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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Updated 07/11/2000 .


NEW COMMUNITIES

How do we set up a new chat room on IMC? 
 "What," many of you have asked, "Are the exact criteria we have to meet in order to get a public room?"  Reasonable question. I hope that you all find the answers below to be just as reasonable. Rooms can and will be added as the chat communities show that they are organized and can tell the administration exactly what they want. 

An existing community on another site can relocate here, so long as they are willing to follow the guidelines below. New rooms may be founded, as well.

Who is permitted to set up a room on IMC? 
Any chatter in good standing may apply to create a supported PR or public room. Any IMC chatter may set up an unsupported PR. 

What do you expect from a public room on IMC? 
Getting a public room on IMC doesn't require you to jump through the sort of hoops that existed on WBS, or on other sites. We're of the belief that a larger number of active rooms equal a larger number of happy chatters. 

We start all rooms as supported private rooms (PRs), then move them to public rooms once the room has proven to be a lasting community. We do have a set of minimum standards for new rooms. The following items are required for rooms that want to eventually move to public status. 

  1. You will need to show that some manner of room structure exists. We recognize that what works for one room may not work for another, so we're going to be pretty liberal with this. You will need to have at least one room Host/Moderator (the SysOps have to have someone to get in touch with!) and ideally you will have at least one member of support staff. Even if you call these by different titles, it's the role they fulfill that matters. 

  2. You will need to show that, to support this room structure, you have some manner of rules. It may be as few as "follow the site rules and obey IMC's Terms of Service," or as elaborate as the rules drawn up by the Marvel Universe. Those rules must be approved and accepted by your chat community.

  3. You will need to show some manner of informational homepage, and some manner of communication for users in the event that the chat site is down. Web-based message boards such as Inside the Web and publicly-archived mailing lists such as onelist.com are very good for this. 

    This is so that your room won't be bogged down with explanations when you are roleplaying; you can simply direct people to the page and remind them to put those fine public educations to use! It is also so that people who are surfing in can learn about your room when you aren't available; we have all learned the importance of getting new blood in our chat-RPs.

  4. Lastly, most importantly, you will need to show that there is a need. Show that the room will be used. When WBS permitted petitions, a number of rooms sprang up that were frantically used for a couple of weeks and then all but died, because people would use their multiple email addies to sign the petition, or would go room-roving to get signatures, or otherwise found ways to buck the system. We don't want to put anyone (like ourselves) through that. 

If you are unsure or 'not yet ready for prime time,' then keep your room as a PR for a few weeks and build up a following. It is fairly easy for us to create a public room, so when you and your community make the decision to go public, it should happen within a day.

At that point, please go to the room proposal submission form, and fill it out completely. You may want to review the contents of that form in advance, so you know what you'll need to do ahead of time. 

How do I make my IMC-supported PR into a public room? 
What you need to do is keep in touch with the sysops. If your room is showing signs of regular activity, and follows the above guidelines, the move from PR to public room is fairly quick. 

What's the difference between a public room, an IMC-supported PR, and an unsupported PR?

A public room has gone through all of the steps listed above, and has proven to have a regular group of chatters in its community. These rooms are the ones that are the most obvious representation of IMC as a whole, so they are watched more closely. They are organized, with a staff and host.

An IMC-supported PR may fit one of several types: 

  • A room that has a small but active user base
  • A room for a regular private campaign
  • A room working toward public status

An unsupported PR has no requirements. We do not ask for any specific content or preparation for these rooms. We have provided these rooms for communities of the following types:

  • Small private campaigns that admit new members by application only
  • Rooms that do not wish to set up the sort of detail our supported and public rooms have
  • "Test" roleplaying, to see if a setting or room idea will work.

Unsupported PRs may become supported PRs, and eventually public rooms, if they follow the steps above. 

What sort of rooms get accepted as supported PRs and public rooms? 
As a rule, we  evaluate a new community on these criteria:

  1. Host and staff who are members in good standing. This means that the room's administrators must not have been subject to recent major disciplinary actions. If you're in doubt, please inquire to the SysOps before submitting a room app.
  2. Originality. New rooms should have something to differentiate from existing rooms. "Well, it's my room" is not a differentiatior. An example of this is Marvel What If... and Marvel Universe. Both work with the same basic universe and existing characters, but one follows the comics closely, while the other offers alternate storylines and timelines. 
  3. Activity as an unsupported PR. We want to see that your room will actually have a community to support. We do have statistics on which PRs are used and how often. 
  4. Supporting materials on a home page. We expect that if your room has rules, they are posted somewhere on the room's home page. If the rules are not on the home page, your chatters will be well within their rights to protest decisions made on the base of those rules. 
  5. A means for players to contact the room staff and discuss issues. This usually means a message board or mailing list. In some cases, it will mean both. We don't have a set requirement about how it's supposed to work, but we do have to see it in place and active.
  6. All information requested on the form must be present, accurate and complete.
What sort of rooms do not get accepted? 

There are a few things that will get your application rejected right off the bat:
  1. Rooms created solely for a small group that do not admit outside chatters. If a room is public, it's open to the public. Period.
  2. Rooms created for the sole purpose of cybersex. We can't stop people from having cybersex, and it's not our concern so long as it's private. However, while IMC is happy to offer an M rating for some rooms, IMC will not accept rooms for which the primary purpose appears to be cybersex. Any room that degenerates into that state will be removed.
  3. Rooms with staff or hosts that have been removed from room-level positions, or subject to major disciplinary actions. We don't do this as a rule until the chatters' input has made it pretty clear that we must. Hosting a room on IMC is a privilege, and we require a minimum standard of conduct, above and beyond that of an average chatter.
  4. Rooms that fall into any classification that the SysOps have said we aren't currently accepting. An example of this: As of 2/1/00, we have no less than three public all-systems modern day World of Darkness rooms and several PRs. We've placed a freeze on additional applications of this type, because the existing communities are more than adequate to serve chatters' needs. On the other hand, we willingly encourage historical settings in the World of Darkness, or other variants.
  5. Rooms that already exist in the same form. As an example, we really don't need two Buffy: the Vampire Slayer rooms. The one we have is active, with a steady stream of chatters. 

Where can I find the room proposal form? 
The proposal submission form is linked here. All room apps are handled through this form and by email ONLY.

How can I promote my new room?
There are many ways to do this. Some are perfectly legitimate; others are frowned upon. 

Within the IMC site: 

  • Recruiting in other rooms: IMC asks that you check with another room's guidelines regarding advertising before you talk about your new room there. Some communities are perfectly agreeable about having other rooms discussed, while others consider it spamming. If in doubt, ask a staff member or the host privately, and abide by their wishes.
  • IMC Links: All supported PRs and public rooms are listed on IMC's link pages; public rooms are also linked to our central chat hallways. If your PR is a supported PR, and you don't appear on the PR list, please contact Chance and she'll get you up there as quickly as possible. 
  • Banner ads: Although this option is not yet up and running, in the future we expect to have banner ad links for every room that chooses to participate in this program. These banners will appear in the rooms every so often, and will link to the doorway (for public rooms) or homepage (for supported PRs) of the communities being advertised therein.

Outside IMC: 

  • Put up ads on RPG sites that allow this. There are several sites that permit you to post ads for games or chatrooms looking for players; among them:
  • Join a Web ring related to your room's subject matter. There are a whole host of RP-related Web rings at http://www.webring.org -- check them out.
  • Join a banner exchange program, using your room's Web site.
  • Post to Usenet newsgroups related to your topic. 
  • Submit your room's homepage to all of the major search engines. There are several places on the Web where you can submit to multiple search engines for free; here are just a few.

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