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Hey guys - this is just a small suggestion of a possible addition to the EG homepage, lemme know if it sucks or not. I was thinking that we could compile a list of random facts (similar to Wikipedia) beginning with "Did you know...", and describing events, objects or people in the OA universe. Just off the top of my head, one example could be "...that To'ul'hs were the first extant xenosophonts to be encountered by Terragens?" Another could be "...that the maker of the Amerindian Worlds is still unknown, and is being sought by the planets' inhabitants?" Ideally we could have quite a lot of these (I have plenty of free time or w/e lol, so I could probably come up with a lot), and they could be randomly generated - we might have ten on one day for example, and another ten on the next
James Rogers, Professional Idiot
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I think the basic idea is a good one
I do see a couple of minor issues/concerns that we would need to figure out to make this workable:
a) Developing the functionality to automate this and setting it up. This would be a Trond question and depend on what time and capacity he has to make it happen. As it happens, he and I are going to try to touch base on resuming the ongoing site redesign sometime in November. There are a number of items on that particular 'to do' list that are ahead of this one, but I can certainly ask him about the possibility of adding this to the pile.
In the immediate term, we could set this up as a manually controlled feature that we change out 'by hand' on some regular basis.
b) I am a bit concerned about trying to do multiple numbers of these in a day, even if automating the process were already a done deal. 10 or so a day is a lot of entries and links, both to set up and then to maintain. It would be moderately embarrassing if we started this kind of thing and then couldn't keep it going. So my thought is that at least initially we limit this to one posting a day and see how it goes. If we find that we are generating so many of these that displaying more than one a day seems doable we can certainly scale things up. Same goes for if we find ourselves able to automate this in some fashion fairly readily.
My 2c worth,
Todd
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Wisegeek.com does this. I don't know how many they do but I don't think they change them every day. It pops up automatically when you first go there. You might not want to do that but taking a look at it may give an idea or two.
Ciao,
Terrafamilia
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Ok, that little window could become addicting:p
More seriously, if we could field this type of tool (which we probably could) and come up with some cycling system of 'OA factoids', then this could be rather fun. We used to have something like this for the 'OA Newsnet' (although less advanced) and we might do something like that again or possibly have more than one.
Of course, the big issue at this point would be how hard this would be to create. That would be a Trond question. I'll be talking to Trond fairly soon and will ask him about this.
Todd
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Great idea. I love "Did you know?"sections.
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11-02-2016, 01:54 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-02-2016, 02:00 AM by JamesRogers.)
A few suggestions I thought up:
"Did you know..."
...that the Limners are closely related to a starfaring species from the Perseus Arm which vanished more than 30,000 years ago?
...that the supposed ban on tobacco in the late Information Age is one of the most common misconceptions about Old Earth?
...that the Low Emission Zone is thought to be due to the presence of a civilization existing entirely within BioGeoComputers?
...that the Skywrack is the largest species of tree to exist on the planet Trees, often exceeding 1 km in height?
...that the terraformed planet Bullseye is named for the enormous storm on its sun-facing side?
...that Nova Terra was Terragenkind's first interstellar colony?
...that the Muuh refuse to allow Terragens access to the Ultima Gate?
...that the inhabitants of the baseline reserve planet Wurm have formed numerous legends about so-called "crystal-men"?
...that the star Regor could not be reached in time to prevent a supernova?
...that the System of Response is the only known AI utilized by the Muuh, and may or may not have been built by them?
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(10-25-2016, 12:14 PM)Drashner1 Wrote: Ok, that little window could become addicting:p
More seriously, if we could field this type of tool (which we probably could) and come up with some cycling system of 'OA factoids', then this could be rather fun. We used to have something like this for the 'OA Newsnet' (although less advanced) and we might do something like that again or possibly have more than one.
Of course, the big issue at this point would be how hard this would be to create. That would be a Trond question. I'll be talking to Trond fairly soon and will ask him about this.
Todd
I had my meeting with Trond this weekend. This has been added to our to-do list for the site redesign. Because it would probably be tied to the redesign of the homepage, it will probably be dug into toward the end of the process, but it is now on our collective radar.
Thanks!
Todd
