Hello PAers.
Take a look at your index, scroll down approximately a quarter of the way, and you'll see a forum called classes. A particularly inactive forum called classes. Now, this is causing a few problems on the site, everything may seem hunky dory, but we admins have decided to bring about a new policy in regards to the classes, in order to make them a little more active.
So, at the moment we have 115 accepted students, as of the 23/4/2011. What we don't have is 115 students posting in Hogwarts, and at classes, nothing near that number, and while we do allow a bit of room for inactive people, people who've left without letting us know, however I'd expect that there's at least 80 or so of those students who are able to be posting in their classes, give or take.
Interesting thing though, most of theses students are active, and they are logging on regularly, they're just not attending the school, it's odd, students who don't attend school.
So, we're introducing a new policy in regards to student attendance, we're leaving the number of classes how they are, minimum 2 for basic, and minimum 2 or 1 class and an apprenticeship for NEWTs.
As we can all see, a great deal of you have several characters, not everyone, but a lot of our current members are continuing to churn out new characters at a regular rate, most of the time citing boredom as their reason, or some new plot that they've come up with, instead we now aim at making better characters, instead of a rabbit-breeding program full of them, ways to find time to attend classes and post in Hogwarts can include simply cutting back on your unnecessary characters, or note sending your 11 year old onto the streets of London, or into a forest.
The policy itself is a simple one. From here on in teachers will be cross-checking who attends their classes with who is in the class group, notifying the admins of any variations in this. If you fail to attend three classes (From any subject) in a semester we will then take actions to try and bolster the activity in the school, including
1) Not accepting any new characters from you
2) Limiting that student account to posting only in Hogwarts and Hogsmeade (Only till you start attending classes again)
3) and possibly limiting the movements of other characters, should you continue to not attend the classes.
While this may seem like we're trying to punish you, this is all in an aim to bring the site up to scratch, after the need to decide where the site was heading became a very apparent one (In order to create plots and further develop the site), we had a great many arguments (Yes, I hate to call them that, but in all honesty we're all very opinionated on the team) before we decided that both aspects are incredibly important in the Harry Potter universe, both Graduate goings on, and the workings of the school, and as they currently lie, the school is in dire need of a kick up the proverbial rear.
We see this need because we're having trouble meeting the wants of our member base, many of you are saying very similar things, the core of which is that the school is not involved as much in plots, and in development as it should be, and that it's just become the same thing over and over again.
We then face a problem in that we can't really do anything plot and development-wise because there's nothing to work with in the member base. It may seem like a bit of a whine on our end, but I'm just being honest with you, we need something to work with just as much as you do, without any active participation coming from the members, we can't work any magic on the admin side of things. In essence it's the give and take problem, in order for you to be able to do things, we need to do things.
And I know, in fact I'm almost 100% certain that we're going to be accused of telling you what to do, and that we're just trying to make this into a private playground, but this is less about learning in classes, which is boring, but more about having the RP experience of learning it, the thrill of learning a patronus that 1st year shouldn't know (But you all seem to somehow... how odd) and the horror of melting through the bottom of your cauldron, and watching the class' shoes erupt as everyone's feet turn into watermelons. We know that you know what Expelliarmus is, and what a mandrake does, but you shouldn't deny your character, and other people's characters (By not giving them anyone to RP with) the experience, for it is truly and utterly rewarding.
However to make things fair, everything above will be applying to the admins too, so we're all on an even playing field here, and if it was an absolutely terrible sort of punishment to you, we wouldn't do it to ourselves
So it can't be too bad.
If you're at a loss for how to RP in classes, and think that it's just walk into the classes, be wrong once then pick it up and spend the rest of the class practicing it, I think you're wrong, and I think you should look
here (Thank you Selwyn) to see how to do it, I know that when I read through that it was telling me things I already knew to do, but reminded me to actually do it! If you feel that it's the teacher's fault that the class isn't interesting, don't be afraid to send them a PM letting them know, they're all mature enough to take it constructively and take on any criticism, and work on it, I'm sure. So please, look at your class threads and don't see them as a chore, see them as just another bit of fun that you can have with your friends, or another place that you can make friends. We have a full staff of teachers, they're all just waiting for you to attend their classes!
Yours not-dictatorialy,
The Admin TeamP.S. You're all being given clean slates. Many of you have not been attending your classes, we know that, but from here on in, any classes created after this day will be reported to the admins, and any variance will be brought to our attention. Also, you're also being given a chance to drop any subjects, or pick any up, so if you'll head over to the claims section and reply to the new class topic with anything you want changed, you're welcome to do so.
by 
