The Founder's Public Service Announcements

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Help Desk Backlog Greetings Mizaharians! I just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know that while we've tried to keep up on the help desk, its been hugely busy lately. We've moved things along that were easy to deal with and just required a 'yes' or 'no' answer. However, in the course of doing so, Gnosis requests this week have piled up. There's a ton of them in there that need to be read and commented on. Some of them are fantastic, as usual, and some of them really need some work. We also have several more storyteller applications that are pending. Go us! Regardless, I'll try to tackle all of these gnosis and long-winded complex tickets tomorrow morning. Until then, please be patient and understanding. If something's older than 3-5 days in the help desk, it has been missed and is probably on page 3 or 4 meaning we'll never see it! Please bump it officially or post a *nudge* post on it to bump it back to the first page. Recently the HD spam has been incredible. This is both a good and bad thing. Mizahar is hopping mad crazy busy and we love it, but again, with only a small amount of people running it, this takes a great deal of our time. So be patient and do what you can to research what you want out of your help desk ticket, so we don't' have to play 20 questions to ferret out what you need from us and what we need from you to get whatever it is you want accomplished with the ticket.

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Signature Size Hello Mizaharians! Just a friendly reminder that we do have signature size parameters here on Mizahar that are not hard coded into our site so our staff can have a little leeway on all the information they need to have in their signatures. But players are required to conform to the following guidelines as copied straight from the Signature page in the wiki: Signatures in Mizahar are small notations which can include banners that are present at the bottom of each user's post both in In Character and Out of Character posts. Signatures often depict something of the user's character. They might include the character's name, image, or even a quotation or saying. Signatures can include links which often lead to helpful pages on the website or a character's Character Sheet. Signatures are not required. However, if they include a banner, those banners must be no larger than 600 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall. Signatures must follow the Rules and Terms of Use and cannot include profanity or nudity. If your signature does not conform to the guidelines in this wiki page, then you will be asked to make corrections. If corrections are not made, signatures will be removed. Here is a sample Signature.

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Caught Up! Hello Mizaharians! I think ALL of the gnosis requests are caught up. There are a few outstanding requests waiting for Gillar's decision, but he's promised to look after those by Thursday evening. If you haven't had an answer on yours, please bump it. Also, help us help you! If your gnosis request (or ticket or skills request or anything) is specific, please title it as such. What do I mean? If you want a Morwen Gnosis, please title your request as "Morwen Gnosis Please" etc. Don't just create a title that says 'Gnosis Request' because the vast majority of requests are from specific gods, and specific Founders answer those requests. So if its some unusual god or request, be specific in the title. You even get bonus points for including the Founder best suited to answer the question in your title. Examples: Rhysol Gnosis Request: Attention Gillar Priskil Gnosis Request: Attention Tarot Akajia Gnosis Request: Attention Gossamer Myri Gnosis Request: Attention Cayenne Hapstance Gnosis Request: Attention Bina Thanks guys!

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The Wiki: PC Pages and Player Organizations Please note that you are free to add your PCs into the wiki at any time. There is a Character Infobox template available too. Please see Leo Varniak for an specific example and the Category:PCs for a complete list of PCs already in the wiki. PC pages are important because they light up PC links that would otherwise are dead. When these links are completed the viewer is taken to a PC page that will then give a direct link to a character sheet, scrapbook, or even notable threads depending on how the PC has designed their page. Feel free to add your PC to the wiki at any time. Be sure to add an image of your PC (your avatar is a good one) so that when we add your PC's image to notable links elsewhere in the wiki, the wiki already has an image stored. Also, Player Organizations are allowed to be added to the wiki, even if they are in development. They need to clearly denote whose in charge and have links to any relevant pages such as a Consortia Forum etc. Please see the Category: Player Organization for a list of examples. These pages should contain [[Category: Player Organization]] at the bottom of their posting to be picked up in the actual category list. Have fun folks! This is just one more reason to have an edit-enabled account in our wiki. You can get your wiki editing rights enabled here AFTER you have created a wiki account and password. Thanks!

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You Can Only Have Five PCs! Please note that here on Mizahar we only allow you to have five characters in gameplay at once. This is for your own good and for the good of the people that interact with your alternatives so that pcs just aren't created for one scene and dropped. I noticed no less than three people last night that had at least six or seven alts while I was trolling the CS forum keeping a watchful eye on the activity there. If you have more than five alts, please retire the unused ones. We can tell who's logging in as who and we can track these things. I'll be sending PMs out today warning people I noted from last night.... so please retire your extra PCs via the Help Desk. Thank you. Goss

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NaNoWriMo HQ Setup Today we set up a subforum under Writer's Workshop for all those that are going to participate in Mizahar's NaNoWriMo this November 2011. For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is - November 2011 is National Novel Writer's Month in The United States and most of the world. Peope tend to try and write a 50,000 world novel in thirty days. I've been a past participant and so has Tarot here on Mizahar. However, we find that our writing energies are better served on the site itself because we tend to write about Mizahar anyhow. So, this year we are offering a NaNoWriMo medal for 2011 to the PC that can add 50,000 to their word count in 30 days. To that end we've set up a forum to add some support for the players here. Anyone is free to post in the forum. It's an OOC situation. I've put up the following threads: [Mandatory for Participation] The 2011 NaNoWriMo Registry (Unlocked Oct 31/Nov 1 on the witching hour PST Time) NaNoWriMo Tips & Tools (Feel Free To Post Yours!) [OOC Thread] Welcome to the NaNoWriMo Forum! (Yack Away.. Welcome Folks/MatchMake Etc) NaNoWriMo Goals - 2011 (Feel Free To Post Yours!)

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Plagiarism I should never have to post an announcement like this, but evidently it seems I have to. I’ve noticed this happening recently and with NaNo and people padding their word count, I’m afraid it will grow rampant if I don’t nip it in the bud now. Mizahar prides itself on originality. It is the first thing people comment on when they come here as new players. We hold too that originality fiercely. Plagiarism is against our terms of use. You cannot copy something directly out of a book (even if you site which book you did it from) and throw it into our game world cut and paste style. You can’t even paraphrase from a book changing a word here and there or the sentence structure. Under the law, that is plagiarism and it opens Mizahar up to liability. When you agree to play here, you agree to abide by our terms of use. Threads that contain any form of plagiarism or paraphrasing are not eligible for grading at all. If I see plagiarism in any domain, I will moderator intervene always. The stuff you take off the net is searchable and since Mizahar is well crawled by google spiders, people can see you take their work word for word. I think we are one of the most documented RPGs on the web... we post something and its crawled within hours and recorded. You want this as a site, but it has its disadvantages too. I’ve been on sites where original authors have contacted the site with LAWYERS and demanded stuff be taken down immediately because they have companies that they pay to troll the web and look for their work (or news about them etc) and report back when they find anything copied blatantly. This goes for paraphrasing too. You cannot thread like this. It is not something we allow, condone, or will even remotely give XP for. If you see it in your domain, please moderators intervene and talk to the people doing it. I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but if this is how you roll thread wise, Mizahar isn’t the site for you.

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Character Sheet Moderator Interventions Currently we have a large backlog of character sheets that have not been gone over by a Liaison something of the tune of 10 pages or so. That means several weeks have gone by and no ones been checking character sheets other than the occasional spot check or something that gained someone's notice randomly. A group of storytellers are going to jump in and check character sheets to catch up the CS forum and make sure folks have accurate character sheets. These Storytellers are going to be posting a LOT of moderator interventions. Please, as new players, try not to be on the defensive and get offended if one of these lands in your character sheet. I expect everyone to react politely and in a helpful manner to these storytellers that are volunteering their time to bail out the CS Liaisons who are in the midst of exams and in crunch week situations. Common mistakes are: Names being incorrect. Misuse of Skill Points or incorrect allocations. Racial points being misused or overlooked. Kelvic ages being incorrect. Race combos/half bloods/mixes being incorrect. Lack of approval for Dire Kelvics and Akontaks. Gnosis Marks added without approval. Lore's being forgotten or misunderstood. Wacky or completely 'far out' back stories or histories. Please be understanding that these storytellers are only being helpful and not attacking anyone for overlooking or misunderstanding something. Mizahar holds its writers and players to a high standard which is why you will not find any game system anywhere that can compare to our all original world. Treat these storytellers with respect and follow their guidance. Odds are that you yourself as a new person in a few weeks or a month will be helping other new people wade their way through the character creation process. So, please cease keep the snippy responses and 'attitudes' to a minimum when responding to these volunteer storytellers. I've personally witnessed a few defensive attitudes and lofty attitudes from newbies tonight at the first round of reviews which is startling to me since again, these storytellers are just simply here to help. Let them help. If you don't correct the things they spot as wrong on your CS, you will not be eligible to play. Thank you.

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Advertisements Mizahar is very well protected against Bots. However, when you start seeing expensive people-driven bots that register individually by someone actually sitting at a keyboard, we get issues. There's no real way to keep these advertisers out. So what we need from you is if anyone deletes any posts by them, please be sure someone's pm'd the name so the user can be uninvited. These are chinese companies with overseas IPs. I don't mind banning the entire spectrum of them if this keeps getting to be a problem. So far we've only had half a dozen in the years we've been open, but they seem to be hitting a high frequency lately due to the holiday. Remember, your RP thread isn't totally ruined if you have to wait a day for a Founder to take care of one of these advertisers. Just let us know so we can boot them by all sorts of means. Eventually they'll back off, probably after the holiday. Until then, don't you dare click on their links. They'll just be encouraged to post more and aren't exactly pointing to safe sites. You honestly should be stoned if you buy a loved one a cheap Chinese knockoff item anyhow. By good quality Italian and American and Canadian goods. Us Founders will thank you for supporting our respective economies.

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CS LIAISONS! We need some fairly badly. Cowboy, who did a fantastic job, is getting eaten alive by college and has submitted his resignation until such a time as classes level out. That means we are without a CS Liaison of any kind currently. I've asked in chat (and am asking here as well) Staff and more veteran players to start overseeing the forum until further notice as they have time. That means new players and new characters might get Moderator Interventions and or PMs from all over the place (and multiple times) as helpful people who have free time step in to help oversee things and get people started. The Mods will remove their Mod Interventions if you PM them after you've made changes. Generally, expect everyone to be nice and helpful. We aren't getting critical to just give new people or new characters a hard time. But many people log onto the site thinking Mizahar is just like every generic game out there, and we have specific rules for creating a character (no pet dragons, etc) that we expect everyone to follow. Welcome PMs contain all the links you need to create your character. The "Getting Started" Drop down menu above every page also has links that will help you. If you have any interested in a serious commitment to being a CS Liaison (which generally means a lot of work!) feel free to apply.