Member Communications and it's Importance

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Muse
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Honestly I know it's a stress considering CH and it's strict policy but honestly speaking, trying to connect with other keepers is such a darn hassle on this site. To the point that it really puts a dent in the sense of community here. That's not to say that this isn't a great community because it is - but it's lacking in "environmental comfort" for lack of better terms.

I understand that the logic is that Chat is what we as members make it and that's fine on paper but the fact of the matter is seeing one or two people in chat every hour for maybe five minutes isn't going to change due to the strict conditions of communication and the fact that better is offered elsewhere. I've even seen one or two members claim they want to leave or are leaving (not sure if they have yet) because of this divide between sharing experiences and providing a welcoming familial environment.

CH takes a great amount of pride in being the first of what it is, and that's awesome, but IMHO it should also take pride in its forum members and provide them with means of communication outside of forum topics. To my understanding there are pm's for tenured members but even then sharing something as basic and small as an email isn't even allowed. How do you expect to provide a community to people who have no way of communication outside of a chat that no one uses...?

I can't speak for others, but I know my personal reason for not using it is...
1) It's terrible on Mobile for me and I don't have a PC atm and...
2) It looks and feels severely outdated personally speaking

I'm sure others might have a better reason, but it's clear members want better from CH and so I looked at the reasons CH didn't implement better communications.

The first reason I found was fear of members being scammed. That's really sweet of the owners but I feel this is an odd excuse as members are adults and there's a seller review section, so they can make their own choices and don't need their hands held and safety gates put up.

The second reason I found was the more common fear of members being taken advantage of, especially young ones. That's an easy fix too...put an age limit on private communications. You've already put a limit on members based on whether they're tenured of not. Put all members who aren't eighteen in a group and have that group limited. And on the off chance someone lies about their age I'm sure it'd be reported, and at that point it could be ban worthy.

The third reason I found was site safety and member privacy, but most of the sections here are public so that didn't make much sense to me either.

I'm sure there were others but I honestly can't recall them. My blunt-point here is, there's clearly various ways to go about keeping a site and its members safe without keeping all forms of contact and content behind a reinforced magically chained missile proof metal door...and if you really don't think emails, pm's for everyone, etc is a good idea after considering all of that...then why not just make a CH Discord with some mod volunteers to run it?

That way it's your own private chat that's much safer than someone's own personal form of communication such as email, you wouldn't have to change anything about the site, there are website codes that can even implement a Discord chat on the site although that may depend on the code you use yourselves, and on top of that you can verify and screen members at your discretion, set up channels that are private or public, keep everything discreet with certain bots, give mobile users 100x more usability, help members connect safely, and most importantly...build a better and more connected community as a whole.

To be frank it feels less like a worry for safety and more of a worry for lack of activity, but I've seen many community forums that actually have had more activity because of a Discord chat or a funny thing in Discord that started a thread or gave a member an idea they otherwise wouldn't have had. On one forum I'm apart of they now do a giant yearbook every year due to a Discord conversation, and that year book inspires people to make intricate posts and threads and really include everyone, what's better is that all the members work on it together along with two or three mods. That amount of passion and dedication could have never happened without the Discord server being there.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is...please consider giving members Some form of leeway. I promise we won't have a mutiny and steal your pirate ship or what have you. :P

Edit: Also don't you think censoring the word Discord is a little much? Next it'll be YouTube and Aim and Skype and Facebook and...wait how many of these are actually censored??? Oh just discord. Weird, it's almost like Discord feels like a threat...


--SEE MY RESPONSE ON PAGE 6 - MAGNOLIA--


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darkwing dook
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Ishvala wrote: So I guess what I'm trying to say is...please consider giving members Some form of leeway. I promise we won't have a mutiny and steal your pirate ship or what have you. :P
Mmh??
You promise? Why do you promise for something you can't control?
So if CH agrees to give leeway, and some of us deliberately break the rules to troll you, what are you willing to give to CH as compensation?
: P


"Often the truth is in front of your face, but your eyes and heart are so full of lies that you can't see it." Shannon L. Alder

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darkwing dook wrote:
Ishvala wrote: So I guess what I'm trying to say is...please consider giving members Some form of leeway. I promise we won't have a mutiny and steal your pirate ship or what have you. :P
Mmh??
You promise? Why do you promise for something you can't control?
So if CH agrees to give leeway, and some of us deliberately break the rules to troll you, what are you willing to give to CH as compensation?
: P
Lololol I'll bake em some fresh cookies?
That's the best I got to be honest. I am but one meme and I have yet to form any steel beams.


But anyway jokes aside, in actuality I realize the promise itself could be seen as empty and that's fine. I just feel that there should be a recognized difference between passionate protection and paranoid restriction. At least, that's how it comes off to me...


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darkwing dook
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Mmm to be fair, I believe there were a lot happening behind the scene. Some of them were in the forum and their records are deleted or archived. Some are outside the forum. The forum may look relatively peaceful now, but that's because most of the problems, dramas, etc are already archived.

I remember reading about problems with stalkers and creeps, one in facebook, and another in paraecho (CH's own social media, but already taken down). There was drama with two younger members on their email exchange that led to threat of cursing (not the bad word, but the psychic attack), outside the forum. And of course problem with sellers bashing other sellers, including CH, in their own social media groups. Not to mention the witch wars, but they're before my time here.

So there is no guarantee that giving leeway would prevent problems and dramas that can break the community from happening. Including the latest drama with the chat, which made the chat quiet these days. That could have been prevented if the mods were stricter and not giving leeway to the troublemaker from the start (sorry, mods, just my opinion : P).


"Often the truth is in front of your face, but your eyes and heart are so full of lies that you can't see it." Shannon L. Alder

"May you live in interesting times, may you be recognized by people in high places, may you find what you’re looking for."
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Muse
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darkwing dook wrote:Mmm to be fair, I believe there were a lot happening behind the scene. Some of them were in the forum and their records are deleted or archived. Some are outside the forum. The forum may look relatively peaceful now, but that's because most of the problems, dramas, etc are already archived.

I remember reading about problems with stalkers and creeps, one in facebook, and another in paraecho (CH's own social media, but already taken down). There was drama with two younger members on their email exchange that led to threat of cursing (not the bad word, but the psychic attack), outside the forum. And of course problem with sellers bashing other sellers, including CH, in their own social media groups. Not to mention the witch wars, but they're before my time here.

So there is no guarantee that giving leeway would prevent problems and dramas that can break the community from happening. Including the latest drama with the chat, which made the chat quiet these days. That could have been prevented if the mods were stricter and not giving leeway to the troublemaker from the start (sorry, mods, just my opinion : P).
You make a very fair point. Aside from the last comment, I wasnt present for that so I don't know who did what and why outside of basic information in forums so....not gonna touch that.

All that said however then why not start with something small...? Like allowing members to at the very least exchange emails? It's not direct social media and doesn't allow for groups to form (that I know of) but still allows for basic communication in general. Not that bad of a suggestion, right?


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Let CH do what they want, i honestly don't care anymore.

I just stick around for the cool stuff in the store, but i spend 90% of my time on other sites, since they actually allow you to communicate with people without restricting you.

I dont like rules, or being restricted. So i tend not to want to talk, if they tell me i cant. So i don't, why bother?

the forums here had information. so thats nice i guess.

If they want to restrict this place to the point of strangulation, just let it happen. That's their problem, and if they dont want to fix it, so be it. Atleast the store is cool, i kinda stopped caring about this place, i only come one once a week to see if anybody posts anything remotely interesting that has nothing to do with ubi's, but its rare, and usually completely...useless for me to read.

is what it is.


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Unclesid wrote:Let CH do what they want, i honestly don't care anymore.

I just stick around for the cool stuff in the store, but i spend 90% of my time on other sites, since they actually allow you to communicate with people without restricting you.

I dont like rules, or being restricted. So i tend not to want to talk, if they tell me i cant. So i don't, why bother?

the forums here had information. so thats nice i guess.

If they want to restrict this place to the point of strangulation, just let it happen. That's their problem, and if they dont want to fix it, so be it. Atleast the store is cool, i kinda stopped caring about this place, i only come one once a week to see if anybody posts anything remotely interesting that has nothing to do with ubi's, but its rare, and usually completely...useless for me to read.

is what it is.
This is literally what I'm trying to prevent as my passion for this place hasn't died yet (albeit occasionally the arrogance I get off of one specifically makes me question why I bother). Thankfully there's a good number of members (Darkwing, Alys, Jim, R...crap I forgot how to spell his name. The R guy! Etc) I want to continue sharing and learning from and I'd love to be able to connect with each of them individually for all sorts of awesome random conversations that otherwise wouldn't happen in forums.

I see no reason why this is wrong or bad or should be shied away from. In fact, based on the above, I see reason to implement it even more so!

And if I'm being one hundred percent honest here, the inability to even say the name of a place outside of CH feels...wrong. Like, morally wrong. Comparing it to something like cultural history is a bit extreme in and of itself but honestly that doesn't change how wrong it actually feels. One could always say, you could just go somewhere else, but isn't that what we don't want...? Everything about this system seems incredibly counter productive.


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Ishvala wrote:
Unclesid wrote:Let CH do what they want, i honestly don't care anymore.

I just stick around for the cool stuff in the store, but i spend 90% of my time on other sites, since they actually allow you to communicate with people without restricting you.

I dont like rules, or being restricted. So i tend not to want to talk, if they tell me i cant. So i don't, why bother?

the forums here had information. so thats nice i guess.

If they want to restrict this place to the point of strangulation, just let it happen. That's their problem, and if they dont want to fix it, so be it. Atleast the store is cool, i kinda stopped caring about this place, i only come one once a week to see if anybody posts anything remotely interesting that has nothing to do with ubi's, but its rare, and usually completely...useless for me to read.

is what it is.
This is literally what I'm trying to prevent as my passion for this place hasn't died yet (albeit occasionally the arrogance I get off of one specifically makes me question why I bother). Thankfully there's a good number of members (Darkwing, Alys, Jim, R...crap I forgot how to spell his name. The R guy! Etc) I want to continue sharing and learning from and I'd love to be able to connect with each of them individually for all sorts of awesome random conversations that otherwise wouldn't happen in forums.

I see no reason why this is wrong or bad or should be shied away from. In fact, based on the above, I see reason to implement it even more so!

And if I'm being one hundred percent honest here, the inability to even say the name of a place outside of CH feels...wrong. Like, morally wrong. Comparing it to something like cultural history is a bit extreme in and of itself but honestly that doesn't change how wrong it actually feels. One could always say, you could just go somewhere else, but isn't that what we don't want...? Everything about this system seems incredibly counter productive.
Theres always other places, i pretty much just hang around for interesting topics, but im already on other chat rooms, i gave up on CH so long ago.

No point expecting things that wont change, or happen. If you want to be here, thats cool. I never connected with anyone here really, and the people i did connect with have already left and moved on to other chat rooms and sites. Literally nobody i care about is on here anymore, and its sad. But thats just how it goes.

at this point i really have no idea what this forum actually offers me. Because i have found what i needed elsewhere, so like i said, they can restrict all they want. But it wont change the fact that restricting people is what causes them to leave, because why bother with being restricted?


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Unclesid wrote:
Ishvala wrote:
Unclesid wrote:Let CH do what they want, i honestly don't care anymore.

I just stick around for the cool stuff in the store, but i spend 90% of my time on other sites, since they actually allow you to communicate with people without restricting you.

I dont like rules, or being restricted. So i tend not to want to talk, if they tell me i cant. So i don't, why bother?

the forums here had information. so thats nice i guess.

If they want to restrict this place to the point of strangulation, just let it happen. That's their problem, and if they dont want to fix it, so be it. Atleast the store is cool, i kinda stopped caring about this place, i only come one once a week to see if anybody posts anything remotely interesting that has nothing to do with ubi's, but its rare, and usually completely...useless for me to read.

is what it is.
This is literally what I'm trying to prevent as my passion for this place hasn't died yet (albeit occasionally the arrogance I get off of one specifically makes me question why I bother). Thankfully there's a good number of members (Darkwing, Alys, Jim, R...crap I forgot how to spell his name. The R guy! Etc) I want to continue sharing and learning from and I'd love to be able to connect with each of them individually for all sorts of awesome random conversations that otherwise wouldn't happen in forums.

I see no reason why this is wrong or bad or should be shied away from. In fact, based on the above, I see reason to implement it even more so!

And if I'm being one hundred percent honest here, the inability to even say the name of a place outside of CH feels...wrong. Like, morally wrong. Comparing it to something like cultural history is a bit extreme in and of itself but honestly that doesn't change how wrong it actually feels. One could always say, you could just go somewhere else, but isn't that what we don't want...? Everything about this system seems incredibly counter productive.
Theres always other places, i pretty much just hang around for interesting topics, but im already on other chat rooms, i gave up on CH so long ago.

No point expecting things that wont change, or happen. If you want to be here, thats cool. I never connected with anyone here really, and the people i did connect with have already left and moved on to other chat rooms and sites. Literally nobody i care about is on here anymore, and its sad. But thats just how it goes.

at this point i really have no idea what this forum actually offers me. Because i have found what i needed elsewhere, so like i said, they can restrict all they want. But it wont change the fact that restricting people is what causes them to leave, because why bother with being restricted?
I wish I knew what all these secret refuges were so I could at the very least send a darn message. The fact we have to go through these efforts to connect and be punished for it kind of ruins the entire point of a forum and a community, doesn't it? XD


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darkwing dook wrote: So there is no guarantee that giving leeway would prevent problems and dramas that can break the community from happening. Including the latest drama with the chat, which made the chat quiet these days. That could have been prevented if the mods were stricter and not giving leeway to the troublemaker from the start (sorry, mods, just my opinion : P).
Something else came to mind concerning this. If they don't restrict members and drama happens as all forums have it from time to time, so they close communication down and drama still happens through members feeling highly restricted and hand held as if they're stupid (such as the example above) and feeling they can get better elsewhere, bound to talk about how they felt restricted...as free speech is indeed a thing...then what is worse?

Normal drama that happens when you're popular or forum drama that happens when you're eventually legitimately disliked by your own members due to what some might classify as "unfair management decisions" or something similar?


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