Rphaven is a text-based roleplaying site that has an option to buy a 'group' These no longer function as forums) in order to 'own' a permanent chat room. There is a lot of vety sexual roleplay that happens on this site, and there are very few precautions taken to keep minors off the site. Many of the character profiles have 'kinks' listed that include things like 'ageplay', which is a kink for sexual activity with children. I will not post links to the material in question, because it is of dubious legality, but you will find it if you go to rphaven.com and look for the profiles pf 'little bobby' and 'ageplay princess'. They have been reported to the center for missing and exploited children, and so far they have been able to do nothing about this site. It would be all too easy for a child predator to get on the site and find a minor to groom. Rph relies on peer reporting to 'out' minors. This is ineffective, because people will not report friends. I personally know of several minors that use the site. When they are reported, they just make new names and return.
The other issue at hand is the absolutely atrocious behavior of the site owner, zach sprague. He insults and berates individual members with system-wide messages and puts up admin messages visible at sign-on thatnot only call out individual members, but insult and deride the member base as a whole. In one message, he threatened to stop doing bug fixes and maintenance entirely becasue people were angry with him over an unannounced outage period. Several features of the site—things people pay to be able to use—have also been disabled. One could once put up a character avatar, and groups used to function as forums, so people could put roleplay logs up and keep track of character stat sheets. He took all of this away, citing some form of security leak. With the rest of his behavior and the fact that these features have been gone for over a year, this is not likely to be the case. Also, he has for months been trying to start two other projects, l.E.W.D. And creightr. He has been berating the member base of rph to support these other two projects, and when they don't wish to do so, he states that the reason the avatars and groups are not fixed is because 'you don't care enough to support l.E.W.D and creightr, so i don't care enough about rph to give the features back', or words to that effect. Sprague clearly has no concept of what it means to work with the public.
On top of all of this, the site is unstable and buggy. His claims about its security are entirely valid; it is run on only one server, and any hacker worth the name could go in and destroy it, or steal the member names and passwords. The climate of the site has become increasingly hostile, with users all too willing to verbally abuse each other. This problem is most evident on the so-called 'help' board. It is to be noted that sprague has the 'donate' option turned off and its attached paypal is unable to accept payments. This could indicate anything from another fit of pique on sadako's part to an intent to suddenly close rph down entirely.
The site needs to go. But it would be better if it were taken down under honest and honorable conditions, not a tantrum by its owner that leaves people unable to stay in touch with long-term roleplaying partners.
Role Play Haven Reviews
Rphaven is a text-based roleplaying site that has an option to buy a 'group' These no longer function as forums) in order to 'own' a permanent chat room. There is a lot of vety sexual roleplay that happens on this site, and there are very few precautions taken to keep minors off the site. Many of the character profiles have 'kinks' listed that include things like 'ageplay', which is a kink for sexual activity with children. I will not post links to the material in question, because it is of dubious legality, but you will find it if you go to rphaven.com and look for the profiles pf 'little bobby' and 'ageplay princess'. They have been reported to the center for missing and exploited children, and so far they have been able to do nothing about this site. It would be all too easy for a child predator to get on the site and find a minor to groom. Rph relies on peer reporting to 'out' minors. This is ineffective, because people will not report friends. I personally know of several minors that use the site. When they are reported, they just make new names and return.
The other issue at hand is the absolutely atrocious behavior of the site owner, zach sprague. He insults and berates individual members with system-wide messages and puts up admin messages visible at sign-on thatnot only call out individual members, but insult and deride the member base as a whole. In one message, he threatened to stop doing bug fixes and maintenance entirely becasue people were angry with him over an unannounced outage period. Several features of the site—things people pay to be able to use—have also been disabled. One could once put up a character avatar, and groups used to function as forums, so people could put roleplay logs up and keep track of character stat sheets. He took all of this away, citing some form of security leak. With the rest of his behavior and the fact that these features have been gone for over a year, this is not likely to be the case. Also, he has for months been trying to start two other projects, l.E.W.D. And creightr. He has been berating the member base of rph to support these other two projects, and when they don't wish to do so, he states that the reason the avatars and groups are not fixed is because 'you don't care enough to support l.E.W.D and creightr, so i don't care enough about rph to give the features back', or words to that effect. Sprague clearly has no concept of what it means to work with the public.
On top of all of this, the site is unstable and buggy. His claims about its security are entirely valid; it is run on only one server, and any hacker worth the name could go in and destroy it, or steal the member names and passwords. The climate of the site has become increasingly hostile, with users all too willing to verbally abuse each other. This problem is most evident on the so-called 'help' board. It is to be noted that sprague has the 'donate' option turned off and its attached paypal is unable to accept payments. This could indicate anything from another fit of pique on sadako's part to an intent to suddenly close rph down entirely.
The site needs to go. But it would be better if it were taken down under honest and honorable conditions, not a tantrum by its owner that leaves people unable to stay in touch with long-term roleplaying partners.