If you are a DWRP player, please take the survey and share with your friends! The aim is to build up a picture of the DWRP community. This survey is a follow-up to the first survey and focuses on memes and PSLs.

Question: when it says 'when did you first start roleplaying on Dreamwidth' does LJ count, since it's essentially the same community and format?

No, the question is specifically about Dreamwidth! LJ doesn't count for that question.

Thanks for the clarification, I am glad I asked!

jeez what year was that big migration...

2012 was the big migration!

If you can remember what the first DW character journal you created was, you can check the date it was created by looking at your profile. I had to go check myself!

(Going by when Mayfield migrated over, which was right in the middle of that timeframe.)

oho yeah...

looks like end of 2011 for me

middle of Dec, 2011

Yeah the big drama started in 2011 but only 2012 the game transfers really finished, because ... well, it was in winter.

should I put 2011 for that, or 2012

yeah...

around March/April of 2011 is the earliest I have.

I had exactly the same dilemma as you guys, I created my first DW journals right at the end of Dec 2011, but did I really start playing before 2012? I answered 2012 myself, but I'll leave that decision up to you...

gotcha

thanks, that helps

welp I accidentally counted my LJ time into it

also was there a section about indepth questions abut games that I missed? Because I feel like i just answered questions about memes and PSLs

Thanks to everyone who fed back since yesterday, btw! You had some great suggestions. I wasn't able to incorporate all of them (I needed to think about limiting the number of questions) but I've included some that I think will be useful and interesting!

randomtology: No, the focus of the survey this time around is just on memes and PSLs! There are a few initial questions that do mention games, but nothing in-depth about games for this one.

okay!

just wanted to make sure

Thank you for this!

yeah, I missed the game-specific survey too

Over 100 responses already, keep 'em coming!

does 'sites like dreamwidth' just mean journals or is it like any site that does text-based rp

I intended it to mean journal-based sites like Dreamwidth, since Livejournal RP basically migrated over to DW.

ok, got it! when people were talking about the last one some seemed to think it meant rping in general and i was all "SHIT DID I ANSWER IT WRONG??" thank you!

...so I don't at all remember if I did the first survey before cause there's been a few different ones, so.. not really sure how to answer that.

Frannyan: Well, the first survey results are here so maybe check if you recognise it? Otherwise may be safer to default to "no".

It looks like 3 others I've done, so..

/went with yes since it's likely

I'd be interested to see other similar surveys if there are any! I wasn't aware of anything that had been done on DWRP before.

And answered, whee. With a note that I honestly don't remember how I ended up RPing on DW, so answer was my best guess. XD;

Did it! and lmao sorry for picking.... just about every answer on "what kind of memes do you do".... I'M JUST REALLY NOT PICKY...

I'll be interested to see what the results are like on that one, however. I know for myself that the only thing I'm really against is horror because I need a specific mood to be in that one (and I feel like it's easier to do that in a game than a meme) but I know I'm just... me. and not everyone else.

Most of them are combo LJ/DW, I think? But there was one I think last month that went around. And then there was the one someone did for their grad thesis or somethihng?

They're normally spaced out like.. every 3 months so by the time another comes around heck if I can find the last one.

Do you have any links?

Not offhand, no... sorry. I didn't replurk any of them, looks like.

No worries!

And we just hit 300 responses! Keep it up guys!

oh hey, I've got a question - in regards to characters we play, I play a couple npcs for the game I mod. i'm the only person who plays them and I tag as them regularly (sometimes even more than my actual characters). would you want those counted as characters?

Would you count them as characters? If you play them regularly and they significantly contribute to the game you're in, it sounds like they could be counted!

that makes sense! thank you!

I realized i've been playing on DW since 2010 and now I just have to stare into the void a little

my how time does fly.....

Yeah, I was like '...did I really make my first DWRP journal in 2012?'.

yeah, my rp anniversary is apparently april 28th, 2010

that's the very first post in my very first lj journal ....

incredible

my first one was in 2010 and I think it was because of that one smut comm over here? before everything moved

September of 2010

sobs. my first rp journal on lj was June 2006.

yeah, I was in a Pokemon game over here

oh this was for DW, LJ was like 2005 or so

2006 dang

well yeah. that's why I specified lj.

I was in a PoT-only game and then a week later joined a game where PCs were aware they were characters in series and took part in fandom. so meta and insane.

for DW.... probably Dec 2011.

replorked this on the dwrpmasterlist and enablemeplz plurks. The end results always have some useful info.

enablemeplz: Thanks, that's much appreciated! And thanks for doing the dwrpmasterlist as well, I'm using it as my games sample!

inthetatras i played in PoT-only games and also joined BNF Brawl, which i think is the game you're talking about

i may have known you back in the day :')

I've been doing journal RP since 2003....

wow, that beats me. I think I started 2006

but that was LJ

I started in 2004 on LJ and 2009 on DW!

i think at least half of dwrpers probably started on lj

keytone8: 80% according to the results so far...

oh wow

even more than i thought

I started 2006 on LJ and was right before the Great Migration, the tail end of 2011

I pretty much forgot what LJ did that pissed everyone off though

partial of the reason was from the sheer amount of times the server goes down and the notifications being off iirc

And we've now reached 400 responses!

Subject lines going away because some tool decided that since he didn't use them, clearly no one else did either.

A cause for leaving, I mean.

hold on, I have posts that talk about the migration and shit /scurries to find them

I think my first journal on LJ was in 2010. but oh god, I feel old. I was doing message board/chat rp in 1996-ish on AOL way before LJ even started.

oh also there was the issue of the new interface making it hard to use icons... i think?

Yeah, I remember LJ doing a lot of shit that basically made everyone flee.

keytone8: yes, that was the one. if you check the muselist link in my profile for the bottom section, I list most of the characters i played even back on LJ

just no LJ journal links haha. too embarrassing

Problem was, I don't remember the specifics though that subject line killing did jar some memory.

here's one with a whole history of LJ

the new interface on LJ took away subject lines, made looking at single threads in a post irritating cos you'd have to load everything in the post, had an eyebleeding color scheme and other horrid issues

but I distinctly remember: Russian LJ staff talking shit about their userbase on their journals, removing subject lines and throwing various comms out of whack (fandom and RP both), and interface changes that actually gave people headaches

script loading problems, I think

Yup, igrick

another post on it

I liked being able to tell which comments in a post were actually new, but aside from that, nope.

those two are all I have on LJ history!

haha awesome. i honestly can't remember who all i played with though

who were some of your main characters? I was in the game for its entire run except for a few weeks at the beginning and a few at the end

so I might remember

Survey done!

ahahaaa i feel so old my first RP journal was on LJ in 2003 when we started to test out the waters. we had to get codes in order to create the journal and i mis-spelled the name i wanted

mwingzero: I started ljrp in 2003 as well.

filled it out!

what actually caused the mass migration was the change of the interface to basically what it looks like today. it's very unfriendly to rp since it makes it hard to view the threads at all, and people who were sensitive had trouble with all the white space

oh i see that i'm late with my answer

thats okay sometimes we need to say it in case new popel come in and cant find it :3

jeeps - I was one of those people in the mass migration. And whoa. That change of interface was painful to look at. ;w; My poor eyes.

thekt: I personally had no issue with the white space in particular, but the number of people who did and lj's unwillingness to respond to the problem was another nail in the coffin

I don't really remember what it was, exactly? But I remember the giant excess space as annoying.

Whatever it was, it just really hurt to look at.

Oops, I just realised I misread the date on my first DW journal as 2012 instead of 2011...

Although it was December so that's still very close.

We've now reached over 600 responses! Great work, guys.

Incidentally, I'm just taking a quick look at the location data now to see how accurate it is. In the last survey, I only had the data provided by the survey software, which is based on IP address. It was suggested to include a question on location in the actual survey itself this time around, because IP data is not always accurate...

...and the first survey results included 5% "Unknown" locations.

Now that I'm comparing the two sets of data (one based on IP address, one based on actual survey answers) and what's most striking is how similar they are.

For example, according to the IP data, 51 people responded from Canada. Whereas in the actual survey question, 48 people said they live in Canada.

That's very close, so close that in percentage terms it isn't really going to make any difference.

So what about that missing 5%? Well, here's the biggest and most interesting difference in the two results. According to the IP data, 69% of respondents are from the USA. But in the actual survey question, 76% of respondents said they live in the USA.

However, I've also got 7% "Unknown" in the IP data this time around. If you add that 7% to the 69% IPs from the USA, then voila, you get 76%. Which is exactly the same as the number of respondents who said they live in the US.

Basically that was a long-winded way of saying that it's safe to assume that most if not all of the "Unknowns" are from the USA! Which means if I hark back to the first survey, I'd add on that extra 5% Unknown to the USA figure and say that 75% of respondents in that survey were from the USA.

So far, the results have been extremely consistent in terms of location. We're looking at about three quarters of the population being from the USA, then a far smaller number from Canada, UK, Australia, and then tiny numbers in a variety of other countries.

::Plurk Frontpage Promotion::

Just for fun... What percentage of respondents do you think answered that they are male on the survey?

(Hint: it's less than half.)

20%!

I'd even say 15%.

Nope!

35%?

40%?

The first two answers were closer!

10%?

ooooh

5%?

....0%?

Haha, it is more than 0%. These answers are close though!

12%?

3%

ankeel is closest so far...

8%

8%!

You're very close! The answer is 9%.

9% of respondents so far answered that they are male.

\o/

HOT DAMN

it just goes to show if you just keep aggressively guessing sooner or later you're right

I had a feeling it would be pretty low. In my experience it's always been about that lopsided

or at least in the last ten or so year

For the record, I only looked inside the plurk after I answered the survey, so I'm afraid I made a mistake regarding "how long have you beein rping" referring to DW only... Sorry if this messes up the results a little orz

psychelocks: I added in a note early on to correct for that in the question about when you first started RPing on Dreamwidth, so it probably won't make much difference!

I got the year I joined DW wrong. I greatly underestimated how long ago the Great Migration was D:

Ah, yeah I might have put the year I joined rp wrong too. I was 'oh I think I started on lj x year so since then it has been y years' and not dw specifically. Sorry! But I think otherwise I did okay in trying to help answer these.

yeah when I think "how long have I been in DWRP?" I tend to include LJRP in that because (at least in the circles I run in) it was the same people/games/general community on LJ and DW

it wasn't until I got to the later question that I realized you meant solely dreamwidth 8(

It was kind of weird going back and checking dates on my old main RP journal...the great migration was much further back than I'd remembered, though now that I think about it of course that's when it was, I was still in school then.

tldr I feel old

Just to clarify, it was only the question that asked what year you started RPing on Dreamwidth that was solely about Dreamwidth. The question immediately before asks how long you have been RPing on sites like Dreamwidth i.e. journal-based RP. It's deliberately broader since many of us migrated straight from LJ to DW.

By the way, I'm planning to leave the survey open for a week, so it will close at the end of this Saturday! (Or rather, the early hours of Sunday to make sure it's available in all timezones.)

So please do share and replurk if you can, I'd love to get as many responses as possible! We're nearly up to 800 now.

Last chance to take the survey! It'll be open for one more day (Saturday).

have you considered making a new plurk mentioning how the survey will be up for one more day, kind of like a last call? I know a lot of people (myself included) procrastinate when it comes to this sort of thing

this is super interesting. i don't rp much anymore but i responded anyway to add to the data pool /

I can do that. Sharing this plurk can also help as a reminder!