If you want to write where only select participants can read a topic, there are always private messages on whichever site you're on! :) Otherwise, this feature has the potential to be misused, such as excluding Prefects and other members of staff from seeing topics, which means they can't keep an eye on things.

Bumping this thread back up! A sort function or folders like owls would be very useful, and a handy way to organise work threads, old topics, active topics, and ones you're following for the tea. It may also prove useful to Prefects to follow topics in their designated areas, and certainly to Management/ HM/ MoMs who are in charge of many different threads for work on top of their own topics!

I would certainly agree that realism is something to be considerate about, but a certain amount of this should be common sense. Some things in lore are already known to be obsolete (e.g. Time-Turners) and other rare items are status objects, like Pensives and the Deluminator and the true Invisibility Cloak. Flying Carpets are illegal in Britain - and so on. While I can understand the frustration, I'm not sure that making a list in the guidelines will deter the people who need to from doing it - hence, the job of Prefects is to monitor topics where they can step in if needed, and the Backstory Team will flag up incorrect use of items or creatures in users' profile texts and backstories. 

I also think it could be a bit too constricting for some - for example, if it really does fit for a user to have a flying carpet, or something functioning in the same way as the Marauder's Map, or a flying car in their possession, what then? Once again, it's just a case by case basis, which was what we were attempting to prevent in the first instance. It may also be somewhat subjective - Dementors, for example, do not have enough lore on them to say how common or rare they are. It's stated they exist and can float around in groups of up to twenty in various places, but otherwise, we know very little about their native range. Is it fair to cut off an entire creature from use by people in topics (especially one like a Dementor, which is a very interesting and useful plot device for character development) or is it not easier and more fun to let people decide to use it or not themselves? Additionally, some things like creatures may be more or less common depending on where you are - something as simple as a Garden Gnome, for example, may not exist at all in cities, but is a common nuisance in rural wizarding gardens. This further complicates things - and once again, we don't know if this is the case or not.

If you feel it's needed, you could speak to your MoM about it though; this may not be something I see as a huge issue personally because I'm perhaps on a different site to you, but I sense this would be something installed by the individual sites if it was perceived to be needed, were Prefects struggling with the caseload and had communicated this to their Lead. It certainly sounds like a gargantuan task to sift through every item in lore and work out how common it is based on the very little context we have!

As has already been said, the sentence limit is to give the piece at least some depth and structure for the rest of the topic to spring from and to help those joining to understand the scene. If you're keen to work in really short replies, there's always the IG chat option or topics via private messages on site.

This is mainly a suggestion for WoP sites which is where I'm from, and on those there is a fairly fixed number of classes, both at Hogwarts and PG - UK has slightly less than US and EU too as far as I am aware and is still comfortably over a thousand - although I can't speak for other WoP sites in other languages. I believe MoMs on WoP need permission to add new achievements and there is an illustration team which handle the designs for this, hence I've brought it to suggestions :)

Perhaps - that being said, you can tell how many assignments there are anyway simply by looking at the lessons available - each core class clearly has 10 assignments every year and 70 in total. It's quick maths for an interested party to add them up. Achievements are awards for meeting milestones on site - homework is there for character development and as with any other achievement or aspect of site, there is no compulsion to complete all of them. Extra achievements would merely be accessible for those who may wish to pursue them.

Is there any news on this? I would love this! There's lots of characters on the sites whose names seem to have broken, either missing a hyphen or missing spaces, to begin with, not to mention those who wish to change their name to accommodate on site partners or other family changes.