Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Something for the "Did you know?..." box

I know they're a bunch of random facts and other cute good to know pieces, but I was thinking that it would be something incredibly useful for the community too to include other suggestions such as

Have you had a glass of water today? Hydration is really important for the creative brain!

When was the last time you had something to eat? Maybe it's time to grab a bite to eat. Food for the stomach is food for the brain!

Other kinds of happy incentives like this could be something really helpful to the users of the website. I got this idea just as I saw the box popping up to me my health was looking low.

Other random tidbits could be something along the lines of;

Let's do some stretching together! Let's touch your toes!

72% Of people have creative insights in the shower.

Trying new things makes you more creative. What's something new you've tried today. (Offer up a suggestion.)

I just think adding in some more of these random factoids and positive reminders could be useful for the community.

Umm can you cut the one about food? I think everyone trying to lose weight, myself included would rather not see that one.

The others ones are nice though!

The suggestion is about remembering to eat.
It's a healthy reminder for anyone who forgets to eat due to stress, depression, anxiety, or even forgetfulness.

I'm sorry that you feel offended, but I don't feel this is insulting or offensive towards anyone trying to lose weight. Why do you feel that it might be so?

Ah man I'd love to see more DYKs! Maybe random nerdy trivia would be awesome? We have a trivia page that DYK could pull some data out of maybe: http://www.rprepository.com/community/trivia.php

Regarding the food one, and also the touch your toes one, I'm on the fence? They're not bad, but I can also see how they can make people feel bad. I'm currently unable to sit without my nerves being on fire due to my disability playing up awfully, touching my toes is not in it for me. It can make an already bad day worse when the widget gets hyped up about something I physically can't do and reminds me of my limitations, which can feel awful. And when my bloodsugar is high, the last thing I need is a reminder for food while I'm stuck waiting 1-2 hours for my insulin to kick in, even if it's definitely time to eat. At the same time, they are inherently innocent statements and about self-care, and I certainly don't want to rob the rest of the community of some awesome DYKs that can help improve their quality of life through self-care actions just because they're inconvenient or don't work for me.

So if we can find DYK statements and thoughts that can balance the comfort of the less abled members and the usefulness to the whole of the site, that would be perfect. Maybe they could be rephrased to "When did you last have a healthy snack?" (healthy is always good and fits in virtually any diet, and what healthy looks like differs per person and diet plan, so we're including everyone) and "Let's get up and dance, or dance in your chair!" (because dancing in your chair can look like anything if you can't physically get up and move, so we're hopefully including everyone there too).

Just putting this out there: No one knows each and every role player's real life. So it's hard to not say something that a person might find offensive.

We don't know who on this site has disabilities, we don't know who is losing weight, we don't know hardly any personal stuff of a lot of people here on this site.

All it is is suggestions, that my friend PrettySir is offering. He isn't meaning, or attempting, to make a person feel bad. That isn't his intention.

I didn't mean that it was offensive or insulting because it wasn't. It's just that my biggest problem is that I like food too much and have to try to keep myself from over snacking. One of the things I try to do is distract myself so I don't think about food so a reminder to get a snack would be kind of detrimental to that strategy.

Perhaps we could have an option to select which did you knows can show up? That way I could just filter out the food one and those that want it could still have it.

-Petitions Sanne to add to the did you know box that she is the cutest gal in all of RPR.

I can definitely support the intent behind this suggestion. The positive reminders have helped me out before.

Perhaps some more RP-based reassurances could be useful too if they don't exist already eg. Dealing with drama plus a link to related help page; If your partner goes silent, try asking if they're doing okay; There's plenty RPers out there so keep trying, etc

Is there one about the smalltalk thread? A link there could help encourage newbies to mingle.

I agree! I know it wasn't said out of malice, and I hope my post didn't read as if I implied that. Just sharing my point of view how seemingly innocent statements can make someone's day worse instead of better, as a person who struggles with a thing or two myself, which would be a shame because DYK is absolutely meant to make people smile.

Sometimes things can be rephrased in such a way they are more inclusive while keeping the spirit of the message intact. I think if we can do that, all of the things suggested so far work wonderfully!

@rat: I looooove those ideas! I think we have some references to the forums but I can't remember which ones specifically.

One question: do we already have a 'dyk' dongle on the site somewhere and I've just been missing it, or is this a new idea? (If it already exists now I'm wracking my brain wondering how in the world I haven't noticed it, haha!)

Check the right-hand sidebar of the Home/Notifications page.

Hmm... Ah! It's at nearly the very bottom of the mobile front page! Gotcha!

This seems like a nice suggestion. It would be neat to have the occasional interesting trivia or inspiring quote, too. I think I'd pay attention to the occasional reminder to upgrade if that message was intermixed with random cool/nice messages, lol.

You are alright. I at first was a little worried, but when I kept reading your post I saw the reasoning for it. So my post in general, was just as a statement to all about my friend not intending to upset anyone. Sometimes people end up flying off the handlebar, so I just wanted to put out there in general to people, as to try and help keep things calm, that my friend had no ill intentions.

I really love this topic. A whole lot of these can definitely go straight into the did you know rotation -- others I will rephrase a bit or expand on.

Another thing I'm slowly working on is context did you knows, for example, occasional reminders about how to use the OOC parentheses showing up on in character boards, or information about how to archive or organize PMs appearing in the inbox. Just suggestions at the moment and place that a person is most likely to need them.

But those are less about general self care and more about how to use the RPR to its fullest extent.

I'm personally more interested in site-based DYKs! I LOVE random site statistics also. How many characters are marked as demiboys? How many characters have 10 or more widgets on their profile? What percentage of players and groups are epic? How many characters use the Runelore templates? How many characters were created in this month in previous years?

More specific ideas--and to be fair, some of these probably already exist, DERP.

- (during art trade signups) RPR hosts two annual art trades, one in summer and one in winter. Signups are currently open for the ____ one! (thread link here)
- (in the month before Epic Week) Epic Week is coming up! Every year we've had amazing, thrilling, and exciting celebrations! (links to news posts, contests, whatever)
- It's been a while since you've done anything in ____ (some group you made). Why don't you consider giving it a kickstart?
- New players are _% more likely to stick around if they get introduced. (Is this true? Lol) You can earn cool swag for your profile by introducing new players! (link to intro forums, images of the celtic knot swag)

You could even do an Epic Week DYK flavortext contest

We did this a full six years ago, holy crap. https://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=461

Yessss I'd love to see more activity on RPR-hosted groups! I'd love to see some kind of month-long nano-like contest where people spruce up or dive into making a group that they've wanted to get running, but that's for another time I guess!

I REMEMBER THAT NOW. Why didn't I participate!?!?

I'm excited to see this suggestion getting so much approval! I had a few more ideas come to mind for the "Did you know..." box while I was away today.


Remember that conflict happens in our lives, but there are ways to do our best to prevent drama! Check out the Preventing & Dealing with Drama help article!

Not sure what emoticons are on the site? This Emoticonspage is really useful!

Need a little creative advice on building your character profile? Check this character creation page out.

Exercise enhances your creative abilities! Dance in your chair, or do a little cardio if you're feeling a little too drained of your creative juices.

Blue is a colour that enhances your creativity. I spy something blue! What is it near you?

A quick nap here and there greatly enhances individuals’ ability to problem solve. Creativity is “just connecting things,” and sleep acts as a bridge to bring together a myriad of ideas.

Need some help improving your BBCode skills? Check out this neat BBCode article on how to style your text!

These are just what I came up with through out the day, but there are tons more ways to help improve the quality of use to this website and that quality of that use for other users.

We could even include quick tidbits on how to organize your inbox with the +Manage Folders feature. Someone might not really understand what this could really be used for!

Another one to point out would be the advanced search features for refining someones searches for groups, characters, and other special features.

I'd also love to see one that people could be shown the link to where Kim keeps her "work in progress" page that shows what Kim has planned for the site and what people could do to comment and show their interest on those features.


I think that's more than enough from me, I'm curious to see if there's anyone else with some more ideas for this feature!

I'm working on implementing a lot of stuff from this thread today!

Unfortunately, that section is defunct. I've been removing all links to that part of the site for some time now, as I was unable to keep it up to date and found that I was typically about a year behind when it came to updating it, making it very unreliable.