I've been toying with an idea but I've never had the knowledge enough with my IPB forum to manage it until now. Now that I have figured out how to move stuff around and add in stuff just where I want it, I've decided to give this a try.

Initially, the idea is to keep the profiles of all characters as well as acceptance on the characters' profiles. Members will be able to edit their profiles and fill out a form for their character. There will also be a few forms that will be left for an admin to leave notes and also stamp their approval - which will only be enabled for the staff to edit. Members will not have to fill it out all at once, they can stop at any point, save what they have and come back to work on it some more. When finished, I will have a forum or thread dedicated to finished profiles for members to let staff know when they are finished.

This idea I got from an rpg I was on a long time ago and it has stuck with me ever since. Obviously that is just a somewhat sketchy idea that will gradually gain more substance but I'd like to know if anyone has seen this done or if they have any suggestions. If you have seen this done before, has it worked well? It worked rather well at the site I was on but I haven't seen any other sites do this so I'm not sure...

I did this on my old site and I have to admit I loved it. The ability to just click a name and see a profile is great. However, I always extremely paranoid about deleting people even after they hadn't posted for several weeks. People don't always save things on their computer and if you delete that profile, they could lose all the character info.

I've since gone back to the basic profiles in threads thing, but with basic info (age, gender, etc) also available in the forum profile (and on topics) for easy access. To me it's just less nerve wracking to move a profile to a hidden forum than it is to delete one all together.

I keep profiles in the member profile, but I also have an admin-only archive for character information so I can save old character information for people who decide to come back. It's a nice medium, I think.

Yes, the profile application (i guess i could call it that) is actually very basic and lacking the unessisary fluff. So I could put it into my routine of accepting people that I copy the application and paste it into an identical form within a character database of sorts for staff only. That way, if we do delete their account for whatever reason... they can always ask for it if they want it or they can ask for it if they want to rejoin again with the same character.