Introducing our user groups and team a little bit!
At the bottom bar of the site there's a link "The team" represented by a shield icon. Clicking that shows you the list of site administrators, moderators, artists, advisors, and writers. Today we'll describe with a bit more detail what each usergroup does. This information will also be included later on in the new version of the FAQ that we are currently working on. On the October Newsletter we'll be covering the different user groups of regular users.
Administrators
User group: Administrators
Administrators on the site have access to a lot of site maintenance features provided by the phpBB forum platform. You can recognize Administrators by the dark blue username, or a curry-colored username in case of Rosehill.
Raneth - Raneth is the owner of the site. He takes care of all the financial and business side of things and partakes in coming up and planning for ideas to develop the site. He handles username changes, and any troubles if you don't get your shards when you donate. He does not do any technical stuff. He gets the last say in what gets implemented in case the team is indecisive or divided, which rarely happens.
Rosehill - Rosehill is the site coder. She handles all the technical stuff, fixes bugs, makes new features happen, puts in new releases, etc. She also takes care of the Newsletter and makes sure that release posts are published on social media, and that planned releases and features and events are scheduled and put in motion along with planning and throwing out ideas for new stuff. If you encounter technical trouble on the site report it in the Report Site Errors thread, and Rosehill will know to take a look.
Madd and Morgaln are currently mostly inactive, so please only contact Raneth or Rosehill on site related issues.
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Site Moderators
User group: Moderators
Site Moderators have moderation privileges on all forum boards. They take care that the site rules are followed, possible spam account posts are deleted and spambots banned, help new and old users alike with the site's functions, and help users with non-technical site and trade issues (e.g. trading partner hasn't confirmed their side in two days). You can recognize the Moderators by their dark teal usernames and the title of "Site Moderators". The Site Moderators take part in the discussions and brainstorming about new releases, and features, and event planning. The Site Moderators are sometimes referred to as "tealies" due to their username color.
NyxNoire and Sochitelya are currently active, and PKGriffin and ShaiNeko mostly inactive, so please only contact the first two.
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Forum Moderators
User groups: Hall of the Speakers moderators, Hall of the Arts moderators, Tea House moderators, Merchant District moderators, Reindeer Games moderators, and Roleplay Stage moderators.
Forum Moderators have moderator privileges in certain forums, indicated by the user group name. Forum moderators take care of their own forums in the way Site Moderators take care of all of all of the forums, and help new and old users alike in using the forums. You can recognize them by their orange usernames and Moderator titles. The Forum Moderators are not part of the discussions of new releases and features, so they do not have any advance knowledge of what is going to happen and when.
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Artists
User group: Artists
The Artists are the ones who create pretty much all of the sprite and digital images used on the site. They also take part in the discussions and brainstorming about new releases, and features, and event planning. The artists also have similar moderator privileges to the Site Moderators, and can thus moderate any forums on the board. You can recognize the Artists by their dark green usernames and title of "Site Artist".
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Writers
User group: Writers
The writers take part in the discussions and brainstorming about new releases, and features, and event planning, and are the ones who mostly take care of writing creature descriptions. On occasion other people will also write creature descriptions, but the writers handle the majority of them. You can recognize them by their light blue usernames and the title of "Writer". The writers do not hold no moderator powers on the forums.
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Advisors
User group: Advisors
Advisors take part in the discussions and brainstorming about new releases, and features, and event planning. They represent the views of the regular users and user game play. you can recognize them by their bright light blue usernames. The Advisors do not hold any moderator powers on the forums.
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NPCs
NPCs, a.k.a non player characters, are accounts that serve a certain function on the site. Some are operated by members of the team, while some are not, and are automated instead. The NPCs are meant for "in-game" interaction, serving as merchants, informants, chaos bringers, and other more role-playey elements on the site.
A few prominent NPCs on site:
Thane - High Archmage Thane is the benevolent but no-nonsense leader of the Keep. He welcomes new users, and usually brings news, gathers people for bigger quests, and is otherwise involved with the magical happenings at the Keep and surrounding areas.
Master Belmos - Master Belmos is the undisputed merchant king. He grows and takes care of a lot of creatures, and offers them up for sale in his own area "Nursery Shopping Front" at the Merchant District. If you have creatures you wish to get rid of, especially frozen eggs, Master Belmos is glad to take them. In that case please send them to NurseryHelper. Master Belmos and Nursery Helper will unfreeze and unname creatures sent to them, and then offer them up for sale. Do note, that it is not guaranteed that you could get back the creatures you send over to them.
Talyn - Talyn usually means either trouble or adventure, depending on who you ask. He invokes and brings chaos with him with whatever he's pursuing at any given moment, yet his endeavors often also lead to new discoveries, or at least fun times.
New features and happenings since the last Newsletter in August:
- A regular release (Cardinal Oryn, August 31st)
- September Monthly Donation pets were release (Oscinemus Gryphons, September 1st)
- The Shimmering Shop stock changed to past September Donation Creatures (September 1st)
- A regular release (Lakiran Colibris, September 15th)
- September Midmonth Donation Pet (Emerald Malakios, September 15th)
- Black Market returned (Oscinemus Gryphon, September 18th)
- A regular release (late September)
- Some item related shenanigans (late September)
- October Monthly Donation pets (October 1st)
- The Shimmering Shop stock changes to past October Donation Creatures (October 1st)
- A regular release (early October)
- October Midmonth Donation Pet (October 15th)
- Halloween event! (late October)
- October Newsletter (late October)
- An integrated item guide
- Item related shenanigans
- Halloween event
- Updating the FAQ and Rules
- The Riparian Forest
- Items
- Halloween
- Other upcoming events, as we're entering the time of year where events are plenty
- New achievements
- Planning for the rest of the year
- Moon shard issue
A reminder that known bigger issues are listed in the Report Site Errors thread's first post. They are now also put approximately in order of which fixes will be worked on first.
- Investigating trade issues where sometimes the pets aren't transferred even though a trade gets completed
- Investigating an issue with gifting
- Investigating some issues with donation system
- Optimizing central parts of the site's code. Once this is done it should help make things load faster and also allow for using items, embedding multiple, and adding creatures to trades from other than the main tab.
