Happy February everyone! We've been looking ahead in the group and trying to get a sense where things are headed. This post will give a little bit of look into things happening currently or in the future a bit.

Modcation 2025

A much needed modcation is coming for this year. Expect to see group functions halt on all fronts. If moderators wish to work during modcation there may be some movement but nothing is being required of the team during this time, so expect most things to not start happening again until early May!

• March 1st-14th: (Wind down period.) The Moderator staff will be focusing on getting feedback out for February prompts and Quests. Ideally if any edits are needed to prompts or acts, they will be made at this time and we'll address things that are resubmitted after Modcation is over. Starting March 1st, we'll be attempting to get any design approvals feedback out to paid submissions queued before March 1st. This is not a guarantee, but just know things submitted after March 2nd or unpaid submissions will continue to be low priority and may or may not receive a response before the break. We'll make a good faith effort, but if people are submitting a ton of things last minute, and they are fully paid, that will have an impact on the progress the design approvals team makes the first two weeks in March.
• March 15th-May 3rd: (Modcation) Moderators will not be expected to work during this time frame. Users can still submit prompts and design approvals, etc. but please do not ask about turnaround times during this window as well. Staff may choose to work if they desire but it won't be a required thing. We want to make sure the whole team has a well deserved break.
• May 4th-18th: (Wind up period.) Moderators will be slowly coming back. Responses may be slow during this time period but we'll be looking to get back to things at a more regular pace after these initial weeks.

We know the wind down and wind up periods make this time seem longer but those periods are time we will still be working, just expect that the team may be working through a flood of submissions prior to and after modcation. Please be patient with us, thank you!

We've also experienced some changes to moderator staff this past year and are expecting more changes to our staff in 2025. In light of this, you'll notice that moderator applications have once again opened! They will be open from February 10th, 2025 until April 20th, 2025 at 11:59pm PST.

Turnaround Times and Questing Updates

We've made a dedicated page to cover turnaround time info since that hasn't had a proper place within the site structure. We've also included those turnaround times, minus the additional info, at the top of our general prompt rules and design edit pages so it's a bit easier to find. Due to some of the staffing changes we recognize turnaround times may not mirror the ones listed exactly. We're a bit short staffed currently, which is why we'll be seeking to hire new staff some time after modcation.

We also wanted to announce that one of our special quests has been updated! The Breathing Exercises special quest now includes bubble breath as an option! We hope others enjoy this trait as much as we have been in recent months!

An important note about older quest acts without claims:

Over the years we've been noticing an increasingly long list of quest acts submitted without claims. In order to process the acts for a certain quest someone is pursuing we need a claim submitted to indicate when all of the acts are fully done. Unfortunately, this has made our list of prompts and acts in the back end of the site appear much larger than it is. The team would like to start seeing our queue of prompts and acts reflect more closely to where they are currently sitting.

Starting March 1st, 2025 we'll plan to do an annual clean up for submitted quest acts that are older than 12 months old. This means, for quest acts submitted without a claim that are older than 12 months, we will check 2 things and that will determine what we do with the submitted act:

1. If the character featured in a given act no longer belongs to the submitter, we will hard reject the act.
2. If the character featured in a given act belongs to the submitted still, we will soft reject the act with a "cooldown" of 365 days to just bump a reminder that acts need a claim submitted for us to review them. If the act is not resubmitted within that 365 day window it will be hard rejected.

Keep in mind in both of these cases you can still resubmit a hard or soft rejected act that was part of an unfinished quest at any time, a hard reject or soft reject does not mean that you can never submit an unfinished quest again. It just might mean resubmitting the acts closer together than a year and submitting the appropriate claim so we know to review them! There will be a generic message to indicate if your quest act has been in the queue too long without a related quest claim submitted.

This annual cleanup will likely take place in early January in future years, but since we're announcing this cleanup work just now it will happen at the start of March this year. We're recommending if anyone has quest acts submitted without claims that are older than 12 months and you want to see them reviewed, be sure to submit a claim before the end of February. After February anything older than February 29th, 2024 will be either hard or soft rejected depending on the status of the elnin attached to the quest act.

Thank you for your patience with us on this! We just feel some amount of cleanup in this space annually would help us out in getting a clearer view of how much we need to review within a given month. Between now and the start of March we will work on language to add to the questing page(s) to clarify this will happen annually, with the goal of having that language added by March 1st. That way there's a reference point if the rejection of quest acts older than 12 months comes as a surprise to any submitters.

Guest Artist Applications

Since we're getting back into some event planning if you haven't submitted a guest artist application in a while, or want to update your existing application, this is a gentle reminder our application form is always open and we revisit it over time! Simply visit our Guest Artists Applications page on site and you'll find a link to the form and guesting info there. You'll need to be logged into your google account to edit an existing form if you've submitted an application to us once already.

If your application is over a few years old and predates the google form's creation we highly recommend submitting an updated application to the form. A lot can change in a few years and we want to be sure our info is up to date. Some of the older forms (back before we used a google form) were missing some fields that indicated user preferences. So they're not very helpful at highlighting what types of events or sales some previous applicants may be interested in.

We want to highlight that this reminder for guest artist applications will likely apply to events held in the later half of this year. So if you don't hear back from us immediately in the coming months, just know that it's because it takes some time to go through any changes and updates to applications on our end and plan events thereafter. We'll also be catching up a lot around the start of May as we get back from the break.

Artificial Intelligence Reminder and General Warning

It's been roughly a year since our last mention of this topic. We continue to see the presence of AI use within group prompt submissions, mostly written ones. If you're a group member who is doing this, stop. This is a reminder and general warning that use of AI to write or draw prompts in this group is unacceptable. If you're unclear with the group's general stance on this topic you can refer back to this earlier news post (Late September Update) where we go over the group's stance on it and where it fits into the TOS.

We're sorry to have to bring this up again. As we've stated in the past, we understand that there are a lot of group members that don't use AI this way. We still recognize that most of our submissions do not do this, but when we so blatantly see AI use in the group it's very frustrating. We want to be fair to those who have put in the time to refine their craft, be it drawn or written, and fear that users who turn to AI to do it for them diminishes the efforts of their peers.

If you are someone who is using AI in your work as more than just a translator or spell checker, and we continue to see the redundancy of phrases that AI tends to write, or writing in ways that don't feel human, we will approach with revision requests. Ultimately, we want to make it clear it is not fun to moderate AI generated work. In general, we try to be more relaxed on prompts and we will still try to where possible, but we've already seen so many submissions that feel definitively AI influenced that we are ready to start addressing AI submissions more directly. If you continue using AI, despite the group's policy not to, please expect a lot of feedback from us requesting substantial edits to future submissions. If you aren't using AI, please continue submitting written pieces as usual; the team will try our best to avoid false positives for AI.

Staff have to review a lot of prompts and every single time we come across something clearly AI generated it leaves a sour taste in the team's mouth. We recognize the phrases AI tends to like to use. Please be well aware things are not flying under the radar and there will be consequences as a result if we continue to see AI use in the group.

If you have concerns that your submissions may be reading as AI due to the use of a translation tool, please submit a ticket with a google document to your untranslated content, and a link to the tool you have been using to translate your content as well as the name of that tool. We are mindful this could be an extra ask for those who do not use English as their first language, so we want to be extra clear that submitting a ticket is not a requirement, so don't feel a need to do this right away. You may still hear nothing from us in the future, but if you do and you suspect it's due to AI translation, we can work through it and cross compare tool options to see if there's a pattern. Doing this at that time would help not only you but also the community as a whole.

Plans for the future

While we will be seeing some slow and quiet periods around and during modcation, the staff will be working pretty hard prior to modcation to try to set the group up for success in the coming months. There will be a few moderators that will likely still be working on some things behind the scenes during modcation too even if some of the regular queues are on hold.

We won't be giving a definitive timeline at this point but here are some of the things we're thinking about in the coming year:

• There will be prompts that run 2 months long between March and April, as well as May and June.
  • The first prompt will allow a max of 2 submissions and run from the beginning of March until the end of April.
  • The second prompt will also allow a max of 2 submissions and run from the beginning of May until the end of June.
• Our usual Bonds in Bloom seasonal prompt will be skipped this year as we try to catch up to queues in May and June.
• The seasonal Spirits Stirring prompt will be making a comeback this year in place of the usual seasonal prompt!
• We will be looking at what backlogged questions can be answered.
  • Due to unforeseen circumstances in 2024 there's some lingering questions out there that we'll be working to respond to. Thank you to those who have waited.
  • Some questions that relate to elnin lore or specific topics may need to be more directly discussed with manaberri still. Patience will be needed on those!
• Mana and the team will be working through getting traits sorted out for another subtype release.
  • There are still many things that need to happen for the group to get back to breedings, but this subtype and one other thing are blockers for us to get back to doing breedings in the group under any context. These will take some time, so we don't suspect both will be done within the first half of this year.
• We'll be aiming to hire additional moderators to try to get staff numbers back up to what we would like to see.
• The team wants to get back to events with guest artists and possibly do some event activities later in the year.
• We have some exciting things planned to occur starting with a splash around May. Stay tuned.