About character interpretations/canon divergence

One of the main concerns brought up was regarding our new canon divergent policy. The intention behind this was not to squash creativity regarding certain types of headcanons (i.e. gender identities, sexuality, neurodivergence, etc.). In general, you can headcanon whatever you’d like! Nothing has changed about that.

The intention behind this policy update is to detour people from essentially changing major canon points and histories that are key to a character, which is something we’ve seen an increase in apps attempting recently.

When applying, we ask that characters personalities and histories stick to canon as closely as reasonably possible. That being said, please be mindful if your character is offensive or could harm our community’s safety. You will never get in trouble for being OOC because you were being courteous. Likewise, if there are certain elements that make you or others too uncomfortable, it’s still fine to omit them. Safety and comfort always come first, just don’t change the character willy-nilly!

In a similar vein, we completely expect characters to learn and grow and change as they interact with new people and the environment of Spirale: that’s part of why they’re here!

TL;DR: 

You will NOT get in trouble for headcanons that add on to canon (like any identity-related headcanon). 

You will NOT get in trouble for any character development that has taken place in an RP setting. 

You will NOT get in trouble for changing or omitting things that are uncomfortable or dangerous to the community or yourself. 

We just expect you to start at the base provided by canon material and may approach people who have changed too much out of the gate. Even if we do approach you, it will be a dialogue. You will not immediately get in trouble.

About Meme Friday

There seemed to be some concern about our community meme day being changed to Fridays, and we wanted to take a moment to address what we saw, as well as explain our reasoning for this experiment.

Firstly, we wanted to assure that there was a lot of thought put into the decision to run this trial, as well as the specific day we chose.

So, why move meme day at all?

Originally, during the first iteration of CA, memes were on Tuesday. When the second iteration started, we moved it to Sunday. It’s been five years since memes moved to Sunday, and we figured with the start of a new MFRP, we could try a new meme day as well. 

We also know that throughout those five years, there have been plenty of people unable to participate in Meme Sunday for various reason--including students, who may spend their Sunday’s finishing homework or going to bed early for school the next day, as well as those that work that day, or have various other responsibilities. 

On top of that, there are a number of members who only have the weekends (Saturday and Sunday) free, and that by starting meme day Saturday night and ending Monday morning, they felt like they lost a significant amount of time that they could have spent writing replies. We’ve gotten feedback throughout the years that the meme day dash busyness can be overwhelming, make people lose track of what they were doing, or feel like their replies are washed away. So by freeing up Sunday, we hoped to allow these people to feel more comfortable writing during their free time.

Then why Friday?

We chose Friday for the trial because of a number of reasons.

Firstly, it’s the end of the work week for those who go to (most) schools or who work Mon-Fri! We figured memes could be a nice way to unwind after a long week of school, work, or other responsibilities. Memes are also things that can be done pretty quickly or easily during breaks throughout the day---which is much harder for things like replies.

Secondly, it’s still attached to the weekend. People in the aforementioned categories are entering their weekend and will have Friday night to comfortably reblog or reply to memes with less worry about having to wake up early the next day (generally). Even if someone doesn’t fall into those categories and has a more flexible schedule, it wouldn’t change much overall for them because they could potentially be working on Sunday as well.

Thirdly, It doesn’t run into the week for our international members.

Finally, we noticed that Fridays tended to be more slow activity-wise. We thought bringing memes to Fridays would be a good way to encourage people to post and have some fun on the dash to start off the weekend. This also meant we weren’t worried so much about it deterring people from writing replies since not much goes on that day.

Why didn’t you just have a vote from the beginning?

We know that, for the most part, human beings are very resistant to change. There’s a lot of research about this subject, and if you’re curious, it’s a very interesting topic (mod Lyra would link a 30-page social psychology research paper, but ain’t nobody got time for that). 

To that end, we didn’t want people to just vote for Sunday because it was what was most familiar to them. We want to improve Isola and we thought this might be a move in the right direction, so we wanted people to experience the change and get accustomed to it before making a decision on what they like better. We still wanted people to vote, but we wanted everyone to see what the change would be like first.

Other notes:

For those who have some concerns still about being able to participate, we’d suggest trying to queue some memes up you find throughout the week for Friday and then answering them throughout the weekend (memes don’t have to be answered the day they’re received). It’s a method that many of those that don’t have Sundays available for memes have used throughout the years and would, at the very least, still allow you to get some development and fun in during that time as opposed to missing out entirely.

Again, though, this is an experiment and we don’t know how things could turn out at the end of the trial period. In the least, we will have learned a lot and we’ll see which day works the best! Thank you all for trying this wild idea out with us.

It's been a wild three months so far, but again, we would like to thank everyone who set out on this journey with us and is sticking with us going forward. We have a lot of cook things planned for the future and we hope you look forward to it as much as we do. If there are any other things you would like us to clarify, please don't hesitate to shoot us a message. Thanks for reading!

In most cases, there is a “three-strike” system. If member concerns are brought to us regarding your behavior on the dashboard or if we spot something against the rules ourselves, a moderator will speak to you. If you continue to behave inappropriately, you will be given an official warning. Accumulate three of these warnings, and you will be banned. 

The three-strike system, however, is only used for minor transgressions --- offenses that can be easily rectified such as not tagging uncomfortable content or going past the OOC limit, for example. We take cases involving member harassment much more seriously. If you engage in behavior such as stalking, sending derogatory messages, or if you otherwise make it a point to intentionally make other members uncomfortable, you may be immediately banned without any strikes depending on the severity of your actions, your past history, and the amount of proof presented to us.

Another scenario where someone might be banned without warnings is if they enter Isola from an outside environment and it is brought to our attention that they have exhibited behavior in other environments that would make our members uncomfortable. Member comfort is our most important concern, so if anyone applies to the group that has a history we may not know of, it’s important to bring it to our attention. We can’t always know what’s transpiring inside of our group, sadly, let alone of what’s happened outside of it.

Bear in mind that any claims made against another member must be substantiated with evidence to be considered. For the safety of all members involved, we will not make any public statements regarding the reasoning behind a ban. If the banned member chooses to make their ban message public, that is their choice. Showing people the evidence provided to us, however, puts the one reporting said member at risk of being identified in many cases. For that reason, we also cannot share logs or other evidence we have been provided, as that would jeopardize the confidence placed in us by those who gave the information.

We encourage members to bring anything to our attention which may be of concern to them at any point in time. If the evidence presented occurred a year ago or more, however, and there is no evidence to suggest they are continuing that behavior now, we may not be able to take disciplinary action at that moment. In these cases, we will keep careful watch over the person while they are within our community, and if we see something ourselves or if something is brought to us regarding them, we will take their history into consideration when deciding what action to take.

We hope that this helps you understand our policy better. If there any questions or concerns, please direct them to the askbox as always. Thank you!