Calling All Members - Ideas Needed, Mousie can't leave Admin CP alone.

Okay, so here's the thing.

Obviously I've been on a huge advertising and mucking about spree with the boards, ending in a new skin, new forums (in Koonyah, Lausler Park has also been added, as have two newspaper boards), and quite a few new affiliates.

Now I'm turning it to you guys. I want to know what you want when you come to Tally. I'd be sure most of you have played on other boards, and probably still do.. so... I'd love if everyone could answer the following questions for me.

- Are there any places/forums you can think of that would be a good addition to Tally? These could be new areas to hang out, or even out of character forums.

- Are there any forums you think are no longer needed on Tally?

- Regarding the organisation of the information threads, do you think it is easy to follow? Or is there a better way it could be organised to help newbies get into the game?

- What parts of Tally do you like the most, what should we hang onto?

- What parts of Tally do you NOT like? Could be anything.

- What have you seen about that you think would work here.. or is there anything you feel missing from the board as a whole? This includes codes, board competitions and the like.

- Are there any other boards you know of, that Tallygarunga should affiliate with?

- Any other comments?

Many cookies to all who fill this out, it will help very muchly.. and we can continue growing as we have!

Love to all.

Mousie.

I have fielded some questions about a movie theater in Narrie

Also with our first group of 7 years moving on perhaps expand Victoria Magical Uni?

The Souterrain Club

The information that you need to know to get your character sorted is kind of spread out. I had a lot of difficulty figuring out which links led to what I wanted.

I'd suggest removing the sub-forums from the Rules & Information forum and transferring each thread into that main area. You can still have the Reading List as a guide.

I just think it would be easier to navigate an area where you can see the name of all the threads instead of having trawl through each area for what you want. For example, I was looking for the house descriptions the other day, and assumed they'd be in with the information about the school, but they're in the Tally lists. And that's in a different sub-forum.

Um... the rest of Australia? I feel kind of offended that we've got overseas locations, Melbourne, the area surrounding Tally, but not the rest of Australia to roleplay in. Even if there was just a forum called "Other Parts of Australia" or something. Especially, since my character is from Sydney which totally pwns Melbourne

- The strobing colour effect on the links. That hurts my eyes. I don't know if you can do anything about it. I just thought I should mention it.

- I find the rules on this site about avatar usage particularly restricting. To me, an avatar simply represents the idea of what your character looks like. It isn't them, otherwise there are a lot of celebrities with long-lost twins in the RP world (not to mention RP characters with long lost quintuplets- or whatever).

And now I'm going to quote someone who can express my opinion on this topic far better than I can:
"I don't think it's rational to be upset if someone else steals the same celebrities image that you stole. Because that's what all of us are doing. We are stealing (borrowing) the images of famous (and not so famous) people. If anyone has a right to be upset about it it would be the celebrity the picture belongs to, not us. It exhibits a kind of delusion on our parts if we think we own a celebrity or even if we think we are so clever as to have been the first to associate oursleves with one. Even if we are the first person to use a certain celebrity on __, who is to say there aren't countless people on other boards using them? How clever was it of us really to do an internet search in the first place?"

That's all I have to say, and I do admit that I've been rejected twice from using an avatar, one of which was a stock photo and which nobody (on this site) had the duplicate of.

And on the stock photo, any and all stock photos are denied. It is not possible to verify the age of the subject to insure it is within the 7-10 years of the character's age. While this does not seem major when it comes to adult characters, it does become an issue with students.

I have seen where people used 30 plus year old celebrities and models to illustrate 11 and 12 year old students.

I have to agree with Elisa on the colorful link thing. It's cute, but it has a tendancy to hurt my eyes a bit. However, I'm not extremely fussed about it.

The rest of Australia would be nice actually. Melbourne is pretty, but what about the Gold Coast? ((I know Mousie is gonna hate me for that but oh well. Gold Coast = Pretty!))

Plus, I agree with Silverwolf on needing to expand the Uni. We could attract more adults, while still having some students too. At least make the Uni have a campus...not neccesarily classes and jobs available yet, but maybe have it's campus. Gotta let the Uni kids chill with their homies!

Oh, and possibly making a forum for the Ministry of Magic too.

When I first joined Tally, it was abit difficult to find things. That could be because of my length of time being out of roleplay, or it could simply be because of the organization. Although, Elisa had pretty good ideas about the organization. It should be more bunched up than spread out.

Yeah. Keep up the great work with Tally. I love it here, and if it ever disappears, I'll kill you!.....Sorry, psyco moment there.

But seriously, keep up the great work!

I agree with silverwolf about the university. With Jay heading out into the world soon, I would like to have him still in school and just just a part of the community doing nothing, but be there, you know?

Also, I still have trouble finding informational threads and I do agree with instead of being spread out, they should all be together.

I do like the idea of contests though. I don't know what kind, but it is always fun to say that you won this and that. Thats just the competitive side of me talking but it is always fun to have some friendly competition I think.

Another idea maybe is more threads that can involve the entire community or just the entire school at least like dances and school functions. I think that would help get people to RP with others instead of just the usual people (I'm guilty of that ^^).

And I say keep the color changing links!!! I love playing with them!

We have done this were not the entire board is in the thread but a large group.. such as for the Winter Masquerade ball in June and the Staff Social when the school year opened.

This can be fun but only works when people check it regularly and remember to school back to look for the person their answering to

Yes, I loved it too

So thats when people bring out the sporks....

*smiles evilly* You catch on fast young grasshopper

In regards to expanding MVU and the Ministry:

I'm trying at the moment to bring in Ministry characters for reasons as yet unknown to all. In order to do so, we need a lot more characters, and the same goes for the University. I'll add in the forums for the new year, though. To make it work, however, we need to keep the activity level high.

In regards to the pretty link colours:

I loved them too, but unfortunately I have dial up.. and my computer hates javascript. Especially as we're getting a lot more coding these days, I needed wrapper space, and it was the most dispensable code we had. So they're gone for the moment... but I may find something more cool later. ... when my residence gets wireless broadband!

In regards to the major events:

I haven't even discussed this with Silverwolf or Vlad yet, but I'd love to have a New Years function. Again, it depends on board activity. It's annoying to stage main events when people are coming and going, being active one minute and dropping off the face of the internet the next. It would be great to get a lot of people playing with different players... I think we all have a handful that we play with the most (and that just sounds dirty), and it'd be great to shake it up a little. I know I'm guilty of it, mostly because until recently I didn't have a student character and I got into routine with the professors. XD

Regarding play bys/avatars:

That is one issue I'll stick my heels in on. As unfair as it may sound to disallow duplicate PBs, it takes away from certain possibilities. For instance, the significance of Victoriya and Anastasia having the same PB - it's because they're twins, not freakishly similar. I think we're pretty relaxed with our rules in comparison to most boards where they are required, or even preset.. and in most cases they are expected to be A-list celebrities. We're only asking for someone known enough to get good pictures, and a verifiable birthdate. It's not too much, is it?

Regarding the rules/information section:

I really don't know what to do here. When I put everything in one forum - it's too much and too confusing. When I separate with subforums, things are too hard to find. I don't want to make it difficult, but with the amount of information we have available, it's hard not to. Basically I want a certain group of threads to be read by every new member - and the rest is optional. So what should be there, and what shouldn't?

Regarding contests:

Name me what you want, and I'll see what I can do. I don't really want to do CotM, or PotM... mostly because Mousie is bad at changing the winners from month to month. She's a little forgetful. But anything you guys list for me, will be seriously considered.

Yes, The Souterrain Club. It isn't used and such.

And maybe a forum for the aussie Ministry of Magic? I dunno if that would take up space or not. Hmmm. Just a thought.

Not exactly specific suggestions, but ideas nonetheless.

In the school... More places to hang out, I think. Hidden rooms and all that stuff. Tally's very own Room of Requirement, if that could be one way of putting it. Or simply more room's with loads of Tally history.

It would also be sort of awesome if Narrie had someplace... forbidden-ish. Other than Mad Mackey's, of course. Which is, without a doubt, interesting with Nikolas, Anton, Nataliya, and the rest staying there and all. But someplace other than would be cool.

And something totally random... Narrie's own little museum (magical if you want it). Just think it would be fuuun.

School clubs and guilds would be interesting... kind of like after school thingers for students and would probably help promote more school staff positions? Just a thought.


But all that aside... You all know I love Tally and it is, for me, the best board there is! Everything and everyone here is awesome.

If you don't want to have annual competitions, you could have one-off ones. Like set up a set of circumstances that you have to RP the outcome to if you want to win. At other sites I've seen stuff about Slytherins having to find objects around the castle (cos they're sneaky) and students having to save themselves from potentially embarrassing situations, or even professors keeping a rare item (like an invisibility cloak or polyjuice potion) protected by spells in their office, and the person who writes the best roleplay about sneaking in and getting past the security is allowed to own that item for a certain amount of time.

In response to this question, I've seen many people say stuff about the Soutterain Club. Frankly, I've been on this board for months, I sign on almost every day, I'm extremely active, and I didn't even know the Soutterain Club existed. So I'd have to agree that we probably don't need it anymore; it doesn't seem like anyone is using it. (Correct me if I'm wrong?)

Just wanted to say that I love everyone else's suggestions on the subject.

I think that perhaps it would be good to have a single forum labeled something like "Helpful Resources" that only contained one thread - a thread that only the admins could post on/edit. This thread would list and give the links to EVERY other thread regarding Tally (not just the required reading - and these threads can be in different forums) and have different sections for what is required and what isn't, so people don't get confused. Also, perhaps there should be a short description of each thread so people know where they should go to get the information they want. It would be sort of like the Board Information up in the welcome box, but more complete. For instance, it would include the thread detailing the differences between houses (I still have a hard time finding that one when I go to look for it). That way, nobody gets confused OR overwhelmed.

I really like Elisa's idea on this. It would encourage creativity and better posting!

DONE