Giving the EG a Bit of a Remodel

[stevebowers]

Also, as a high technology, far future setting, I'm not really seeing the value of having entire topics devoted to primtech and low tech - a view which is further supported by the fact that we apparently have added almost nothing to either Topic page since their initial creation - and much of what is shown on one Topic page is replicated on the other.

I disagree, actually. The concept of 'primtech' is significantly different to Modotech, since it implies that any culture that adopts primtech is deliberately avoiding the use of a wide range of capabilities that would otherwise be freely available to them. Maybe only a minor fraction of all cultures would adopt such a lifestyle, less than one in a thousand, perhaps, but there would be many of them in the Terragen Sphere and I would like to write about more of them.

The idea of primitive reserves was first suggested by Anders Sandberg in the early days of the project, probably inspired by Neverness and other stories by David Zindell. M. Alan Kazlev was also enthusiastic for the idea. I think that the Prim lifestyle would be a choice made by a non-trivial number of people, and this number might increase significantly as the complexity of normal modosophont life increases.

[selden]

WRT the Glossary name, would "A-Z Glossary" work for the alphabetization? That'd at least make it look like less of a hack.

[stevebowers]

WRT the Glossary name, would "A-Z Glossary" work for the alphabetization? That'd at least make it look like less of a hack.

Actually, adding a colon, as in :Glossary: or quotation mark, as in 'Glossary' would move the entry to the top of the list. Any punctuation mark would do. Curiously enough, a non standard letter, such as Å, goes to the bottom of the list for some reason.

[Avengium]

I think, better than this solution, we should think on a way to put the glossary on a different section. Not with all the related articles.

[Drashner1]

I disagree, actually. The concept of 'primtech' is significantly different to Modotech, since it implies that any culture that adopts primtech is deliberately avoiding the use of a wide range of capabilities that would otherwise be freely available to them. Maybe only a minor fraction of all cultures would adopt such a lifestyle, less than one in a thousand, perhaps, but there would be many of them in the Terragen Sphere and I would like to write about more of them.

The idea of primitive reserves was first suggested by Anders Sandberg in the early days of the project, probably inspired by Neverness and other stories by David Zindell. M. Alan Kazlev was also enthusiastic for the idea. I think that the Prim lifestyle would be a choice made by a non-trivial number of people, and this number might increase significantly as the complexity of normal modosophont life increases.

I have nothing at all against writing more about primtech and lo-tech societies in the setting. In fact, we have two distinct Topics for just that purpose that could definitely use some additional articles:

Primitive Tech Societies

Low Tech Societies

That said, it should be noted that:

a) The vast majority of (if not virtually all) such societies described in the setting to date have been written about within the framework of a description of a specific place (usually a planet) and thus appear under the Galactography section. Which is probably a major reason why the two Topics above are so empty. I suppose we could generate links to current and future articles and place them under these Topics - but is that really necessary or wise? Coming at this from the other direction - I have something of a sense that these two Society pages, as well as the other related Topics (Middle, Hi, and Transapientech Societies) are not really serving a clearly defined function or contain clearly defined Articles (much of what is there seems to be a duplicate of articles likely found on the Technology pages. Not arguing to remove them per se - just that we should consider looking into this.

b) The technology pages on the site by and large deal with specific devices and processes that are presumed to found within the setting. Given that we are a high tech/future tech setting and that such devices have extensive articles in RL, including on Wikipedia and elsewhere (or even websites in some cases I'm sure) do we really want to set up articles in the EG on things like bows and arrows, knapping flint, and birchbark canoes? While the prim/lo-tech sophonts of Terragen civ may use those things and much else besides, there are extensive RL online resources for anyone who wants to learn about them - and they do not really do much to describe anything unique about the OA setting (unless you're suggesting some uniquely 'OAish' takes on such things, either on general principles or due to the specific needs of some race or clade).

My 2c worth,

Todd

[Drashner1]

So, in considering the six main Topic pages that launch one into the EG, I had a notion, which leads to a question for the group:

What do you consider to be the Top 10 items that best characterize or represent the OA setting within the following categories?:

Culture and Society

Galactography

History

Science

Sophonts

Technology

Note that you do NOT need to have 10 items in each category, but do aim to have NO MORE THAN 10 items in any category.

Thanks!

Todd

[Drashner1]

Aw Jeez


within the cryptotechnology thread, these 3 articles were not combined.

Cryptotechology
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/464631b51b1a8
Cryptotech
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4eab6f5dc6579
Cryptotechnology
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/46463127ad98c

Sorry Todd, I forgot to message you with the image. 

The Cryptotechnology article has been updated, including the image from Vaktus, and the other two articles have been removed.

Thanks!

Todd

[Avengium]

Hi,
I have a suggestion.    To apply (if aproved) from now on if we are too busy, not in retrospective. Only in retrospective if someone thinks we are not too busy.
Because i don't want to charge the mods with additional work. Is not my intention when i suggest things. I suggest things to help.

The suggestion from the EG is this:
"Could the mods, specifically the one that edits an EG article put the date of the day he/she updated that said article on the development notes along with the "Initially published on" date?"

I saw a thing on Cryptotechnology and several others recently updated.

Text by M. Alan Kazlev
updated by Todd Drashner
Initially published on 07 January 2002.

i think the mod that did the update, in this case Drashner, could manually put the date of the day he is updating the article on the line, along with the name.
This has the advantage that don't require programming, only writing a bit more.
A second one is that, after writing it, the date is visible for all people who visit the page. Guests included. And don't need people logged on the website to see the CMS historical of updates.

That previous quote could read:
" Text by M. Alan Kazlev
updated by Todd Drashner (May 2018).
Initially published on 07 January 2002. "

This was intended in the technocalypse article because it has major changes. But i think this practice of putting the date could be done more frequently and when the change is smaller than that because we have articles that were modified on different periods of the project and this could be useful to determine it without need to login into the CMS to look an historical.

We have currently stickied "Known Canon Issues" in General Setting Discussion subforum because this thing of having different periods of Canon, and articles that are older than others is real and is happening. that's why we have the sticky.

Other example is the Cyberian Network empire article. The article was changed drastically. The whole main body of text is different from the old one who featured "L33t hackers". And the developments notes are:

Text by Anders Sandberg and M. Alan Kazlev
alphaomega325, Avengium and Ryan B
Initially published on 03 July 2000.

There is no trace of another date that is not the 03 of july of 2000. A better way of putting it could be to put the different times it was edited in different lines. Like for example:

" Text by Anders Sandberg and M. Alan Kazlev
alphaomega325, Avengium and Ryan B
Initially published on 03 July 2000.
Last version of May 2018. "

This is only a suggestion and i am in no means forcing anyone to change it to the suggested. Feel free to do it what you want with the suggestion.  

This post also reminds me this other Forum Thread from 2017: Automatically updated Page revision date: http://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2908

In this old thread is suggested an automated way of putting dates. But this post is not about an automated way, but a manual one.
You can do the manual way of putting the date (the one suggested in this post) that is easier, even if you don't have the time/skill/posibilty of putting an automated one.

Not liking that old thread should not stop you from trying an easier method that may work.

[Drashner1]

Something like what you describe would be doable, although we would need to look into exactly where to put the dating since we might (or might not) run into issues with your first suggested spot if we had a lot of people involved in a revision. We would also want a consensus on where to put such information for the sake of consistency.

Another issue to consider is that if we do start manually putting in revision dates, will we have to turn around and remove them again if/when we finally get an automated revision date system set up. There is ongoing work on a redesign of the website taking place, although it is moving slowly for various reasons.

We have a bit of time before we start attacking all of the various suggested remodeling projects being added to this thread. Should be later in the summer or Fall at the outside. Between now and then, I will reach out to our Webmaster and get his thoughts on whether or not we should do this manually. If he is OK with it, then we can add this into our process moving forward.

Thanks!

Todd

[Avengium]

Good to hear ongoing work is taking place.