Hey there and welcome
To be 100% honest, I never much cared for doing introduction posts myself
I joke that we made it mandatory here to share the pain of writing these things
Joking aside though, we do understand that the approval process isn't peoples most favorite thing in the world so we try to keep it fairly smooth and painless. The idea is just to make sure new arrivals have read our rules and policies and to ensure that they understand and respect what we're trying to build here enough to put the effort in even if it may be a little annoying.
Fun fact! Since Storyteller's Circle opened in November of 2016, we have only ever had to ban 3 users, and have only about a dozen users with any sort of altercations that resulted in requiring staff intervention. We strongly credit the largely peaceful atmosphere here to our approval process. It really helps draw in people that are interested in the spirit of Storyteller's Circle
People who aren't interested in our policies tend to just walk away.
That you have posted an introduction despite finding the process annoying tells me right away that you respect our policies
And that's what we really look for in people. People who respect each other, and respect our shared forum space. So thank you!
That all said, I will note that our chat is a discord channel. We used to have a live chat forum side, but we discontinued it due to lack of use. I HAVE considered getting a shout-box style chat added to the forum in the future though, but it's just on the idea back-burner for now. We do have a neat feature though once you get approved. Our 'PM' system allows for multiple participants so you can have group PMs with friends.
Also out of curiosity may I ask why you don't want to use discord? There's nothing wrong with not using it, of course, and we have other users who choose not to use it as well. But knowing people's reasons will help me as an admin to understand people's preferences and why.
