Mascot Project Guidelines

--- FAQ ---

Q: What is the OCR Mascot Bio Project all about?

A: The OCR Mascot Bio Project aims to enable visitors of the site to click the mascots (game characters) in the upper right corner of the page and read about who they are, what games they appear in, and links to remixes of those games. Also, the bio pages will include links to other pages for more information on the characters.

Q: How can I help?

A: The original idea was that visitors would post information about a character. The current way to help out is to post a full bio on your character of choice. You can post as many bios as you like (one bio for each character). Also, if you find typos, wrongful info, etc. in the bios, you're welcome to tell us. In order to be as helpful as you possibly could, however, please read and follow these guidelines (which are in no particular order) before you post anything:

--- Guidelines ---

1. Don't write a bio on a character that someone has also written a bio on (unless it totally sucks, and in that case, you're encouraged to).

2. Always provide sources for any and all information you post. This will help the team by letting us concentrate on the information rather than finding out where you found it. It will also help us ensure that the mascot bios do not contain untruthful information, which will in turn ensure that the mascot bios do not give OCR as a whole a bad reputation. In other words, posts like "I heard somewhere that Mario was originally named Jumpman" will largely only add to our workload rather than the opposite and will therefore likely be ignored, even though the statement is true.

ALWAYS TRY TO FIND MORE THAN ONE SOURCE - especially if that one source is a Wikipedia page. If possible, please refer to game manuals. Some game manuals can be found online - try *removed* or *removed* if you don't have the manual yourself.

Also, please try to find related links (to fansites, etc.) to every bio you write. Never leave a bio with only a Wikipedia link. If you want, you're welcome to provide links to such sites for bios that are currently lacking related links.

And if something is wrong in a bio, PLEASE TELL US ABOUT IT.

3. The bio pages are not intended to be an encyclopedia. Do not search the entirety of the internet to find every bit of information there is to find on a character. The purpose of the bio pages is merely to introduce characters to people to whom they are largely unknown, not to provide all the information there is about them. You are, however, very welcome to provide us with links to pages that do contain tons of information. These links will then be added to the bio pages. Hopefully, we will be able to accredit the information to those who provide it.

4. Also, try to write bios so that they don't contain "spoilers," i.e. revealing things that are supposed to be found out during gameplay. An extreme spoiler would be revealing the main character's death at the end of the game, or the likes. On deciding what to consider a spoiler and what not to, consult yourself: if there's something that you find out during gameplay that would ruin YOUR experience if you had known it beforehand, something that YOU wouldn't want to know before reaching that part of the game storyline - then don't include it in the bio. We all know how it is when people reveal how a movie (that you've been planning to see) ends, or unintentionally finding out how a book ends by reading the back cover. Not that great.

5. Any and all information provided by you is then and thereafter at our disposal, and to be used by the team at our leisure, to be edited and meddled with in whatever way we see fit. The information you provide might not actually make it all the way to the bio page, and especially not your exact sentences. It's all up to the team to decide what to put up there.

6. Bios need not mention or describe every single game a character has appeared or starred in, unless that game has one or several remixes here on OCR. All such games are to be listed at the end of the bio, and each game name is to be a link that takes whoever clicks it directly to that game's OCR page.

7. If the character you're writing a bio for is a selectable character, especially from an arcade fighting game, please describe some of what makes that character special in terms of attack moves and such. This goes for any character from any game, of course, but this is particularily interesting with these characters, since the games they're in generally tend to focus immensely on special attack moves and the likes.

The bios should have an "open ending", not by allowing for further content, but by not seeming like they're trying to stay up-to-date. Again, they're an introduction to the character, not an encyclopedia on them. Bios should be written in a way that they can be read in a few years and still not contain invalid information.