litphoria

I'd like to propose our ad system be expanded or redone. Right now it comes entirely in the form of "ideas", which means it doesn't function as well as it could. It suggests unstarted roleplays are the only thing that should be advertised, and it also implicitly interprets every unstarted roleplay as being an advertisement (not necessarily the case). This is fine if it's exactly what you want, but I find it an unsatisfying arrangement. Ads should be able to do much more, and roleplays shouldn't pull this double duty.

People on other roleplaying forums or sites use ads for many other things: ongoingly advertising long-term group roleplays, floating potential roleplays to obtain expressions of interest, or just advertising their character for the various scenarios they'd like to do. People looking at our site would reasonably conclude we don't really have an advertising system for those things.

So, I want to suggest a different sort of ad system: one that is separate from roleplays, does the job of advertising specifically, and which lets people do those things. This also means unstarted roleplays just become exactly that again, and don't have to do two jobs as ads as well.

The generic ad system

Ads should be their own thing. They shouldn't be unstarted roleplays or anything else, they should just be ads. They won't have posts; nobody posts to an ad, they contact the advertiser directly.

Ads can be for profiles, or for roleplays, or for chats, or other stuff like "I've got this great new roleplay idea that hasn't started yet, PM me for expressions of interest." When an ad is specifically for an existing roleplay or chat or a profile, it gets a big special element previewing that roleplay/chat/profile like you see in the lists for those things.

Why should we do this?

• Have a crystal-clear ad interface that just does ads, and does it well, for various kinds of things. (Roleplays will be slightly less confusing to deal with for not having to do something completely different as well. and ads will be more straightforward for not being done via some totally different feature.)
• Easier to learn and use. Follow convention with how ads work elsewhere. The concept of creating a roleplay to advertise is unusual and confusing for new and existing members, increasing the site's learning curve.
• Advertisements get content neutrality. Litphoria currently strongly signals it's a site that isn't interested in supporting ongoing, open group roleplays very much, and signals to the people interested in that kind of thing that this isn't the site for them. If you want more people, there isn't an advertising system for you - only one for roleplays that haven't started yet. There's no reason it has to stay this way. Making them content-neutral will support various new ways of using the site.

The interface (the "how")

When creating an ad, you have these fields:

• Standard text fields: Title, Short summary (for lists), Description (the full content of the ad you read on the ad's page)
• The profile that owns the ad
• Visibility: Visible to anonymous users, visible to signed-in users, or Archived & hidden. (Archived & hidden is the one setting.)
• Interests: tag it.
• Sexual: yes/no.
• A field to link a roleplay, chat, or profile, or alternately pick one from the list of thingies you own. The ad will directly display this. ("If this ad is for a roleplay or chat or profile, which one is it for?")

You can click to create an ad from within your roleplay/chat room's edit page. If you do, the ad creation page has that last field autofilled for you. The same edit page will list all active ongoing ads for the room.

Got a roleplay you want to start off? Create the roleplay, then an ad pointing to it - or we should have a wizard that lets you do both at once. Got a roleplay that's already going but you still want more people? Same thing but you've already created the roleplay. Now we can advertise for large ongoing group roleplays too.

When viewing an ad on its own page (ads get a page), you should see:

• The title, along with the status (actively lookinng / passively open) close by, and the rating marker saying whether it's rated 13+ or sexual (but that part's a while off).
• The description (but not the short summary)
• The profile that owns the ad
• The interests
• A button inviting you to PM the user
• Finally, if the author supplied a link to a roleplay, chat, or profile, the ad will say at the bottom as a title: "Visit the [roleplay/chat/profile] this ad is for here:". It then shows the standard full block for the room itself - the same one you'd see in your inbox or on the front page or on the list of roleplays/chats, showing title, last post time/user, short summary, user list, etc.

Follow-up changes

Some other changes become natural follow-ups to this one.

First: Reconsider the placement of the Ads list. Currently it's in Roleplays, but that would no longer be an accurate home. It should either become its own site area, or we should have a separate ads list in each of Chat, Roleplay and Profiles depending on what it's tied to. (But then we'd have no particular place for ads that aren't connected to any of those, so idk.)

Second: Rename the "ad" field of roleplays and chats to a "short summary" field. That's more straightforward language. (And not everyone's trying to use that field to advertise anyway.) We'd also have two extremely different things called ads otherwise.

Third: Remove the "staging" status for roleplays. It had these purposes:

1. Mark something as still being set up.
2. To make a roleplay an ad.
3. To suggest the roleplay's open to new people.

However, (1) isn't necessary - you can tell if something's being set up if it's got low or few posts. (2) is obsolete, and (3) is a problem because existing roleplays should be able to satisfied they're open to new people. (3) can be better satisfied by allowing roleplays to signal they're looking for new people or not.

With the removal of Edit Mode and of Staging, this leaves just three statuses: "In Progress", "Paused" and "Finished." Since "In Progress" would just be the default state for any non-paused non-finished roleplay, we can probably just simplify this system to have roleplays be Open, unless they're Closed as either Paused or Finished. This mechanism would be quite familiar to people who use forums (i.e. just about anyone).