Operation Audacious Phoenix

I've been working out a fairly tentative system for character publication status at the moment. As it adds massive layers of complexity to a whole lot of different user interfaces, I don't know if this will be in at new site launch.

At the moment, this is how I envision it:

Public - Exactly as characters are now. Everyone can look at their profile, they show up in directories, you can post with them, etc.

Friends Only - You can post as this character. People who are not friends with your user account/this character specifically will only see a notice that the profile is friends only when trying to view it. You can issue friend requests with this character, but receiving them may be somewhat limited.

Private - only you can see this profile. You will not be able to post as this character. If you previously made posts using this character when it was set to public or friends only, the character's name, icon and link will still be visible to others on those posts. However, clicking the link will result in a message about the character profile being set to private. I imagine the main use-case for this setting would be storing information about a character you were writing a novel about, but did not ever intend to actually RP with.

WIP - when a character is first created, it can be made as a "Work In Progress." This is functionally equivalent to being set to "private," except that once a character has been removed from WIP status, it can NOT go back to WIP status. Leaving WIP status is what would generate the notification to your friends about a new character having been created. You could go from WIP to private to skip having a notification generated about a new character being created entirely.

You can swap your character between public/private/friends only at will.

Obviously, mods can review profiles in any state.

A major hiccup I'm struggling with for the idea of "friends only" characters is issues like: What happens when a friends only character applies to join a group? The mods of that group would need to be able to review the profile to make a decision, and perhaps could not.

The system becomes dramatically simpler if we have only public/private and WIP, but that feels a bit incomplete

Hmm so private isn't anon character but simply hidden one? Do I understand it right?

Sounds like a nice idea, but how much work will this take you?

Personally I create my characters as Anonymous and then edit/work out their profiles before switching them to public. For me, having characters visible to friends only isn't really a need.

Yes. Anon will remain as-is.

I like the WIP/Private a lot. It makes it easier to get back to creating a character after a break from the site.

Would this be perhaps solved by a notification/restriction that "friends only" be changed to "public" if you wish to take such a character to a group setting? I presume that a "friends only" character would be used in one-on-one private messages or group private messages where all parties are "friends"? Such a character in a public group setting really should be "public" at that point?

Is that a fair restriction to make? I am, of course, assuming one can flip the "public vs. friends-only" switch at any time for each character...

I absolutely love the ideas of these character profile options. Having characters that are strictly for friend use would be incredibly fun to have the option of having.

However, a concern about the Private profile is that people could attempt to heavily abuse this by creating those "- - -" profiles that are completely blanked out and using it to harass others or try and create trouble in the forums, only to quickly set the profile to private so no one can directly go to the profile itself. Wouldn't this cause issues for the moderation team? Or is there some back door things there to ensure that this can't be so easily abused? Not that people won't try anyway.

I love the WIP and the Friends Only posts the absolute most. These two options would be absolutely useful to those who are wanting to, say using the WIP profile option, to work on new templates but don't want their personal feed and friends feeds dumped with a lot of useless jargon from poking back and forth with images and other things on the profile.

The friends only option, with the issue revolving around groups, I think it would be entirely fair that to access a group you would need to open the character to public view, or at least anonymous, to gain access to public groups, unless the character is specifically invited by a friend who owns the group. Which, would it be possible to make the character profile an "invite only" type, like we do with top secret groups?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, as Kim said in the original post, it seems that mods can review profiles in any state, so if they were to abuse this, the person responsible could be dealt with.

Yeah this would be a non-issue for the mod team.

Forgive me if I am missing something here, as I am tired, but...what would the purpose of a Private character be? If you can't use a character, I am not sure how/why you would make it at all.

I imagine there are more uses of this than I can think of, but I'll give you a few ideas that I personally would use the Private category for:

A) A retired character that you may one day put back into circulation, but for now, nobody needs to see them and you just want to hang on to their profile.
b) Alternate versions of a character that may not be of use right now, but possibly might be later, and it'd be nice to be able to swap between the profiles quickly at some point.
C) Storing information about things like world-building, character development, backstories, etc, that perhaps aren't necessary to put 'out there' in a visible character profile, but are nice to have a nearby reference available for.

A repository of something, after all, is a storage space.

Ah, thank you, I hadn't thought of those. Now that I think about it, it could also be that you want to tweak the character a bit and you don't want anyone able to see the changes you've made until the finishing touches have been put on them.

Though, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say with option B? Alternate versions, like a fantasy version, vs. a sci-fi version, vs. a modern one, or a realistic b8ut historic version? You could just do such alternate versions of the same character on a different page from the main one as things stand right now...or am I misunderstanding what you mean entirely (totally possible, considering how tired I am, hahah)?

I absolutely agree with a Friends Only option. I'm not entirely sure what the problem with groups are, though. Wouldn't they just treat them as anonymous characters?

You can still view anonymous characters even if you aren't friends with them, though.

I have some reservations about the concept of "friends only" character profiles. Are there any considerations about the power this will give those stealing content from others? I've had a character recently lifted (both images and text) and I've reported stolen characters to others who were grateful to be able to do something about it. It's concerning that these profiles might be much harder to identify and report in the future.