to post with all accounts, rather than being able to make one large post for all characters.

[Llau]

Jan 9, 2015 5:07:00 GMT -6 John said:

I am conflicted between saying yes, and saying no. On the one hand, it'll make things nicer, but on the other it'll make me have to post with all accounts, rather than being able to make one large post for all characters.

That's why it'll be optional and not mandatory like some sites do with this. 

[Samuel Murray]

Jan 9, 2015 8:59:33 GMT -6 @tracker said:

Just gonna, speak again here >.>

It's more effort for the members xD I don't know who in their right mind wants more effort I also just think things would look clustered, I.E Member count a day, a good way of checking site activity, will become harder to work out as you have to pick who's been on more than one account, what account they've been on. etc. Everything is just tidier and easy to decipher on one account, and yes, I know other sites do it, fair enough to them, but nuuu not on this site.

It also stops people, yes, I acknowledge it's optional, but people who choose to do it to put all their characters in one post, meaning they'd have to post two times if someone has posted something involving two of their characters, and it just fills it up somewhat unnecessarily, to me at least, if they could just neatly organise it on one post.

Yes, it may be work for you, but some of us enjoy neatly setting up profiles and tinkering with them, and to me its never been work setting up and posting twice. 

[Samuel Murray]

Jan 9, 2015 11:09:32 GMT -6 @tracker said:

Jan 9, 2015 11:03:50 GMT -6 Samuel Murray said:

Yes, it may be work for you, but some of us enjoy neatly setting up profiles and tinkering with them, and to me its never been work setting up and posting twice. 

Neatly setting up accounts for profiles instead of having one account with all it's profiles neatly under it? I don't get it.

You can tinker with the profiles you have now, which are already neat and tidy, nothing is stopping you from doing that, and you really don't find it just a tad tedious that you're gonna have to log in to post, then log out, then log in again, then maybe log out again, repeating the process due to how many character's you have to post with?

I've got seven. I'd lose my rag but that's me personally.

I personally don't use many characters so I wouldn't mind to be honest, some people prefer other things, and of course this is purely optional, so you wouldn't have to use it.

[Deleted]

Voted no already, but to state my humble opinion, past experience with account-per character on forums typically resulted in hundreds of accounts for a fraction of the people posting, ensuring some confusion and subsequent purge of the inactive accounts. Having been on a few forums with that system, and perhaps more of my own ability than anything else, I can tell you the frustrations of having to keep making new accounts for every single character, switching profiles and naturally posting as the wrong account, managing the details specific to a character per account-basis was far more complicated than just the singular.

Another issue is forum-members that use the same name as a character - to me, it always felt more difficult to tell who was who as actual members of the forum, from the character-centric accounts. A brief mention is using a 'main' account and only using character-accounts when posting as characters, for the forums that used them. To rehash, simply how I feel.

For the desire of tinkering with character profiles, surely the thread-per-character setup is enough? A thread can contain all the details, the history, backstory, ideas as-is here. The 'character list' function in the profile settings beneath the avatar can link to every character using the URL code, or that can be pushed into the signature area.

My 2 pence.

Edit; I am aware it's all optional, but you did ask for our votes, and I wanted to give my opinion, as means of explaining the vote.

[MrKill]

I think everyone is forgetting that this would be optional, you don't have to do it. It's not going to be forced down upon your throat, but you would have realized that if everyone read the first initial post. I'm surprised, and a little disappointed, that some people haven't read or realized it would be entirely optional to the users.

When people vote 'no', I feel like you're just voting because you don't want to see more accounts. Sorry, going to be blunt there, I don't see how this would become a hassle to those who've voted no. I respect your vote, realize that some of you just don't want more accounts on the online list, but it's entirely optional.

Some of you have argued that it'll be a hassle for the members - unless you're that member, you wouldn't know how much of a hassle it really is or isn't, and since it's optional, you'd find out who finds it a hassle or not.

I voted yes because it's optional, gives people some more options and it really doesn't make anything harder for myself as a member of the website - or as a staff member either - because of the central character rule.

[SuperCommando]

Jan 9, 2015 13:36:13 GMT -6 @tracker said:

Why should it be a vote though if it is optional? 

The reason this is a community vote is because it affects the way the website and community operates. The "it's optional" thing actually has very little to do with the big picture, it's just a minor detail people are getting too hung up on.

The point people should be more concerned about is that, again, this policy will change how the site operates. Like @tracker mentioned earlier, sure other sites do it and it may (or may not as Frazer and @dragontear pointed out) work for them, but that doesn't mean we need to do it too.

So putting this to a vote is entirely relevant.

[MrKill]

While the big picture is that it changes how the website operates, it is a very minor change at the end of the day really, at least in my opinion.

[Frazer]

The site will just look really cluttered with profiles and it will be hard to judge whos actually a member.

But yeah with it being optional thats okay I just dont see the point in it as it really makes no difference to the way we post.

[MrKill]

Thanks for your votes. This has been denied.

Locked.