April 2017 Announcements

April 2017 Announcements.
No April Foolin'!



What's New

Staff Absences

We've got a few quick general reminders to cover, so lets get down to business!

You can always check out the staff activity levels here, but this is just a general note that several of our staff are not currently around, so things might be delayed. While apps should be handled regularly, power upgrades and event stuff will be delayed.

Small change to organization
The Islets forum has become a sub forum of the pacific, and is still accessible.

ICC Behavior
We the staff would like to remind everyone to be friendly and inclusive in the ICC. We do not want to see a character being ganged up on, or bullied, or made fun of in the ICC. Please remember that there is a person behind the character!

You may think "Oh, this doesn't apply to me", but it DOES. We are at our limit with this. The staff will does not condone or tolerate ICC bullying, rude or passive-aggressive behavior, and we will begin to be more stern regarding it.

This also applies to general inappropriateness. Sexual content should not be discussed in the ICC, even during canon events. Excessive violence is not tolerated, and during canon events your character may end up facing real In-Character consequences to their actions.

Patreon
We've added a new post for our patreon subscribers. You can check out our Patreon here!



Events

April is a pretty chill month all around, and after a hectic March we're taking it slow. You can expect to find more about the events taking place in April during the mid-month announcements.


Yup. We did it. Read all about this fun, laid back event here!

March Virus

The March Virus has now... come to a close? While the virus has now been cured, the plot itself isn't quite finished. We've seen a lot of great responses to it, and you'll see a part two in the near future. Keep an eye on the event forum for more information when it pops up!

As noted in the Virus posting:

The virus will be cured over this weekend! By next Friday everyone should be cured to avoid the virus mutating and re-spreading. While the cure has the potential to remove all effects, players are welcome to have symptoms remain, although if that symptom could be considered a power they need to contact @Kyros.

Click to expand...

Contests

Spotlights
Congratulations to our spotlight winners!

Kathinja: Kathinja is a long time member of over two years; their dedication and commitment to the site is something members and mods aspire to; a pillar of the community. Even if they are just hanging out, they have a great personality that makes them fun to talk to, and a cast of amazing character to RP with. They spent a lot of time in the ICC, and their characters always add something great to the ICC. Whether play or work, Kathinja is someone on the site that makes the best of everything and makes SA an even better group!

Narraine Arore: This month has been hell on Narraine Arore. The March Virus nonsense, the issues with being a foster mom and a full time student, and someone close to her falling victim to a hate crime. Her threads and the emotion in them has made for some wonderful character development, and it looks like there's only more to come.

The Desmoth Prophecies: This plot has been a wild ride from start to finish. Kicking off with the sudden and alarming disappearance of Desmond Reynolds, local hobo, citizens of Manta Carlos were devastated to learn that Desmond had been found dead. Around the same time, a mysterious mothman showed up who looked strangely similar to everyone's favorite homeless psychotherapist, but of course insisted he wasn't. It was a crazy plot from start to finish, and even though things have certainly normalized, we're still seeing the aftereffects as people get used to Desmon'ds new mothy form.

We had a great turnout for spotlights this month, both in nominations and voting! Be sure to nominate over in the april nominations thread!

Posting Spree
April 8th - 9th we will be hosting another general Posting Spree! Prepare yourself!

Application Improvement Month Wrap-up

SA's first ever Application Improvement Month is now over! We had a great turnout with lots of really nice profile updates. While players are free to update non-power part of their applications at any time, only those who had already completed all their applications are eligible.

Those who qualify for the reward have been pinged to the reward thread to claim their prize, and can head over to the medal claim thread to snag their medals. We hope to see everyone back again next March for another AIM!
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April 2017 Mid-Month Announcements.
That was a bumpy start to a month...

Downtime

As I'm sure absolutely everyone is aware, Starlight Academy had a fair bit of downtime at the start of this month. You can read a detailed write up explaining what happened over here. We also had some brief downtime this morning to repair the last few things. This should have remedied several long standing bugs (such as the post box remaining filled even after the post is completed), and should ensure things run much quicker! Since you're reading this, it means the upgrade went off without a hitch, and we don't foresee any possible reason why SA could have more downtime.

We've successfully upgraded the software to a more recent version. HOWEVER, the only theme that the upgrades work on, at this point in time, is Twilight. Over time each theme will be remade to function under the software 100%. There's a couple of bugs fixed, and a few features added.

Enhanced Conversations

- You'll now be able to prefix conversations with your own custom prefixes! For example, 'character pends', 'commissions' or 'power upgrades'! Prefixes can be created in your Account Settings.
- You can search your conversations to sort them by just one prefix.
- Players can now create personal 'participant groups' which would allow you to open a new conversation with all included members. For example, you could make a 'Manta Carlos Police' group and easily message everyone involved!
- Vacation mode now exists, allowing you to set up an automatic response that'll fire off on certain days.
- You can now sticky conversations so that all important conversation doesn't get locked!

Notepad
In the sidebar, you can now see a section called the Notepad. This is your own custom block to do whatever you want to do. You can put in picture, links, text, anything!




Staff Changes

Starlight Academy has had several staff changes since the start of the month. Both Poppy and Tom Marvolo Riddle have stepped down from staff and moved on from SA, and we wish them the best!

We'd also like to announce @Kadakism's promotion to mod, @TORY's joining the staff team as a ranger, and @Foxy's return to the staff team as a ranger.


Small Changes
The rules as posted in Board Guidelines have been tweaked for readability. No actual changes have happened, but things have been touched up a bit. We've also added alt text for those who use screen readers (or for those with slower internet) to the images on our premise pages.

Code tags now have a button that lets you copy the text to your clipboard directly. Code tags also no longer scroll, but instead display it all.

The miniprofile on the left side of your posts now has fields for both your Plotter and Tracker, as well as a pronoun field that displays more directly.

Power Upgrades should be handled. If you've messaged Kyros about power upgrades and have not received a reply, please resend your message, as it's gotten lost in Kyros's inbox since conversations were split.


Tag Guide Reminders and Updates
Unfortunately, all tags were lost in the downtime earlier this month. However, the new tagging system allows tag sorting for a much cleaner system. We have a detailed tag guide which explains how tags function on SA, as well as the types of tags.

Of note is the expansion of relationship tags:

Relationship Tags: This one is more for fun. If you've got a ship you like - say, John and Angela, you can stick a little tag on all their threads so you (or someone else) can easily see all the threads they have together. Romantic/sexual ship tags MUST be Name1/Name2 format. For family/friendship tags, the format should be Name1&Name2.

Events

The event calendar for the remainder of April seems mysteriously empty... Perhaps something surprising is on it's way?

Keep an eye out at the end of this month for more.

Post Spree and Spotlights

With the end of the downtime came a post spree as everyone rushed back to catch up on what they left behind! The winner this time around is @TORY with 41 posts, with @Claire as the runner up with 31! All winners and participants are eligible to claim the appropriate medal.

Spotlights are here again! We have voting running for the rest of the month, as well as May nominations!
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