Okay folks, I haven't made an announcement as of recent because I wanted to make sure that plans were in place so I could give a better idea of what is going on rather than a vague one.

So over the next few weeks or so a few forums may vanish on you. I know the Ear to the Underground already did. That was because of it's lack of use. That won't be coming back. As to any other forums that vanish on you during this next week or so do NOT fear they should be back shortly I've created a new section for our new Critique team.

Some of you my have noticed it in the legend at the bottom. The critique team will be in charge of giving you tips and pointers on how to improve various things that you create for the RPG community on the whole. The critique team will also be in charge of SF promos.

Now some of you may be wondering, "Carrie, do you even have a critique team?" and the answer is not really. Lowrie has graciously decided to head up said team but has no team to lead. That is where you all will come in.

I know that a number of our teams are looking rather small and could use additional help. This is why sometime this moth I am planning on putting out some threads to hire new team members. You will want to keep a weather eye out for those threads! Please, DO NOT PM me about these positions at this time. I will put the threads up about them when I am ready. You PM me about the positions at this point and that will reflect poorly upon your consideration for being a team member.

I was going to make my own announcement (just to give everyone a head's up), but I'll just tack it on to Carrie's announcement instead. :]

As the person in charge of accepting skins into the Underground Skin archives (aside from needing a shorter title than that) I will be sorting through all the skins in the archives. What does this mean aside from a lot of work from me? Well for a lot of, if not most, of you, you have nothing to worry about. Skins which are accepted need to be free of Invisionfree defaults, as in colors in your skin (the areas of img.attach, option.sub, photo.title, searchlite, normalname, unreg, and thin will be the only areas where default colors will be ignored by me, but I have cookies for those who code everything :] ), and have a style and format that is uniquely your own. What I will not accept are skins where only the IF colors are changed and the skin still looks like a carbon copy of the default IF skin but in another color, nor will I accept skins which are rips from another artist. Those two really should go without saying. You want a skin that is original, and uniquely you. Skins should also be browser-friendly. As someone who uses neither Firefox nor IE (but has both) I check for browser friendliness as should everyone who skins.

Underground Skin Requirements: browser friendliness, no defaults, no rips, no carbon copies of the default skin, and no defaults (unless in the areas mentioned in the above paragraph).

Like I said before, most of you will probably have nothing to worry about. For those of you who do not meet those requirements will have one week to make changes before I archive as a skin attempt. If you need more time please just post saying so, or PM me if you want. I don't want to turn skins down, so just say how much longer you need to make the required changes and the time is yours.

Much apologies for the delay that is now going to have to take place for these changes. I had hoped to get most of it done this week and have a lot of lovely thing in place here at RPGU but life has suddenly gotten in the way.

I will still be around BUT the planned changes have been moved to the speed of a snail's pace seeing as I have just broken my thumb and am now on very strong pain medicine that makes work on the changes very slow and difficult particularly seeing as it is the right hand that I injured.