I've seen a trend among players, and even a few GMs that I find quite odd. And that's posting in a perfectly good profile that their personality or history is lacking, when it's perfectly fine. More than once I've seen people asked to "Talk about history on Draenor/Fall of Silvermoon" or whatever, when it's something EVERY SINGLE ONE of the people in those races have gone through.
Restating what has happened every time is redundant. In reality, what's acceptable on CoTH is a minimum of ten lines, for history and personality combined.
Can you do more? Yes, of course. If the character is lacking on a good ammount of substance, do we ask people to expand on it? Yes.
If they have more than that, and it's fairly well written, we usually approve it. I'm gong to ask players right now to -stop- saying to people "Your history is too short", when I can see you guys don't know. Your perception of short and what's acceptable here are two different things.
Err... Well. I first of all am guilty as charged, but I plead innocense on the base of ignorance.
Generally I've been commenting on other's people profiles alot these two days, and I simply gave them what I was given, I myself was told some expanding on the history and persona will do me greatly, when by what you personally claimed it was absolutly fine. So.. Sorry.
Was just trying to promote some of the profiles to the attention of others. Some are really good.
I still stand by the belief that players ought to refrain from commenting on another player's profile. I know many disagree with me on this, as many do so in attempts to 'help' their fellow player, but I believe it does more harm than good. Very rarely does anyone craft a truly 'perfect' profile, and I find that many individuals are quick to point out the flaws in very quick succession. There's nothing worse for a player than to see 6 or so of his peers viciously dissect their work, making multiple posts about each and every flaw they perceive.
It seems really pedantic to me and scares away the newbies. The GM's were appointed to check profiles because they can do so in a professional, polite manner. They have standards that they have to follow. I can't say players behave in the same manner when commenting on other people's profiles. Sometimes I've seen them act quite nasty to others in both direct and passive ways.
But, eh. Not much I can do about it.
I'm actually inclined to agree with Krent here as well. I'm seeing more and more lately people trying to use their "supperior lore knowledge" to try and outdo eachother. More often than not it turns into, as Krent said, a pendantic argument about lore.
I know a lot of you wish you were GMs. But this isn't a quick way to become one. It's actually making CoTH look... pretty bad overall. You know the saying "Don't CoTH on me bro"? That's what this is about. Sometimes it can hurt more than help.
I think it may be ideal to restrict posting replies to profiles. In lieu of that, we could require a profile to first be hashed out in the Workshop, perhaps having a requirement of it being in there a couple days first before porting it to the base Profiles forum. People would also need to put a link to the appropriate Workshop thread as well (where further comments from other players would be directed).
That'd probably stop the arguments in threads, and stop people from "bumping" threads down the line of approval.
Well personally i think it does help -most- times, pointing out our mistakes in our profiles does help one with the mistakes we still haven't seen on our own profiles and also help out people who are new to X race in general (Although i guess that's the GM's work...). Yeah, WoWwiki does help, but we sometimes need that extra help that we can only get from other players that already hold some knowledge on X race's lore. But i think Kretol is also right. Maybe leaving a profile one week on the workshop can solve that profile posting trouble, but at the same time help players with their profiles; of course, always posting with constructive criticism.