Closing Open Registration on January 15th

[Diana]

WHAAAAAAAAT?


Many many years ago when we hijacked Iwaku from proboards and wrote up a list of community goals, one of the big things is that we wanted the site to be large enough where we had a huge variety of players and GMs so we always had cool stuff going on, but not so many people that things were out of control and that quality of community suffered. Based on super-intelligent calculations we estimated our max capacity for an ideal community size would be around 1000 daily active members and at that point we were supposed to lock registration.

At some point we got so excited we FORGOT to keep an eye on that size! We're currently at 2500+ active members! Which is pretty damn awesome! Buuuuut, it's been VERY clear that this number is higher than our abilities to comfortably manage and to maintain the qualities we like for Iwaku. We never wanted to be the biggest and most popular roleplay site, we just want to be a GOOD roleplay site!

As of January 15th we will be closing Open Registration. Any future registrations will only be possible by giving a friend an invite code.

You can already test out your invite link via the "People you Invited" link in your User Control Panel. In the future we might use a different kind of invite system or rules, but for now this should do the trick. :D


Crazy things you should NOT do? Don't try to register backup accounts if you're one of those weirdos that is constantly self-deleting because you like erasing/escaping account history. >:[ That gets on our nerves. And don't try to register backup accounts and pretend to be different people. That is against the rules and we ban people when we catch them!




With registrations locked down as a first step, we hope during the rest of this year we'll be able to get Iwaku back in the order that we like. <3 Fix some bad decisions we made, get inspired for the future, and evolve in to a happier Iwaku. A big THANK YOU to all of our loyal members that put in the time and effort to help Iwaku through it's many evolutions!

 

[MiNaGi]

I'm just kinda curious: I've been around here for a few years, but are you planning to continue with the 2500+ members or how is that going to work out? It's obviously way about the estimated 1000, so I just got stuck thinking about that.

 

[Nano]

My first reaction was: WHAAAAAAAT
Then I saw that.
Diana, you're a mind reader.

 

[Diana]

I'm just kinda curious: I've been around here for a few years, but are you planning to continue with the 2500+ members or how is that going to work out? It's obviously way about the estimated 1000, so I just got stuck thinking about that.

Well, we don't intend to kick anybody out. XD But people naturally fade and leave over time. So EVENTUALLY with a little bit of monitoring and adjusting of when/how we allow registrations, numbers will level out to a place we are comfortable!

 

[Hecatoncheires]

I suggested to Diana that she let me ban at least a thousand members to cut down on the numbers, but she didn't want to go for that for some reason.

Fucking spoil sport.

But nah, locking down the registrations to folks our members already know comes with an added benefit. At the minute, the majority of bans we're throwing out are for spambots that keep finding ways to sneak past the spam detection systems we have in place to wreck merry spam-havoc across the board. Which is always a frustration. This way, no more spambots. Makes everyones' lives easier.

 

[Cerulean]

Can we get member's only jackets?

 

[Verite]

whoa

 

[MiNaGi]

Well, we don't intend to kick anybody out. XD But people naturally fade and leave over time. So EVENTUALLY with a little bit of monitoring and adjusting of when/how we allow registrations, numbers will level out to a place we are comfortable!

Alrighty！Thank you very much for the clarification. I was a bit confused ahaha.
I didn't think you would do that regardless >u>

 

[Hecatoncheires]

I didn't think you would do that regardless >u>

 

[Esmeray]

Well, we don't intend to kick anybody out. XD But people naturally fade and leave over time. So EVENTUALLY with a little bit of monitoring and adjusting of when/how we allow registrations, numbers will level out to a place we are comfortable!

So basically you are using Flight Risings system of closing registrations for a couple months and the opening them again. I suppose that's not so bad. I still don't think its something that is well received by guests to the site or people that haven't joined yet. I feel indifferent to this update, but if it'll finally get you and the staff back on track then have at it. :0

 

[Kestrel]

Can you go into further detail regarding the reasoning behind this decision? What qualities do you believe are too difficult to manage right now? What is the in-out-ratio of active members? What do you look to boost versus what to discourage? etc.

From an outside perspective, this is immensely vague.

 

[Izurich]

Well, as long as it'll not be permanently invite only, then I can rest easy, but I'm sure you guys got everything planned for various situations... right?

 

[Bomb]

whoa.

Also, why not do "approved" registrations or something like that?

 

[K3l]

I suggested to Diana that she let me ban at least a thousand members to cut down on the numbers, but she didn't want to go for that for some reason.

Imagine all the weeaboos we could have gotten rid of wtf diana

 

[Lusterless Nova]

A rather unusual decision. At least I can say that it is new. Ah well. Not sure if I understand the purpose, but Iwaku has treated me well since I joined. By all means, go ahead and good luck with it.

 

[Diana]

Can you go into further detail regarding the reasoning behind this decision? What qualities do you believe are too difficult to manage right now? What is the in-out-ratio of active members? What do you look to boost versus what to discourage? etc.

The biggest issue is that we can't hire volunteers and staffers fast enough to handle the size. D: We have to find people who are trustworthy AND have time. AND train them on how to do both maintenance work as well as social work (member drama and so on). By the time we get someone trained, someone else has to retire because of life commitments, etc. With our current number of members we need AT LEAST 30 active staff members, and we're barely able to reach 20 (on a good season).

meanwhile, the amount of members we have just keeps growing, and growing, and growing. Without sufficient staff to keep them all under control, quality of life starts to suffer. Jobs don't get done. Things get messy. Social problems start to happen. Cases don't get handled fast enough.

It's easy to say "JUST HIRE PEOPLE FASTER!" but that's how you get lazy people, assholes, and psychopaths on staff. c___c

Limiting registrations for awhile is the best way to help us catch up and get things the way we like it.

AND YES, this doesn't mean closed registrations forever. There's always gonna be a way people can get registered, we're just limiting the how/when! (Otherwise we'd KILL the site and never have new blood. D:)

 

[Noctis the Devious]

It's not vague at all really o.o For a while the staff seemed to have difficulty managing the site simply because of how big and active it is. As it states in the post, Iwaku simply has gotten too big, and it has even been mentioned in the post this was they're intention from the beginning; to do so before the site got difficult to keep in order. I don't see them reopening registration any time soon since their goal was a thousand active members (not just members in general), but at least there is an invite feature for those who want to invite their friends. Mind you, this won't become a thing until the fifteenth (and probably won't have any effect on anyone's daily life really). Any affairs you need to get in order do so now :)

 

[AFeatheredHat]

When my account is old enough I will definitely be signing up to volunteer.

 

[Andy]

The way I see it as long as I'm not in danger of losing my account or anything then I'm alright with this. However I do have the concern of what if in real life I get too busy to keep up with my roleplays then I get free time to go again and want to come back but this rule is still active and my account has been deleted due to inactivity. I love Iwaku and being a member and I hope that I'll always have time to come back and roleplay but in reality it's clear that isn't really going to happen. Things are going to happen and I'm going to get busy. I guess I"m just concerned that if my account get's deleted due to inactivity I'll never be able to join again.

 

[Reanimator Buns]

Never been a part this sorta thing before. I think this will help if you guys do, though I do hope that one day people will be free to join, and spambots are at least funny enough to be tolerated