What should we do about Hogwarts

True, but classes are not the only thing in Hogwarts, are they?

Personally, I agree wholeheartedly with Aaron. I see PA's heyday (not just Hogwarts') as the period of time where we didn't have closed threads beyond factions, common rooms or dates. It makes no sense to have them in an environment such as Hogwarts! However whenever I've suggested preventing them, or at least limiting them I've either been ignored by the member populace, or told no by the admins.

Sadly though the logistics of the site prevent this, as well as things like Hogsmeade trips (why make a big deal of it if your student can be in London, Australia or anywhere inbetween at any point of time?)

I think classes are the smallest part of Hogwarts - they probably account for maybe 5% of the actual book? Approximately? Even then, generally only massive plot points come out in them. Point is, just because teachers aren't posing, shouldn't mean that there's less activity in Hogwarts than anywhere else on the site. That topic at the cafe between your tre chic students in Diagon Alley should be at the Great Hall over breakfast, or the date in Paris should be out near the lake. Hogwarts is a beautiful place, and is neglected badly right now.

I don't feel like you can truly dislike another person if you just set it up. I remember one character ( Not writer, mind you, she was an excellent writer, just hated her character ) where one of my characters was with the girl he had a crush on. The other student barged into the thread, ruined the date, BAM a rivalry was born. It was random, I actually felt IC malice towards the other character, and it was so fun to write.

When you try and force it, it seems weird, and never works. If someone hates Aaron, it is because of something I did IC, I never plot out friends and enemies, just locations. I feel like a lot of the friendships and loves are forced at Hogwarts. I have been a part of it myself, I have formed friendships that had no basis or background at Hogwarts. They were just, BAM, friends.

I feel like we don't go out and make friends/enemies anymore. And it is hard too when every thread is closed. Imagine if Ron and Harry were in a closed thread. No Hermoine! Malfoy never becomes Harry's mortal enemy if he wasn't allowed to interact because the thread was closed. You shouldn't be able to limit interaction, and that is what closed threads do.

I know, I know, some people want to further plots or have something happen a certain way. Well, don't we all want that? Things to go out way? But, sadly, that is not how it always works out.

Honestly I say we remove the "safeness" of closed threads. I know there are some members who would jump at the chance to insert their characters in awkward situations between two other characters, and as Aaron's saying that could lead to some great RP.

The site overall has shifted towards a graduate based role-play. I remember when 80-90% of our characters were students, and graduate roleplaying was pretty much ONLY factions (and the factions themselves were filled with students haha.) Now its about 50% and whenever we have big events like a quidditch match, we don't get enough students participating.

I think the basilisk was already done in the books. But we can come up with something else. One of the best moments of the PA plot was when the Dark followers (or whatever they were called back in 2009-10) kidnapped several students and took them to the forest. Or, as Chase mentioned, the numerous battles we had.

I fully agree with Aaron. We should have a mass thread in every major forum (Lake, Common Room, Library) where anyone can post, like we used to have.

As for Classes, they never have worked too well here, and I think it's unfair to blame that on professors. Yes, the professors should be interacting with students more, but most of the first classes seemed fun enough, especially Jack's. Yet, the classes went inactive after about a week. A professor can't get through a class with just four or five students. Classes will only ever work when we have the majority of students participating.

I think we could expand extra-curricular activities to more than just Quidditch. For people like me who find Quidditch hard to be able to work and fallow on the site it would be nice to have other things to do. To get professor’s involved you could make teachers choose an activity to sponsor.

For professors I’ve found that I’ve felt like some of them don’t know what they are doing. Maybe there should be something to help new professors. There should be some sort of guide for them like how to manage a class, how to keep it going and how to keep interest. It may also help if there was some sort of incentive for them posting.

For the excessive amount of Graduates maybe putting a ban on graduates for a while and require in order making a graduate you have to be on the site for so long. I know some people won’t like this but I have to say that it’s the only way to really balance that out.

I do have something else to say about professors and classes that I think should be addressed but it’s not a big deal to me. I’m finding some of the Professor’s making the classes too hard and going too fast or too slow. There aren’t really enough classes. Most of the classes there are I have no interest in.

What is going to the Potter’s Army? There hasn’t been anything lately about it. I’m not sure what is happening but it’s frustrating. I’ve gotten to the point I want to drop my enlistment in Potter’s Army.

I think another thing that could help is maybe starting up a roleplaying tutoring program. The first Harry Potter site I was on offered this and I loved it. If I hadn’t had that I wouldn’t have been able to make posts like I can now. It shouldn’t be required unless the posts are being reported too short or godmodding is being reported.

There is two more things that are bothering me I’ve been avoiding for a while that I’ll go over quickly. Godmodding is getting ridiculous. I’m finding keeping up with five classes is very hard for people in university like me.

Closed threads shouldn’t be removed. There are people who are not comfortable with mass threads. Also there is a lot more fighting when there aren’t closed threads, I find on sites that I’ve been on with this that the out of character drama is horrible and a lot of hurtful things have been personally said on sites like that. I’m not honestly sure I would stay on the site if that was too happen; I’ve had too many bad experiences. I joined this site because I like how much freedom I had with having open and closed threads. It turns off a lot of people when they don’t have that.

When Jack was kidnapped by DFs... nothing really happened. We ended up skipping to the battle, I believe.

But yes. Battles are fun. PA and DFs are virtually nonexistent, as is the Order, because of one main problem: what can they do? Pa and OoTP have a hard time because it's hard for them to go on the offensive really.

Bans never work. We've discussed that before, character bans don't work. People quit, throw fits, and it's not fair when there are staff members who also have more grads than students. Bans are never fair. Simple as that.

Classes are hard to run. Simply because some people want it to be all-learning (which if boring) or all social interaction (which misses the point). That's why I had Milo come in and try to make chaos. When I tried to throw something in to force more social interaction, people didn't post and it messed up. (Perhaps Milo will just show up, make them sing him a song, and let everyone talk.)

Tutoring. Didn't we suggest that before? It never got going... I think it's a good idea.

Make sure you're reporting godmodding. I haven't seen godmodding as much as I've seen unrealistic RPing. My character shouldn't be accused of having the hots for her brother. That's where tutoring might help.

Closed threads shouldn't be banned (see above reasons) but perhaps we need to clarify the purpose of closed threads. In our tag lines, put closed if you only want those you invited into the thread to post. In other ones, you can tag your friend, which means they should post there, but everyone else is free to join as well.

I do have an idea for the site. As I've been doing the Daily Prophet for a few months now I'm more then willing to let a few interns into the Daily Prophet. I will have these interns do articles based on what's going on Hogwarts. I've also been thinking to offfering up starting up a section of the Daily Prophet where the Hogwarts staff can write whatever they want, well to a certain extent. The Daily Prophet has been Ministry based in the IC past and I want to make it more people based.

1. Banning things.

I don't really think banning things will get us anywhere. Believe me, I hate closed threads with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns and would love to see them never again, but I don't think banning them will be effective. All it would do is stop people who like those type of threads RPing here.

Likewise, I don't think graduate charries should be banned, because (a) there are heaps of them already and any newbies joining up will be all like "well that's just unfair" and (b) in the conversations I've had and read on RPG-D most people agree that they'd rather join a board where instead of banning a certain member group, the admins encourage new members to join as a wanted member group. So it would be better to create a banner advertising for student characters in the accordion.

2. People RP for different reasons, and in different ways.

Some people RP because they want to be good writers, some people do it to have fun, some people just want to play with their friends. Some people like long, descriptive posts, other's like quick back-and-forth ones.

You all know I often post below the word count, because I edit my posts to the barest minimum of what the other person needs to know. One of the reasons I like open threads is because I need a motivation to remain interested and if I plot things out ahead of time then I know what's coming and my interest wanes.

So maybe we could have thread or forum (or just add it to charrie profiles) where people can describe what type of RPing they like. We could also add stuff like what their limits are (I think I have one of these at the top of Selwyn's profile) such as whether they're happy for their character to be killed, if they don't like romance plots, whether description of rape triggers them, et-cetera.

3. Classes

On PA classes are the main way of gaining and losing points. I think that's a problem.

As well, nobody can deny that a good portion of the teaching staff have similar personality traits. Most of the staff right now are McGonnagall and Snape personality types. We need more Flitwicks, more Trelawneys, more Hagrids, more Quirrels and more that are just different in general!

I believe the reason it's hard to RP in classes is because people are looking out for themselves. Because the books put an emphasis on points, people do it here too. They don't want to step out of line with the strict teachers who are watching them. It's for this reason I tried to modify Melinda into a more laid back character. By doing this, they're protecting their characters from losing points but they're also treating the class like a real class instead of like a role play thread, and thus everyone is missing out on valuable character development opportunities.

People need to learn that losing house points is no big deal so they're not so afraid of making a mistake in class or acting in character and causing a disturbance if that's what their character would do.

Points need to be brought into other parts of Hogwarts life so it's easier to earn back points once they're lost.

I suggest that we put up an announcement somewhere (perhaps at the top of each classroom) reminding people that the classes are just for roleplaying. They aren't real classes. I also suggest that the teachers giving homework stop doing it because this is only a game.


4. Tutoring program.

A tutoring area, or a forum for tips and tricks of writing is a good idea. A program is really only a good idea if it's optional. Nobody wants to be told they're not good enough, and one of the best things about PA is that it welcomes people of all ability levels.

Honestly, the best way of tutoring anyone in RP is by RPing with them more and you don't need a program for that. Just people willing to put in the effort


Sorry for the wall-O-text, but that's all I have to say.

When Jack was kidnapped by DFs... nothing really happened. We ended up skipping to the battle, I believe.

The kidnapping I was referring to happened in 2009

For the excessive amount of Graduates maybe putting a ban on graduates for a while and require in order making a graduate you have to be on the site for so long. I know some people won’t like this but I have to say that it’s the only way to really balance that out.

I understand where your coming from Amelia, but as Liesl said, banning things don't get us anywhere. We have tried before. Banning graduates won't make everyone create student characters, people just stop creating characters.

I think another thing that could help is maybe starting up a roleplaying tutoring program. The first Harry Potter site I was on offered this and I loved it. If I hadn’t had that I wouldn’t have been able to make posts like I can now. It shouldn’t be required unless the posts are being reported too short or godmodding is being reported.

Tutoring is a decent idea. Though, almost all PA members are great role-players already and tbh, I haven't seen much godmoding, or maybe you guys have just stopped reporting it. But yes, we should have a forum dedicated to writing and improving roleplaying.

Also, more extracurriculars, more classes.. I'm not ruling them out but PA used to have a lot more than we have now. We decreased them because many of them are inactive and tbh, I don't see a point in having more until the classes we have become more active.

On PA classes are the main way of gaining and losing points. I think that's a problem.

Only the teachers are aware of this fact, but you can't lose house points in any way, since I thought that would discourage people from attending classes. I should have told everyone that though :/ It might be buried somewhere in educational decrees.

But anyway, A problem with house competition, and classes, is that many of us aren't aligned towards one house anymore, at least I don't think we are. I imagine it would be quite hard to support one house when you have a character in every house. Previously there was at least some sort of house spirit, but that has vanished since then, and so people don't care much about house points.

I've also been thinking to offfering up starting up a section of the Daily Prophet where the Hogwarts staff can write whatever they want, well to a certain extent. The Daily Prophet has been Ministry based in the IC past and I want to make it more people based.

Good idea. A Hogwarts section in the daily prophet will allow people to keep track of the gossip there.

Wall o texts are good! I didn't expect all the input, it's great.

About the house points system - I'd like to see that changed quite a bit actually, with almost all restrictions on gaining/losing points lifted and handed over the the population as a whole.

It's been brought up before, but to be quite honest house points are a horrible motivator. People simply have too many different characters in different houses to really care which house wins for the year. There's no real OOC satisfaction in winning the house cup, which their needs to be in order for it to serve its intended purpose as a way to convince students to attend classes and such.

So I propose that any character that would have the power to add/deduct points be able to do so at will. The advantage to having a smaller, more intimate RP community like PA is that we can trust the players not to go overboard with these things, and honestly if things start getting out of control I'm sure an admin can step in. Basically, if in an RP thread your character gives or takes points from a certain house, for whatever reason, you PM an admin (I could do it, or whoever, really) and they change the point totals. I think it would help the players feel more involved in the house points and make them feel like more a presence on the site.