IMPORTANT: Should we require biographies?

[paroxysm.]

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.