I personally see the Ons/Offs threads and Sigs idea as the best thing about this site. It does make it extremely convenient to find compatible players/writers in a short time, and helps to avoid offence. It's a sign of remarkable honesty and understanding that is exceedingly rare elsewhere.
On the other hand, Elvi has repeatedly pointed out that there are problems with having them.
Rather than messing up someone else's thread in a debate, I post this here in the hope that a solution can be found.
I have seen another player, trying to help by throwing suggestions at another player, only to be brushed asside because "she should have read their on's and off's before suggesting them".
Well, it's certainly appreciated to at least learn about another person before making suggestions out of the blue, isn't it?
He/she could've picked a nicer & more polite way to say it though.
Another being told that if they had an on's and off's thread that the other player 'may' take a look and 'may' see if they were suitable to their 'requirements'
People do this sort of thing in dating clubs all the time, and it certainly avoids one of the major hassles online of not being able to tell anything about the other person except username, age , and gender.
And yourself suggesting that roleplay would be easier if they displayed their wears.
Well, it's true isn't it? And you could've put that another way other than as if they were on shopping rack. Besides, don't you have your Ons/Offs in your own Sig and do the same thing?
I have seen one player say in his on's and off's thread that he felt pressurised into making one.
This is only real problem that I can see with Ons/Offs. It's going to happen anyway, but this is the tricky one. Instead of demonizing all the other things about Ons/Offs and how they are used in a way that sounds purely subjective, you should have a thread discussion dedicated to just this one problem and see if a solution can be worked out to avoid it, because otherwise Elvi, you will be spending years lecturing & preaching about the problem on threads that have nothing to do with it without ever solving it.
There probably is a very good solution out there besides just going around lecturing & reaching endlessly. Let's at least discuss it on a thread dedicated to finding that solution rather than having the problem rear it's head on every thread where some one mentions Ons/Offs and how convenient they are, and you going into lecture mode. Otherwise Elvi, you'll wear yourself out.
To everyone else, can we have some ideas about this, and how to solve it?