On Intro Posts

[paradisamods]

We have had a lot of complaints about intro posts getting ignored/overlooked.

To better illuminate the problem, we decided to look at who comments on a sample pool of 40 entries spanning from March 9th to April 4th (4pm), and we discovered the following:

• Only 163 of our 330+ characters participated on the introduction posts. That's just under 50%.
• 89 of those 163 only participated in only ONE introduction post in a period of 27 days.
• These 163 characters appeared 312 times –– 114 of which were for castmates*, 198 of which were for non-castmates.
• 43 characters tagged castmates only.
• 8 of the 40 posts were by characters with no existing castmates in the game; they respectively got 1, 1, 1, 5, 6, 7, 18, and 18 characters commenting. One of those "ones" has already dropped.
• Conversely, 8 of the 40 posts from characters with existing casts got either 0 or only 1 non-castmate tagging. Five of those are new players.

Overall, this means we've got a mere 25% of the game's characters doing the bulk of the introductions, if you count "bulk" as "two posts or more."

There has been talk of "I just don't have time to tag something new", but consider this: if every character added just one more intro to their tags, there would be another 330+ tags divided amongst all the new entries every month. When you split that work by all 150+ muns, it really isn't that big of a change for the individual, but it'd make a big difference for everyone new.

We aren't ranking people or ordering people by number of posts they participate in, because this isn't a contest. There is no prize for having more, no punishment for having less. We aren't going to chase after any individual, because what really matters is our effort as a group. We just want everyone to look at how many intros they post on and consider their own participation in welcoming new characters to the game. That's all we ask -- consideration.


* Marvel Universe, DC Universe and Doctor Who Universes were respectively conglomerated to count castmates. (Ie, Marvel movies and Marvel comics lumped together. )

Comments

[knightprodigy.livejournal.com]

:(

/Will try harder.

[leon.livejournal.com]

This was kind of a wake up call for me. I went back to look at where I fell in all of these statistics, and it looks like I only tagged into Drusilla's intro with Angel--and that was because it would have been ooc for my character to ignore it/she is a castmate.

I'm really going to work on trying to turn this habit around. Thank you guys for doing this and posting it up. I don't think I would have caught on to it otherwise.

[luthored.livejournal.com]

I'm happy this was looked at, and am impressed by those...statistics. I'll definitely try harder here as well.

[hanfreakingsolo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing this. ♥

[skort]

jlkdadj those are surprising stats, but something tells me they probably shouldn't be

/makes note to do better 8(

[fightfurther.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. ♥

[mal-addict.livejournal.com]

I shall indeed use this as good reason to try harder in tagging intro posts.

[payback.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's... quite a difference. I'll take a closer look at my participation here.

[msattentionspan]

I just set up tracking for ALL intro posts, so that anytime a new intro gets posted up and they use !intro when they post the entry, I'll get notified.

It's super easy to do and it might help out some of the intro posts that get buried on those busy/heavy plotting days. You'll get an email every time this tag is used when the post goes up. I know that !intro tags get added after the fact a lot, but this could still help.

http://www.livejournal.com/manage/subscriptions/user.bml?journal=paradisa

Just set it to notify you anytime : Someone posts an entry tagged !intro

[luckyvalentine.livejournal.com]

Aah! Good idea.

[msattentionspan]

It's how I do all my tracking!

[fastest.livejournal.com]

I would do that but that's just too many notifs for my inbox, but I'll certainly be keeping a better eye out for intro posts. :>

[leon.livejournal.com]

I'm fail with tracking, so I think I'll do this too.

/now with less fail-grammar

[hard-talker.livejournal.com]

Good idea ... which also reminds me. Has telling people to tag their first posts with "!intro" been added somewhere that new players will see it? If it hasn't ... I do a sweep of the comm every week looking for people to add to Harry's welcome wagon list. Maybe I could edit the tag into the intro posts that are missing it?

[assombris.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's a simple mistake but some people aren't tagging their intro posts (they probably don't realize it) with "!intro" or sometimes make the mistake of tagging "intro", and that tag i'm sure does not get checked. i usually add or fix the tag depending on what i see. the same goes for OOC posts with the "new characters" tag. i think it's starting to slip everyone's minds.

[onemanshort.livejournal.com]

Great idea. I'm definitely using this.

[luckyvalentine.livejournal.com]

Point taken!

I realize that I suck in this area, and yeah... after seeing this, will definitely be trying harder. Thanks for the wakeup call.

[save-the-souls.livejournal.com]

Point taken!

I'll definitely try harder to comment to intros more. If anything maybe simply pick a day of the week that tends to be busy for Paradisa intros that I can set for the day that I tag like...1-3 intros (and if there aren't any intros that day, pick a second choice day of the week). That way it'd be easier to get into the habit of doing that than pulling a "MUST TAG ALL THINGS" for a week then getting burnt out by it. And of course, nothing stopping me from tagging intros outside of that day if I see fit :)

Which begs the question - has anyone noticed a particular popular day for intros?

[superheroine]

No idea, but I can certainly look at that later. I doubt there'll be any particular pattern, though, as people tend to post as soon as they have comm access, which tends to be any day of the week.

[save-the-souls.livejournal.com]

True true.

Eh I'll probably pick some weekend day then, since I usually have time then. Except Friday because for some reason...Friday is very quiet in Para...I swear...

[leon.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that Sundays are usually pretty dead, too. But there's nothing to stop us from going back and tagging two or three day old intros on that particular day either. It's a good idea.

[save-the-souls.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah...Friday night we go party, Sunday night we catch up on the homework we've been putting off :C

And that's true! I would not be opposed to backtagging either if the newbie is fine with that :) Though I totally misread and thought you said tagging two or three days ahead...like you could TIME TRAVEL :OOO

[leon.livejournal.com]

I wish. >(

[hard-talker.livejournal.com]

MONDAY NIGHTS.

I swear, every time I have Harry post, about an hour after the post goes up, MORE NEWBIES SHOW UP.

Actually, early in the week in general seems to be newbie time. And yeah, this is coming from the girl who tracks the intros. ;D

[hulloeverything.livejournal.com]

That's a startling statistic, to be sure. I usually do my best to tag intros, but last month kind of sucked for me activity wise.

I'm working on picking it all up, though, and that includes keeping track of intro posts.

Thanks for looking into that, really.

[lanacavelle.livejournal.com]

Goodness, that stat is not a pretty one. I have to kick my arse back in gear and start pouncing on intros with Gino more (and figure out how to get Jin involved too).

Thanks for the wake-up call, I'll definitely work to clean my own act up.

[tomatoandbasil.livejournal.com]

Now that I'm back, I'll definitely be on the lookout for any intro posts more so than usual. Thank you for being kind when letting us know about this.

[bro-codebreaker.livejournal.com]

Thank you thank you thank you for looking into this. I've been ridiculously busy, so I haven't been able to tag as many newbies as I've wanted to - but I do try and grab them on the second post if I missed the first, most of the time. <3

I do know that I've had to reassure people about a lack of posts to characters' intros, in the past - ESPECIALLY characters who aren't from "popular" canons like Marvel or DC-verse, or Homestuck. Obscure characters need love, too! :D

[paradisamods]

I think obscure characters are more likely to be passed over when the mun is new OR the character has never been in Paradisa before (and thus has no prior CR hitting them up.) A good number of characters from canons I wouldn't call "popular" got a good number of non-castmate tags, but they also happened to be played by a) established members of the community OR b) had been here before. Conversely, a couple of Homestuck and DC characters went largely ignored by non-castmates, despite being "obscure" characters within their fandoms –– the types that probably would have been overlooked if they hadn't had castmates hanging around.

I'm not a statistician, though, I won't make any huge claims to seeing patterns beyond what I posted up there, nor can I really make them without widening the net and including more intro posts.

[calidragon.livejournal.com]

That's probably a true enough assessment. I had only one character tag into Felix's intro. Granted, it wasn't a spectacular entrance, and a lot of that had to do with me having no idea what I was doing, and I know boring stuff like that doesn't exactly tend to draw interest from the characters, but still, his intro to the castle basically boiled down to "read the journal and figure it out for yourself"...which was...really cold. This has actually played a lot into the fact that Felix now tries to help newbies out whenever he runs into them, because his welcome wagon, frankly, sucked.

That said...some people are hard pressed to come up with a really interesting intro post and that should not effect the tags they gets as much as it does.

[n0secondchances.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this. We're all busy, but that's no excuse to ignore people who come into the game. This is an eye opener and I'll definitely try harder to get my guys out and about.

[eightynine.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, this is an awesome way to encourage participation! I'll try harder to post around more. :) Thanks for taking the time to post the stats like this!