IMPORTANT: Should we require biographies?

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Staff has been considering making Biographies a requirement for roleplaying on site. Similar to tags, these required biographies would serve as a means of a structured, standardized "tag" system where a character essentially writes a mini-snapshot of who they are, what they're like to plot with, and what they're about.

In doing this, it would allow for a place for characters to plot together, become more interested in character development, and serve as a platform to ask yourselves how your characters fit into the world of BoB! These biographies would be 'staff approved' in the sense that we would look them over, just to make sure you were following the rules and seemed to have a general idea of how your character fits in the world (i.e, are they a no-good looker in a leather jacket, ready to cause chaos, and more likely to make enemies instead of friends? Or a sunflower loving little girl who loves her family more than anything else in the world?) 

It would NOT or EVER serve as a means of only allowing "advanced" writers or characters on site, but instead standardizing the system in which we currently represent characters and make it a bit easier to plot and develop on site! Let us know if you think that this should be implemented! As we try to turn our attentions towards development, this may or may not be a good start for encouraging more complex and detail-oriented encounters between characters, but given it would be a big change, we need to ensure that you guys, as the roleplayers, want to see it!

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in this thread!

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Just like with any other official poll, I will be checking for duplicates.

I have a question about issues that could arise dependent on how detailed the biographies have to be. As most places were I have seen biographies required the bios are never updated so players go to plot and get incorrect information because things changed about the character and the bio was never updated to reflect that. Would there be a way to remedy this here?

Voted yes.

Considering how small our community has become lately, I think biographies with staff approval should be enforced. I'm on other rp websites that are just as small as bob, and they use this system perfectly. They don't require a lot for you to fill out-- just a name, age, species, appearance, & abilities. You can include other details like personality or backstory if you wanted.

I feel like current characters should be grandfathered in, and future characters should be submitted for approval from staff.

In my own opinion, Bob has been dying lately. Our community has only gotten smaller, and we are not a huge, popular roleplay site. If we want to get Bob back onto it's feet, requiring biographies like every other small rp website is the first step. Requiring biographies shouldn't seem stressful or pressuring. From my own experience, when I got characters approved on other rp sites, I felt more excited to plot with other characters and wanted to focus on them more. So having required biographies can be a key to getting people plotting with each other, especially focusing in development.

And Jiyu, on the site I'm on, if you wanted to make changes to the bio, you just have to notify staff you wanted to make an edit so they can make sure the edit fits site standards.

tf? hell no

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 1.4;"]i don't see why not?

plenty of jcink sites do it and their system works pretty well. even if you fill in the bare minimum of your character then it would help, becuase sometimes i find tags lacking in information ( if there's even tags at all )

I voted no and for many reasons.

Like Sky, I too have been on many sites that use this system, and many of these sites have failed and eventually were shut down because of this system and how it repelled people from joining. Our community is so used to not having biographies as a requirement so this WILL make people leave and our community will just get smaller because we decided to randomly implement this rule out of nowhere. And the thing with staff approval: staff aren't always on, and people just want to jump into the rp and not have to wait for someone to approve of their character. Also, getting staff approval for having to edit a bio of your own character is awful. You would have to notify staff for every small edit you make, and that will get tedious fast. And not just for the member, but also staff. Roleplaying is supposed to be fun, and I think this would take a lot of fun out of the playing experience for people, and they'd find somewhere else to roleplay that doesn't have this form of restriction. Just let people make their characters and hop in, because it's more fun that way for people who joined this site to get away from real life for a bit.

Like I said in the beginning, I’ve been on sites that used this system and had a small community and were doing just fine the first month, but as it continued to run, it wasn’t working so well in their favor after the grace period. The community dwindled, and eventually, people stopped joining because they were intimidated by the fact that staff approval was needed in order to roleplay, and staff took a while to even approve things on most sites because staff have a life too, they get busy. People would get impatient, and just leave after a while because it was just too much of a tedious process. Some sites can use these systems and have no problems, but sites like these are few and far between.

Another reason why I voted no was because I want creative freedom. When I create a character, I shouldn’t be forced to make a bio for them when I don’t even have a basic personality down for them yet. I’m one of those people that like to roleplay my characters so I can get a basic feel for them and then make a bio for them now that I know them better. I know I’m not the only one like this on the site, so I think you guys would be making a huge mistake in implementing this idea and end up repelling more people than attracting them. There’s also people that make new characters ALL the time, and that would get tedious for staff eventually, and for the members as well that just want to make a new character and have fun. I again want to stress the fact that roleplaying is meant to be fun, and this just has an air of professionalism hanging over it like a dark rain cloud. Roleplaying shouldn’t have to feel like it’s a professional thing, and that we have to fit some kind of standard just so we can play our characters.

I can see why this would make things easier for people, don’t get me wrong. It really helps to have information about a character so people don’t go in blind when interacting when someone else’s character, but this really isn’t the way to go in my opinion. People on this site are already used to hopping straight into the action, and forcing them to make a bio just to be able to roleplay in new areas just sounds.. scummy to me, in all honesty. Sites can make it work, but it wouldn’t work for BoB and its community.

I genuinely believe that implementing this would kill this already dying site, and we should just not go with it.

This kind of got rambly, but I’m just very passionate about this site (and care about it a LOT) and I don’t want to see it die completely because of a new rule change that just seems really forced. It just wouldn’t work for BoB and that’s my honest opinion.

I voted no and for many reasons.

Like Sky, I too have been on many sites that use this system, and many of these sites have failed and eventually were shut down because of this system and how it repelled people from joining. Our community is so used to not having biographies as a requirement so this WILL make people leave and our community will just get smaller because we decided to randomly implement this rule out of nowhere. And the thing with staff approval: staff aren't always on, and people just want to jump into the rp and not have to wait for someone to approve of their character. Also, getting staff approval for having to edit a bio of your own character is awful. You would have to notify staff for every small edit you make, and that will get tedious fast. And not just for the member, but also staff. Roleplaying is supposed to be fun, and I think this would take a lot of fun out of the playing experience for people, and they'd find somewhere else to roleplay that doesn't have this form of restriction. Just let people make their characters and hop in, because it's more fun that way for people who joined this site to get away from real life for a bit.

Like I said in the beginning, I’ve been on sites that used this system and had a small community and were doing just fine the first month, but as it continued to run, it wasn’t working so well in their favor after the grace period. The community dwindled, and eventually, people stopped joining because they were intimidated by the fact that staff approval was needed in order to roleplay, and staff took a while to even approve things on most sites because staff have a life too, they get busy. People would get impatient, and just leave after a while because it was just too much of a tedious process. Some sites can use these systems and have no problems, but sites like these are few and far between.

Another reason why I voted no was because I want creative freedom. When I create a character, I shouldn’t be forced to make a bio for them when I don’t even have a basic personality down for them yet. I’m one of those people that like to roleplay my characters so I can get a basic feel for them and then make a bio for them now that I know them better. I know I’m not the only one like this on the site, so I think you guys would be making a huge mistake in implementing this idea and end up repelling more people than attracting them. There’s also people that make new characters ALL the time, and that would get tedious for staff eventually, and for the members as well that just want to make a new character and have fun. I again want to stress the fact that roleplaying is meant to be fun, and this just has an air of professionalism hanging over it like a dark rain cloud. Roleplaying shouldn’t have to feel like it’s a professional thing, and that we have to fit some kind of standard just so we can play our characters.

I can see why this would make things easier for people, don’t get me wrong. It really helps to have information about a character so people don’t go in blind when interacting when someone else’s character, but this really isn’t the way to go in my opinion. People on this site are already used to hopping straight into the action, and forcing them to make a bio just to be able to roleplay in new areas just sounds.. scummy to me, in all honesty. Sites can make it work, but it wouldn’t work for BoB and its community.

I genuinely believe that implementing this would kill this already dying site, and we should just not go with it.

This kind of got rambly, but I’m just very passionate about this site (and care about it a LOT) and I don’t want to see it die completely because of a new rule change that just seems really forced. It just wouldn’t work for BoB and that’s my honest opinion.

^ basically my thoughts. personally if when I first joined bob and there was a requirement to need a staff approved biography, I would not have joined at all.

[align=center][div style="max-width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]Dittoing the above, with the added reason that I personally would prefer an environment that encouraged meaningful IC interaction and discovery rather than OOC plotting. I think that reading through a biography is an impersonal way to discover things about a character, and is honestly a lot less fun. Developing a character as they're written and letting them figure out how they fit into any given universe is one of my favorite things about these spontaneous roleplaying communities where I don't need to have a character concept fleshed out before I write.

[align=center][div style="max-width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]Dittoing the above, with the added reason that I personally would prefer an environment that encouraged meaningful IC interaction and discovery rather than OOC plotting. I think that reading through a biography is an impersonal way to discover things about a character, and is honestly a lot less fun. Developing a character as they're written and letting them figure out how they fit into any given universe is one of my favorite things about these spontaneous roleplaying communities where I don't need to have a character concept fleshed out before I write.

Dittoing this as well