Site News

The Overwild (Aquatic) Tail Token Raffle from this May's prompt has been rolled and our winners aarrrrrreeeeeee~

1. MewWolf
2. blankshi
3. Zezima
4. StarryDoe
5. Jahpan
6. TragicKiwi
7. Cynder
8. Trashiebag
9. LocketShoru
10. Wander
11. Silver-the-wyrm
12. CandyChameleon
13. tara-elani
14. XXxbunnyloverxX
15. woodlanduni
16. FruitCrepe
17. Whimsicalblue
18. Koiwitwil
19. ShinPurple
20. Sharky
21. Chickolates
22. Giz
23. Angelos
24. Afrielzi
25. wintry-chan
26. osteoh
27. Vontier
28. glassmoth
29. wriven
30. Picnyx

Congratulations winners and thank you everyone for participating in this past month's prompt. Tokens have been sent out to the raffle winners!

Rolling took place in our discord #games_and_raffles channel today. It was a fun raffle to host this year! ^^

Event Update - 6/4/22

A small update on the event. Prizes for this fishy raffle will be rolled 6/5/22, at 10:00am PST time!

After some discussion internally and approval from Mana, we've upped the prizes for this raffle from 10 winners and we will now be raffling off 30 Overwild (Aquatic) Tail tokens to our entrants!

For the month of May we're hosting a raffle for 10 Overwild (Aquatic) Tail Tokens. We're reposting the information here since once the prompt closes people may still need form access and access to the rules/guidelines for these tokens, so we've moved the information over to a news post as well!

As an aside, additional info can be found on the Overwild (Aquatic) tail entry in our encyclopedia for those of you trying to ponder out tail ideas. We know there's still some that have come up that we're still woking through but we'll expand upon the trait entry as we work through questions.

Please read below for additional info on how to enter and rules. Completing June's monthly prompt will not automatically enter you for this raffle, you will need to submit a response to a google form so please keep this in mind!

May Raffle Details

Hello everyone! We're back with a bit of an overdue update!

Achievements and Titles

Some features we've been excited to have on site are the ability to create and grant both achievements and titles! We'll be starting off slow with these but we wanted to let everyone know our first two achievements relate to the seasonal prompt currently going on!

1. By completing the seasonal prompt this year you can earn a single elnin the "Lantern Crafter" achievement which will allow your elnin to acquire the title "Lightbringer". If you wish to earn this achievement for a different elnin you'll have to complete the prompt again next year!
2. Completing multiple eligible prompts based on this seasonal tradition  will allow users to earn the "Returning Light" achievement and its associated title "Luminous"! This achievement has some past eligible prompts that count towards the unlocking requirements so if you've done some lantern crafting in years past, be sure those legacy prompts have been submitted to the WoE site!

For full details see their respective encyclopedia entries! The seasonal prompt will be returning every year during the months of January through March. If you cannot complete a prompt this year you'll have a chance to participate and earn these achievements in future years.

You'll notice that currently neither achievement has art. Since these features are relatively new and things have been busy we're aiming to have achievement art completed by April! If you're wondering how to claim an achievement we'll be following up with how that process will work after the seasonal prompt is over.

Please do not attempt to claim any achievements until we have been able to release guidelines on how this will work in early April! We appreciate the patience as we explore this aspect of our website!

Group Staffing Changes

In the past month or two you may have noticed some changes to our staff on the website! A few things have happened. We've officially hired 4 new Prompt Moderators, 3 new Design Approval Moderators, and 2 new Discord Moderators.

Please welcome these individuals to our staff!

• Angelos, LeechiPeachy, Picnyx, and woodlanduni have joined our Prompt team!
• LizzyJun, StarryDoe, and wintry-chan are the new members of our Design Approvals team!
• Last but not least BlackSapphire and kaethus will be our new Discord team staff!

We're very excited to have them on board and we hope the community will be, too. There were a lot of good applicants to review and it took us quite a great deal of time reviewing everything and getting our new staff settled in!

Having dedicated discord moderators will be a pretty new endeavor for us. Their job will not overlap with any sort of website moderation, so they will not be expected to help with tasks that are not directly related to our discord. We'll be requesting everyone to adhere to the rules and guidelines provided in our discord #rules_and_info channel, as always. If you've not looked at them in a while you're welcome to! In the coming weeks we'll be slowly clarifying  with the community what our discord moderators role will be and our expectations on what interacting with them should look like! Their role will likely differ in some ways from the rest of our moderator staff simply due to the space they're assisting in.

In addition to acquiring some wonderful new staff, we're also announcing that our website developer (and maintainer) has stepped down to pursue personal projects and we sincerely wish Cy the best! We would not be where we are as a community today without Cy's hard work these past few years and the contributions of many other dedicated developers expanding on what Lorekeeper can do, so a big thank you to these wonderful developers!

Regional Guide Updates

Headed up by our resident Sharky, regional pages have been updated!

With some of the updates to our website's features and code we thought it would be good to make sure some of our pages were keeping up too. There have been a ton of art prompts submitted since the site's launch and the moderator team worked to pull together some great examples for our regional pages. We'll revisit these pages periodically to improve on them, but they're looking better already!

Adoptable TOS Update

On the "Adoptables Terms of Service" page we've adjusted some wording to try to clarify our stance on design similarities and expectations relative to referencing other original designs. We understand accidental similarities may occur between designs, as there are many designs out there, but in this group we're expecting such occurrences to be wholly accidental.

If we encounter situations where our moderator team has to ask for designs to be distanced during approvals it helps to be clear with everyone that intentionally referencing someone else's design is not condoned. Not everyone is comfortable with their characters being referenced and we want to respect that within our community. We recognize breedings events are a bit of an outlier from this stance but during those events permission to reference parent designs is explicitly granted.

Under the General section wording has been revised to read:

Do not directly copy or heavily reference characters from existing franchises or original works/designs that are not your own. While you may use character names or hairstyles for inspiration, please make sure they are not a 1:1 copy, and should not be treated as that specific character itself. For non-humanoid designs, this includes distancing colour palettes, markings and/or traits from the original design. Any outfits or props used should not be based on the specific character themselves and exact replicas may not be used (ex. Do not use the tri-force as a crown, pokemon cards as a prop, etc.). If we feel a design is too similar to a specific character/another design, we reserve the right to ask for changes to distance them further. *

*UPDATE: If you have a concern about a design similarity seen in any group space please submit a support ticket on site so the moderator team can be made aware, do not approach other group members directly about this concern.

Editing Elnin Art

This has come up a few times so we just wanted to throw out a general reminder!

If you have art done by another artist that you want to edit, always check with the original artist that they allow their art to be edited. This goes for mocking up edits as well even if you intend to have another artist redraw the mocked up image as final art!

We recommend checking their TOS first, if one is available, to see if it specifies they allow edits to their works. If a TOS is not available to cross check, we recommend directly contacting them to ask. We require users to provide some form of proof in the comments tab of their design update submission that they had permission to edit art that is not their own, or that they hired the original artist or another artist to edit the art knowingly and with permission from the original artist!

If we ask you to provide proof of the original artist’s permission please do not be offended. We ask this of everyone who submits edited artwork! It is simply our aim to help protect all artists’ work.

Past and Future Sheninigans

It's been a busy start to our year but we're ambitious as ever!

These past few months have involved a lot of time sunk primarily into a lot of the wonderful things we've mentioned above.

We've been:

• Testing the website extensively for bugs
• Sorting out aforementioned new features
• Updating guides (Mostly regional though this is often a constant task)
• Reviewing potential moderator applications
• Preparing for staff additions and departures (site role setup, reorganizing and updating a lot of internal tools and documentation we use, etc.)
• Training new staff
• Keeping up with day to day tasks  as much as possible (Prompts, Design Approvals/Updates, Claims, Tickets, Questions, etc.)

Needless to say all of these items have had quite a bit of depth to them. As we wrap up some tasks we're looking forward to having some bandwidth to get back to other facets of the group.

Looking forward we're hoping to get back into:

• Events / Activities! Currently there is nothing we're planning for specifically, but we're hoping to get back into this space.
• Discussion about longer term projects the team wants to pursue
• A little bit of mischief (maybe even some elnin jokes)
• Pestering any sleep deprived mods to take a vacation

And with that we've covered just about everything for now! Thank you again everyone for the continued support!

The website is coming out of Maintenance Mode! So a lot of our regular systems will be reopening.

Design Approvals, Claims, and Character Trades/Transfers Reopening

Please give us some time this week to send out feedback and go over things. It will probably take a few days to catch up on things

Prize grants will also be happening this week. They haven't been forgotten, it's just going to be a bit of a slow start. Your patience is appreciated! Thank you!

Prompts Reopening

Monthly and Monthly Regular Prompts for December will be submittable from December 19th, 2021 to January 31st, 2022 at 11:59pm PST time.

• December's Monthly Prompt "Memorable Messages" will allow for a max of 2 submissions between now and the end of January.
• December and January's Monthly Regular Regional and Gift art prompts can be submitted any time in December or January, PST time. The rule still stands 1 per month though, so we should not see more than 2 Regional Scenery pieces and 2 Gift art pieces come in per user between now and the end of January.

In January we'll be introducing a new prompt category Seasonal Prompts. These will be prompts that run within a 3 month time period, so the first Seasonal prompt will run from January 1st, 2022 to March 31st, 2022 ending at 11:59pm PST time.

General Content Updates

• On our General Prompt Entry Rules, we have added guidelines for pixel art.
• Metallic Markings has been renamed to Metallic Suffusion with its guidelines updated!
• We have made changes to our navigation menu!
  Changes include:
  • World - Now includes Lore, Regions, Shops, Encyclopedia, and Submission Gallery
  • Guides - Includes some notable guides for easier access
  • Activities (Public facing) - Includes Prompts, Sales, and Raffles. Essentially hubs for things that may be currently happening.
  • Home (Only available to logged in users) - Encompasses what the private facing old "Activity" menu item had and previous Home menu features. Consider this like a dashboard for anything you might need to do while logged in!
  • Masterlists (Previously called Browse) - Now just includes Site Masterlists for Users, Characters, and MYOs.

Website Updates

The website is now on Lorekeeper v2. This update includes improvements by corowne and a number of extensions that were integrated into Lorekeeper core. Extensions integrated were thanks to contributions from the open source community. Credits for extensions can be viewed on the credits page.

There's a few things of note. I'll be going over what major things we have added to the site feature-wise and a few things that are pending implementation or evaluation still.

New Requirements on site

• Users now must have a dA account connected to access site features. This was included as a part of the lorekeeper v2 update, but since we still largely cross check ownership across platforms, having it is required.
• The website now requires that users input a birth date to confirm our users are old enough to use this site. You must be 13 years or older to sign up for the WoE website. Your birthdate information will not be shared publicly on your profile in any way.

New Features Usable Now

These are some of the features we believe will see the most use now. There may be a few other features on site not explicitly mentioned on this list that add to the general QoL of the site that you'll notice around, like avatars on site, as well.

1. Stacked Inventories - Inventory stacking is now a thing. This isn't something all too major given our current inventory numbers are quite low.
   1. When accessing items via your inventory, use the checkbox to select which item you're interacting with.
   2. For example, when applying a frame, remember to not only select your elnin from the dropdown, but also make sure that you choose which frame item you're applying if you have multiples of a frame.
2. Comments - These will be available on news posts and sales posts, not user profiles or anywhere else. Please keep comments appropriate and follow community guidelines.
   1. Comments are new for us, so at this time we are still figuring out our approach to moderating them. We will not be responding to comments that are questions. If you would like to ask a question on something specific, please use our #questions channel in discord or support tickets on the WoE website.
3. Reports - This is a reporting system feature for content that is either a bug or not appropriate (comments/profiles/etc. that break TOS can be reported now.)
   1. This was added specifically for these two tasks/purposes, our Ticketing system is wholly separate and broader to cover general questions.
4. User Transfer Reasons - When transferring characters, you are now required to provide a reason for transferring the character. This only applies to one-sided transfers done through the Transfer option on a character's masterlist entry.
   1. We recommend using the on-site Trades feature whenever possible with details relative to what you are trading.
5. Character Toyhouse Profile Link - Users can now add a profile link to their elnin's on-site profile. When added, it will create a small button on the top right of an elnin's masterlist entry next to their name. This can be a link to a character's Toyhouse profile via their profile page (https://worldofeyre.com/character/ELN###/profile) if you prefer to use THToyhouse rather than adding character bios on your elnin's WoE profiles.
   
   1. Example: See ELN046
6. Captcha (v3) - Will appear on the registration page for new users registering.
7. Separate Prompts - This mostly changed the sidebar of our prompts page here.

New Features Possible in the Future

These are features we have had added, but currently do not have in use. We will be exploring options.

1. Submission Add-ons - This allows users to attach items/currencies to claims or prompts.
   1. Currently we don't have a specific use for this, but it's something we'll likely explore down the road. Feel free to ignore this feature until we provide instructions on how/where it may be used.
2. Character Items - Currently we have no items in our database that can be attached to characters, but we may eventually. This is another feature we will explore.

Features Still Being Considered or Worked on

1. Galleries - We have a currently existing Submission Gallery for prompts (under the "World" menu item).
   1. We're still exploring use cases for a secondary gallery that was part of the v2 update.
   2. The secondary gallery inherently functions differently than our existing Submission Gallery, which is prompt focused.
   3. The two galleries (old and new) will not be merged. We will be keeping the old gallery for prompt submissions. The new one is still under review as it may not be needed, but we're still assessing.
   4. You may see areas on site that are part of the new gallery feature that is still being considered. For now please ignore these sections.
2. Watermarking - This is not implemented on site yet, but something we're looking into. This will likely not be like Toyhouse's watermarking in terms of flexibility, but we're still looking at what this feature provides and how to fit it into our site.

There are a few features that came with the Lorekeeper v2 update that are disabled or that we will not be using on our site for various reasons. Some reasons include already having similar features on site that were coded custom for our site needs or certain features not fitting how our group is structured.

That wraps up our news update for now. We'll continue to provide updates as needed as the week goes on! Thank you everyone for your patience with us during this time period!

Hi everyone!

Popping in with a small update relative to the site! While things might seem quiet on the front-facing side of the group, on the moderator side we've been making progress behind the scenes in a few areas.

Website Updates

Website Maintenance is being extended to December 18th. This means Prompts, Acts, Claims, Design Updates, and Transfers will remain closed. If we can reopen the site sooner we will make an announcement. Until then though, thank you for your continued patience on this!

Code-Wise
Website code was updated last weekend. A few bugs arose that needed fixing, so some bug fixes have been made this weekend. There are still a few outlying bugs and things we're checking on, but once those bugs are fixed, questions resolved, and the moderators finish any non-code things we're aiming to get done, we'll reopen.

Moderator-Wise
Some testing has been done on the site this past week. There is still a bit more we need to do, and some areas of the site we need to think through. It's been a pretty busy past week, so we're extending the maintenance period to give ourselves a bit more time for any remaining things to be fixed, site staff to become familiarized with what's changed, and to make sure we're prepared for things to reopen.

While bugs are being fixed, we have been wrapping up some mod tasks in the background.

Event Prizes

Raffle prizes from the event were rolled mid last week. The second half of this week has been following up on those and pondering the Risky raffles. Follow up will continue into next week as we work on finalizing things.

Assuming we feel website updates are mostly done, ideally prizes will be granted on site sometime this upcoming week, or early the following week. We'll continue to keep people updated if we think there will be further delays.

Moderator Changes

Recently Night-Class has stepped down from her role as a moderator in the group to refocus on other things happening in her life. We've been lucky to have her volunteering on our team since 2018! She's helped the group in many areas during this time, but probably most noticeably in the prompt space. While we'll miss her in our moderator spaces, she's mentioned she won't be too far. We will still see her participating in the group as a member. Hopefully she'll continue to share what mischief her cats are up to and tasty treats she's cooking in life with us. ^^ Thank you again Night for your years of volunteering!

We are still in the process of reviewing moderator applications. The process has started and will likely be ongoing throughout this month, possibly into the new year depending on how things go.

On the Horizon

December has likely been pretty quiet on the community-facing side. On the moderator side though, what some of us were aiming to be a quieter month has still been relatively busy. When the website reopens up we'll likely be very busy sending out feedback we've drafted while the site has been down for maintenance. With that said, when the holidays roll around there will be a lull and response times may be a bit slower if they occur at all.

Since we do not intend to have any deadlines fall during the last week of December or early next year, the group moderator staff will have a 2 week break period from December 24th, 2021 to January 8th, 2022. Similar to last Spring's modcation, this just means staff will be following up at their own pace or not at all during that time frame. Character transfers and trades will likely be the only thing guaranteed to be checked once a week during that time. We'll figure out a day when the site is back up to let people know, but expect other areas to be pretty quiet. You may see moderators in group discord channels during this time just casually chatting, but we'll kindly ask for group members to not ask how long things will take to get done in that time window.

We realize it has already been about 2 weeks since the site slowed down for maintenance reasons, but given it hasn't really slowed down at all on the moderator side, the team needs a break. Our work seldom stops unless we explicitly enforce a break, or life happenings force us to take one. So hopefully setting aside a two-week period will give us that breathing room.

Thank you for your patience, understanding, and support this month. There's always more things we want to do than we can possibly cram in the time we have so it means a lot! January may still be on the quieter side once we come back as well, as we sift through what we want to accomplish in the new year.

Hi everyone!

We've been communicating with our website developer and we are planning on having website updates implemented early December, specifically some time on December 4th (PST time). The website code updates in theory should not take long. However, since there will be quite a few updates coming, we'll need some time to configure any new features on the site and make sure our documentation follows alongside the update.

Assuming that everything goes smoothly, we're hoping that the configuration and guideline updates will be completed quickly. We don't want to promise an exact number of days that the site will be in sort of a maintenance-mode state at this point in time, but we'll be planning accordingly. We're aiming for a pretty quiet month in December in general. We hope the most exciting thing in December ends up being the website updates. Hopefully, that will also give the team some time to rest and time to look over new moderator applications afterwards.

With these updates to the site, we want to take some extra measures to ensure that there isn't anything submitted too close to when the code changes are implemented. We'll be closing a lot of the site's features a few days before the 4th. Please see the timeline below for what systems will be closing, so that you can plan any submissions in advance! We have full intent to re-open everything once we're sure updates are complete, configured, and guides are updated as needed. We'll also be addressing what will happen relative to December's prompt lower down in this new post!

December Website Update Timeline

• December 1st (at 11:59pm PST): New design approval submissions, new claim submissions, and new prompt/act submissions will close.
  • We ask that any existing design approvals not be edited/re-submitted after this date until we publicly confirm that site updates are done!
  • The moderator team will still be doing design approvals and prompt/act/claim reviews up until 11:59pm PST on December 3rd. If you receive feedback on an existing design approval, please do not resubmit that design to the queue or update anything.
  • We cannot guarantee feedback by this date, as this is mostly just to let people know if you have not heard from us on the 3rd or earlier, your feedback will be sent after site updates are complete!
• December 2nd (at 11:59pm PST): Design transfers/trades soft-close on the website.
  
  • We cannot hard-close design transfers/trades. However, we're going to request that no one submits any design transfers/trades after this time until site updates are done!
  • Any design transfers/trades submitted before this time will be reviewed and approved on December 3rd PST time.
• December 3rd: As stated above, December 3rd is going to be sort of a buffer day to give Moderators time to push anything through that they can before we halt to give some breathing room for updates coming on the 4th.
• December 4th: The site code updates will be moved to the live site and the site will go into maintenance-mode. We're reserving this day entirely so that code can be moved up at any time. There will be no precise set time when the site is put into maintenance mode.
  • While the site is in maintenance-mode, it will largely be inaccessible to the general public. Moderators will be able to login and configure aspects of the site as needed.
  • This time will also be spent resolving any bugs that might have cropped up during testing but might appear in the live site environment.
• December 5th-12th: We're going to loosely say this is sort of a tentative maintenance period. We're not sure how long configuration will take on the moderator side. We may re-open well before the 12th. We'll look into doing some sort of update on how things are going during this week.
  • If we come across a bug or concern, we'll seek help from our website developer. For the most part, we expect this time will have less to do with code and more to do with making sure if something has changed, documentation and settings are right.

We're predicting that site updates will go smoothly. On the odd chance updates don't go smoothly, we want as little movement as possible on the site and few to no changes. That way if we have to rollback any data, any impact will be minimal and well past when anything new was submitted. That's what the buffer day is for!

December's Prompt

December's prompt will go live when the website updates are done and the website is once again accessible to the general public. We will end December's prompt a month later from the date it opens.

The same will go for Monthly Regular prompts for December. If you want to get started on Monthly Regular prompts while the site is undergoing maintenance, go for it! You just won't be able to submit those prompts until the site is accessible again.

Monthly Regular prompts will end at the same time the regular prompt for December does, but you will see some overlap with January. This means we'll probably have at least a week where if we see a MR-001 or MR-002 prompt come in two times, the first MR-001 prompt will be assumed to be for December and the other M-001 prompt will be assumed to be for January. We'll be very transparent about prompt deadlines once December's prompt is able to go live!

The Event Raffles

We'll be rolling raffles on the 5th as planned, and we'll be following up with event prize winners around then too. Any masterlist grants or updates for the prizes will need to wait until after site updates are done! We hope everyone understands. While this update should not impede prizes being drawn, the website update will likely impact those prizes being granted to accounts and elnin on site. Everything else for the event aside from the raffles should, for the most part, be wrapped up by the 1st of December if not earlier.

Hello Berry-Bazaar community members!

We are looking for a few new moderators to join our team. If you have interest in volunteering your time and contributing a bit more to the Berry-Bazaar community please continue reading! If you are not interested at all in this sort of thing, then carry on and just expect to see a few new faces on our moderator team in the future.

Who we're looking for:

1. Active community members or members who want to play a more active role in the group's normal processes/activities. Events do happen from time to time but they generally sit second seat to the stuff we would like to have open or happening regularly.
   
   
2. Team players who would be comfortable working with our current moderator team. Communication is important for a lot of what we do, due to the team effort nature of how we problem-solve.
   
   
3. Patience. Those familiar with the group should be aware we are not a super fast-paced group. We try not to overwhelm our community members or moderators. At times on the moderator side it calls for it, but generally we spend a lot of time considering feedback when implementing or modifying existing group systems/activities. It is not a quick process and so we definitely need moderators who can patiently bear with us as we work on setting things in motion.
   
   
4. Individuals that can keep moderator-only/behind-the-scenes information private. Moderators have the perk of knowing inklings of things we are planning or that will happen in the long-term future. We ask this information not be disclosed publicly until it is posted to the group, not even to close friends. A lot of what we work on is liable to change and even if something seems not liable to change we expect it to not become public knowledge. This is to avoid any unfair advantages to parties that we would account for if they were a moderator or foster false hopes/information if it changes. Moderators should not be pressured to give any behind-the-scenes information to non-moderators. We expect them to not disclose details so it is fair that they are not pressured to do so. We encourage fairness in how we approach moderators being involved in group activities given they have this knowledge (You may have noticed we like random number generators/RNG as it's often the fairest way we can let moderators participate without concerns of favoritism or unfair advantage). This is a courtesy to our fellow group members.
   
   
5. Individuals that have good communication skills and a generally positive attitude. We know everything is not always pomus and kittoms levels of positivity in the group but there isn't a single moderator role in our group that is not involved in communicating with community members! When possible, we want the group to be a positive space that others can enjoy in their off time, so we try to keep our communications with community members in line with that.

Position Details

This position/work is purely volunteer. Moderator rewards are occasionally granted, usually in the form of group items/mutations/slots for volunteer work done, but they are not promised or guaranteed. Please keep this in mind when applying that being a Berry-Bazaar moderator is not a paid position, and as such, moderator compensation is not what the team works for or expects on a regular basis.

We acknowledge there are perks to being a mod. However, the community and group's welfare should always be the highest priority when acting as a mod, above self interests. It's a lot of fun getting to meet new people and contributing ideas to how the group runs. Generally, this also means moderators will know about group plans in advance and other details that should not be community knowledge until solidified.

While the community is a high priority, please know we also work hard to make sure the moderator team is a safe space. The mental health of our moderators is a priority when we organize and plan how the group runs events among other things. We are 100% respectful if a mod wishes to or needs to step down to take care of themselves. This is volunteer work so it should be enjoyable. If there are things that come up that would put a potential strain on moderators owing to a long term absence, please notify us in advance. We understand some things aren’t planned and happen suddenly, but communication is key and working together to make sure we all have the necessary support is essential.

At the end of the day moderators are group members too, and while we contribute a service for the group that goes beyond the average community member, the decisions we make impact everyone, including ourselves. Moderators are also expected to understand that community interactions are relative to the group and often we're speaking on behalf of the group in ways that are transparent across the whole team. This means a lot of the feedback we're receiving and giving is in no way personal, so we're really working through things as a community and internal team.

As stated in a prior news post, compared to the last time we hired, this opening we'll be hiring for more specific positions to build upon our existing internal teams. While most mods currently are capable of wearing multiple hats, we have mods that specialize/focus on certain areas more than others.

We'll be focusing on the following three roles:

• Design Approvals
  
  • This role will focus primarily on any and all design approvals that run through our group. This includes art updates, design edits, MYOs, elnin rank ups, kittom growths, and guest artist design approvals (including adult and kittom designs). \o/
  • We are especially seeking some folks that feel confident with their math skills and the group's pricing resources for EC/SC group currencies! While you're not required to know the ins and outs of design updates within the group, it will help you if you do.
• Prompt/Quest Approvals
  • This role will focus primarily on art and text-based submissions for prompts and questing claims through our group. If you're passionate about seeing and hearing more about other group members' elnins, and cross-checking guidelines for drawn and written content through the group, then this may be the role for you! ^^
  • While not largely math-based, this role will still require knowledge of prompt and quest requirements, and making sure proper currency grants are awarded! So knowledge of how prompts and questing works is appreciated.
• Discord
  • This role will focus only on discord moderation! Tasks will include redirecting users to proper channels, redirecting or halting inappropriate conversations, and making sure discord rules are being followed in general. Users in this role will forward any recurring concerns to the overall larger moderator team. (ie. If users are frequently having problems finding certain channels, rules, or resources that discord mods are helping redirect them to and so on, the larger team will implement changes accordingly. If discord rules are repeatedly being broken with soft warnings in discord, it will be the larger moderator team that assesses and sends out applicable warnings and takes further action when needed.)
  • Unlike other roles that may have more discussion about group workflows and processes as they relate to one another, discord mods will largely not be a part of those aspects of moderation and any roles granted will mostly be aesthetic if outside of discord.

New mods ideally will fall respectively under those existing specialized areas with less bleed across roles as time goes on. Communication between teams and mods will still be required, as our tasks often impact other mods in some way. The group is very interconnected. ^^b

Additional info to keep in mind

• Application Window: [11/12/21 at 12:00am PST] - [12/01/21 at 11:59pm PST]
  
  
• Follow up: We will be following up either in December or early January, after the application window closes or during if we have more questions. If we do not reach out to you this time, please don't be discouraged. We tend to like to grow our team slowly so we have time to work with the moderators we bring on board.
  
  
• Application Edits: You will be able to edit your application at any time during the submission window by clicking on the link above/returning to the form page. Once the window closes, application edits will also be closed, so please be sure you include all information you feel is important before the deadline!
  
  
• Probationary Period: [3-6 months] Getting situated working with a team is a process. There are slow periods and faster periods. Should there be any major problems we see causing strain between current moderators and new moderators, we will let you know if something is not working out. We do not want a toxic volunteer workspace for anyone. Working out any confusion or miscommunications will always be done first, but as a last resort we're making this probationary period known so it's clear we are paying attention to the comfort of new and old mods alike.

Application Forms

If you are interested in applying for a specific role, please fill out the respective application form below. You may apply for different roles by filling out all or some of the forms, but you will be hired for one position/role within our team. We are using a google forms approach to give us a little more organization and wiggle room with how we handle applications. Thank you. ^^b

• Apply to be a Design Approvals Moderator here
  
  
• Apply to be a Prompt/Quest Approvals Moderator here
  
  
• Apply to be a Discord Moderator here

If you have any questions about this process feel free to ask them in the #questions channel in our discord, or submit a ticket to the "Community" ticket type on the WoE site. Thank you for your interest and time! We look forward to another fun year working with and for the Berry-Bazaar community. <3

Hello everyone! We're back with more news~!

Adoptable TOS & Community Etiquette Updates

Starting with some important things!

The following two pages will have slight updates: Adoptables Terms of Service and Community Guidelines

Specifically on "Adoptables Terms of Service", a small section is being added that addresses expectations the group has relative to distancing group adopts from characters from franchises and original works that are not your own. We understand there may be a lot of love for fan characters, however we want to make sure that a respectful distance is kept towards material/characters that in no way belong to our group and could have repercussions on the group.

Under the General section we will be adding:
"Do not directly copy characters from existing franchises or original works that are not your own. While you may use character names or hairstyles for inspiration, please make sure they are not a 1:1 copy, and should not be treated as that specific character itself. Any outfits or props used should be distanced from the specific character themselves and exact replicas may not be used (ex. Do not use the tri-force as a crown, pokemon cards as a prop, etc.)"

On the "Community Guidelines" page, we'll be amending how we reach out to users when we need to give warnings. While we don't have to give out warnings frequently, we realize that some emails used for our site run the risk of being throwaway emails. With that in mind we'll be updating our methods of contact to include that when a warning needs to be given, we will be sending that warning via email and via modberry note if a dA account is available.

This isn't a guarantee folks will get the warning if they do not check their email or dA account but we felt going through both would possibly help at least double the chances someone will get an important message if needed. (Note: We will be looking into a way of giving warnings on site, but right now we're focusing just on site updates we've already put forward towards our website developer.)

Website Updates

At the moment website updates are still being worked on. Nothing has been implemented on the website yet. Things are still in progress. We will not be requesting any additional/new features outside of what we've already put forward towards our website developer until the current planned updates are complete.

When updates are ready to be implemented on the site, we'll let the community know in advance and announce a time window when we will need to restrict access to the site. During that time the site will be largely inaccessible to the general user base but it will give us the opportunity to configure things that have been updated and do any necessary correspondence with our website developer if we find something that needs fixing.

Palu'au Party Pandemonium Event

This fall's event is now live! You can find the event journal here: Palu'au Party Pandemonium Masterpost

If approvals have been lagging a bit behind or the mod team has seemed a bit slow lately just know the event was the likely culprit for delays. We've been pretty busy setting up for this event. With that in mind, expect approvals and other areas of the group to still likely be a little on the slower side throughout November as the event runs! We're very excited to host this one. ^^b

Notables:

• This event will include some interesting adult elnin sales
• A larger flatsale raffle of kittoms will occur towards the event's end
• There will be a free kittom raffle later on after all event sales are done
• Similar to our Masquerade Mystery 2019 plot, this event will have a side plot activity with puzzles and prizes

We hope you enjoy this event and hope that there's a little something for everyone. We try to mix it up activity-wise in the group knowing that not everyone will like every single aspect of a given event and that's ok! If one aspect of an event or group activity does not appeal to you, then maybe the next one will. With that in mind though, please keep any commentary or feedback on the event positive and constructive. Feel free to participate in those that you're interested in!

If you have feedback that is not constructive ("I can't afford any of the designs." or "I'm not good at doing puzzles.", etc.) those sentiments are best shared privately outside of group channels. A lot of time goes into planning and hosting events and we want to try to focus on the positives.

Username Changes

We've been pondering this for a bit. At this time we're going to just start slow with this type of allowance. Similar to other processes in the group, please give us time to make this change. If it doesn't occur within a week, you can poke in the discord #questions channel with a link to your ticket.

We know this has been highly requested. We're making a note now though that this is a manual process that a moderator will have to do. We know it may be tempting to ask why this is not more automated. The answer is that not all of our organizational workflows are contained within the WoE site.

This being done manually ensures we're aware of when these changes are happening so our records elsewhere and communication chains with group members remain clear. If we have an internal note pinned or stuck somewhere that says to follow up with someone (or that someone is vouching for another member) but then their name changes before we follow up, it can be a real confusion point. So for now this is what we're going with!

Currently we will be allowing users to change their username 1 time in a 12 month period. This means if you request a username change in October 2021, then we would not see another request for a username change until October 2022. We may update the frequency of this allowance later on but for now this is where we're starting.

To ask for a username change, please submit a ticket under the "Website" ticket type with the following form:

• Current WoE username:
• New WoE username:

If you would like your dA alias cleared, we'll use a similar scheme of 1 time in a 12 month period.

To ask for your dA alias to be cleared so you can connect a new dA account, please submit a ticket under the "Website" ticket type with the following form:

• Link to current dA account:
• Link to new dA account:

Hiring Additional Mods

We'll be looking to hire new mods soon. Expect to see a separate news post for this specifically as it's a lot to cover in this news post. Mostly though we just wanted to pre-emptively say we're heading in this direction. Compared to the last time we hired, this next opening we'll be hiring for more specific positions to build upon our existing internal teams. While most mods currently are capable of wearing multiple hats, we currently have mods that specialize/focus on certain areas more than others.

New mods ideally will fall respectively under those existing specialized areas with less bleed across roles as time goes on. Communication between teams and mods will still be required, as our tasks often impact other mods in some way. The group is very interconnected. ^^b

Lore, Trait, and Guide Updates

It would be putting it lightly to say there's probably more than half a dozen trait guidelines being discussed back and forth. Some are taking a lot longer than others. We've been slowly tackling backlogged questions.

In that vein, some of the lore questions we've gotten, we grouped into an overarching lore page. This page has some older lore that we've transferred over after checking nothing had changed as well as some newer tidbits. We're likely to add to this page and probably break some things out into separate pages as we get more information but for now the bulk of it will be on one page.

See the new lore page: About Elnins and Eyre

Trait wise we've updated guidelines for:

• Phantom Step
• Colored Sclera
• Whiskers (specifically clarifying these are just thin cat whiskers/not anything fish-like or dragon-like).
• Descriptions for some of our types of elnin ears (specifically trying to clarify stacking a bit more).
• Added in the visual for horn glamours to the anima section for elnin anatomy (and confirmed this visual is accurate with current guidelines).

Questing-wise we've added a few more notable clarifying tidbits to our Questing FAQ section:

My act was soft-rejected! Do I have to have the changes completed within a specified time frame?

• No, you do not need to complete the changes within the specified time frame for acts! The edit period is a carry-over from prompts, which adhere to a stricter timeline, and the timer is unfortunately hard-coded for both prompts and acts. If you're unable to get the changes in before the edit period expires, simply re-submit the resonance claim with the updated links and you should be good to go!

If I submit art, do I need to include a written portion as well?

• While a written portion is not required, it can help provide context on what is happening, especially if the art doesn't clearly portray this in the act. If we're unsure of what's happening within the act, we may request that some context be provided via text (generally no more than 2-3 sentences), though you are also free to edit the art instead if preferred!

Due to the urgency of this update, we are notifying everyone cross platform. It has come to our attention that there is an account impersonating our group moderator account modberry on DA that is going around and contacting past bidders from auctions/sales in order to obtain their PayPal info.

We'd like to specify that if a bidder/winner should ever back out of a sale, we will never ask you for your PayPal email or send a reply through DA's chat function through modberry. We would first confirm your interest through DA notes, and then mention that the respective artist will contact you for payment info.

That said, please always make sure to DOUBLE-TRIPLE CHECK THAT THE CORRECT ACCOUNT IS MESSAGING YOU. Check the profile itself to ensure that it is the right account. If it is not the right account, we would recommend blocking and reporting them so that you don't get any further messages from them.

Hi everyone,

We're reaching out after some stress arose in discord from the flatsale last weekend.

Moving forward for flatsales:

1. If we allow GAs to choose to do flatsales in the future we will require users to type out or copy+paste the whole design name/no partials or typos. It's honestly the only way we can have a hard and fast rule about this where it's crystal clear to everyone without entirely banning GAs from a fcfs flatsale option.

People have a 1 hour preview period for flatsales currently and should read the entire post so outside of this formal announcement. Hopefully having better wording on the dA posts themselves will help us avoid concerns as well.

We will be revising the top of flatsale posts to state:

"When comments open, please include the full design name (listed in the description below) for the design you wish to claim in your comment. Typos, partial names, etc. will not count as a claim. We highly recommend copying and pasting design names when possible for claims."

Examples of acceptable claims if the design's name is "Bright Stars":

• "Bright Stars"
• "Claiming Bright Stars!"
• "Bright Stars please!"

Examples of claims that are not acceptable if the design's name is "Bright Stars":

• "Briht Stars"
• "Claiming Stars!"
• "Bright please!"
• "Stars!"

2. In the future if a user has any concerns about their own flatsale claim or other official sale comment, we ask that they send in a ticket on site and use the "Community" ticket type. Then in the #questions discord channel we ask they ping @Modberry and inform us that they have a time sensitive question/concern relative to the current flaffle and to let us know right away they've sent a ticket. This will bring a concern to our attention and we will correspond with the parties directly involved from there.

We understand that our community members can be very protective of one another and care a lot about their fellow group members. At times, though, actions like these while supporting some members can unintentionally harm others. Rapid fire commentary on things that may be undergoing further evaluation and communication applies a lot of stress and pressure on both the group members involved and the moderators working to resolve an issue. It creates sense of urgency to respond quickly that is not always the best, and we recognize that in this case, having everything happen so quickly did more harm than good. For this reason we're asking communications be left to directly involved parties.

It's important that we all recognize that these mistakes and incidents are isolated and take time to work through. We understand there are strong opinions that people want to share but posting those in the lounge and group discord are not the right places. If you want to support a fellow community member please let them know privately. If you're worried they have been wronged in some way privately suggest they submit a ticket and let them choose how they want to proceed.

If you have a concern about how moderator staff handle a situation you may DM Manaberry, as she is in charge of the staff and can express concerns to us anonymously if needed. We acknowledge yesterday our lounge became an uninviting place to other community members in the process of community members voicing their concerns. The lounge became a grounds for hostility, dispute, and inappropriate language. This is not acceptable. We believe there are better ways of addressing concerns than making it a public affair.

Moderators have made mistakes in the past. When approached about possible mistakes by those directly impacted or when we notice internally mistakes have been made, we make an effort to try to evaluate the concern, hold ourselves (and one another) accountable when appropriate, and find resolution. Perhaps it's because we usually handle accountability and group concerns privately but there seems to be some misunderstanding that moderators will just let mistakes happen without concern for users involved. This is absolutely not the case. Please give us some good faith when mistakes happen. We are not unfeeling, lacking empathy, or unsympathetic when these types of ordeals happen.

Thank you for your patience with us on this but we really do not want this to become a common occurrence. We never intend to have mistakes and misunderstandings crop up but when they do we try to do our best in a bad situation and reach out to individuals privately to address concerns.

Sincerely,

The Modberry Team