Hey! Sorry for a second suggestion this week, but with the arrival of a few new members (shout out to Addy in particular) I think it'd be a grand idea to have a thread in the general information board that surmises what's currently happening in the role play. Whether it gets updated every month or every two months is obviously up to the staff, but for a new member coming into the role play I can imagine it would be quite daunting to have to sift through the recent threads to piece together some kind of direction that the story is taking. Considering how old the site-wide plot thread is now, it seems that this is the next best step to introducing our new friends into the RP.
The level of detail in this thread is, again, up to you. It could either be a few sentences about what's going on in different parts of Anikira, with a mention of a few key characters/packs, or it could be an in depth list of all current threads and who is partaking in them, and a few paragraphs dedicated to character/subplot developments. If I had the time I'd do it myself - but I don't sooo I'm lumping it on you guys. haha.
I don't think that this is a bad idea at all. I definitely think that a thread that is up to date on the IC happenings with the characters would be helpful for new members, especially with a site that's been around as long as ani has been and with all of the in depth plots that it has. I think writing a thread that's got ALL of everything in it is going to be a daunting task for whomever has to write it and also to new members that are going to read it. I think that just highlighting certain things like matings, pups, pack interaction, pack rank changes, and plots that have impacts on the site as a whole or on a specific pack should be sufficient information for a new member.
Then comes the question of how long ago should we refer back to as some of the plots we have going on have been in motion for 2 years or more.
Also, what might make this less daunting for the staff is to have everyone take their characters and write a short summary of their important plots thus far. Like for Aaricia, I'd write about how she and Goliath were reunited and how she fought with Xion and that her meeting with Rain fueled her desire to have Xion be killed. Whereas my character Kadar hasn't done much at all so I probably wouldn't write anything about him as he wouldn't be important for a new member to know about. This would divide up the work a little bit so the staff wouldn't have to spend hours or days working on combing through everyone's threads trying to decide what's important and what's not. Then, when everyone's submitted their summaries the staff can just compile them together.
Again, just a suggestion as to how we might go about this if the staff thinks it's a good idea to have one of these threads
I think that's a great compromise, Scout. Any member who wants their characters included can write a description of their own IC happenings which the staff could compile together (unless one of them wants the undertaking to be solely theirs). Of course, I'm not sure how often this would have to be updated and whether that would be a hassle for everyone. I still think some form of up-to-date summary needs to happen - the absence of one might be turning away prospective members. ):
My thought process was that we'd update it about once a year (or twice a year at most) because it would take a while to get everyone's entries and then we'd just summarize the happenings of the past 6 months to a year. I'm not sure if members would see it as a hassle either. But, I think it would be a great addition to our important information board if everyone wanted to do it. It might be a good idea to turn it into a poll and see how many people wouldn't mind doing writing summaries of their characters' plots.
In my opinion going back two years might be a bit of a stretch (as almost all of the plots that existed then are no longer relevant, with the absence of older characters and abundance of many newer ones) - and updating annually or even bi-annually might be too infrequent. I think smaller summaries more often would be more fitting and easier for new members to 'digest'. It also means that staff can do these independently as they're only small (so long as they're up to date on the role play, which I'm sure they are anyway, they'll have a general idea of what's going on).
Perhaps, like you say, a poll would be best to find out what everyone wants. Of course we'll need some staff input on this before it gets to that stage.
Once the new packs are settled I really hope we can introduce an epic site-wolf plot again. Something that will make the forging of alliances/enemies crucial - but that is a topic for a different thread altogether haha.