This is getting so off topic but a sidenote, if you tell someone to design something within a theme vs. design something to their heart's content, it will be different. That's just how it goes. When you give a brief to someone, regardless of what kind of occupation you're in, you're giving them set guidelines. Eg. when someone tells me to make a layout for a clan, there are specific guidelines such as width/height and other things that are within that realm, versus if I was just making a profile or a shipper layout, I can do whatever I want to do with that. That doesn't make it any less fun for me, it doesn't mean I use a lesser amount of creativity, it's different. Comparing those two is like comparing an apple with an orange, not to mention if we wanted a theme and it wasn't stated in the brief, then how would any of the users participating understand that?

When briefed, the participants can't read the mind of the people proposing the brief. To get something that both sides can agree to takes a lot of work and communication; if I was given a brief and I immediately understood it from the get go and got everything perfect in the first draft, I'd be the most highly paid person in this world. The point of doing something like that is a process; you start off with the ideas and draft the ideas, hold conversations about it, and then settle on what works. Designing and worldbuilding isn't a linear process nor is it something done by one person. To assume that it 'won't guarantee people making a clan that's interesting' sounds really condescending and rude to the people who actually put a lot of effort in creating both hypothetical and already-existing groups on this site.

EDIT TO FIT A RESPONSE TO JETCLAW'S REPLY JUST NOW LOL YALL REPLY SO FAST: I guess with the whole leaders being approachable thing, I find that if they're not enthusiastic about RPing with me, then I match their energy. The people who really go out of the way to ask what I'd like to RP or what kind of characters they are, I always respond really well to. It doesn't even need to be a mates plot, I love a good friendship dynamic or even rivals or just a simple adventure and move on, you know? It's just when I ask and they say sure but make little to no effort in actually putting forth an RP and the effort is one-sided (not being shady, this is just general my RP experience including non-classic) or I'm the only person moving the conversations/threads forward, it gets draining.


ANYWAYS
Moving on, I might've mentioned it but a possible way of maybe making clans that interact with each other more could be this idea I had for my own site back in 2015. It's based on the day/night theme, which can be applied and modified otherwise, but what if a disaster happened and the territories were reduced and therefore, clans had to share territories but have certain rules about what times they're allowed out? Example could be that moonclan and sunclan are forced to share the same part of a forest but they have large, separate camps/territories but share the rest, and sunclan is only allowed out in the day, moonclan is only allowed out at night, and twilight/dawn they can mingle and territories no longer exist? (very your name vibes, I know) It could mean going out after your set hours means the other clan could hunt you for sport (exciting!) and it could lead to some fun hostile and friendly interactions, or cross-clan relationships!

The same could be integrated to any of the other clans really since their territories are so close to one another. For example, the seasonal clans could do more cross-clan things during seasonal events, or have to work together to find a certain balance or something? There could be places where all the clans are welcome to, where apprentices train in diplomacy, or cross-cultural events for the different groups? Would those bring up activity?

achromatic

I'm not going to lie that sounds like it could be really interesting. The nice thing about utilizing plots like that is that it's a lot easier to make those temporary and to move things around if we need to. It would be easy to add to and worldbuild around as well.

Jetclaw

I love the idea of clan mixers or more diplomatic neutral territory. Maybe we need to do more out of character bonding. Roleplay is what we're here to do but ooc bonding appears to be critical. I am more likely to approach someone im very familiar with or have seen around a lot than someone I've never interacted with. I have severe anxiety and I hate the anxiety of rejection. I doubt I'm alone in this but I really feel like I don't know other users much. This is inevitable since I was gone for so long and now I have to reacquainted myself with everyone. Obviously no one would be forced into it and perhaps different staff could facilitate bonding nights and it doesn't always have to be faith. There could be a few people that cycle through or a group of volunteers that does not have to be staff.

I know I also messaged faith and suggested roleplay nights where a group or two is at the focal point and the goal is to roleplay in that group as much as possible and potentially do some more flash rp to encourage development and interest. The idea would be to include all groups and have them rotate, maybe it's a different group every week or two that gets the spotlight. Maybe we could do multiple groups at a time or even have a plot with a very focused time that seems to work for the majority of users and can fluctuate. Maybe this is interesting to people and maybe it's the worst idea I've ever had, there's no way to know until I put it out there.

I mean a site I used to be on, we played games with characters such as 'never have I ever' in character, or 20 questions in character, just character-building games where you respond to everything as your characters, so you could have some banter and refer to plots they already had, and basically it was a good thing for character building and quick banter so you can see if anyone you play hits off well with someone else's character. That could be fun! 

Okay because I don't feel like reactivating my account to post this. I was going to majorly stay out of this because I just quit and have zero intentions of coming back. But I do care about Classic. I probably always will to some degree I've met a lot of friends and its been apart of my life for the last 13 years. While I've been watching this unfold since it was first posted and like I said I was going to stay out of it. I do care about the success of this site and wish for newer people to experience this site.

I thought it would give my opinion of this matter as an outsider currently. While I did quit classic because of many personal reasons. Amongst some of the reasons I quit is how staff treat their members. While I adore majority of the staff. There are a lot of staff members that are against change when change really needs to happen for the success of this site. This thread is an example of that. Now I do believe many of the RUs and mods on this site care very deeply for the success of this site. But any time they try to come up with solutions. Their solutions fall on deaf ears and they get shut down every time they bring up discussions.

Now as for my opinion on the whole clan deletion, merge, and overhaul discussion. I wanted to point some things out that I don't think anyone has considered. Now Classic has dropped majorly in activity over the last few years. You can say yes we've had x amount of members join in this year, but if you take a look at how many of those new members end up stay its fairly low. Also a lot of newer members tend to just be returning old members under new names. While yes Faith you did point out how merging, deleting and/or overhualing Classic would interrupt the things you had planned this summer. They still don't fix the issue that this site an astronomical amount of clans and groups. Yes that can allow for creativity, but it spreads members thin and causes some clans to be thrown to the way side. Currently I don't think classic has enough members to sustain all the positions that are opening up in all of the clans. Its coming to a point where every member at some point will be a staff member and there will be very little RUs.

Now I saw some people mention closing joining for certain clans. While in theory this could work to allow some clans to gain more members. I'm very doubtful that this would help activity very much. I am a former admin for a different Warrior Cat RPG site that was once just as large as Classic is now. My team and I tried restricting joining for certain clans when they got too big to try and help boost the clans that were struggling. In the end it didn't help activity with activity and we ended up deleting those clans.

Now to discuss the whole idea of clan deletion. I see a few people are hinting that Moonclan should be deleted. Okay if it were deleted it ends up disrupting the Forest Clans. As it is the opposite counterpart for Sunclan. Still that would be only deleting 1 clan and probably wouldn't make much of a difference. Now if lets say the Forest Clans set or the Mountain Clans set was deleted as a whole then you run into issues. The forest clans are not very traditional while some could argue that Nightclan is it would restrict the people that prefer traditional clans over the forest clans and at that point as a site you might see a mass exit of members. If you were to delete the Forest Clans and keep the mountain clans. You still run into the same problem. There are people that prefer the Forest Clans over the Mountain Clans and you would probably see a chunk of members leave.

Now onto the suggestion of merging. I don't think this is possible while its a good idea. You run into issues as to who would be the staff?? I will take Fall and Winter as a suggestion. Both leaders are active and they have staff members. Are you going to force staff members to step down at that point?? I think that would ruffle some feathers and upset more people that way. Also speaking of Fall and Winter both clans are very different for each other and wouldn't mesh very well. At that point you would have to cherry pick what traditions to keep and was to get rid of, but that also brings me to my next point if your merging clans to make whole new clans at that point you might as well overhaul as a site.

Now that brings me to my last point. Several members are saying overhaul isn't an option, but honestly its one of the few logical options that seem left and that would hurt the less feelings. Personally I think the whole reason the overhaul didn't happen the first time is because it was a train wreck. It wasn't handled probably and personally I thought admins at the time responded rather poorly to it. But that's not the option I was to discuss. The reason the overhaul didn't happen is for I think the following reasons.

1. It didn't downsize the amount of clans we have.
2. There was not consistently theme.
3. There was very little clans and mostly rogue groups that got chosen if I remember correctly.
4. Creators of the clans were allowed to pre-choose there staff members and this ended up with a lot of bias and many members getting left out.

A suggestion of how this could of gone better as a site. There needed to be better criteria set it place before the design the clans contest was ever created. I know members jumped the gun for it and it caused a lot of mental health issues. But it was ran rather poorly and was a train wreck which didn't help with the matter of people's mental health. Also the fact the site was in limbo for so many months was the lack of response from in my opinion the admins. They were a wishy washy negative attitude on change that would of greatly helped the site. There was also the feeling that the only reason the design a clan contest was created was to satisfy members, but to not actually go through with it. Which is why activity was in limbo for some long.

Now a solution I think would of made that overhaul a lot better. For example say you only wanted 5 clans and one rogue group or 4 clans and 2 rogue groups. 6 is probably the only As a site have the members as a whole decide on an overall theme they would love to see for the new clans that way there is some form of direction. For example lets say you wanted a beach, tropical or water theme you could make a set of clans where the names match : Streamclan, Brookclan, Riverclan, Lakeclan and the names would revolve around that but they could all be different. Another thing I think would make this easier if you had members loosely create a set of clans. For example if they made the set I suggested above two of them could be more traditional and two could be more unique like Sunclan/Winterclan/Moonclan. That way there is a comfortable balance. But this way if a person is creating the set the more likely the clans are going to balance each other and mesh well together. But another thing if you did an overhaul I think the overall consensus should be that the winner doesn't automatically become leader. That way you have people actually looking at the attributes of the clans and not people voting on clans because their friends made it. I believe there should be a mass leader tryout for these clans and the site should vote on the leaders as a whole. I believe there should be rules set in place that tryouts need to be automatically conducted for the deputy, mc, and mca positions. That way there is fairness and people don't just automatically choose their friends for positions. I believe if an overhaul happens leadership lengths need to be set in place. There needs to be a max of how long a leader can be leader. Because as of currently we have some leaders that's been leaders for well over 2 years which is kind of ridiculous. I also believe there needs to be creativity locks put in place. So people who are not upset their set didn't get chosen just don't randomly change the clan. Now do clans need change sometime in some cases yes this needs to happen. We've seen it with Moonclan, Brookclan, and Absum Lux. It did help to a degree, but I believe the amount of clans we had at the time didn't help. Also in regards to the Brookclan and Absum Lux overhauls they were discussed heavily among staff members and members when they happened. I believe if clans were to be overhaul there needs to be criteria that needs to be meet and it needs to happen. I don't believe leaders should be able to easily overhaul a clan. We saw this with the last overhaul when it didn't go through a bunch of clans changed to be loosely based off of clans from the design a clan contest. Which is how we have kind of ended up with very little traditional clans left.

Sorry guys I say this out of tough love. Not trying to attack anyone more or less just expressing my frustrations.

Completely, 100% off-topic because I just got off of work and haven't read through everything yet, but I saw that someone mentioned a territory merge and that brought up a minor issue I've been having with Summerclan. The way we have the four clans set up for both groups is that one is supposed to be an opposite to another - an inherent enemy or sorts for plot purposes (Sun - Moon, Day - Night, etc). For the Mountain Clans the pairs are supposed to be Spring - Fall, Summer - Winter as opposing forces, and I've really wanted to do something with that and build a genuine antagonistic relationship with Winterclan. But here's the problem I've run into: neither of the Mountain Clan pairs actually share a border with one another, reducing interaction and potential for conflict. How is Summer supposed to hate Winter, and vice versa, if they never see each other?

Sorry for completely highjacking this discussion for a hot sec, for the sake of the ongoing debate y'all can just say my idea to boost activity is to move borders/territories around to maximize potential conflict. XD

Nova I know we used to require training threads, but people got really tired of the same type of thread over and over.