User blog:Sophia McLaren-Cobb/Discretion Recommended

i'm posting this here bc i am petty af not really

"You can't solve everything by blowing things sky high. Sometimes, a little discretion is in order." - Charles Darwin to Jacob in Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

Excuse the random (but sorta relevant) quote from a video game above. Anyway, most, if not all, of you had seen that earlier today, two blogs went up, from Jaye both. Both were more or less about the enforcement of policies. Don't get me wrong, I got the message. About time we start being serious again. And know that all to follow is nothing less than my personal opinion on the whole ordeal, and you're not required to take me seriously or anything. If you disagree with me, that's fine, I don't judge.

Now, for my point. I had commented that I do not support the movement. Well, if you want to call a movement that is. I understand the end goal is good intentions, as I too want the best for DARP, but I believe this wasn't quite the way to go about it. We've been lax about enforcing policy, sure, but would such attitude justify the necessity of it being enforced again? To an extent, it would. But to a greater extent, it would not.

Why not? I'll keep this short and simple; the policies, as they are, are broken. They've sat there for a huge time, yet in the wake of a changing admin team, they have not been changed to reflect the current state of DARP. It would be petty of me to complain without suggesting solutions, so I'll propose what I had in mind. Of course, like everything else, you don't need to take me up on it; just know that this is how I think and feel.

Inactivity
This one, I'm afraid, is the one of principal concern to me. I understand we have it there for a reason, but as it is??? It's unforgiving and to an extent, it has little regard for others' RL commitments. I can understand that the argument in support of it is that we did sign up for a reason, but things happen and more often than not, we can't control them. For the reason I stated above, here's my suggestion/proposal:
 * My main suggestion: increase the time limit for demotion consideration from 2 weeks, to 2 months. Yes, you read that right, and yes, you can stare at me and think I'm crazy. But hear this; most of us as we are, are high schoolers/young adults. That on its own is the majority of the reason why some of us cannot make it around all the time. If you don't include the other sh*t that goes on in our lives, then more or less, we can't be around all the time. Should someone have a tough time in RL, two weeks simply isn't enough time for anyone to become active again. Two months however, is enough time for us to be able to sort out whatever it is that we need to sort out and get active. The catch to it all is that there's far less room for excuses, but I feel that this will hopefully allow those of us in school or buried deep in work to not get demoted after trying to fix their priorities in RL.
 * Optional idea: do completely away with Department edit requirements, instead focusing on admins making edits, period. Department edit requirements, while relevant, make being on the admin team feel like a chore that needs doing, instead of a right with responsibilities. Hence why I suggest that maybe we should consider dropping those edit requirements, to instead focus on the admin team making any edits, full stop. Of course, this doesn't have to change, but it's just a thought.

Chat
I won't lie, I agree with most everything mentioned about it. However, there's a small amount of points I wanna make.
 * My personal minor distaste is the whole cussing ordeal. Like I mentioned previously, most of us are at least young adults - we're mature enough to handle people cussing. I won't lie, many of us do cuss. I'm about as guilty as the next person for it. But that's not the point; the point is... we cuss for a reason. It could be because we're frustrated, angry, whatever. Sure, some of us actually do it on a regular basis, but really, it's not much more than blowing off steam. What my personal thought is: common swears should be allowed, unless someone actually feels uncomfortable, in which case, shut up. Racial slurs, and other offensive language is a huge no.
 * As far as topics which can end up in uncontrollable debates/have trigger potential, my take is more or less "keep it to yourself, unless you really need to go off/drag someone, in which case, take it somewhere where it doesn't disturb anyone". Truly, that stuff belongs in PM, period. Don't @ me on it.
 * The rest, I don't have much to say on, because it's fine as is.

Character
This particular policy, is more of a nuisance really than a thorn in the side. Here's my take on what was mentioned.
 * I'll be dead honest, I don't like the idea of a falsely enforced maximum. Quite honestly, it's rather deceiving that there isn't exactly a limit on the chars one can make, only to find out that there is a max. It can be misleading to people, and it was that way for me once upon a time. My proposal is that, instead of a falsely enforced maximum of chars, we move to an absolute and defined maximum, so that everyone is aware exactly how many chars they can have.
 * My suggestion for this is an absolute maximum of 20 characters, of which 8 can be exotic, and you can brand 5 as semi-active/rp on request without much repercussion. Let me explain; 20 chars is a perfectly even amount, and gives people enough room to do all of their fancy collabs with whomever, but it also makes enforcing the exotic char limit easier. That being said, 8 should be maximum amount of exotic chars someone should be allowed. This actually fits ideally in with the "40% of total chars" bit in the Character Policy. Also there's a no excuses with this too. Now, the 5 semi-actives is what I might get questions for. The reason why I said that 5 chars should be allowed to branded as semi-active/rp on request, is because many of us have that one char that we just don't use a lot for whatever reason it may be. But punishing people for having such chars isn't really productive in my opinion. On the contrary though, if half your chars are semi-active, then that's just no.
 * That being said, anyone who goes over this, will be warned and depending on the scenario, the char could be subject for deletion, but that's up to S&S to decide.

Meeting
I wonder why I mention this one, since this is one that hasn't exactly bothered me that much. But I had a small point to make about it, now that it's been brought up.
 * The phrasing of the meeting policy, really makes it sound like a closed doors type of thing. Honestly, I feel that while doing things behind closed doors is useful to a point, at the same time, it's not transparent, and it can feel that regular users are being left out, even if it doesn't concern them. To this end, I suggest we stop this closed door thing, and move to being honest and transparent; should this be by chat logging or by actually allowing regular users to have a say. Just my thought.

Rating
This one bugs me, sort of. It's not the whole PG-13 that bothers me, just tiny things about it, but I did have a point to make about the PG-13 thing as well.
 * PG-13 is very broad in what is and isn't allowed. The cursing part, actually, is more often than not common in PG-13. And quite truly, even if there was something with a ton of swearing (assuming it's nothing racial or actually offensive), it'd still teeter comfortably on PG-13. Because it's just that. My only thing is just that using common swears frequently, should be allowed. Chars are still human too, even if they're not real. Again, what I mentioned about the Chat policy basically applies here.

Roleplay
There's not much to say about this one, as this policy is more or less one that'll always stand the test of time. But I believe this one needs a slight change; public displays of affection is a perfectly acceptable thing, granted it is kept outside of the school. I mean, I personally fail to see what's wrong with two chars sharing a kiss while they're out and about. It wouldn't de facto violate the PG-13 rating. Sure, that might mean trigger potential if someone is just not used to two lesbian chars kissing, but that's a fact of life. Now, doing this in school, is just no. And the last little thing; drugs. They're bad, but unfortunately, they're sometimes necessary, for medicinal use. That being said, I believe certain drugs should be allowed, for medical reasons only. There could be a registry made or something along those lines, to make sure characters don't get out of line. Should there be forgery involved; then I don't need to say what'll happen to chars who might consider themselves slick.

And that's all I had to say. Sophie out.