I have spent the past year (at least, I'm pretty sure it's been more) as a Registered User on this site that I've called a home away from home since 2009. While this may not seem like a big deal, we don't have a ton of RUs anymore so I feel like that is a bit of an accomplishment haha. Anyways, I wanted to share my personal experience after reading Fox's essay about being a registered user on a regulated activity site. Know that I come from a place of truly loving Classic and the best friends I've made through it. A lot of my dear friends fall into every category of leadership on this site and I hope you know I will love y'all through it all even if I don't always agree with what you decide to do. Many of you also know that I am a peacemaker and try hard to fix and mend broken relationships between people so I want you to realize I am not trying to create more of a rift between anyone through this. These are just my personal experiences. 

Anyways, grab a second drink because these are the things I've discovered just from being an RU (meaning that I have no idea the mod things that happen behind the scenes anymore and I am simply a user of this site). 

1. Classic is a workplace not a place to relax. I think a part of us saw this coming back in the days of wikifoundry right at the switch of wetpaint. We saw the rules on activity start to emerge and the resistance towards it. This site surviving two big moves (in a way because that time between wetpaint/wikifoundry was crazy) is seriously pretty impressive. However, I think we all have noticed the drop in activity. I remember a time when after school all I could think about was getting on classic and rping with my friends. I was much younger then and had less responsibility but believe it or not, I still have that itch. The only problem? Rps are no longer fun, even if they're all plotty and intense. They all feel so forced or you can really only participate if your character has been integrated in or if you have impressive writing skills. New members and members coming back from a break have no chance of keeping up. Anyways, I'll get to that later. This biggest part putting a strain on rping is burnout. What causes burnout in a workplace? Think about your own schooling or job. Imagine those weeks when you have major projects or assignments every week. I love my job but I get burnout if I'm having to turn in user stories (or assignments) every day of the week. It gets worse if I am overloaded and working through the burnout just to not deliver that week and I am given the look of disappointment from my colleagues and managers. Fortunately, I don't work in a place that treats their employees this way so we are pretty productive and get more user stories done than we commit to initially. My managers make me take PTO and breaks throughout the day and my colleagues are understanding when life sucks. An encouraging workplace brings more productivity. Classic has become a place of counts and charts for their leaders and deputies. This is no ones fault because it's just been building since 2011 in my opinion. People are burnt out on rping because they feel forced to get those replies in. Everyone knows it is human nature that if you are required to do something you will resist doing it or come to resent it. Rping is fun and I hate that it's become something that people say, "Ugh I've got 3 more conts to make in order to pass this week." This is just a cat rp site, why are we treating it like a workplace? As an RU, I feel this tension even not being involved with mods/admins. And to make it more unbiased, I only private chat like two people on the site (they probably know who they are) and we don't talk about these things. I've avoided the classic stress talks this year purposely lol. You can just feel it in the conversations on Saturday night or in the rps during the week. A lot of leaders and deputies are stressed out, burnt out, and feeling beat down by all of the numbers they have to meet. Believe it or not, that seeps down into the RUs because we just want to be included but instead we are being shut out because everyone has to get their counts in first. At least, that is my experience. I would love to come back as a helper mod and continue building out the code on this site and helping out with the others but I'm worried that the second I become a mod again then that familiar stress of requirements and guilt trips will come back (so instead I bother Cleav's inbox lol). There should be a different level of expectations for mods, but not to the point you're choking them.

2. We are not included. You can say the solution is to involve ourselves, but for someone with social anxiety, or one wanting to create their own Classic experience and character plots, or a new member just trying to fit in that is practically impossible. You have to join certain families and reach out to several users to figure out what is happening in that character's life to feel like you can keep up. Even then, your character is not interacted with as much as the integrated ones. It feels really alienating and honestly pretty lonely. You might look at me and say that I haven't been that active this year so how would I know. I can tell you exactly why my activity has been the way it has. I spent a year out in 2020 because my family got turned upside down with multiple immediate family deaths and the fostering of my nephew, and I'm sure many people had a similar experience of trauma in that year. These are the years to be kind and soft on your users, staff, and self, not stricter, by the way. Everyone (including staff) is struggling right now, so lets choose to be understanding in 2022. Anyways, I came back so ready to rp many times this year. However, because I spent a year out I got automatically lumped into "the inactive ones." That meant I wasn't included in anything when I returned. Many of my friends were cold and only reached out to me for ACs or to kill off my favorite characters for their plots. Not saying I am angry at those people, but I was hurt because I didn't expect to get the shoulder when I returned to people I loved and had so much fun with in the years before. I continue to blame myself for that but if I'm being honest, I thought there would be some level of grace from my friends? I also thought that maybe my rps weren't good enough so nobody really wanted to plot with me, or felt the pressure to come up with groundbreaking plots to get people to rp with my not-integrated characters. Character development became an uphill battle. I can think of a few people that didn't treat me coldly and attempted to include me and to those of you that did that and still do that to this day, thank you. You rped with me and stuck by me in the worst years of my life to date. I can't thank you all enough for that friendship. I love rping with you all like nothing ever happened. What is really interesting about that experience this year is that I've had a lot more time to rp but just didn't want to. That isn't because I dislike rping. I play D&D every week and LOVE it. I love my characters and their development. It's that I haven't had that experience on classic for so long because I've practically been shunned for taking time off. Time off that I didn't want to take but I couldn't meet the requirements to stay. I'm more than willing to be active again but when it feels like I have to work for a promotion at a job or to even get noticed then I get pretty worn down. Classic should be a source of peace for it's users, not another pain point in an already busy, difficult world.

Solutions I suggest:

1. Let's try no counts for 3 months and like fox said, let Jadie be an encourager and not have to carry the heat of being the person to say you didn't pass. That's got to be an awful feeling for Jadie. At least, I would feel bad if I had to tell someone that they haven't met the mark and now your friends are going to vote on if your excuse/experience is good enough to be pardoned. Everyone handles life challenges differently, it is not fair to judge their life experiences. 

Here are two research articles talking about job burnout that could apply to Classic since we are treating it that way:
    
    - www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10615806.2020.1797695
    - www.researchgate.net/profile/Tareq-Lubbadeh/publication/341112394_Job_Burnout_A_General_Literature_Review/links/5eaf4ba045851592d6b84ddc/Job-Burnout-A-General-Literature-Review.pdf
    

2. Let's (meaning staff and RUs) make a conscious effort to build out other plots that are not based around two families on the site. Those can still continue for those who love them, I definitely don't want to take anyone's fun away and love seeing those unfold from the outside, but lets do better about giving a spotlight to new characters people are building and clans that are struggling a bit more. If a new member creates a character they are so excited about, lets reach out and include them and build plots with them. People will continue to rp if they feel like the characters they thought up and gave life to is interesting to others and worth rping with. 

Thank you to those who took time to read this <3 Know that I have no hard feelings towards anyone on this site. I've called many of you my closest friends for years and want to make friends with everyone else. I'm sure some of my close friends disagree with me right now and that's okay. Let's consider everyone's opinions and come to a compromise. I just want everyone to love coming to classic for rest again. That's all I want, and I'm sure what many of you want. 

Until I can build up my activity again, I would love to continue to help where I can on the coding side or whatever else you need. Happy new year, my friends. <3
- Simply