litphoria

Right now, the front page of the Ideas section has two roleplays that are in progress, three profiles with multiple ads, and only three profiles with one ad.

I think it'd be a lot better if instead of six profiles looking for play on the first page, there was twenty. The easiest way to do that might be just having the most recent roleplay idea for a profile show up, rather than all of them.

Or let a profile signify their 'primary' RP ad, so that is the one that shows up for them in the list of 20.

That would add another step and be more work, but sure. That would totally work too.

I'm just thinking that the most recent RP added might not be the one I wish would show up in a list that is limited.

Maybe by slightly editing the one you want to show up, the same thing is accomplished.

I think it'd be a lot better if instead of six profiles looking for play on the first page, there was twenty. The easiest way to do that might be just having the most recent roleplay idea for a profile show up, rather than all of them.

Another way to pull it off would be to group ads. Find the most recent 20 people (by whatever criteria: newest ads, profile activity), get their top 3 ads, group those ads under their name and show each of them. That means having a header that says their name, then up to three of their ads. People with more than 3 ads have a "show X more" button in their grouping.

I think it'd be a lot better if instead of six profiles looking for play on the first page, there was twenty. The easiest way to do that might be just having the most recent roleplay idea for a profile show up, rather than all of them.

This will almost certainly encourage people to use ads as general "I want roleplay!" instead of the specific scenarios they're meant to be.

This will almost certainly encourage people to use ads as general "I want roleplay!" instead of the specific scenarios they're meant to be.

I don't agree that would happen, but even then that'd be a big step up from the status quo. Right now as a practical matter, multiple ads on a profile clutter things up a bunch. Worse, it gives a perverse incentive to roleplayers to create a bunch of ads.

Plus, this would only affect the Ideas section. People would still want to fill out various, niche ideas on their profile, for when people click on their names in a chat or find their profile through a search.

The compromise solution might be to have a toggle, for "Don't show multiple Ideas from a single profile".

I don't agree that would happen,

You don't have to, we can just look at sites which only allow one post per period of time, and that's exactly what happens. People just say "I want roleplay, here's what I'll do, here's what interests I want, and check my profile for ideas".

My ideal ad system probably allows people to get that general "I want roleplay" message across while also allowing them to list specific scenarios right in the ad itself.

[avatar] Name of person
[general hook / message]
[title for idea 1] · [title for idea 2] · [title for idea 3]

Not sure where the clickables here would be, but we definitely want to encourage people to make their specific niche ideas as ads without drowning out everyone else on the list (particularly people who only make one or two).

Something like that sounds totally awesome. My suggestion is really more for a stopgap solution between the current system and that.

I think for ads to be a central device on the site, a Main page needs to feature recent and 'popular' ads. The 'popular' list could randomly pick from the top 50 or something, refreshing the list every few minutes. 'Popularity' for now would be view-count. And even with showing a few ads per user, (even though my profile doesn't have ads atm), I know that characters are going to want to control which ads show as their top one or top three.

Reading this and recent discussions elsewhere, I had a thought on a new way to list and highlight Roleplay Ads/Ideas:
Make a list that is sorted by a Recently Online check.
So, when you display this page, it lists all Roleplay Ideas limited by profiles that were on Recently or in the Last Hour or so. Then it is sorted by profile last-online time, or by Roleplay Idea modification date. This would increase the freshness of the LFRP factor.

(Another current issue is that Ideas don't list by modification date, but by creation date or ID (which for an incrementing ID is the same as creation date). So you can be updating your Idea with new tweaks, and it doesn't pop to the top of the list. It should! All my current ideas were initially created a long time ago.)

P.S. I have Ideas/Ads now, but they've already dropped to the second page due to single-profile Idea spams.

I really hope there will be some movement on this suggestion soon.

Whether it is on a 'main' page, or becomes the first 'tab' of the Roleplay page, or whatever, I would like to see a better representation of roleplay ideas, which is supposed to be the focus of the site, and the 'key' to getting interaction on the site.

Right now, Ideas are simply a list that, besides being quite buried away, is not easy to use. The first page can easily be dominated by one or two new users that came in and made 10 ideas. All too often, this is done by a person that might hang around the site for a day or two, or maybe a week, but then after that period, they are gone forever. So the first page can get covered up by roleplay ideas that are effectively dead within two days or a week of creation because the owner never comes back to the site.

One way around this might be to do a search, but the longest activity period you can search on is 1 day, and that doesn't work as it should. It only finds Ideas that were 'created' within the 'activity' period. With the current user-base, this never returns anything you don't get from just looking at the first page of the Ideas tab. (Use of Interests is also low, with 67 of the last 80 Ideas not selecting any Interest for the Idea.)

Also, if an older RP idea is updated with edits by an active user, it does not rise in the listing, even though that is an activity that makes that roleplay more likely to be responded to by the creator. I was in an RP with someone that decided to simply drop Litphoria entirely. Their list of RP ideas are higher on the list than any of my RPs will ever be in any search that returns both of our ideas due to the fact that mine were created earlier, even if I've gone back and updated them, and despite the fact that my profile may have been active most days on the site for the last month, and her profile has not been active on the site for a month now. Only by deleting and recreating my Idea can it ever be shown in a list or search higher than her batch of ideas.

Suggestions:
Make the Activity search for RP Ideas key off of Profile activity, not Idea creation-date/ID-num. Thus you would make the Activity search actually return something, and get a different list than the already existing default list which sorts by creation-date/ID-num.
Make the default list of RP Ideas show by Modification date, not Creation Date/ID-num.
Rather than having to do a search on Activity with the criteria that Activity references Profile Activity, add a new tab or page that lists Ideas by this criteria. It would list all Ideas in order of Creator's last active date. This would promote the RP Ideas of active profiles to the top of that list.

I like this idea. I especially like it being related more closely to actual character activity. Anne, I like your suggestions.

Just to get the wheels moving, I've done a simple version of this on the testing server. It should sort by profile activity now and should only show one ad per person. I still have to figure out how to deal with keeping those multiple ads in rotation.