Warning: Strong nerdery follows. Please be cautious of your fragile mind.

Since late 1997, in all of my pre-teen glory, I have been involved with something my friends and I simply called roleplay in our own little vernacular. Of course I’ve since learned that roleplay doesn’t only refer to the peer-driven world of online roleplay, it refers to all sorts of real-world tabletop games, live acting, and various amounts of storytelling, but this particular post is written with the word roleplay referring to the freeform online roleplaying that I have always been so close to.

Freeform roleplay, or the idea that there is no GM (game master) or storyteller (as in Vampire: The Masquerade), and is instead driven solely by the players, with no concrete rules for battle, statistics, or progression of the story. Rules and guidelines were driven by common expectation, which developed as a sort of social justice system that remains effective, even today.

The very roots of this sort of roleplay stem from early chat systems, where one could adopt a simple moniker and create a personality around the idea of an “avatar”, which in most cases consisted only of this name. Players, without defining themselves as such, would interact in an imaginative world that coalesced out of their collaborative imagination. Each would react to the other characters’ actions and dialogue in a fashion that suited their own character’s theoretical personality, and this would create a constantly evolving story arc.

As the web (and the young teen’s perception of the web) evolved and grew, so did the concept of roleplay. Online forums became an entirely new beast, allowing users to write more and more into their in character posts, instead of being limited to the single lines that chat provided (of course, some chats had enough space for people to post a full paragraph, or even two - but this was limited at the time), they were able to expound upon their writing and even proofread their copy before sending it across the web for the other players to view.

Freeform roleplay had also grown to be very competitive at this point, with groups of players forming groups known as clans, guilds, or otherwise, and expanded their IC competitions from chat to the forums and message boards now provided by a few enterprising organizations (or individuals). It was this competitive banter and challenge that defined what many now call the golden age of roleplay, which is what really drove the forefront of this gaming medium.

There were plenty of players who had entered their late teens (and some even were adults at this point, *gasp*!) who moved away from chat, and who moved away from the conflict-driven world of this type of roleplay. They went on to create storyline-oriented games, with a small and select number of players in more of a collaborative fiction setting. These players often went on to become writers and editors, being driven more by the literary aspect of relaying a fiction onto the internet, and often have their own private niche where they can continue to do this with their long-standing playergroup.

And… that’s where we are today. The freeform roleplay community is growing and changing, barely 15 years old at this point. We have the chance to nurture it, just as we have the chance to neglect it. Those of us who’ve been involved since the beginning have the greatest opportunity to influence the course of growth, and that’s exactly what I’m hoping to do.

So, entirely not in light of any recent events, I was integrating the chat rules that Vexar wrote into RolePlayGateway’s Rules, and I was looking for some examples of forum etiquette that other forums use. In searching, I found this perfectly humorous video:

(I found it on Neil Boortz’s website, but since headed over to videojug to get the original. PS, Neil? You’re awesome.)

That was probably the best one I found, above and beyond the video I came across that seemed geared towards the Steam forum community, which was a bit too NSFW to actually embed here on my blog. If you’d like, you can go check out posting a new thread on AlbinoBlackSheep.

I’m admin on several online forums, and I’m a moderator on many more; not counting the countless other communities where I’m an active member. I was pretty proud of the rules I put together on Gateway, and I think they’re clean, simple, and easy to follow. No one likes being bombarded and tacked down by rules, so I try to keep them as simple as possible. What do you think of them?

How do you manage forum users and set rules? I know Martin Reed has some good tips on forum rules, and there are many others out there that learned a lot from running forums. The best thing that we can do is learn from others, and gather experience on how to handle these issues. What is your approach to forum etiquette?

I’m a pretty heavy feedreader, with about 164 subscriptions. Over the last 30 days, I’ve read 8,032 items, starred 9 items, shared 20 items, and emailed 2 items. Of course… I really enjoy a good number of things that I read - and I want to share these items with everyone.

Then there’s the question about content-theft. Some bloggers like to take RSS feeds and republish them on their own site, earning revenue from the content, and there’s a huge backlash from the original authors.

What I’d like to do is publish my shared items feed here on my blog, without changing anything in the original article. I’ll have to play around with tagging and the like, and I’ll have to decide on what plugin to use exactly. However, will I get any backlash from the authors? Is this appropriate?

(There’s supposed to be a list of shared items here… but apparently it isn’t working.)

Now, keep in mind that each of them would most likely get their own post, with all of the original links intact. I’d be pulling the RSS feed from my Google Reader account (if I could link to my profile, that’d be great - then people could even “Add Eric as a Friend” and subscribe to my shared items. Alas - Google doesn’t make it that easy), and letting people read and see it here.

What do you think? Blog authors who I frequently share from, I’d really appreciate your opinion, or even suggestions on alternatives. Google Trends says my most shared items are from Lifehacker (a getting things done blog) - so YOUR comments would be especially helpful. Let me know!

I was just reviewing some of my older starred posts in Google Reader, and I came across a great post from ShoeMoney about Understanding Communities. Pam outlines some great approaches to the whole social media market, and how to understand and utilize the communities on which they are build.

Oldie but goodie! Does anyone have any feedback on how relevant this four month old post is? I for one, totally support the ideas that she came up with for usability. I don’t think usability will ever become a non-issue, personally. SEO is huge, but as we’ve always hammered home - your visitors come first.

One of my favorite blogs is run by Martin Reed, and it’s about online community building. He’s really onto something here, and it’s a shame there aren’t more blogs out there on the topic (*ahem*, nudge nudge, wink wink). His content is top notch, and it relates directly to what it is that I do with my sites, particularly RolePlayGateway.

Just today he posted an article on active forum members and their value, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t forward that article to two teams on RolePlayGateway. And then I submitted it to StumbleUpon for good measure! Keep up the good work, Martin!

Does anyone know of any blogs about online community building? Please, share!