User blog comment:Ildsjel/An Open Letter/@comment-27612891-20190817053445


 * In my opinion, I think that a major problem with inactivity on DARP stems from the fact that we simply aren't the same demographic that we once were, even from two years ago. If a fifteen year old was to join DARP two years ago, they'd find many peers their age. If a fifteen year old was to join DARP today, I'd say that the amount of people near their age might be able to be counted on one hand. The majority of DARP's userbase have been on the wiki for several years now, and might've joined as young teenagers. We've grown up, and now we're all mostly young adults. It's no longer a matter of "school is keeping us busy", and activity should be rising on the summers in accordance with our breaks". It's a matter of going onto university, which requires more effort than just regular secondary school. It's a matter of being expected to get a job, part-time or full-time, to earn money for yourself. And it's not even just a "summer" job, there's probably some of us that have to juggle school and work at the same time. Our schedules are being filled up with all the expectations of adults. Even as my parents have supported me through my decision of delaying entering higher education, it's not like I'm going to be allowed to stay lounging around the house to be on DARP. I'm still currently looking for a job. It's probably the biggest reason why activity is winding down, and it's so obvious when you see people saying that they'll be taking breaks because of work/school.


 * No one is coming on DARP and leaving because they're tired of the beige color scheme. They're going on DARP and being like, "Shoot, I only have seven minutes before I need to go back to work/class, what can I do?" And oftentimes, the only thing they can do is update themselves on what's happening before going back to whatever it is that they need to do. And it's been brought up in admin meetings that people have actual lives now. Oftentimes, we forget that roleplaying is just a hobby, and others might devote more time to it than other people. I would love to roleplay more, but most of my roleplays have stagnated due to people being too busy to post. I would love to put more effort onto this wikia. But it's not fair to dismiss DARP being currently inactive due to reasons related to aesthetics or "failure to devote the necessary amount of time into such an influential, and thus highly demanding, website." There's people on this wiki that literally need to devote the time and resources into other things because it's necessary for them to survive/move ahead in life, and I don't think that they should be dismissed just because they can't afford to devote more time to DARP.


 * This actually made me really curious about how active our admin team is, so I paused and made a spreadsheet detailing our activity levels. All usernames here were gathered from the User Model Registration, and names in bolded white are administration members. The activity levels were gathered by looking at the first page of everyone's Contributions page.


 * Active signifies a user who has all their first page contributions within the time frame of the past month. At the time this was created, this time period extended from July 17, 2019 to August 17, 2019 in UTC time.


 * Semi-Active signifies a user who have at least made one edit in the past three months. At the time this was created, this time period extended from May 17, 2019 to August 17, 2019 in UTC time.


 * Inactive signifies a user who, according to model policy, has no edits in the past three months. At the time this was created, this time period extended from any date before May 17, 2019.


 * As you can see from the spreadsheet, a whopping 8/11 of the admin team members are marked as active. And here's what they've been doing as of late:


 * The Sorting Department as a whole as been keeping up with the forums and sorting and denying when needed to. In fact, we're so on top of things that we're looking into more things we could do to make the forums better. Lissy is the only member of our department that is marked as semi-active, but she's working at McDonalds, and a lot of the userbase can attest to how much hard work that is.
 * The OOC Department as a whole all have jobs, whether part-time or full-time. Even though they might be late to do some of their duties, they're still trying their best to keep up with doing OOC work. Brocky and Audrey's codes are widely-used by the wiki, and Audrey's the coder of the location code that you see everywhere, from all of Hogwarts to stores. Jay is the one who has been posting votes and archiving pages. They're clearly hard at work.
 * I can't really speak on The AI Department, but from what I see, Oli's been hard at work with the next part of our expansion: he has prepared the Daily Prophet article that leads into the leadership of Siobhan in preparation for the next phase of the wiki, he's been researching niche holidays that could make for fun mini events across the wiki, and he's been working on elements for future expansions. He was also the one keeping the wiki updated on the options for next year in regards to sports. Seeing as CK as only recently joined the team, her work within AI currently might be limited - but I've seen her being on top of her personal roleplays and doing well with moving her own character's storylines.
 * HR is the department that has all of its members marked as semi-active. That's okay, with Migs moving countries soon, and Fandom has been moving between countries over the summer. Plus, it's not only til recently that a lot of what they have to do have been clarified, so I'd ask if you would overlook that.
 * As a member of the admin team, I feel that personally we have been doing a lot, and we've shown that we're around, as the admin team members that are active also make up the majority of the active users on DARP. It feels like a slap to the face when it's suggested that we're not doing enough, because as I've just shown above, I think that we're doing a lot in order to keep the wiki well and alive. What else can we do to build trust among the general userbase, so it doesn't appear like we aren't doing anything?


 * You mention other user communities. And as a creator of successful wiki, such as EESM, I never made these communities to compete with DARP. EESM was made as a result of a high ranking member of the administration team trying to limit the amount of LGBT+ characters on the wiki. It's not like I wanted to direct activity away from DARP - it was just me and a group of friends that decided to make something new without the constraints of DARP. I've never wanted to make a wiki to compete with DARP, or be DARP 2.0. Rather, I've just wanted to make communities other than DARP where I can explore certain storylines or make characters on the dot because I want to (Even as a member of Sorting and Stores, there's times where I wish the sorting forum was not as strict!). If a group of friends decide to explore alternate universes using their characters, or make a roleplay wiki solely for themselves, then that should be their right to do so. It doesn't mean we love DARP any less, it's just that we want to explore other worlds. Polyamory exists, you know.


 * I feel that in regards to new users, they are certainly put on the spot from the moment they arrive on DARP. And I think it's just natural that we gravitate towards people that we find similar. I remember back in the day, a lot of new users were ignored the moment their roleplaying style didn't fit in with their own. Even just consistently having bad grammar and vocabulary was enough to get someone ostracized. These days, new users are harder to come across, but it doesn't erase the fact that we have issues with including new people within our already existing friend groups. Unless you already know someone (my sister, for example), or have something that you can bond with a portion of DARP (if you aren't shamed for it first) then you'll probably be left to the dust. I actually think that the Big Sibling program would be good, but that's to be a story for another time, I suppose.


 * There's going to be a time and place eventually when the last user will dust off their shoes and stop editing. And until we come close


 * In reality, I can agree with some of your points here. But honestly, I'you sound somewhat conceited and some of your text can come off as if you're solely responsible for making sure DARP becomes active again. I can let some of it slide, since you're an admin, but please do remember that there's 10 other people on the admin team that you're a part of. These are my two cents, and I hope that you and the rest of the community can respect it.