It's generally a formality. The more proactive a new player is in getting themselves up to speed, the less actual review the GM needs to do with them.
We just can't trust that every single new player will take the time to do that. We had lots of people just diving in blindly, jumping into ongoing scenes that made no sense to jump into due to IC circumstances, and in general causing disruptions. We also had a lot of people jumping in, posting randomly once and then having no idea where to go. And lastly we had good players taking the time to read up on everything, only to jump in and miss some subtle but important IC development that hadn't been updated into any of the OOC pages (a frequent occurrence due to the nature of the roleplay), resulting in mistakes that where no fault of their own.
We set up the system of requiring new players to be checked over and given the green light before they can be added to the omniverse group to eliminate these problems.
For everyone that doesn't fall under such problems, it's a less involved process and more of a final check before getting the thumbs up.
That said, if you want to go ahead and get your starting character(s) added to the omniverse characters forum, you can. That forum is open to everyone.
I'll be available most of today. Only just woke up so I need to get breakfast and knock out my morning administration tasks before I can settle in to focus on roleplay stuff, but after that I don't have much planned for today other than getting caught up with people wanting to join the Omniverse. So just give me a poke when you're free.