Hey everyone! I just wanted to start off with a huge thank you to everyone who's supported me thus far, it really means a lot. Between you and me, when I got the letter about making the top 6 from City Hall, I started dancing around the house like the dork I am (haha!). Well this dork wants to be your senator, and I promise to do the best job I can if elected!
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Melanie, and I've been on Whyville for a little over 3 years now. I mostly like to read and post on the forums, but you can also find me at the food court tables, and occasionally at south beach. I try to be friendly to anyone who comes up to me, so don't be afraid to say hi or anything! I write for the Whyville Times when I have the time and inspiration, and I also like to dabble in face part designing. I'd also love to see Whyville change for the better, and I'll do my best to relay the things that Whyville's citizens want to see changed the most!
Here's a list of ideas I'll try to push for if I make senate, but if I do make it, I'll definitely be open to the ideas you guys have too!
1.) New Arrivals Time - I'd love to see the face parts new arrivals time changed. The new designs usually come out at 8:03 A.M on Whyville's time, which is pretty inconvenient for the majority of Whyville's citizens. Most of us are obviously in school at this time, and I find it pretty discouraging that I have to ask around just to see what came out in new arrivals, let alone buy it, and I know that a lot of people feel the same. Therefore, I think a nice fix would be to postpone new arrivals time to maybe 4:03 P.M Whyville time, to at least give everyone a fair chance at seeing and snagging the latest designs.
2.) Game of the Week - I think that instating a game of the week system would be entirely beneficial to the Whyville population. Gaming isn't quite as popular as it could be, and the payout you get from some of them doesn't really get you too far either. Maybe to change things around a little, we could have a game of the week! Each week a Whyville game would be spotlighted on the homepage or the play page, and for the whole week this game would give you double the clam payout than it normally does, and would be rotated each week to give Whyvillians a little taste of each of the games. I also think that it would be nice to add a clam prize to a few more of the games like Simon Says, and maybe add a few new games in addition to that!
3.) Y-mail Upgrades ? Personally, I think our current y-mail system could use a little upgrade. Additions such as a draft folder to save unfinished messages would be extremely helpful. Also, what I've found our y-mail system to be lagging in is how it displays messages that you've sent. In order to see your sent y-mail you have to first wait for your recipient to reply, which I find highly inconvenient. If we could add a sent folder, I know personally, my y-mail experience would be highly elated.
4.) Face Part Lock ? I've heard plenty of complaints from Whyvillians about how they've gotten their face parts stolen in a hack, or gotten scammed at the style studio when putting their favorite face parts up on display. While there are other ways to prevent this, I still feel that a face part locking system would be a nice thing to have. This system could work in a similar way to our savings account at bankinter. You could choose which face parts you'd like to lock up and then put in a personally devised code to make sure no one could access it but you. This way, one wouldn't be able to send, trade, or sell that face part until it was unlocked with the security code.
5.) Limited Chat Dictionary ? There's definitely been a time in all of our why-lives where we've had to deal with limited chat for a certain amount of time, either when we were new citizens, gotten punished with tape, or simply just didn't have a parental permission slip for chat. Obviously, limited chat is a bit frustrating because, after all, it is limited. However it's frustrating for more than one reason. My biggest frustration with limited chat is the fact that you never know what you're allowed to say. Sometimes you'll be sitting there for a prolonged amount of time trying to respond to someone's question, digging around through different word combinations to figure out what it is, exactly, you're allowed to say. If we could simply be provided with a list of words and phrases we're permitted to say in chat, I think it would help a lot. Additionally, I think Whyville should allow you to say basic numbers in limited chat. I know I've seen newer citizens trying to play simon says and failing, simply because they weren't allowed to say a number, or someone being asked their age and having difficulty, therefore adding numbers to limited chat would be a nice fix.
6.) HTML in City Records ? As most of us know, the Whyville Forums recently got a fantastic new upgrade (thank you city workers!). This new upgrade allows you to change the color of your font, as well as use bold, underlining, italics, and strike through. I think it's a pretty great system that they have in place, and being able to do all these amazing things in order to personalize your city records would be a nice addition to the Whyville experience.
7.) Face Part Rotation ? In pick your nose, sometimes we'll be dressing our avatar, and it would look absolutely amazing if we could rotate a certain face part just a little bit. Having the option to rotate face parts that we buy from Akbar's would be pretty amazing, in my opinion, and would also eliminate the need for designing face parts strictly for the purpose of upside-down avatars.
8.) Whipcar Summoning - I, and many others, find it slightly annoying in chat to have whipcars roll on by every so often, with not a single person willing to rent it. Other times, someone will be desperate to get a rental car, but one just won't show up! I think to eliminate this problem, we should be able to summon a whipcar just as we can with a regular scion to make things more convenient for Whyvillians who aren't so fortunate as to have a scion of their own.
9.) My Book of Dances - In all honesty, it'd be nice to be able to keep more than one personally made dance. I think we should be able to keep as many dances as we want, with the trade-off of using up satchel space to keep each one. A dance book could be a place to view all of your previously made dances, and you would be able to select the dance you want to wear. From here, you would also be able to delete unwanted dances from your book. This system would also prevent forgetting dance names, as you could simply look up the name in your book.
10.) Friend Request System - I think our current address book system needs to be completely revamped. I think in order to add someone as a friend, both parties need to give confirmation. I know I'm not alone in feeling uncomfortable with having people you don't know put you in their address book. A friend request system could also prevent those annoying unknown friend finders or random people finding you on the map that you'd rather not have doing so. Additionally, I think Whyville should remove the stipulation of having to add someone as a friend in order to whycash or send face parts to a person. I, and many others, do the business of buying and selling to some Whyvillians who I do not really know, and with the trade post at a limitation, I think this would be useful now, more than ever.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my platform, and a special thank you, once again, to all my supporters who have helped me to make it this far! I really do appreciate every vote, and I hope you all take my platform into consideration!
Best of luck to all the other candidates - ocean10kv, DeadsnaiI, kittieme, lilpcdoll, and lilchiche!
-xoxkitkat
