I think part of it is a difference of opinion, and another part is the cast size. In order:
To touch on what Artican said, the descriptions get so monotonous. It simply defies logic in a sense: to facilitate imagery, we have to generalize the descriptions and let the reader tilt it their own way. In the grand scheme of things, what difference does it make for my character to have red hair while I have black hair in reality? Am I or am I not ultimately the personality of the role? And is this or is this not fantasy? Because last time I checked, I don't actually own secluded acres of cannabis, nor was I involved in a production of The Phantom of the Opera. So why should it matter if my hair, eyes, measurements, and location match? If I write a second person, I'm seizing control of the character description, knowing full well it means diddly in terms of personality - which is where it counts - and find myself closing those that place too much emphasis on generic text due to both the logic and the staggering number of variables that requires. And yet there are people who do believe this matters and make these stories with generic descriptions that close those stories that ask them to fit a hard appearance. As such, what's the right answer? How does immersive text best appeal to other writers and readers in the face of this divide?
Even if we restrict ourselves to simply using immersive text for names, where do we say we need to stop creating variables? Am I really going to be involving all those characters throughout the entirety of every plot line, even if just to make them observers for certain actions or isolate them for a few threads in the interest of a subplot? Or am I just going to be using them in shifts for individual plots of a central story that aren't necessarily going to involve the remaining cast? For an example let's look at a CHYOA story: The Fourth Floor of a College Dorm. Excluding the player character, the story has 14 different immersive characters, but most of the story-lines never use even half of those characters until a certain arc resolves itself, and usually quickly dips right back down. Since I could make choices that result in me never meeting the entire cast, what value was there in having me name all of those characters? An immersive character should dominate the whole story, being sidelined only for character or plot development with the understanding that it will circle back, and yet the variables are used to name any little thing we might use. Additionally, even if all of these characters appear, do we really know who should get what name? My example story gives a brief description of each character, but some don't and also fail to describe the characters in the opening thread. In the case of those some, how am I sure I gave the right character the right name before I get into the story? Perhaps I wanted the sociable character to be named Alex while the loner should be named Sam, and I gave each one the other name. If it's just two characters - the reader and a love interest - then no big deal, but anything higher, and we've got ourselves a conundrum. The underlying drive of immersive text is to close in on each reader's fantasy, and if the opening thread doesn't facilitate the fantasized names, the immersive text doesn't facilitate fantasy.
The second is a little easier to fix in my opinion just because it's a matter of pure logic: assign only characters who are immovable, and be sure to describe them before readers click anything outside the sidebar. The most difficult part is going to be alerting the other users to this principle. The first, however, is far more subjective, and many would rather stay out of that debate.
