TELL US: Which way would you prefer a character vault to be organized?

How would you want the categories to be set up for a Character Vault?

  • By Alphabet

    Votes: 48 19.6%
  • By Availability

    Votes: 49 20.0%
  • By Genre/Setting

    Votes: 134 54.7%
  • OTHER (I will tell you my idea!)

    Votes: 14 5.7%

  • Total voters
    245
By availability makes the most sense to me if it's going to be for the browsing list site-wide.

I don't think alphabetical really helps a GM or potential 1x1 partner find what they're looking for unless they have some kind of obsession with names that start with a certain letter.
Organizing it by genre or setting also doesn't make any sense to me personally because you can always tweak or adapt a character to fit the genre or setting. I do it all the time.
 
Both user. Preferably email, since I change my name frequently and many of us do.
 
Perhaps it should be by Genre, and then within the genre, alphabetically by nature, rather than the "first to be updated" thing. In characters, I often look for names that would go well with my characters, but if I was doing a Horror genre roleplay, I'd find it annoying to find the perfect name in a HUGE list of names to find out it's a MLP character. Then also, for the avalibility thing, you could always put the character status in the title. Like:

"John Smith (Taken)"
 
Perhaps sorted by genre/setting, and then alphabetically within that genre/setting?
 
QUESTIONS FOR SOMEONE IN CHARGE!

Will we have to use the like, site wide sorting thing if it's not in a way that works for us?

Will our personal character catalog thing be sorted in any way we want?

If we do have characters sorted by genre, would it be fair to ask for an 'adaptable' or 'general' listing area?
 
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One of the issues with recycling characters into genres they weren't originally designed for is that they stick out like a sore thumb; they require a lot of special attention on the storyteller's part in order to minimize the innate canon dissonance, and the player typically has a fortified idea in mind that may grind against the storyteller's intentions. Of course, there are some characters and writers who are more genre-neutral and flexible, respectively, so as to avoid that problem, but I wouldn't bet on it for a majority of the roster in question, here.

I'm with @Dawn about alphabetical order being rather inconsequential in most cases. But in response to categorical genres, I think rather than trying to dismiss genres entirely, it would be best to have a genre-neutral category among the rest. This makes it clear that the character is not intended to be necessarily roleplayed in the specific genre they may at first appear to be designed for.

As far as per-user goes, as far as I understand, it seems that each user will have a link to their characters on their profile anyhow, so ordering by user seems redundant to me. Of course, maybe that isn't happening, in which case we might think about a way to accomplish that without removing categorical genres.
 
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From my point of View maybe it would be beneficial to use them all and set up some sort of filtering system so that for example, Somebody wants to see an Available character from the Fantasy Genre whose First Name or Surname starts with the letter K per se? I believe it would be rather convenient to have such a setting
 
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Well, like @Diana said, if we could do all three, we wouldn't be discussing the topic under a poll. Though I am curious why all three can't be done, I'm sure the staff have their reasons — likely something to do with pre-written proprietary features lacking such a configuration.
 
Having it alphabetized almost at all is a bad idea to me because characters past like, N may never really be looked at if people are just scanning over the lists or something of the sort. Now if characters were alphabetized within the users list that is different, but site-wide I think it should be arranged another way such as availability or when the character was updated/used
 
I'm leaning towards alphabetical to keep things organized but what does availability mean?
 
What about allowing someone to sort their characters themselves (manually)? That people can say, this character is 1, this character is 2 etc. In that way everyone can have any order he/she desires!
 
Maybe all but adding the characters owners name next to it.... unless your already putting that then don't read this!
 
QUESTIONS FOR SOMEONE IN CHARGE!

Will we have to use the like, site wide sorting thing if it's not in a way that works for us?

Will our personal character catalog thing be sorted in any way we want?

If we do have characters sorted by genre, would it be fair to ask for an 'adaptable' or 'general' listing area?

You will have a personal album of all your characters, and in that album you'll be able to sort your characters in any way you want. By genre categories, availability, eye color. Whatever. O_O Because it's your album on your profile.

There is also a tagging system, so you'll be able to search characters by tags too. Tagged, fantasy, one on one, teenager, multi genre... whatever tags people wanna come up with.

We're just trying to figure out what kind of category listing will make the most sense for browsing the Master Listing of characters. The Master List is an optional place that people can submit characters to for other members to browse. You won't have to list a character in there or even have to use it.

You will already be able to search by Member or view all of a member's characters, so there was no sense in organizing categories by members. >>
 
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You will have a personal album of all your characters, and in that album you'll be able to sort your characters in any way you want. By genre categories, availability, eye color. Whatever. O_O Because it's your album on your profile.

There is also a tagging system, so you'll be able to search characters by tags too. Tagged, fantasy, one on one, teenager, multi genre... whatever tags people wanna come up with.

We're just trying to figure out what kind of category listing will make the most sense for browsing the Master Listing of characters. The Master List is an optional place that people can submit characters to for other members to browse. You won't have to list a character in there or even have to use it.

You will already be able to search by Member or view all of a member's characters, so there was no sense in organizing categories by members. >>
Will the tagging and search-by-tag system be a feature of the Master Listing of Characters, or will there be a separate place this system is implemented for people to browse through characters?

Edit*

Assuming the tagging system is being implemented in the Master Listing which you're running this poll for - I feel sorting by genre will not be necessary, as we will be able to search genre tags. That said, sorting by availability seems to be the most useful categorization for everyone.

This would especially be useful if the separation of "available" and "taken" characters is carried into the tagging system. For example, the Master List would be sorted by availability, and when we search a genre tag in the Master Listing, our results are still sorted by availability.

Now if the tagging system is being implemented somewhere else and NOT as a feature in the Master Listing, then it would probably be best to sort by Genre and simply have one of the Genre Categories be "Adaptable" or "Neutral". But it would still be fairly important to have some separation by availability here, be it in the listing itself (ex. Charm Asader (Taken)), or somewhere else.
 
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I think having it listed by availability won't work out well in the end as would it not require the user/owner of the character to keep the list updated on a continual basis? Eventually, people are going to fall behind in their housekeeping and the list would end up with a lot of either available characters that are unavailable or unavailable ones that are.

If I had to choose, I would say by genre/alphabetical is the best of the choices available. Perhaps the tagging system can be used so the user could tag their character for multiple genre's if they know the character is versatile? Unfortunately, this also means one character would end up on the list several times if you are looking at one big list so probably not a viable option. :(
 
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IT'S ALMOST READY TO GO LIVE.

There are THREE modes of sorting:

Availability Categories: (Seeking Partners, Group Roleplays, Adaptable, etc)

Tags: Which will include everything from Genre Tags to gender or any other import tags people feel need to be listed. (We will encourage people to use genre and availability the most!)

User's Characters: You'll get to browse through member's personal albums of characters. Members that create their own personal albums instead of using the Master categories can sort their characters in to any kind of categories they want.

We just have to fix a few template phrases and this will be reeeeady. >:3
 
OMG OMG OMG @Diana is this new Media tab thing it?!
 
OMG OMG OMG @Diana is this new Media tab thing it?!

Yes. O_O I have to work on all the language phrases. But staffers can see it and test it and make all the members jealous.