Hey Whyvillians, kittypet here, but I'm sure most of you are familiar with me by now, seeing as how some of you helped make me one of the seven finalists in the senate race. Let me just start by thanking every single one of you who took the time to review my first platform and click that "VOTE!" button. Now, I present to you my revised platform jam-packed with even more ideas and suggestions for improving Whyville and making everyone's experience in our little community just a little more pleasant than it is now.
First, I'd like to introduce myself to any who may not know who I am. My name is Amanda, I'm 17 years old and I've been with Whyville for many years. I originally joined in 2003 at age 9, and after forgetting the password to my first account, but still wanting to stay with Whyville, I created kittypet in 2005 and 6 years later here I still am! I have a salary of 274 clams a day. I've been a Y-mail helper for a few years now, and I always respond to Helper Center calls and answer inquiries via ymail promptly. I visit Whyville on a daily basis and am a frequent "BBSer" and I can often be spotted in any 3 of our most popular chatrooms: the sun roof, the woods, and beach south.
And now, without further adieu (except maybe a drumroll and a fanfare...) I bring you.... kittypet's senate platform:
1.) The BBS~ I have alot of ideas to improve many different fields of Whyville, so let's start with a personal favorite: the BBS. Expanding the BBS to something more than just a small forum solely for discussing the latest Times articles was, in my opinion, one of the most successful additions to Whyville we have ever seen, but there's always room for improvement!
A. Deleting your own posts~ If you post something you later change your mind about or accidently hit "reply" twice, creating the notorious "double-post", it'd be nice to have the option to delete your own (and only your own) BBS posts. This can be as simple as having an X in the topright corner of each of your own posts (when the X is clicked, a popup messege will ask if you are sure you want to delete your post with a yes and no button)
B. Page Selection~ If threads are significantly longer than 7 pages, it is a nuissance to click through each page to get to the end of a thread. Perhaps we could install a drop-down box with page numbers, or at least make it so we can get to the end of each thread with one click (for example, if a thread is 23 pages long, you would see "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, arrow, 23").
C. See Recent Threads You've Posted On~ When I post on a thread, I like to go back the next day and see if anyone else replied. Sometimes I post on several threads in different sections, and I can't always remember exactly where to find them all. Somewhere at the bottom or top of the BBS home page, there should be a link to view threads you have recently posted on, i.e. in the past 7 days or however many days Whyville can make it, the most recent of course being first on the list.
2.) Akbar's Face Factory~ I think all designers including anyone who has ever paid even one visit to Akbar's Face Factory can agree that those tools need a serious upgrade. Basically, my goal is to make creating a face part in the Factory much like drawing a picture in the Paint program on your computer.
A. The Paintbrush Tools~ Along with the four square-shaped paintbrush sizes, how about four circular paintbrush sizes to match? This would make it so much easier to create rounded faceparts such as eyes.
B. Erase All~ This one's pretty self-explanatory. Sometimes I change my mind about my design as a whole, and if I already saved it, I have to use the eraser tool to erase the entire image, which is tedious.
C. "Undo" Option~ Sometimes our hands slip and we're left with a nice facepart in the making and a big ugly line across the screen. Also, you have not recently saved your design. You go to hit the "undo" button only to discover... there is no undo button. Now you have to either start over again or take alot of extra time to carefully erase or cover up that line. You get discouraged and give up, and Akbar loses a potential bestseller. Bottom line: install an "undo" and "redo" button.
D. A Tag System~ Sometimes when naming a face part we like to get a little weird and creative... I dunno about you guys, but none of my faceparts are called "brown hair" or "pink dress". Booooringgggg. So, let's make it so we can search by the details of a face part. In addition to providing a name, price, etc for the facepart on the screen prior to final submission, lets add in a "tags" section where you can type in general details about the face part. For example: "brown, hair, girl, long, curly" or "pink, princess, dress, girl" (obviously there would also be a "Search By Tag" section along with "Search By Name/Designer/Cost" in the face mall).
3.) The WhyTimes~ Before I list my other ideas, I thought I'd make a new addition to my article, not seen in my original platform: expanding and improving the WhyTimes.
A. Controversial Topics~ I noticed the WhyTimes pretty much publishes the same articles by the same people every week. We see alot of makeup and hair tutorials, movie/book/music reviews, interviews, and articles about events within Whyville itself. As much as I enjoy repitition (that was just a hint of sarcasm...) I think the Times should feature more controversial topics such as abortion, mental disorders, adoption, drugs/drinking, poverty, gambling, etc. The list goes on and on. I feel like the older, more mature citizens of Whyville are not learning enough about the real world based on the articles deemed "appropriate" for the Times today. I know the editor sometimes makes it so certain articles can only be read by the age 13+ crowd, so perhaps she could create a 16+ restriction too if necessary.
B. More Articles Per Issue~ As Whyville is growing and becoming more populated, the Times is not. Many Whyvillians look forward to reading the times every Sunday afternoon. I think allowing a few more articles per issue wouldn't hurt. Tons of articles are submitted every week, and very few are accepted right away, or at all. I guess there's no GOOD reason why each issue should have more articles besides.... we all want to read more articles!
4. Miscellaneous Ideas
A. Deleting Accounts~ First of all, I think all the expired Whyville accounts with absolutely no significant history of them should just be deleted, wiped clean, freeing up the usernames so they can be used again. There's only so much you can do with a 9-character user limit, and it looks like we're running out of ideas. By significant history I mean no face parts created by that account, no whypass/pearls ever purchased, earns very few to no clams a day, logged on less than 10 times... some accounts have not even logged on once. It's like they were created just to take the username and then forgotten about forever.
B. Friend Requests~ Instead of being able to add whoever you want to your friends list without permission, in order to become "friends" with someone, you will have to send them a friend request, which they will recieve in their ymail, and wait for them to approve/deny it.
C. A "sent" folder in our Y-mailbox.
D. Donating to Grandma~ People used to use this option to delete faceparts they did not want because there was no other option to get rid of them for free. Now there is a trash can icon. So how about.... we bring back donations to Grandma, but this time, the parts we donate actually get distributed to newcomers. Every time new parts are donated, they'll get stored somewhere and be distributed to newbies, every newbie will get 5 parts from the list, selected at random. Maybe we can even make this so anyone at all can go to Grandma's and get some free faceparts, but to prevent greediness there will be a limit (for example, you can only visit Grandma once a month).
E. Customizing Your City Records~ You will be able to change your font type (BASIC fonts such as ariel, tahoma, and verdana), font size (8-14), and font color/background (colors in the rainbow + black, pink, white, brown and gray).
F. Designing Projectiles~ If we can create faceparts and scion decals why can't we throw around our creations too? This would work much like Akbar's Face Factory. you would need to obtain a "Projectile Factory Voucher" and pay a fee to use the factory, but unlike the Face Factory which lets you select a size for your facepart, there will only be one size window to create your projectile, to prevent giant, oversized missiles.
G. A New Veteran Medal ~ What kind of medals do we get each year we stay with Whyville? Bronze, silver, gold, animated gold, animated gold, animated gold, animated gold, animated gold...... do I sense a bit of repitition? Maybe next year Whyville comes out with a new medal. I'm not going to suggest any colors because we know that'd be entirely up to the staff. They could put a vote on the front page with a few different main color/ribbon color options and the one with the most votes will be the newest medal. Maybe it can be so everyone who has at least one animated gold medal will earn this new medal next March/April.
There you have it, fellow Whyvillians. I present you with only the most possible ideas I came up with. Although it would be really great to be able to have more concerts, or be able to just not have annoying Justin Beiber ads all over the place, to bring back things such as Whypasses and Kajeet chat, to have less strict chat filters and internal moniters, none of this is ever going to happen. Whyville will not bring back things that are no longer sponsered or supported, and they can't make a celebrity appear out of nowhere for a concert. I ruled out any ideas that seemed too complicated or impossible. Although some of the other candidates have some great ideas as well, I believe mine are truley the best and can easily happen if I have any say about it.
So, everyone, let's not treat this race as a popularity contest this time around. Vote for the person you feel has the best, most realistic ideas, and is the most reliable. Consider me, an intelligent 8 year veteran who knows her way around Whyville. I really believe I deserve this position, and apparently enough of you do too, or I wouldn't have made it far enough to be able to be writing this article right now, trying to prove my capability to my fellow citizens. If anyone has any questions, concerns, or comments at all please feel free to approach me in chat or shoot me a y-mail. I'm more than happy to answer any inquiries about my platform, or Whyville in general.
On a final note, "kittypet" faceparts have been and are still available at Akbar's Face Mall, and all of them are very cheap. To search by part name, just type in "kittypet". I encourage all of you to show your support!
KITTYPET 4 PREZ!
