>You guys are responsible for running and maintaining a game
>that hinges on original content. Some of that content (a very
>small fraction) is player driven, and much is driven by
>volunteer contributors (staff).

I (mostly) disagree with your assessment that the game "hinges" on original content. To some extent, stock areas would give new to CF players a little bit of past knowledge from which to build. To a large extent I don't believe that any area content (no matter how cool) matters as much as code content. There are a lot of MOO? style muds out there where all people do is build rooms and RP and stuff like that. That isn't what CF is about, or at least certainly not why I play.

So, given that we have fundamentally differing views on the importance of "content", it is hard to comment on how I'd "fix" it that would be helpful.

>You know that a significant portion of the players simply
>choose to recycle old content. Furthermore, when questioned,
>the majority of the players plead ignorance, or claim that it
>is their character. There's nothing to say it isn't their
>character, but there is nothing to say it is either.
>
>You also know that a proportion of players are almost always
>going to cut corners, or cheat any system repeatedly,
>especially when there are not any consequences*. Please keep
>in mind that you have limited resources, and an extremely
>hands-on system will create a lot of administrative work.
>
>How would you design a system to tackle this problem**?

I would create a standard description generator that happens during character creation. You can choose eye color, hair color, etc. or get assigned random attributes for each. This becomes your description. If you want to make a custom one on top of that, go for it, but it adds to instead of replacing the "standard" one.

It also allows me to roll a character, get a randomly assigned "description" and go about actually playing the game. There is the added benefit that maybe I get some randomly assigned attribute that sparks a bit of creativity and becomes a part of my character I'd never have thought of, or that I decide to roll with later, once the character has truly taken on a life of their own.

If you have any familiarity with DnD 5e, think about the randomly rolled (not the only way to do it), flaws, bonds, traits, etc.

>**And yes, we can argue that this is not a problem, but I
>would not personally be happy for someone else to get Imm Xp
>because they copy/pasted a description which I had written.

I would never give Imm Xp for a written description. Role's (as much as I personally dislike that they seem to be required) should at least give some idea as to why your character behaves the way they do, and as such can be used as a ruler to measure a character from an Imm standpoint and can be a helpful tool for a player to coalesce their thoughts on their character. A written description just isn't going to come into play enough (ever) to be worth 1 Imm XP or 2 seconds of reading/enforcement/whatever.

Most times a player walks through one of the extremely well crafted rooms that CF area writers have written over the years they will simply gloss over the description or have brief mode on and don't see it at all. Players are "seeing" room descriptions once a second. Player descriptions probably aren't seen once every ten minutes and are reading them just as often as room descriptions, probably 1 for every 1,000. Entire characters are rolled, ranked, and deleted without ever reading another Player's description.

It just isn't worth staff time to police.