Tuesday, January 6, 2009

OtherSpace: Bio Approval Tips

On Otherspace the staff works to either approve or deny all bio submissions within 48 hours. Most of the time it doesn't take near that long, and approval or denial of some bios can be taken care of within a couple hours. Some things that can be done by applicants to assist in speeding up their character approval times include:

Complete Application

The more complete a character application is, the faster it can be approved and ready to play. By complete, that includes a full biography, including things such as: Childhood; a significant event; background information; values; goals; and desired gifts, faults, and quirks look at OtherSpace: Writing A Biography for more information.

Formatting

When submitting your biography, it is important to use proper formatting. Mostly this means using %r%r between paragraphs. %r%r between paragraphs represents a double line space. So:

This is a paragraph.%r%rAnd so is this.

Will be read when the +str command is viewed as:

This is a paragraph.

And so is this.

This helps when a bio is read, especially when it is quite long. It also allows convenient stopping points when someone reads it. Without breaking a large block of text down into paragraphs, a bio becomes much more difficult to read, and thus, may take longer to evaluate and reward for.

High Powered Concepts

The more powerful a character concept is designed to be right away, the longer it may take for approval. While your average engineer from Ungstir (on OtherSpace) that is competent, but not amazing, is a pretty simple concept to examine and approve, an incredible engineer that has several specialties and is extremely good at all of them is a bit more difficult.

This also applies to concepts such as politicians holding positions of power right at the start, 'unique' character variations that violate conventional theme, and characters that wish to start with characters that have skills above good.

That isn't to say these character concepts are not welcome, because they are, but the applications are held to a higher standard and may take longer than a normal application. The within 48 hour rule still applies, and staff will try to approve these within that time frame as well.

Check your +Str

Many times, your application may still be shown as pending, but it could have a message with it. When you log on to check your bio status, be sure to +str/view to see if anyone has posted a comment. If the bio is rejected, it will often come with details of what is wrong, and potential fixes.

Thematic References

The more references to the local theme made in a character application, the more likely it is to be approved, given that this shows thought into the world your character will inhabit. It should be noted, however, that this applies to most 'general' theme. Longtime players who explore more obscure theme references can expect a longer turnaround time, especially if the app reader needs to check up and confirm information.

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