Demographics Poll: Decide the next topics!

[Brovo]

As per the usual, I want this in General Discussion for a week, and then after that, it can move to RP Help & Discussion where it will promptly fade into obscurity. Please keep this in mind, staff, please and thank you.

I'll keep this simple and sweet: In each Demographics thread, I asked people what they wanted the next topic to be about. It seemed to be working quite well, so I've decided to expand it into something more broad and interesting. Call it an experiment if you will. The objectives here are...

1. To be able to offer more options on the poll than I could before, thanks to better organization.
2. To be able to hear specifically back from people who enjoy the demographics threads what sorts of topics and questions they may want to see in future demographics polls.
3. To (hopefully!) get more votes, as before I was only getting maybe half a dozen total voters, and it was usually the same voters.
4. To be able to better plan out the next set of polls--in that I will have days or weeks instead of hours to compose a question and answers.
5. To let people have more suggestions and control over what appears as questions and topics, since having a dedicated thread for it gives people a specific place to discuss or offer suggestions.

So how this works is quite simple. You get a multiple choice poll, and you can choose up to five of the available fifteen options, or, allowing someone to vote for one out of every three of the topics. Each topic is intentionally rather broad--some moreso than others--to represent a swathe of questions that could be pulled from that topic. Topics may overlap each other a little by the nature of being broad. The topics are all roleplay related, but can be anything from Character Design to Site Policy, and everything between. The top five poll options voted for become the next five topics in the next five demographics polls, which means that these threads should appear once every five weeks--which should help to avoid burnout.

In the event of a tie for fifth place, I'll flip a coin. If the tie is greater than two options, I'll roll some dice instead.

To prevent the same five options from dominating the poll over and over again, there will be some future weighting to plunge overused topics into a starting point negative that has to be overcome by overwhelming majority interest. Topics which never get votes, will be culled and replaced with others. I'm not sure how strong to make the weight--it will depend on how much interest this poll gets.

This poll, unlike regular demographics threads, will only run for one week. After that, the poll will close.

People can suggest questions for future demographics polls here as well, and they may even be used with said user being credited for giving the question! However, please keep in mind the following.

1. Questions will be vetted by myself and/or @RedWillow and/or @Hana before use. It will depend on who is putting up the demographics poll that week.
2. Please ensure that questions are appropriate for people in both the teen and adult age groups. No questions about kinks or anything like that--adult topics can be tackled, like gender identity, or sexuality, but just ensure that it's worded in a way that doesn't encourage overtly sexual and specifically fetishistic content as answers.
3. You can provide answers to the question alongside the question itself.
4. Please do not ask loaded political questions. They won't be used. To figure out if a question is loaded, simply ask yourself if any dissenting answer would paint the person in an inherently poor light, especially where it concerns morality or ideology.
5. Please ensure that a question has at least two valid answers. Even yes/no questions are just fine, so long as there's at least two valid answers.
6. You may suggest more than one question at a time.
7. Please remember to tie a question to a specific topic! If a question simply floats out in a void, it probably can't be used. (Ex: "This question is related to Character Design. Question: How many of your characters are ferrets?")
8. Joke questions, while amusing, probably won't be used. Probably.

For further information on each topic, simply click on the spoiler below.

Further Question Descriptions

• Character Design: Questions about how characters function, from character sheets, to background choices, to skill sets, so on and so forth.
• Content/RP Search: Questions about the Content and RP Search sections of the website, such as who uses them, and what people are using them for.
• Gender/Sex: Questions relating to the gender and sex of characters, and how they're interpeted, and the popularity of some more than others.
• Genres/Tropes: Questions relating to genres, and tropes. Like how many people participate in genres, or the popularity of certain tropes, or how original people think their characters are, or so on.
• Group Dynamics/Relationships (Outside of Romance): Questions about the dynamics of groups and relationships between characters of an explicitly non-romantic nature. Like antagonists vs protagonists, or mentor-student relations, or so on.
• Ideology/Politics: Questions about the ideology or political views of characters, both relating to the real world and to total fantasy.
• Mechanics: Stats, traits, dice, RNG, and more as question topics. Such as their use, and what people think of them on a forum environment.
• Plots/Premises: A plot or premise as related to the world. A premise is an idea, a plot is a string of events, but both can create an interesting string of questions. Such as the pace of plots, or how much stuff people plan in advance, or how on-the-rails stories tend to be.
• Religion: Questions about the influence of religious mythology, or the construction of religions for character backgrounds, or so on.
• Repeat an Old Poll: Repeat an old poll, and see if it gets new results. Comparisons between old and new polls will be intentional in demographics reports, and can show how the site's population's beliefs and desires change over time.
• Romance: Questions involving romance between characters. How salacious!
• RP Stats: The length, pace, completion rate, and other related self-reported numbers for the general statistics of role plays.
• RP Types: The types of role plays and their popularity. Ex: 1x1, group, jump-in, sign-ups, PM RP's, et cetera.
• Tone/Good vs Evil: How "light" or "dark" a particular piece of content is. Questions related to this topic will involve the prevalance and types of villains and villainous acts, and what sorts of worlds people like to play in, as well as what types of conflicts people might like to face.
• World Building: Questions related to the building of worlds, and how they function.

Note: A demographics thread is going up today shortly. I just saw no reason to delay putting this out and seeing how people react to it.

 

[Razilin]

I'd like to see more World Building.

Mainly because that's the fun part of RPing for me - to see a thread grow and evolve over time, with new ideas being incorporated, others changing or being discarded, and the tone/atmosphere of the game world changing with the characters.

I prefer a "ground up" approach rather than "top down." I like starting with a general idea for what I want an RP to look and feel like, and, based on player input/preferences or gameplay, see how the game world builds from there.