litphoria

A character's eye color

The problem with that is that portraits are often actively misleading, due to the nature of being borrowed from somewhere quite often. And right now, a large number of Traits are not really ever going to be searched on, but I have found again and again that they provide a very useful reference for writing the RP. So things like nipple appearance, eye color, build, and so on are used in the RP prose, and I don't have to wait until a self-description has been given, or ask it in OOC and wait for a reply.

Maybe the feedback on making a Trait description box will encourage self-descriptions, but right now, it is extremely rare to find anyone who has described their own eye-color anywhere.

I disagree with that. I've made many profiles, and it takes a lot of time to get all the details down. And for the most part, we don't think about things that make it easier for others. And that is what this is all about. Of course, this is coming from someone who literally edited the eyes on my avatar and other pics to be more green than the original pure-blue. But I also didn't add a physical description for Anne, either. And none of my other profiles on F-list and elsewhere have had their images edited to harmonize the eye-color. But I do look for physical descriptions in other's profiles to be able to make better RP descriptions of others in my posts.

For me, traits are something that we need other users to see. Not everyone reads the fluffy text about the characters, and it is frustrating to have your character's eyecolor or other stats missed. That said, I suggested non searchable traits as a place to enter items like hair color, fur color, eye color, etc, without the expectation that it will be searched. This would make it so that people would have the standard format to search for the stats, and not have the concern of whether it is an item that is often searched or now.

I worded that badly. The intent of my suggestion is that people will have a standard place to enter, and view on all profiles, certain standard items that are not fitting for search purposes.

I so not, personally, because once more, there is no standard to those. One person may put eye color and fur color and nothing else. One person may put a four paragraph personal description. I want to be able to look at a profile and know that the eye color is at X spot, and the other traits were in similar , consistent locations. This is specifically not about searches, and thus the argument that lack of completion will limit searches makes no sense. This is about uniformity and a flow to the visual of the profiles.

do not, personally^ I am full of typos today.

Before we add even more of these traits, I think it'd be good if this was implemented first.

Griz, while I agree that that would make things much easier, saying something like 'no more new features until this ease of use thing is created' would sorely cripple the site, in my opinion. Wrecked is getting to things as quickly as possible, and the site is getting easier to use, but shutting down the forward motion in some areas, while waiting for things to be cleaner, neater, and easier, only feels harmful to the site.

While I do like the Trait Description box as a catchall for non-standard trait description, I also agree with Yasu about formalizing the descriptive traits. I don't mind the current system, but if a trait isn't one that is deemed to be needed in Search, then it also doesn't need to have user-suggested categories either! They can just be text-fields, so I could enter "red with golden-red streaks" for hair-color, for example. To the degree that they aren't filled out on a profile, they would not be shown, like any of the Traits now.

Valid views, but keep in mind that character creation for a brand new user looks like this, and those with multiple characters can feel pressured into filling all of that out again, and users browsing through profiles get hit with that massive list as well.

Adding even more clutter on top of what is already a ton of stuff that's not vitally important to all users is more trouble than its worth at this point, I think.

Anne, that is specifically why I wanted all of the text based traits added. No, these would not have search functionality, which I understand some people want. On the other hand, as a character who has naturally blue hair, and pale grey eyes, I would like a formulaic place to enter these things to make them easier for others to find and for me to enter as well. Certainly, I would not use traits like the various fur colors. That said, if I know that eye color goes in the third slot down, then I can enter it there every time, and look for it there in profile comparisons, rather than scanning through, potentially, pages of profile info to find that single tidbit.

Griz, it seems less cluttered to me. If you look at my linked post, there would be neat little text boxes, telling users exactly what is needed. They could fill these in, or not. We can when looking at other profiles, find these traits easily for writing purposes, rather than searching through text with no formatting at all.

Griz, I agree that that is a lot of buttons, but the fact that it looks like that is a particular design choice that can change easily to one that is far, far less cluttered. Personally, I think it is flawed because you are shown every possible choice, and the number keeps growing every month. I fully expect it to be double this within a few months or so, if the user base picks up, even if things like eye-color aren't added to the Traits.

It could be that instead of every Age choice, you only see an Age button. If you don't want 'Age', you skip it. A mobile-friendly way to select your Age choice would be to press and the options flow out around your finger, and you slide out to the one you want. Or you press and release on Age, the choices expand out in some way, and you press on the Age choice you want. The point is that Trait selection is more hierarchical and you aren't presented with every possible choice as a unique button right from the start.

Anne, you should consider making that a separate suggestion, it sounds like a really good idea!

I've heard plenty enough of people being into dreamy blue eyed guys as much as people being into redheads that this makes sense. Personally I have no interest in it beyond having easy reference for eye color if I ever feel like referring to it.

A lot of people seem to be especially into differently-colored eyes, enough to search for that.

I'm for the idea that Eye color/trait/type is to be added in traits. People do have particular interests in certain eye colors and for some characters [such as cartoons] are able to give more detail even if it's just simple. Besides, people can fill out additional details on the trait if they want to be more descriptive about it.

I think that there are people interested in people with blue eyes, or red eyes or other such traits. I believe we could treat this like hair color, and decide on a set number of 'standard' colors, and people could write in their variants from there.

Well, what I'm gonna say is, it is very useful to see things like eye color at a glance, when you need them. Personally, I honestly don't memorize it about every character I interact with, so it's very useful to just take a look at the trait and find out when you need to know it in a pinch, rather than search for a description god knows where. Not to mention that searching for eye color, especially with something like hair color combination, is something I can totally picture people do.

I think that having a lot of buttons is a problem, a big problem, but it's a separate issue, and frankly it shouldn't impact our ability to add more things, because without that the system on the whole kinda loses its purpose.

Declined, use your description. Traits aren't intended to cover every detail of your character, just the ones that are valuable to search or match by and which people are commonly likely to have strong preferences about.