You need to make it clear the our government is all rp before the next person comes along and has a crisis
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In my opinion Sigrblioonia/Ossacria did not seem like a troll, only someone without a firm grasp of how anything worked
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Iām supportive of this, but this will (of course) require coordinating with TSPRP staff. Plus, before going along with it from our (mod/admin) side, I think itāll help if we have more of an understanding of what TSPRP is like, and why.
Would TSPRP staff allow me to have a full view of the server (read-only suffices) to look around and get a feel for how things are?
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I will post my own thoughts later.
Absolutely (thatās a right that weāve intend for global mods normally anyway!)
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(TL;DR below)
Iām currently inactive due to my IRL situation, which seems to be one of the worst times to have become inactive ^^
Since this discussion is major though and requires community and rp mod input, I want to at least state my initial two cents here too. I preface this by mentioning, I am not in the loop, what arguments were exchanged on TSP-RPās Discord, so I base everything off of Robbyās and Hennās initial posts and my own thoughts.
Generally I was and am hesitant of integrating the rp section of TSP to gameside too much again.
For one, as others pointed out, our current system works fine. (ānever change a running systemā) and it does so in other Pacificas (most notably TNP) as well.
Secondly, the communities are - even if legally one community - two batches of people with different mindsets, types of humour, etcā¦ Partially I feel those different āpersonalitiesā of TSP gameside and roleplay incompatible, which is why many currently active roleplayers are not really active over on the main Discord server, including me e.g., but thatās just a feeling and not a hard fact, so I stand to be corrected.
Thirdly, at the moment gameside politics do not interfere with the rp-side too much, which was kind of what partially happened before I joined TSP RP in late 2016. That should generally stay that way and is not guaranteed, if rp is becoming part of the general gameside meta again.
On the pro side for a merger would stand, that I am aware, gameside updates made it more difficult for gameside to receive new active players, which in turn - even if we advertise TSP RP a lot - means, we will also receive less new active roleplayers too. Thatās not as strong of an argument though, as we generally only gained around 1-3 new roleplayers per year anyway that stuck around, but for fairnessā sake it should be mentioned.
Another pro argument would be, that a merger would make TSP feel more like one community potentially again. That might also help with the last and most major counter argument I have:
I am afraid, that gameside admin has shown just recently (see comments by Glen not even a year ago), that rp is the somewhat unwanted, maybe a little annoying child of TSP (I exaggerated a bit here, but it was said or at least alluded to, that we are somewhat unimportant and require unnecessary amounts of infrastructure). Thatās my main caveat, but Iām seeing your, Hennās, initiative as a sign of goodwill.
If paired with (1) guarantees for the continued existence and maintenance of the wiki, (2) the current rp-mods not losing their roles, (3) the rp-mods and community being consulted and listened to before any major changes to our rp-related infrastructure and (4) if thereās a guarantee, each canon will continue to have its own subsection on the forum and main Discord, no matter how āunimportantā they are, then Iād be willing to accept such a merger.
Lastly, but I hope, that goes without mentioning, the current rp-Discord should be archived and not deleted, but thatās something we rp-mods will have to figure out/discuss ourselves once weād go into the execution of the merger.
A minor guarantee, Iād wish for, but wouldnāt make or break the merger for me, would be, that Iād like some TSP-RP related emotes over on the main Discord too. If necessary, tied to a rp-user having to Nitro-boost the server to add a new rp-related emote. I hope, gameside and rp mods can discuss that, if the merger is executed.
This proposal looks fine to me. It is basically our current condensed TSPRP Discord server structure, which has proven itself to work at least as well as our more expansive channel structure we had until recently. The only thing thatās missing would be the āwiki-channelā, however we could have such one over here on the forum too. Looking into a rp-spam channel or a rp-spam thread in #coconut-grove might also be beneficial, especially to counter any fears of potential ācaustic argumentsā between gameside admins and the rp community, which might be used to a sometimes slightly more leniant way of moderation.
As for the roles, I think we can go for only adding two roles - āRoleplay Moderatorā and āRoleplayerā. Due to newbies not initially knowing, which canon stands for which kind of roleplay and sometimes discussions moving from one canon channel to the other, Iād also say having too many roleplay-specific roles is redundant. It also makes managing the roles easier for the server admins.
Even while Iām away (I hope, the plan to be back around mid-July works out!), I will monitor the discussion and especially the arguments exchanged here. At the moment I can say though, that my TL;DR would be the following:
Wouldnāt mind the merger, if the guarantees enumerated above are offered to us.
EDIT: Added a minor guarantee regarding RP emotes.
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Personally, I do think this idea has potential. We already have a combined onboarding process for our politics, roleplay, and more when new users join the forums, and it seems to me like thatās working well. It doesnāt force some kind of cultural merger ā I imagine those of us that arenāt interested in our politics or our roleplay will just mute the categories we arenāt interested in ā but it does allow different aspects of our community to be more discoverable.
If we take a step back, I think itās worth appreciating that we have an onboarding wizard at all! My impression of the old forums was that there wasnāt any guide to different parts of the forums; either you stumbled upon the roleplay subforums, or you didnāt. At least we have a process now for introducing newcomers to various different parts of our community.
And I think this idea will work best if we embrace that same mindset with Discord as well. Iām sure weād all like it if roleplay got more visibility. What if everyone who joined our Discord server was introduced to roleplay, similarly to how everyone who joins our forums is? Because thatās possible with Discord now.
Hereās an example shamelessly stolen from TEP ā everyone who joins their Discord server, for example, gets asked this question and hence introduced to their RP:
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Thank you for the details, Gi!
Well, thatās independent of a Discord merger, but yes.
In which sense?
As RP mentors (or whichever other leadership structure exists), no problem there.
As moderators over the RP section, not an issue.
As moderators of the Discord at large, thatās another story as we have established processes here, but I donāt find it unreasonable or unthinkable that somebody from TSPRP could, post-merger, end up getting the nom for the global moderator team.
Absolutely. Any changes to an institutionās section within TSPās Discord is discussed and figured out together with that institution beforehand anyway, and in most cases weāll simply do whatās asked of us. So if youāre not proposing 80 extra channels and 57 new rolesā¦ 
Thatās fine, so long as the amount of canons remains reasonable. 3 canons with 2 channels each is perfectly fine; 16 canons at that scale not so much. If thereās a sudden explosion in the amount of canons, we might have to talk about how to best represent them, but even then itās a discussion and a finding of a good solution, not an order from above.
Weāve got 66 slots still available, and several of our current used slots can probably be purged, so I see no problem with that, assuming āsomeā doesnāt mean hundreds
Wonderful! Iāll head on over there later today.
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Thanks for your quick reply and the general support of my points. Quick answer to the small points you brought up:
The second definition. I donāt think, it is necessary (or even desired by the admins at large on the one hand, but also by us rp mods on the other) to be responsible for even more infrastructure/parts of the community as nowadays. It would be a sign of respect though to ask rp mods, if theyād feel they could take on some extra workload and help with moderating the main server. I can tell you, my answer would be āNoā though. Moderating the rp section here and on Discord suffices ^^
At the moment I donāt see more canons joining our roleplay section for the foreseeable future. I think the maximum amount of canons we can or should be able to manage would be 5, but thatās dependent on new people joining and ideas for certain canons coming up and picking up huge support from within the community, which did not happen much since I joined in 2016 except for A1-0 (and technically Aurora, but that canon is somewhat stuck).
As you can see, if you join the TSP RP Discord to get an own overview of it, we do not have that many emotes ^^ Generally Iād say, we have maybe 5 rp-emotes used regularly and we introduced a rule on our server, that players boosting the server and players celebrating their 10 year rp anniversary may request to have an emote of their choice, but related to their persona or rp added to our server emotes. That rule is not set in stone though and was more of an attempt on our side to have more emotes to choose from 
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āRay adds their 2 cents to something they care about bc why notā
From everything Iāve read, having taken my spare time at work to digest (Iām on lunch as I speak actually)
I am for the idea. There are cons, for sure. But my honest opinion is that the pros outweigh the cons.
From what Iāve noticed since returning for RP, the RP community is really tight-knit and thatās a good thing! A potential server merger means 1. Less discord servers to cycle through, 2. More visibility to the RP community, 3. More unified TSP.
As much as someā¢ people may deny it (too many ārp cringeā jokes go around >_>) an active and flourishing RP community is a good thing! Having more visibility on the rp canons potentially means that people interested in that sort of thing has a chance to join. People not interested in participating all can be interested in seeing what the community is doing. Idk about anyone else but if people asked me about the IC stuff about FiHami or Antarcha I would be happy to flood a chat with all the information, relevant or not. It gets the creative juices rolling. And, to my final point, even before I left I saw all the different subcommunities as one real entity with a bunch of clubs, sort of like a university. One does not need to be in all the clubs the uni has to offer to be a part of TSP. Just being there for whatever is good, and I personally think it even better if the other āclubsā had easier access to visibility with other clubs, to see what they are doing.
Of course, there are cons. But those cons are already hashed out afaik. And 100% valid, and we should all work to find a way to address+resolve those concerns before executing anything. I may give more of a two cents after Iām off of work for the day.
Now, Iām gonna go do other things on my lunch break before I get the temptation to return to NS beyond RP lol (please for the love of the sun do not let me, lock me in a closet if I try)
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The issue is that it, in my assessment, it wonāt be civil or limited in scope. I did spend a few months on TSP-Main when I first joined in September, and the impressions that I got during that time suggest that the community that frequents TSP-Main is significantly more aggressive about many topics & socio-political positions and is highly unlikely to be willing to coexist in a server with parts of TSPRPās community whether the TSPRPers stay in the RP channels or not. People on TSPRP mostly manage to get along fine and roleplay together without letting politics and spicy-topic arguments create lasting hate and toxicity, but thatās not how I saw things work on TSP-Main most of the time; the idea that any potentially opinionated TSP-Mainers will just mute the RP channels and move on without tossing fireworks, as has been suggested above, feels like wishful thinking to me.
Some people, me included, deliberately avoid TSP-Main because of the community and the people on it, and my worry is that merging the Discords so that more of TSP-Main gets involved in RP will be tantamount to pouring water onto potassium shavings. I understand that the goal of the merger is to increase engagement between TSPRP and TSP-Main, but I think that the answer to the question of whether said increased contact would actually be beneficial is something that should be examined rather than assumed.
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I would disagree with this assessment. There are particular channels where individuals can discuss socio-political issues, and if anyone is being aggressive on those topics outside of those channels, then they should be handled by the mod team for breaking the community guidelines.
Thatās not the goal at all, from my view. Merging TSPRP back in is to help streamline the integration process for new RPers, primarily. Nobody has to interact with all facets of the community, but they can if they want to. Thatās made easier with a merger.
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I was (and still am) a bit wary of how to integrate that into our processes but particularly if the RP community is to merge in, Iām starting to feel more like this is a really good idea, and particularly a good idea to set this up before a possible merge so that the infrastructure is there to address some of the things that were mentioned in this thread already.
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If non-RPers are tossing fireworks into RP channels, that would be actionable as per the Community Standards and those individuals would be handled accordingly.
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I donāt know, what pros even are there, Iāve only heard two. The first is that it wall be streamlined/easier, which is incorrect and laughably so. The only real one that I van think of was visability, and I donāt think we should be forced to or even need to get absorbed by the main discord to become more visable.
Why is it incorrect?
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Its honestly just easier to switch between servers than to have to constantly move between channels if Iām having a conversation for rp and main. I can reply in the lampshade bar, continue debating in aurora discussion, and when the white dot appears I just click the tsp icon and Iām right back in the lampshade bar discussion. I know where everything is, my server-switching is quick and efficient, and I donāt have to scroll through what, like, 30-40 channels to get between rp and main channels
I donāt mean to derail this conversation, but Iād be curious to hear your reasons for wariness. Itās an idea that Iād like to see regardless of this merger, but itās certainly very possible that there are some downsides Iām overlooking.
You arenāt going to because thereās not going to be several dozen channels to have to scroll through. Discord lets you hide channels off of your channel list, which I imagine many people will do for some channels should this merger go through.
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In the event of a merger, Iād like a channel named #conlang or #rp-conlang right below the rp lounge. This would allow conlanging discussion that doesnāt detract from the conversation in any of the rp channels or Lounge.
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A #cartography channel as well as a Cartographer/Map Manager role would be useful for those who manage the maps. I remember seeing Gianni mention this on Discord, so I wanted to ensure it was mentioned here.
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