The first DWRP survey back in July 2016 was all about what players look for in DWRP games. This time around I'd like to research memes and PSLs. I've drafted some questions, take a look at the summary linked above for details.

Your thoughts welcome! Depending on the feedback I get, I hope to have the survey ready to go this weekend.

One other thing I would really love to get help with: estimating the DWRP population. I had a go last time, but I had a big error margin because I only counted player numbers in a small number of games.

To get a better estimate of the DWRP population, I would need a much larger sample size of game populations. Basically, I'm looking for volunteers to help count the number of players in as many DWRP games as possible! Let me know if you'd like to help out.

It's tricky 'cause I know I definitely go through periods of heavier meme and PSLing between feeling planted in/commmited to active games

So it's very inconsistent/casual pickup play

Largely dependant on having the spare space to fill

o/ I volunteer to count the players at the games I'm in (Eluvio, Eudio, and Knights of Legend)

I love this census taking stuff

objectpermanence: Thanks, that would be great!

I'm a list mod at Eudio so that ought to make it easier

How will you correct for players who are in multiple games? You're going to get an exaggerated sense of numbers because many people play in more than one game.

I'd suggest having a question for location/where rpers are from, because using the ip as location can give you incorrect results

jadefishes: I addressed that by using the survey results which told me what percentage of players are in multiple games. You can see my calculations for the first estimation in the first survey results.

a lot of people use stuff like zenmate to be able to access media that isnt available in their country

ooh exciting!

Cool.

and you can catch people out of their country by the time the survey goes up, or expats working abroad, etc

(sorry for slowness, Im on mobile)

this is great, i somehow missed the survey the first time around and i was acutally just thinking about rp demographics lately!

I don't remember off-hand right now, but was there a thing about how many people are ESL last time? that could be interesting

ihasarobot: That's a good point, I didn't ask about location last time but the IP data said that 70% of respondents were based in the USA.

because even people who live outside an English speaking country might not be ESL, so it's not like that aligns perfectly

That seems realistic to me, but it might be interesting to compare with how people actually answer.

time zones would also be an interesting thing to lay out and again I don't remember off-hand whether that was part of the last survey

i think an ESL question would be gr8

reineke: There wasn't anything about ESL last time, no! Timezones could be at least partly covered by location, though obviously many countries straddle several timezones.

maybe just a general 'what's your first language/s' thing?

u r cute
i wanted to do the first one but im not in any games. excited to do it this time!

and yeah, I thought it might also be interesting to see timezones laid out exactly seperate from countries, especially since timezones are a huge factor when it comes to RP

Yep, I remember you mentioning that! I'm just very curious about those 30% :'D

also I agree with making a "what's your first language" question, that might be better than asking if a person is ESL

there is a document/spreadsheet for counting the number of players in DWRP games? How would you factor in short-term games like murdergames?

mutanthairything: I plan to use the list of games from dwrpmasterlist as my sample. There is a spreadsheet linked from that post which includes a column for player numbers, but it's very incomplete and approximate at the moment. It would be great to fill it in more accurately.

thanks so much for setting this up!!

i think a more specific way to factor in short-term murdergame kind of things would be good because like, i've spent a while out of games entirely except for short-term murdergames and rping very little in between the end of one and the start of the next and i know that's true of some of my friends list too

and they don't always make it on the masterlist because they aren't multi-round or because apps and stuff happen over a period of like 2 weeks and then close

nidorina: There appears to be one short-term game on the masterlist right now. If there are others missing that you'd like to include, I'd be very happy to take volunteers to count them!

i'm not sure i can volunteer for counting because my schedule's kind of iffy so what'd be the most efficient way to make sure they're reported? i know of two current ones offhand that don't qualify for the masterlist because apps are closed

do you want me to just link 'em here or

nidorina: Sure. Are they on the game directory spreadsheet?

doesn't look like it! i'd thought that was just for open games too kflhfgf

but there's parasomnia, which started a little while ago, and robowest, which starts officially next week

Noted! If they can't be added to the spreadsheet that's fine, I can ask a volunteer to ping me directly, assuming that I get enough volunteers.

thanks so much for your work on this!!!

Something else to look at might be non-game places that don't really fall under the 'meme' banner, like dear_mun / dear_player and dressingrooms if any dressingrooms still exist

could first language have a "multiple" option with a type in box? I'm native bilingual and I expect I'm not the only one

I'm willing to help out in the survey as well if necessary - I'm in multiple games right now (Empatheias, Lost Raiders, Lagunbiru) but also do a lot of PSL/memes.

Thanks guys for your feedback so far, it's all really helpful! I am going to limit the main focus of the survey to memes and PSLs, as they are the two most popular forms of RP other than games. But I'll take all suggestions into account.

pohutukaryl: definitely agreeing with a type in box! or maybe one of those drop down thingies with a bunch of options

rpresearch: for those of us counting player #s do you just want us to fill out the spreadsheet with the accurate count? or PM you the count? or what

objectpermanence: At the moment I'm thinking both would make most sense, but don't worry about that yet! I'll contact you separately to work that out.

o7

I'm interested in helping with counting players in that case, thanks!

mutanthairything: Great, thank you!

If I were to include a question about how people got into DWRP, what options do you think should be included?

I personally migrated straight from Livejournal, so I'll admit I don't know very much about how else people might find out about DWRP and move here!

Jumping from other platforms should be included, but also have an option about hearing about it from friends, since that's how I got into DWRP and online RP pwrsonally

Yep, I've got a "heard about it from a friend" option!

since a lot of us are old farts that started rping in the wee days of LJRP, perhaps it would be a good idea to ask how we got into RP in the first place? personally I make no mental distinction between LJRP and DWRP anymore, seeing as practically every game is on dw these days, but it all started there right?

I'd consider using "journal RP" with a question like that-- LJRP and DWRP make sense as the same category, but if you just ask "how people started RPing", you're gonna get a lot of answers relating to tabletop or MMOs.

Unless that's the goal-- which it could be! Lotsa fun datasets here.

While that would be interesting to know, I think my goal with this question is to find out how people find DWRP specifically. There was a lot of talk after the last survey about how and whether DWRP can recruit new blood. How are people finding us?

I'd like to find out what percentage of DWRPers migrated straight from Livejournal like me, vs how many got here from other platforms or heard about it in some other way.

Journal RP is exactly what I was thinking of but couldn't find the right word. thank you!

It would be interesting to know, regarding new blood.

So the question isn't going to be about where people first started roleplaying. It's going to be about how they first got into roleplaying on Dreamwidth.

/nods. Makes logic! I still might consider the journal RP option-- or possibly two separate ones? (One about how they found the site, one about how they got into this type of RP.)

If you'd rather just focus on the website, that's obviously fine, but given the similarities, I'd assume that a lot of the ways people got into livejournal RP could also be used as vectors for recruiting people to DW.

seconding notglitching yep

If you just ask about DW, I suspect there'll be a large enough bulk of "migrated from LJ" answers that it'll limit the value as a recruiting tool--

while it's cool to know what percentage of current RPers were actually attracted to Dreamwidth as is, if a majority migrated... that's means we don't know how a majority of people became interested in this kind of RP to begin with.

Hmm, I see what you're saying. But I think it will be more relevant to see how people who didn't migrate from LJ found us, even if that is a small number, because that tells us how people are finding the site right now.

If you ask about how people originally got into RP at all, you're probably getting information that's several years old and maybe not as relevant.

Fair enough! If you wanted, you could do both-- even compare/contrast them to see if things have changed? But that might be getting overly complicated.

idk if having a "how did you originally get into journal rp" question and then a yes/no "did you migrate to dw from lj" question separately would be useful?

I migrated from LJ, but I initially got into journal RP via the fanfic writing community (and hadn't done any online RP before that), so that might be a useful option to have on the list, finding journal RP through fanfic communities. (Although that might be less common now that most of the fanfic has moved to other platforms.)

(Although that would also be interesting to know, if that pathway was more common when fanfic and RP were both prevalent on LJ, and less prevalent now that large swathes of the fanfic community are based on tumblr instead.)