ariel_ooc | MOD POST: CLARIFICATIONS AND HOUSEKEEPING (Reply)

∴ Activity

Late-acceptance clarifications
Characters who receive their acceptance emails after the 15th of the month will not be expected to provide AC comments until the following month. However, they must comment to the AC post with links to their Taken/Player Contact comments. The following month will be treated as their first AC month and as such they will only be required to submit two threads of five gen comments each or one thread of ten gen comments, though of course if they have qualifying smut threads by this point then they are welcome to use those instead.

AC/Status AC links
Just a friendly reminder for people to please link their AC and Status AC threads from the point at which the sexual content begins rather than from the top of the thread, and not to link entire posts. Much as we enjoy reading all your glorious porn, this helps us check through your links faster and means your Status AC is more likely to be approved in a timely manner. Please remember that we have five days to read 2200+ comments of smut, which does not leave us with enough time to search for where the smut begins.

Hiatuses
In order to receive an AC exemption, a player must be on hiatus for two full weeks out of a given month. If you are on hiatus for less than two weeks we will still expect to see you meet AC. If you are going to be on hiatus during the AC period, you are welcome and encouraged to post your AC in your hiatus comment.

Maximum number of hiatuses in a given period limit
At the moment, there is no limit on the number of hiatuses a player can take in any given time period. We would like your input as to whether there ought to be a limit, and if so, what that limit should be. One popular suggestion in a mod plurk about the matter was that the limit should be no more than 4 hiatuses in one year, or one per three months. Please comment in the thread below and let us know what you think of this suggestion or if you have another suggestion. For the purposes of this discussion, a hiatus is defined as one that grants an AC exemption, where the player is on hiatus for more than two weeks.

Please note also that if you take a hiatus but discover that you can make AC anyway, you can comment to the AC post and your hiatus will not be counted towards the limitation decided upon, if any.

As always, the mods are open to negotiation around hiatuses when players have extenuating circumstances. Please contact us as soon as possible if you are unsure whether you will be able to meet AC due to unexpected RL disasters. We are here to help you. Whenever you contact us privately, the information is kept completely confidential and never discussed with anyone apart from yourself and the three head mods.

Status AC/re-ed connection
This is a question we’ve received on a number of occasions and so we’ve decided to take the time to clarify it now. If a character is sent to re-education for IC misbehaviour/rulebreaking then they will lose one status level regardless of whether it was purely for plot purposes or not. The only exceptions to this rule are during certain events where the status penalty has been lifted (this will be stated in the event information post) due to the nature of the event, or if a character is entering re-education for reasons other than IC misbehaviour (for example, your character may have been abiding by Ariel’s rules and even having regular sex, but the City may decide to ‘help’ your character by taking them into re-education to solve a particular problem, such as decreasing inhibitions, or perhaps your character has chosen to go into re-education voluntarily!)

If your character has been taken to re-education for IC misbehaviour/rulebreaking, then they will not be able to gain a status level until the following OOC month.

Status AC redemption
Please, for the sake of your reviewing mod, post your Status AC threads from the point of smut commencing, and ensure that your thread is complete. Incomplete threads will not be accepted, regardless of why the thread is incomplete.

Rules update: You may post to claim Status AC once per calendar month.

AC requirements
You must have 5 smut comments in each of two threads (5+5) or 10 smut comments in a single thread (10) in order to pass AC. Other variations (such as 7+3) will not be accepted. You must also have (5+5) or (10) gen comments in order for your character to qualify for re-education.

Re-education
To complete re-education, you may either write a narrative of at least 500 words or have a re-education smut thread that would meet AC requirements - i.e., it must have at least 10 smut comments from your character. You are most welcome to have a narrative post that is open to characters to tag into, and threads in narrative re-education posts may be used for AC and/or status AC.

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∴ Applications

Reclaim policy
We are instituting a reclaim policy, for those times when you drop a character and then realize that you've made a huge mistake.

If you dropped your character you may reclaim them before the next reserve round opens by e-mailing the mods. Once reserves open, you must reapply for the character, to be fair to others who may wish to apply for the character as well.

If your character was removed from the game after an AC failure you may not reclaim this character and you may not reapply for one full app round. For example, Bob fails AC and is removed in January. Bob's player cannot reapp in the February app round; they must wait until March.

Rejected applications
We’ve decided to introduce a limit to how many times a player can attempt to apply with a particular character. If a given application is rejected three times, the player will then be required to wait six months before attempting to app that character to the game again. They may, however, apply with a different character at any time should they choose to.

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∴ Housekeeping

List mods recruitment
We're looking for some more list mods! Our list mods help the game run smoothly and their work is very much appreciated. Recently we've had some list mod turnover as players leave the game or find themselves no longer able to help out, which means we need a few more brave volunteers.

List mods must be able to update the lists at least once a week, more frequently during our busy application rounds. We are hoping to recruit enough list mods to have two people updating each list:
-Taken
-Player Contact
-Reserves

If you're interested in being a list mod, please e-mail us at arielmods@gmail.com with 'List mod' or something along those lines in the subject! Current list mods, please also e-mail us and let us know whether or not you'd like more helpers to keep your list up-to-date.

Tagging your posts
Please remember to tag all of your posts with your character’s name/all the names of the characters participating in a given log post. Similarly, please remember to tag your character into posts and logs they respond to. It is also helpful for people to utilise the [open post] [closed post] and [smut] tags in the logs community as many players use these tags to search for open posts to respond to and this will help your posts get seen!

Journal HMDs
HMDs in your character journals are a requirement of the game, they are not optional. Please ensure you have a HMD post set up in each of your character journals or your character may run the risk of being removed from the game.

ETA: You are also required to post your application in your character journal. This is not optional and is part of the process you must follow when you add a character to the game.

How the network works
Just a quick reminder of how Ariel’s network works, as there has been some confusion. In Ariel, network communication always takes place over the chip, which is implanted into your character’s brain.
- Video: utilises your character’s eyes -- whatever your character sees while making a video broadcast to the network is what their audience will see. In order for your character to be visible during this broadcast they must be looking in a mirror or a reflective surface of some kind.
- Audio: as with video, audio is what your character hears. Your character must speak aloud for the audio function to work and ambient noises will be transmitted.
- Text: is transmitted from your character’s brain and translated by the chip
In all cases, your character’s unique network ID is transmitted with all functions.

How leveling your business works
Congratulations, you’ve reached a level where business ownership is possible and you’re wondering about how to level your business. You redeem status points. You may redeem one business level’s worth of status points per month if your character (or one of the co-owners) is the appropriate level. You may choose to “bank” that approved level increase for later, and if you do that for three months in a row, it’s possible to take your business from level 1 to level 4 when it’s opened. You still have to take the OOC time to level up, but ICly once that’s been done, the leveling up can happen all at once.

Regardless of the number of co-owners, the business itself can only be leveled once per month. Three co-owners can’t redeem status points all in the same month to take the business from level 1 to level 4.

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MOD POST: CLARIFICATIONS AND HOUSEKEEPING

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