Here in the UK, there has for several years been active pushing of the 'it's okay to talk about mental health issues' message. So yes, I certainly hope that if a newbie had a meltdown of that kind, the PPC would be understanding (once we understood what was going on).

I feel like your 'tenure' comment is portraying things kind of backwards. What you seem to be talking about in this example is not having enough trust in newbies, rather than too much in oldbies. Otherwise we'd have to read it as saying you think you /should/ have been banned, which would be a bit silly...

hS

But it's not.

Fortunately for all of us, we've gotten to see more of you on your good days than on your bad ones, so we know that's the exception, not the rule.

Making a good impression to start with is important. So is reaffirming it over and over again over the weeks, or months, or years. If you build up enough good interactions to outweigh the bad ones by a wide enough margin, then yes, people are going to be more likely to forgive the mistakes. That's just social math. It's a ratio you actively maintain through behavior, though, not a stamp that you get when you've hung around a certain number of years.

It wouldn't be fair to throw out all the good interactions we've had with a person when considering whether we want them around or not. That would be completely arbitrary and basically make good behavior meaningless. That's not a world I want to live in.

~Neshomeh

The PPC Wiki!

I kid—Iximaz already pointed the wiki out, and I know it's not the be-all, end-all of information. It is impersonal, too. Not the same as having a live person to talk to. I did try to write the main page with newcomers in mind, though, so I'd love any feedback about how well it introduces the PPC and various information. (And, er, do people even look at the main page?) I think it does address where to find more missions and other stories, at least.

As for a who's who, that's harder. There are rather a lot of us, with people coming (yay!) and going (boo!) somewhat frequently. You may encounter some names you recognize in the various FAQs, but many of the people who worked on those have since moved on. You can look up some of us on the wiki, but that will only get you so far, since not all of us have devoted a lot effort to building a user page. (Which is fine! Our home is here, not there.)

I guess the only real solution is for everyone to individually introduce themself a little bit when welcoming a newbie—just a little "hi, I'm Soandso, I write Agents Thus and Such" with maybe a link to your user page, or website, or story hub, or whatever.

Not everybody welcomes every newbie, though. There is no perfect system, I fear.

~Neshomeh

P.S. Hi, I'm Neshomeh. I'm a Permission Giver here. Here's my user page, and here's my PPC website. {= )

You can check out the page on the Wiki here. It's been around for a while but it's never really taken off, which makes me sad.

As for the 'more examples of stories', there's always the Other Prominent Agents tab on the Wiki as well.

Honestly, I think the reason why people don't explain much to newcomers in the PPC is because, well, newbies tend to not stick around. Confession time: I have a welcome speech that I copy and paste (and sometimes slightly alter depending on what the newcomer says they've already read). Going to the trouble of writing out a creative hello just gets discouraging when a newbie vanishes into the internet, never to be seen again. And if a newbie has questions, well, that's what the Wiki is for.