I’ve been thinking on and off about this issue for a while now, and I believe that I have answers for at least some of its components. The core of the problem is that major public events (that is, major roleplays open to participation by others) just aren’t run very well in Pacifica as a rule and haven’t been for a while now. To quote a thread from the olden days, back when activity in Pacifica was very high by current standards:
While the above thread focused on lack of planning as a core factor in causing conflagrations, and I do believe that it is largely accurate, it is also my assessment that lack of publication of important event information is also a significant contributing factor. Therefore, I came up with the following idea to fix some of these problems:
I suggest that a new pinned thread be created where people intending to run roleplay events can post notices describing important information concerning what they want to do. Each notice will have fields for the following information:
- Game masters / main event organizers
- Non-GM participants
- Join status (is the event open for new participants at this time?)
- Script status (is the event fully scripted, partially scripted, or unscripted?)
- Outcome status (are any outcomes/end-states predetermined or are they responsive to participants’ actions?)
- Event synopsis
- Link to main thread
- Links to any supplementary threads or wiki pages
Using this form, people will be able to tell quickly and easily whether an event is open for involvement, where the important threads/information for the event are, and whether their involvement in the event will have any effect on the outcome; as a bonus, the thread will also work as a central location for people to both look for and advertise events that are seeking participants. I’m sure that there are other things that will need to be done to fix the problem in its entirety, but I believe that this would be a good start.