One of the most critical responsibilities of Offetstine staff in onboarding new members is aiding them through the process of character creation. Numerous concerns in the process of character creation require staff intervention, including any clarification and explanation about the lore of Offetstine,[1] and the process of character approval[2]. The responsibility of character approval is owed to new and veteran members alike, and any character submission should, in theory, be reviewed critically and expediently.
This article primarily focuses on the process of character review and approval, though considerations in easing the process of creation are explored as well. Furthermore, this article is a living document and does not reflect the unilateral, permanent status of Offetstine policy. While a primary goal of this document is to mitigate biases and help standardize character review in Offetstine, it does not posit a strict process that staff members must follow to the letter. Staff members are not only allowed, but encouraged, to deviate from this process in any way that better fosters the community interests of Offetstine.
Background
Before any protocol was implemented for character approval in Offetstine, errors in individual profiles were identified on a per-case basis, although this practice has been discontinued[2] as it reduced clarity for members submitting characters and increased the burden on staff. Members who do not have an approved character ("spectators") are allowed to discuss in out-of-context channels such as #general, and conduct out-of-character discussions in roleplay channels.
Discussion this way, under one's own identity, is hereafter referred as "OOC". Offetstine does not prevent OOC discussion by members who have not joined with the intention of roleplaying, nor members who are yet to have a character submitted and approved. New members reserve the right to explore and understand Offetstine as much as possible before creating a character, or to not create a character and simply spectate.
Imperative
When a member does decide to create a character, however, the process of getting their character approved and joining roleplay must be as frictionless as possible. While it may seem contradictory, it is equally important that new members, who typically join with an abundance of ideas and eagerness to create a character and explore the world firsthand, may have their character approved quickly and easily. Submitting a character can often be a nerve-wracking process, and it is our responsibility to quell as much anxiety as possible.
The process of character review is carried out by any staff member and must be fairly uncomplicated on behalf of the member. To this extent, character review and approval in Offetstine necessitates a level of rich feedback. Staff members should be able to justify, not only amongst themselves but to members who submit their character to our community, why they believe a character should be approved or rejected, and should be able to cite any relevant worldbuilding precedent or legislation.
Furthermore, the process of character approval or rejection should be used as part of the feedback loop of Offetstine's improvement, to expand on the worldbuilding of Offetstine. Character profiles should be, much like roleplay and propositions made OOC, taken as impetuses to either canonize a concept as part of Offetstine (such as a new subspecies or a magical practice) or refine an existing concept.
The goal of any character review in Offetstine is to constructively and non-confrontationally discuss a character with their progenitor, to discuss either:
- Why the character is in its current state unfit for Offetstine and what must be changed in order for them to be accepted, with a focus on remediation and recognition of the existing artistic effort devoted to the character design.
- What stands out about a character that was approved, and where they might be able to find a comfortable niche in Offetstine, such as what events they may wish to participate in, or what locations they might find themselves at home in. See Approval
Roadblocks
There are four major categories of roadblocks between the envisioning, publishing and approval of a character, with respect to character review and approval. This document outlines the responsibilities in addressing each category of roadblock and minimizing friction for new members.
Clarity of lore. Details may be unclear in the lore of Offetstine, either because those details are not established or because they are poorly documented, that a roleplayer may either need to ask about before they can have their character approved, or may incorrectly (and reasonably) assume to be a certain way either represented in the real world or in more typical fiction.
Misunderstanding of documentation. In addition to clarity of lore, roleplayers may also misunderstand an existing, documented tenet of Offetstine lore, perhaps because they cannot find the relevant document or because they misinterpreted its meaning.
Restrictions of the setting. Not all ideas are conducive to the setting precedent of the world of Offetstine. Some ideas are best suited for other fictional worlds or contradict the existing worldbuilding of Offetstine, such as concepts of time travel[3] and multiverses, or concepts from the present-day real world that did not exist 25 years ago. These restrictions are elaborated on in Worldbuilding.
Community rules and regulations. Offetstine, as any roleplay community, imposes a certain number of guidelines that members are expected to follow when submitting characters. These guidelines are enumerated colloquially in #oc-guidelines and more rigorously in this document, but users cannot be expected to fully grok these guidelines before submitting a character.
Responsibilities
Creation
Before the review phase of a character, where a character submission is critically analyzed by Offetstine staff, may even be considered, staff members have certain responsibilities to roleplayers and character designers to clarify lore information in Offetstine and aid character design in such a manner that is amicable to the setting prescribed by our community.
While the Offetstine Wiki exists to provide a central repository of all worldbuilding affairs, a roleplayer cannot be expected to find all relevant details of their own accord, or read its entire substance before submitting a character. Moreover, many details of generally accepted worldbuilding consensus are widely accepted but not documented in the wiki; these details, upon discovery, should be added as TODOs in articles, or as redlinks in OW:NW.
Review
Critical errors
There are a few errors which are considered critical and which explicitly prevent a profile from being accepted. All other guidelines in this section are loose and subject to interpretation as per the community interests. The critical errors include, but are not limited to:
- A profile which does not sufficiently identify the character. All profiles must contain a name, an age, and a race (though that race may be "unknown" or verbatim "demi-human").
- A profile which lends from an existing universe. Fiction in the real world exists in equal part as fiction in Offetstine, making existing-universe characters violate the worldbuilding doctrine of Offetstine. Moreover, profiles that lend from existing universes may be considered libelous, both legally and ethically, and may run afoul of media trademark and copyright legislation when canonized into Offetstine.
- A profile which heavily involves a real person. Again, such profiles may be considered ethically libelous and are inconducive to the worldbuilding doctrine of Offetstine.
- A profile which runs afoul of the "Art Rule". The "Art Rule" refers to the guidelines for whether a piece of art depicting a character in a profile may be accepted. While it has existed in various capacity before being formalized, its current iteration is a flowchart that defines whether a given work of art may be used for a character.
Detail level
While submitting a character to Offetstine, platform limitations can frequently dissuade in-depth submissions. Submitting a profile inline in Discord, while the simplest format for moderators to review, may limit an author's freedom or interest in expanding on the background of their character. Similarly, submitting a character as a user subpage on the wiki, while initially touted internally as a solution, proves handily too complicated and unwieldy due to the nature of the MediaWiki software which the wiki runs on. Preparing an external document through a service such as Google Docs takes additional time and effort to perform necessary typesetting work.
Semantic quality exists independent of text length, and long profiles, literate roleplay post and tonally encyclopedic articles do not symbolize nor indicate meaningful and rich concepts. Generally, processes which encourage more introspection during the character creation process enable higher-quality submissions, and the review process is aided by more in-depth and more tightly edited character submissions.
Shorter character profiles are genuinely suited for characters who are more reserved, or who are not initially fully defined and where roleplayers wish to explore the identity and final details of their characters in-universe. Having an initially strong conception of a character may, in certain cases, prove a detriment, because as a member of Offetstine explores its world through roleplay, their character may develop, and facts about the character may be discovered serendipitously through spontaneous innovations in roleplay.
Writing style
No rule or regulation should impede the ability of non-native English speakers or other members who are not highly confident expressing themselves with the written word, from participating in Offetstine. (Non-native speakers compose some three-fourths the total population of English speakers,[4] and we consider them an indispensable facet of our community!) Any rule or regulation that targets the written word should focus on motivating output of high semantic quality, whether in a character submission, roleplay post or wiki article.
Wiki articles can always be edited after their initial submission; part of the default agreement put forth by the MediaWiki software, echoed and used by the Offetstine Wiki, is that any contributor agrees to have their work "edited mercilessly". Roleplay posts are ephemeral and generally only need to convey semantically meaningful information to their direct partner. Character profiles are only one facet of a character design, and much of a character is shaped by their use in practice rather than their initial proposition.
Elisions
Reviewers are encouraged not to approve any character whose profile shows evident signs of not being thoroughly vetted or which appears to have blatant elisions, or which appears to be truncated, and instead refer to the author whether any omissions were intentional or not. Part of the responsibility of character review is to serve as a second pair of eyes, and while short profiles are generally accepted, profiles with direct omissions are not.
For instance, if a profile submitted directly to #oc-submissions is based on the prescribed template, and contains a "Personality:" key but does not contain any value assigned to the key, a staff member ought to approach the member and ask about the elision. The member may either verbally clarify the elided detail or edit the profile to fit it in, or explain that the omission as intentional and optionally elucidate their rationale.
Approval
It is recommended that any message of character approval be congratulatory, since generally it is symbolic that the character thus joining Offetstine has passed some form of "great culling", the churn of review that many characters are subject to before they can be approved and comfortably fit in the setting of Offetstine.
While no laudatory remark is prescribed, and no remark ever should be, I (Eunakria) do think it's worth mentioning the template that I inadvertently found myself using:
Hey (member)! I've approved (character) and want to thank you for the incredible character design and contribution to our community. I can't wait to see them in-universe, and welcome to the world of Offetstine!
Any staff member approving a profile should find something from the bottom of their heart to say. Above all else, be genuine. If these are not the words you feel, don't say them; say something that truly highlights how you feel about a character, and about the artistry of their creator.
Notes
- ↑ See [1]. Prior to Jul 2021, no formal documentation was published about the established lore of Offetstine. A document authored by Eunakria and Sonoritas was eventually published as #lore, although this channel has been archived out of risk of misinformation, pending an internal effort to rewrite it.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 See [2]. As of Nov 2021, characters are approved through a staff member reacting with the
👍emoji, or any of its skin tone variants, on a character profile message in #oc-submissions. Conventionally, staff members usually verbally acknowledge the approval. - ↑ See [3]. This is the discussion that had time travel conclusively removed from the list of possibilities in Offetstine.
- ↑ See [4]. This figure is eventually sourced from Ethnologue, but the ultimate document is not open-access.