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2025 Announcements - ProxCenBound - 01-01-2025
Hello everyone,
We hope you are enjoying the holidays. Heading into the new year, we have several announcements for the community:
Revised Procedures for Submissions
The How to Contribute page for Encyclopaedia Galactica articles has recently been updated, and we would like to emphasize two points that are a significant change from previous practice, to ensure the community is aware:
Quote:-Authors are limited to no more than three submissions in development/editing at any one time. Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the Executive Editor. We limit submissions in order to not overwhelm the Editors and other contributors, so shorter articles of 1-3 pages are ideal (but not required).
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-Members are required to begin by posting a summary or outline of their proposed article or article update to the Encyclopaedia Galactica Articles sub-forum. The thread this creates will then be used to host the first and subsequent drafts of the new or updated article as well as any discussions that take place as part of its development. Article threads should be titled with the name of the new or updated article to be created.
Due to their experience with the project and familiarity with its needs, Editors and Administrators may post drafts without the above limitations.
Staff Backlog Catch-Up Month
Starting in 2025, the admins and editors will spend one month per year catching up on backlogged OA work to the extent they can. Members are welcome to continue to submit proposals and revise their drafts the same as during the rest of the year; however, they will not be reviewed until after the backlog month has concluded or the backlog has been cleared. Backlogged OA work may include backend work, reviewing older drafts, writing or rewriting needed articles, or other matters.
For this year, January will be the backlog month. For members who are not editors or admins, nothing will change except that you will need to wait until February or thereafter for us to review anything submitted in January.
Xenosophont Moratorium
It has been decided that 2024's xenosophont moratorium will be revised and extended for 2025.
Instead, we strongly encourage submissions describing very strange neogenic, provolve, xenoprovolve, and other sophonts developed by Terragens themselves.
Revised from 2024 are two new exemptions - types of new xenosophonts that are permitted:
-Xenosophonts that satisfy both of the following criteria - that are (1) extinct and (2) were bound to their homeworlds due to lacking spacefaring capability - are exempt; these can be included as part of the history of a current or former garden world, for example.
-Xenosophonts outside of the Terragen Sphere are exempt. However, for such submissions, we expect significant elements of mystery to be maintained, in line with the fact that they are being observed from a distance.
As before:
-Revisions to xenosophonts that are already in the setting are exempt. We encourage submissions intended to flesh these out more fully as appropriate.
-Non-sophont alien life, such as garden worlds, is exempt; these are welcome to be developed without limitation.
Focus Topic
There is a new Focus - a topic on which we particularly encourage submissions, and which we as staff each set a goal to write an article about during the Focus - for 2025, after our last Focus about the Sephirotic Empires.
The Focus for 2025 is Culture and Society.
Inspiration for possible things to write about may be found in the subtopics of the Culture and Society topic page in the EG, for example. Some possible subjects include, but are by no means limited to, the unique cultures of unusual clades of sophonts, the language of a particular society, the games and pastimes that can be found among Terragens, the arts and creative works of Terragens in general or of particular cultures, and so on.
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We wish everyone a happy new year, and look forward to continue seeing what your creativity has to offer in 2025!
RE: 2025 Announcements - ProxCenBound - 01-02-2025
Our updated approach to terraformed worlds developed a few years ago also remains in effect, and can be viewed here.