Posted by Lieutenant Conner Reid (Chief of Security) in Announcements - General Posting Etiquette

Posted by Ensign Skye Shepherd (Scientist) in Announcements - General Posting Etiquette

Posted by Captain Freja Andreassen (Commanding Officer) in Announcements - General Posting Etiquette
Hey all,

I am taking a moment out of character to highlight a few things that have been brought to my attention (or noticed by myself). This isn’t naming or shaming anyone and if you feel singled out, please accept my apology, that was not the intent of this post. This is simply to highlight some club posting etiquette that has either been ignored or I think is in danger of being ignored on the ship. As always if you have questions or concerns about the ship, you can reach out to me or to Scott as XO and we can address them.

There’s a lot of what I’d consider unnecessary tagging going on. The tagging feature is really to bring attention to certain threads that you want characters to pay attention to. It isn’t always necessary to tag everyone on the ship for certain threads. Certainly, if it makes sense for that character to be present. For example, I tagged all the senior staff in the pre-mission briefing that was held to talk to them about the mission. Another good example is the CMO tagged my character when hers commed mine about her department’s readiness. That’s where that can be useful, not every thread is going to need my input and that’s okay, I do read all threads eventually, but if I am short on time (which happens more frequently over the weekend) I prioritize threads with me tagged in because I’m assuming those are the ones that need a response from me.

There is also a lot of rapid fire posting going on and while it’s great that loads of you can post frequently, it does present a little bit of a problem for those of us who can’t as we wind up sort of getting lost in the background and it has lead to some frustration that has been aired to me in private. So I am asking you all to please be mindful of your fellow crew who may be involved in the main sim timeline but aren’t able to respond daily to posts. Senior officers are only required to post once every five days and JOs every seven days, I am not going to require more than that from anyone, because it’s really not fair for a recreational club of this nature. File this under “give everyone who is involved in this thread a chance to respond to it” type of thing. Particularly if that thread if a main simm thread, we’re all here for Matt’s amazing Scallax mission, but those of us who can’t post daily are feeling a bit lost in mission threads. If you have a post thread outside of the regular mission thread(s), those are different, go to town there.

There’s been a few posts that have also very nearly or have crossed the cardinal rule of the club where someone is playing another person’s character. Please do not do that, nobody likes when that happens and you should only ever do that if you have express permission from the creator of that character to do so.

So those are the three things I wanted to highlight. I think the bulk of it stems from we have a group of you who can devote more time to post than others and while that can be a bit frustrating, we really need to keep our posting speed in mind and give people a chance to respond. I do love the excitement and I appreciate it, so I hope I’m not coming down too hard here and discouraging someone. :)

-Kat

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So I’d like to ask how often do you want us junior officers to post if it’s not rapid fire, since I’d assume that I’m involved within said threads. Do what would be the suggestion to follow when there’s so many scenes happening at once in the main sim?

Ensign Skye Shepherd
Science Officer
U.S.S. Chimera - 98730 (Mjolnir Class)

If I may, I’d like to add something as well. It may be nit-picky, but it does concern me.

That is the use of AI (ChatCPT or whatever is being used). It seems it is becoming more and more prevalent, not only on the Chimera, but other ships, as well.

I will be the first one to admit, that, yes, I have used AI before, usually when I’ve been stuck for a proper, interesting reply. I don’t like to use it, because I’ve found it really easy to start relying on it, and that’s taking away part of what this club is about–creative writing in a universe that we all enjoy!!!

Once you’ve used AI to reply, you start to notice certain things that are repeated continually. You can see people that are using AI for all or almost all of their posts and that stalls creativity, in my opinion.

If you feel you’re not creative enough that you have to rely on AI, you’re cheating yourself as well as the people you’re writing with. I’ve been a part of this club for a loooong time and I have seen many amazing writers come and go. If you’re not a strong writer, reach out to some of those that are, for tips or tricks on how to become better. Most of the people in this club would be more than helpful. You becoming a better writer, makes it more enjoyable for them, as well.

So, please, let’s cut back on the use of AI for all our sakes. I’m not calling out any names, but those of you that are doing this, know who you are.

Sorry for ranting about this, but I feel like it needed to be said.

Terry

Lt. Conner Reid
Chief of Security-USS Chimera

So junior officers only need to post once every 7 days. We have the ability to do multiple timelines in this club, that is you can post physically 5-6 times (or more) a day, but in different timelines of the ship (either concurrently with the mission or before or after) . So for example:

1. Post once or twice in the main sim thread where relevant to your character.

2. Post a personal character development thread.

3. Post in a thread you’re working on with another character or two. Multiple times per day if everyone involved is keen on it, have at it.

And you might find 2-3 other posting opportunties depending on what happens to be going along at the moment.

Again, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I am asking everyone to kindly be mindful that there’s a good chunk of us who simply cannot devote time every single day to reading posts and responding and it’s lead to frustration voiced to me in private and people are talking of leaving the ship because they feel edged out (and frankly, I don’t blame them).

For context, I’ll use myself as an example, I am required to post once every 3 days (and yes, I do stretch that sometimes, usually during my work week which is off set from most people, my commuter job is Friday to Monday and then I do freelance work outside of that). In that 3 day period, there’s 20 posts. If every person on the roster posted around their AWOL limit, we would have 88 or so posts for the month, averaging to about 22 ish posts per week. We’re over double that if we make 20 posts per 3 days… for someone who can only devote one day per week, you are asking them to sift through 40-50 posts and that might be too much for people.

I wish we had a fast-paced ship to recommend to some of you who do have that kind of time, but our posting requirements should be setting the pace for the mission to make it fair to everyone on the roster. Every person on this roster is a valued member of the crew, so I don’t want anyone to feel buried under the posting volume. If you have loads of time to post, one thing you could consider is joining a few more ships to spread out your posting volume. Say you can post 20 times per day, on a single ship that might be too much for your fellow crewmates, but if you have 8 ships, that drastically reduces the number of posts per ship.

I am simply asking everyone to remember that we all want to participate, but we can’t all participate at the same level so we have to strike a balance. And in this case, the balance is our posting speed. 3 days for command (myself, the XO and GM), 5 days for senior officers, 7 for everyone else).

Again, this applies only to main mission threads. You may post as much as you like character development posts (ie: your character going about their day) or crew interactive posts (ie: things like your psych evaluation and boarding physical threads or a poker night between a handful of you who are keen on posting daily or more than daily). I have sometimes deliberately held off replying to a main mission thread to allow someone else time to post and instead elected to drop a post in another area for the time being. Another idea is if a few of you want to rapid fire post about the main mission, start another thread for that dialogue. Just keep in mind that we can only proceed with the information the GM gives us, he’s our cruise director afterall. :)

As for the AI comment, I can’t specifically discourage its use, but as Terry said it’s a problem club-wide that will probably come to a head at some point on the command ship.

-Kat