The purpose of this sit is to keep everyone informed on what’s going on in the game. As such anyone who runs a plot of any kind will be asked to post a summary of the plot here. All posts by players will go through the staff before being formally posted, to ensure style, tags, and other options meet with any standards. Thus a player need not know what they are doing and can focus just on getting information into a post allowing a staff member to do a little editing.

So what does that look like?

Types of Summaries

What a post looks like depends on what kind of summary it is going to be or where in-game the information will come from. A lot of information comes from news outlets while other information would never be found in such a place and needs to be placed elsewhere.

News

News articles are pretty simple when it comes down to it. The standard is to put all of the details of a story front-loaded in the article. That is to say the details should come within the fist paragraph, the facts. Then subsequently should be a little analysis going back over the facts that were just put.

Now a player need not know how these things will effect everyone in game yet, that is can be filled in by staff later during editing. However, if a player would like to have a certain spin on an article to forward plot, that can also be included in the analysis section.

Secure Information

The primary alternative to a news posting is in a secure communication for a particular group. No one is going to post a news story when someone gets abducted successfully by someone else. The news may report on the abduction but this kind of post was added for things the news would not be aware of. For instance, when the Imperial forces in Blazing Umbra joined forced with Onyx this was important news within the game but it would never be in the news. Similarly when an update to the operation was issued, it was important that all players could access the information but the general public in-game would never know what was going on there.

New orders issued to Solas Tempus personnel, communications and updates to spies throughout the area in-game? That is where this post type comes in handy.

The format of this post type differs radically, it is intended to be bare-bones with minimal analysis except where it will assist players in knowing where a person wishes to go with a story. Focus on information, details, and not repeating facts. These should be shorter communications packed with information.

Again, if it is unclear how to do this just make a post and save it and a staff member will come by and get it going and ready to post.

Other Information

While requests for players and things of that nature should go on the forum, it isn’t reasonable that all such things will. Someone wishing to make a general site-wide posting that is not in-character should save a draft and let a staff member look at it. There is promise that it will get posted but depending on the type of post it very well might.

Tags

A post should be tagged with relevant themes. Themes not mentioned in the post, however, should not be tagged. We have some tags that interrelate to each other so that one can see related posts (bottom of the page for a post) and the like. A tag should in all lowercase and be created for every person, ship, story, or sub-plot. The tag for a person should not contain rank thus it is lance thomas not admiral lance thomas or admiral thomas. Similarly, a ship should not contain prefix or registry so it isn’t uss akron it is akron and it isn’t inv new hope it is new hope.

Further, place tags (such as nimbus station) should not be used if that is simply a place that something occurred but rather should only be used in the event that said place is the direct subject of things going on in the post. For example, if a ship crashes on Soteria, then the post should not get tagged with soteria. However, a volcano erupts on Soteria (which makes the planet a direct subject of the post) then it should get tagged with soteria.

I will note that these definitions and rules may change and are inconsistent as I’ve been figuring this out myself. Tags are tricky, don’t be offended if someone comes through and changes tags to a post. Over-tagging causes the database to become difficult for the software to process while under-tagging makes events and people more difficult to follow through the forum across long periods of time.

For Staff

Staff members should focus on how posts read and flow for the type of post it is. Does it feel like a news article when reading it? Does it feel like a covert communication? Again if one isn’t sure, get assistance. Due to spam prevention players will have to ask to be given the proper access to make a post after joining. When they do, staff should give them the role of Contributor which will allow them to make posts that will require approval before sending out.