Admins don't know what do about Bluestar. HALP?

Keep the Bluestar section. There’s nothing wrong with it. We just need to advertise it more often instead of running from it like if it’s a forbidden zone, lol.

I remember joining my first roleplay when I joined this site years ago as an adult. It was a Bluestar, and I really had a blast there, and the roleplay was absolutely amazing. The people, mostly practically all teens, were really nice, and kind.
Wait, I wasn’t a redstar when I joined this place. I guess it has been so long that I didn’t remembered it. XD

But, yeah, it was a nice place. The only suggestion I can give is to just open the blue star rooms for everyone, really. Not all adults are here for sexual roleplays. Everybody that have roleplayed with me knows that my roleplays are all ages friendly. Yes, there’s cursing here and there, maybe some blood and violence, and when it comes to sexual stuff, it’s little to none, unless it’s a mature roleplay, of course.

So, yeah, maybe you should open the blue stars for everyone, and assign some of the staff to check that people are not breaking any rules there.
 
I say keep the Bluestar. It might be dead right now but one day a teen might pop on in there and post a thread.

As others here have also suggested, you could advertise the Bluestar section too if that'll help bring more life to it.
 
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So, yeah, maybe you should open the blue stars for everyone, and assign some of the staff to check that people are not breaking any rules there.

That's what the general roleplay forums are for? For everyone to roleplay together adults and teens? The star forums are for sexual content roleplays only and that's why they are age gated!
 
I know i've had teens sneak out of the bluestar and message me before wanting to rp, and now that makes sense why, and that just means they do need to keep their space. Maybe appoint some like "house mother" sort of users to make bluestar feel more safe and advocate for them/advertise for them to bring in fresh kiddos? Some people to break the ice in there? Also advertise elsewhere to bring more users to the site. They're all hiding on Gaia Online and we must liberate them!! lol
 
Honestly, I'd suggest looking for Bluestar Community staff to help promote it and keep it rolling so to speak...? I dunno, I've gone Red a LONG time ago so...
 
Hmm. I would suggest (if there is not one already), a discord chat to send teens to meet up at, and agree on RPs. If they are having issues posting a thread to test who is interested. Or their numbers are low. Then throw them all in the same spot, and help them see each other. Unlike a thread, discord chat is 'live' so they would get a responds back right away if another teen is online.

It may also help to make the bluestar/teen area smaller. Right now I see a 'group connections', 'extras', and 'character ads' but that may be good for organization, but probably not that great for a small group of teens as it makes each area look a lot smaller due to less threads in them. That is just my two cents. It may not even be worth that much.

As for the reason to move to PMs. Privacy may be one small issue, but for me personally the larger issue was I disliked having to ask a Mod or Admin to move my thread to the graveyard when I am done (which is fine for a super long rp, but for short rps is wasting someone's time and cluttering up the graveyard), or having to possibly look at the second or third page to find my thread due to other rps having more recent posts. In a PM, my thread is always there, I now can even make a 'folder' for specific people, and there are no other people making threads cluttering up my area. That is my two cents here.

The only issue I have with PMs is when I make a folder or category, and delete a thread. The number of PMs in that category does not seem to decrease. Not sure if its cause the other person still has the PM in their inbox, or what, but I would not think that would be counted in my side of things. (Edit: I should also point out. A PMs let me delete the thread, and not simply move it to a graveyard. Or a least a visual one)

3rd Edit: Also I am not sure why there is a General Area & BlueStar Area. Basically the only reason for an adult to go to the general area is to do a non-sexual RP, and so the adult would know not to do that there with anyone rather teen or adult. And the general forum had to be monitored anyways? And teens wanting to read other non-mature rps probably could just check to see if the thread had a warning at the first post, or if some icon was used. Unless there legal issues with adults possibly seeing sex scenes between teens.

Mmm, in that case, maybe it would make the site more simple to just have 1 General forum (no star areas), and a rule to take any sex scenes to PMs, and then Mods would just have to watch 1 forum area, and PMs. It be less work since that forum and PMs probably had to be watched already anyways. (And a mod would just have to check to see if both users are adults, not read the entire thread/pm. If one is a teenager, then maybe they would have to check the thread or pm for sexual content. Although I guess adult threads need to be check for the age of the characters, but a page search could be used to check for key words, or quickly look through the posts) Just two more of my cents.
 
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Hmm. I would suggest (if there is not one already), a discord chat to send teens to meet up at, and agree on RPs. If they are having issues posting a thread to test who is interested. Or their numbers are low. Then throw them all in the same spot, and help them see each other. Unlike a thread, discord chat is 'live' so they would get a responds back right away if another teen is online.

It may also help to make the bluestar/teen area smaller. Right now I see a 'group connections', 'extras', and 'character ads' but that may be good for organization, but probably not that great for a small group of teens as it makes each area look a lot smaller due to less threads in them. That is just my two cents. It may not even be worth that much.

As for the reason to move to PMs. Privacy may be one small issue, but for me personally the larger issue was I disliked having to ask a Mod or Admin to move my thread to the graveyard when I am done (which is fine for a super long rp, but for short rps is wasting someone's time and cluttering up the graveyard), or having to possibly look at the second or third page to find my thread due to other rps having more recent posts. In a PM, my thread is always there, I now can even make a 'folder' for specific people, and there are no other people making threads cluttering up my area. That is my two cents here.

The only issue I have with PMs is when I make a folder or category, and delete a thread. The number of PMs in that category does not seem to decrease. Not sure if its cause the other person still has the PM in their inbox, or what, but I would not think that would be counted in my side of things. (Edit: I should also point out. A PMs let me delete the thread, and not simply move it to a graveyard. Or a least a visual one)

3rd Edit: Also I am not sure why there is a General Area & BlueStar Area. Basically the only reason for an adult to go to the general area is to do a non-sexual RP, and so the adult would know not to do that there with anyone rather teen or adult. And the general forum had to be monitored anyways? And teens wanting to read other non-mature rps probably could just check to see if the thread had a warning at the first post, or if some icon was used. Unless there legal issues with adults possibly seeing sex scenes between teens.

Mmm, in that case, maybe it would make the site more simple to just have 1 General forum (no star areas), and a rule to take any sex scenes to PMs, and then Mods would just have to watch 1 forum area, and PMs. It be less work since that forum and PMs probably had to be watched already anyways. (And a mod would just have to check to see if both users are adults, not read the entire thread/pm. If one is a teenager, then maybe they would have to check the thread or pm for sexual content. Although I guess adult threads need to be check for the age of the characters, but a page search could be used to check for key words, or quickly look through the posts) Just two more of my cents.

Hello! Thanks for all your input. The reason we have so many areas is because we wanted to give Bluestar all the same cool stuff we gave Redstar, but I think you might be right about how this is currently just making things split up and contributing to them being empty.

As for your questions about PMs, the Xenforo PM system is kind of weird in that those threads still exist. You're not actually deleting the PM thread, you're deleting the shortcut to it from your inbox. PMs are only deleted by the system if all parties leave the conversation. It would be a problem if you could delete a thread without your partner's permission, which is why normal threads aren't deleted and are just put in the graveyard; if you are the only person to post roleplay content in a thread or have permission from everyone who has, you can ask a mod to actually delete a thread. You can also ask for non-roleplay-related threads to be deleted without having to check with anyone who has posted. This is to ensure no one loses content they might want to save because of a thread owner being spiteful!

Bluestar is separate because it protects teen members from adults posting there who are predators, which is the OTHER reason we don't allow sexual content to be RPed between teens and adults. While our community is safe and we do ban people we find being creeps, and it doesn't happen often, unfortunately predators are good at seeming harmless and it is just safer for teens to have a distinct area. It also reduces accidents happening where people missed the other member's age by honest mistake. Some adults are also uncomfortable reading those scenes when they know teens are writing them--and some people don't want to see sexual content in general! Warnings are nice but it's very hard to enforce mandatory sexual content warnings.

Having the sexual content areas separate and hidden from the main site also helps our Google search info because it keeps us from coming up when people look for sites about actual sexting-type RP.

We are absolutely not going to start moderating people's PMs like that though. For one thing, it's a huge invasion of privacy; people have a right to expect that without good reason, admins are not going to look at their PMs. For another, only admins have the tool to look at PMs because it's something that could be easily abused even by a well-meaning mod. There's simply no way we could keep up with how many PMs are sent, especially since we have no way to filter them to find actual roleplays easily.

We only look at PMs if we have reason to believe someone is breaking rules via them--usually if we think they're writing sexual content about children or RPing across age lines. Yes, we're going to miss some things, but that's going to happen anyway.

The issues that would arise even if we DID try to moderate PMs are part of the reason we were wondering if it was just simpler to go 18+. When we do look at PMs, I can tell you right now that it is a tedious process if the person has more than just a few PMs; there's no easy way to sort or search and we can't see the person's categories or prefixes. From the few times I've had to do it, it sometimes took me several days just to go through one inbox. x__x
 
Thank you for answering my PM question, even though I was a little off topic there.

Anyways, it was interesting to hear more about the 'why and hows' with such setups related to the star and pms.

I think that mostly answered your own question though, in that the reason the star system was setup originally, is still there. So keeping it is the answer. That leaves trying to help teens get together to talk about such ideas, and more advertisement basically. I am not sure what anyone else can say unless someone can come up with something totally left field.

I will say in my opinion, a least, that going straight for 18+ is probably a bad idea. It would be unfair to current teen members, plug a hole in a way for the site to gain possible new people in the future, and basically makes this another adult-rp site. (Edit: Not to say that is bad, but it becomes more like a clone of other sites if you start removing parts of it) The actual teen area may need to be adjusted though with low-numbers in mind since as put earlier 'empty forums everyone is too intimidated to use first'.

It is basically saying going 18+ may be the 'easier' path, but maybe not morally, and more importantly it probably would kill the future of the site. Since unless lots of new adults show up, there needs to be teens who age into adults. Otherwise the rest of us will just get old, die, and leave the forum empty. *throws fireworks*

Anyways....that is just my two cents based on my opinion, and other comments I have read so far.
 
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Just a random note, I've found here and the other rp site im in (that one is 18+) most people seem to pm these days because forums get lost in the notifications and replies are missed which leads to dead forums spaces. Also i think a lot of people dont like others reading their rps necessarily if they arent the person/people they are rping with. Not sure there's a fix for that, when i started rping as a teen on gaia it was forum only, the switch to pms seemed to happen the more i started in on adult themed rps

I think its worth keeping the blue star even if the forum is fairly empty. If theres a place where people can see other people in their rating and just go to their profiles and see their preferences there and pm them to ask i think thats fine too, and honestly is really how i find new partners these days more than the search threads which i find myself going through a ton and not actually finding a partner from.

I will admit ive moved to less rps here though (nothing against the site) and so i use this method more on the other site im on, but in the past i felt like the red star forums weren't super active necessarily either, so i dont think its a problem that the blue star ones arent.

Maybe all it takes is the mods posting some threads there? Newer introduction threads to get blue stars into just a short one liner about what they want in rps for people to skim and message people and have less focus on actually reviving the forums as the place they need to use?

All that said, i imagine if you take away the blue star people just join and lie about their age to continue rping since theres really no where for teens to do so these days it seems
 
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Hmm. I would suggest (if there is not one already), a discord chat to send teens to meet up at, and agree on RPs. If they are having issues posting a thread to test who is interested. Or their numbers are low. Then throw them all in the same spot, and help them see each other. Unlike a thread, discord chat is 'live' so they would get a responds back right away if another teen is online.

I'm glad we're getting feedback from actual BlueStar members on this topic. I was never a BlueStar on Iwaku, so can't comment with any authority.

That said, I was young on Moonwings and found most of my RPs started from Naked Chat. It was there that most of the fun happened for me, as well. I wasn't the type to craft detailed OCs or RP ads. It was just too much effort at the time.

We might consider giving out a BlueStar role on Disc that opens specific channels for RP ads and for general discussion. This may or may not lead to more activity on the actual BlueStar section (PMs may be more comfortable in the end), but at a minimum, we'd be supporting the community in the real end goal: Finding rp partners, being safe, and having fun.
 
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I'd keep the bluestar, but maybe start asking people to spread word-of-mouth to places like Gaia or other places. Not necessarily about how "TEENS CAN WRITE SMUT HERE" but just show younger people that we exist, and then they can discover bluestar from there.

Kids need a safe place, or else they'll have all the more reason to lie about their ages and endanger themselves and others.

Iwaku for me is a place I can feel safe because blue star exists, even if I've never been blue here. It makes me feel secure that, if there are kids, they have their own place where they can do what they want, and our security team and admins are making sure that people are honest.

It's not charity to let the kids play—it's safety for us grown folks. xD
 
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When I was still a little teen and looking to explore sexual content in story writing it was very hard to find someone in my age group and someone who was into it. I didn't join iwaku until I was already an adult. But I do think having the Bluestar section is a good thing. Even if it doesn't appear to be active. It still allows teens to find other teens to play with. When I was a teen I did most of my rping in PMs because sexual content wasn't allowed to be in open forums, or it got to MSN. It's also very possible that while teens are exploring sexual content in written form they have be a bit shy about the fact that other random teens can read their work.

It was really only in my early 20's that I got more comfortable with forum rps.

As Moody said giving teens the chance to find a safe space to explore writing is needed and if that is removed people are more likely to lie about their age just to find a place to write.
 
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Would say keep it. Was a blue star years ago. The place was nice to explore stuff normally verbotten. Might need someone to run promo stuff though.