Seconded! I'm tired of spotting a name I think I know and finding out it's a closed RP.

The option of "create a new asylum" VS "create a new RP asylum" would just be a classification - like a tag.

Glad I'm not the only one who's getting disappointed when clicking those links. I like your idea of create a new asylum vs create a new RP asylum. Perhaps there could be an entirely different signup form altogether for RPs. Well, whatever will work best has my vote. *nod nod*

Might look something like this:

Awesome!

That does sound good.

^__^

Okey dokey. Point made. If closed RPs are useful to you, then I hope you truly enjoy yourself on IJ. Have fun! *goes back to LJ where they have actual communities*

Putting a checkbox or radio button on the application form seems like a good idea, but I see no reason really to list the RPs on the home page at all. You can't tell anything about an RP from the username, so anyone looking for an RP to join just goes to one of the many asylums that advertise RPs. One of the reasons so many people have remained on LiveJournal despite the censorship and the stinginess of the avatars is because of the fandom communities there. Unless IJ gets more of these fandom-oriented asylums, it's going to go the way of GreatestJournal. It's doubtful that many RPs or their players ever pay for a journal. The real money spenders on IJ are the personal journals. Only non-RP asylums should be listed on the home page from now on.

No, it isn't doubtful. There are many RPers who pay for their journals to get more icon space or better layouts. I'd really love to see the stats on RPers with paid space versus people who don't RP, because I think you'd be surprised about how many of us are willing to invest in our hobby.

You must not know a lot about roleplay. Roleplayers account for a huge source of revenue. Most members of ~tradingspaces, who constantly buy rename tokens, roleplay. Roleplayers are more likely to exceed the 100 icon limit than your average personal journal, thus necessitating a paid account. I've bought paid accounts for at least 15 different character journals (and upward of 50 rename tokens) since the migration from GJ, purely for roleplay purposes. I've also bought four permanent accounts, which I (and many roleplayers) never would have done if not for IJ being a source of roleplay. The list may not be useful to you, but if I click on an RP community and like the premise? Chances are I'm going to want to find a great username and eventually buy a paid account for it.

Talking without actually comprehending a community is generally a pretty dumb idea.

This would have to be something VERIFIED by squeaky since he is the one that handles the funds for this site.

Of course it would. But "hardly any roleplayers buy any accounts" doesn't have to be. I can name 30 people who do.

Actually, several of the games I've had an interest in just in the last few months were ones I found on the homepage because I saw the name often, which told me the game was very active.

It's doubtful that many RPs or their players ever pay for a journal.

Actually, it's not. In fact, I feel fairly confident in guessing that roleplay journals bring IJ more continuous revenue than personal journals. Many roleplay journals AND asylums I see are Self-Committed accounts, and as one single person could have more than on account at any given time, they are paying IJ on a regular basis, in multiple amounts, to continue having the same paid services. On the other side of that, many personal journals I see are permanent journals (mine included), where someone only paid one time for the service, something which doesn't necessarily make IJ sustainable over a long time because that journal will never again pay monthly or yearly.

There is obviously no way to truly track such a statistic to make my guess any more than a guess, which is the same issue for your claim.

I've found games through the homepage, too. Personally, I find having them listed there to be quite useful.

And I think you're right about the paid journals. I have one RP journal that is permanent but a handful more that are regular paid accounts, just because for some characters I want more icon space.

Money aside, RPers make up the bulk of IJ's userbase, I'd wager, so it seems like it would be a disservice to the majority of the userbase to remove RPs (new and old) from the homepage.

While I agree that it could be a good idea, I really resent the tone you're taking as if roleplayers are some evil scourge on the IJ community. I've bought paid time for my RP accounts before, and I've also bought it for friends. And I know plenty of people who have gone permanent for character journals + their CDJs. And GJ was specifically for RPGs to begin with, so I don't get what your point is there.

I think his/her point was that GJ went to hell because RPers didn't pay for their space. Well no duh, we COULDN'T because there were no paid schemes available. System refused to let us pay for our space.

It's going to go the way of Greatestjournal? What does that even mean? Did you seriously think about what you were saying when you said it, or are you really this ignorant? If your complaint is that there aren't enough fandom asylums on this server, then make some. That's the real problem, it has nothing to do with those of us that RP. I will never, ever understand someone who whines without taking initiative. If you find what you need on LJ more than IJ, good for you. Then get what you need there and stop comparing the sites like there's anything TO be compared about their members and resources. They're two different sites that offer similar services. Members are what make a site what it is and if you think there's a saturation of RP-related things on IJ, IT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE IJ HAS MORE RPERS ON IT THAN LJ, OHHHH GEEEEE. THAT WAS SO HARD TO FIGURE OUT, MY BRAIN HAS A THINK-OWIE. By the way? This is an RP journal and I paid for it for months before I made it a permanently paid account. I do the same with other RP journals of mine, I pay for the journals of friends/role-play partners, and I pay for my OOC journals as well. Everyone I know via RP either have paid accounts, permanent accounts, or have paid for their accounts when they can afford to. Suck an egg.

LOL. I'm not in any games at the moment, but I have two permanent RP journals as well as two permanent non-RP journals. I had two more that were paid accounts until I let them expire after the game (which lasted a year and a half) ended.

Incidentally, there is quite a bit of non-RP here. Unlike LJ, it's centered largely in personal journals. There are active asylums, but they're not the be all and end all like they can be on LJ. It's just a different style.

Speaking as a useless roleplayer, I ONLY buy paid accounts for my RP journals. Why would I need more than 100 icons otherwise? Besides, RPers spend way more time on here than most people, so we hit the ads way more often than journal users do. The VAST majority of hits on IJ, I would say, are from roleplayers. And anyone who doesn't think that ads account for most of a website's revenue is out of his or her mind. Paid accounts are supplemental. Ad revenue is the lifeblood of free sites like this one, and how much they get paid depends on how many people are on here, how many journals are registered, and how many times the pages are viewed.

RPers make this website profitable, which allows it to stay open, which allows you to use it for whatever you're using it for. You're welcome.

While I don't think this is a bad idea (and I'm here on IJ primarily for role-playing), I'm not totally sure how effective it would be. I'm sure there will be plenty of people who either mark the wrong box either on accident or because they don't care, and what about RP-related communities that aren't actually for RPGs? Do you mean having the second list only for RPGs or for anything RP-related. For example, I run find_icons and were that an option when I created the community I wouldn't have known which to pick. It's not an RPG but it's primarily a resource for RPers.

Awesome! "Separate but equal" ALWAYS goes over well.