Giving the EG a Bit of a Remodel

[Avengium]

I'm interested in reading examples.

[ProxCenBound]

Embedded functionality sounds good, and I don't consider either a or b to be major problems. I think having one timeline to update and affect all the other pages is well worth it.

Seeing an example, as you mentioned, would be nice.

[Drashner1]

Here ya go...

LINK

This page is the result of me playing around with this last night and this evening. Some of these have filter capability turned on, some don't. Some have colors, some don't. I can adjust them in a variety of ways and the changes will show up by refreshing the page where the embed code lives.

I suspect we will need to play with this a bit to determine all the things it can and can't do and possible design tricks to optimize functionality.

In terms of a Master Timeline - I think that is a worthwhile thing in its own right, even if we were to never display any part of it on the website itself. This simply because it would provide a single 'source of truth' and let us rapidly see the huge OA timeline in more than one dimension. The rough mockup I've done touches that a little, but I suspect we could do more.

An obvious limit with the embedded timelines is screen width - although Trond might be able to help us with that. Alternatively, we might use a Master Timeline to keep track of all of our history and then use separate labeled tabs on the same workbook for each timeline on the site. These sub-timelines could be built by copy pasting content from the Master and then embedding into the website. This would allow them to be fairly stable in themselves (They wouldn't reflect the changes every time we were updating or manipulating the Master for some other project) but would also be in one place and clearly labeled so we could make updates to specific timelines or across all of them much more rapidly than we do now where we have to remember what Timelines we have and where we put them (with very mixed results so far).

We could also eliminate some types of timeline. For example, the Technology Timeline could likely be folded into the Master. People wanting to see the history of technology across the setting could just filter on that Type (or whatever we end up calling it).

Timelines for planets might need to be separate from the Master so as not to reflect every change we might make while doing other things (or not, depending on what we can do design wise). But they could probably be kept on a dedicated Timeline spreadsheet or workbook with each planet labled and easy to find and update from the central location.

Anyway, please look them over, ask questions, and share ideas.

Thanks!

Todd

[Drashner1]

So, inspired by Qualitum Dragon's feedback re making the site easier to navigate and 'get up to speed on' for new members, I'd like to suggest the following:

a) We've already started moving toward including Rynn's Snapshots (or presumably similar vignettes if/when we create them) at the start of various articles to provide a more story based window into what life is like in OA. I'd like to suggest that we continue to do this and, in particular, try to develop these for our Topic and major Article pages. These are often the first pages that new members see (they sort of form the skeleton for the entire EG) and by reading through them, a new person could find it easier to visualize and grasp the setting, while also being (hopefully) entertained in the process. We might also 'mine' our existing Traveler's Notes stories or vignettes for material as well.

b) I'd like to also suggest that we do something similar to what we've done on the updated Backstory and include 2-6 important terms and their definitions from the Glossary at the start of each Topic (and some important/more complex or specialized Articles) as well.

Taken together the layout might be something like:

Snapshot: A vignette set in OA that entertains the reader while helping them visualize OA.

Terms: 3-6 (on avg) important terms and their definitions that the reader will either encounter or that it would be good to know when they start reading the Topic/Article text.

The text of the Topic/Article explaining/describing whatever the concept/setting element is.

A link to the full Glossary added to the Additional Information section at the bottom of the page. Also links to any YouTube videos or the like that might be relevant to the subject matter. We've already done this a bit with Isaac Arthur's videos and could continue to expand on that.

Thoughts?

Todd

[Avengium]

If we put terms at the start of the article. Is there a possibility that we put the same terms on different articles.

[Drashner1]

If we put terms at the start of the article. Is there a possibility that we put the same terms on different articles.

Possibly - but a couple of things:

a) Putting terms in at the start would generally be limited to Topics on the site (Topic and Article are distinct terms used in our Content Management System - a Topic is one of the 300 or so main pages the EG is built around, like Galactography or Modosophont or Vec. An Article is usually about a specific example of something described in a general way by a Topic) rather than appearing in every Article. The exception would be Articles that are more technical, such as the Layman's Guide to Wormholes, or maybe an article about Halo Drives or something. So the overall number of times we would do something like this is for (at most) some hundreds of entries in the EG, rather than the literally thousands of articles that it actually contains.

For example - we might put a list of terms on the Vec page, because it introduces the concept of vecs in general. But we probably wouldn't put a list of terms at the start of the article about Cryovecs since that is a specific clade of vecs.

b) If we do find ourselves looking at two (or more) entries with the same or nearly the same terms at the start - that may be a strong indicator that we should consider combining those articles into a single one.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Avengium]

Point b) is clever.

[Worldtree]

So, inspired by Qualitum Dragon's feedback re making the site easier to navigate and 'get up to speed on' for new members, I'd like to suggest the following:

a) We've already started moving toward including Rynn's Snapshots (or presumably similar vignettes if/when we create them) at the start of various articles to provide a more story based window into what life is like in OA. I'd like to suggest that we continue to do this and, in particular, try to develop these for our Topic and major Article pages. These are often the first pages that new members see (they sort of form the skeleton for the entire EG) and by reading through them, a new person could find it easier to visualize and grasp the setting, while also being (hopefully) entertained in the process. We might also 'mine' our existing Traveler's Notes stories or vignettes for material as well.

----


Todd

Yes to all this! This is a great way to make more narrative/ charcter happen in OA!!!!

[Drashner1]

So, just a quick update. Since the Solar System in 10,600 article seems to be just about wrapped up, I've started doing some things with this project.

As a first step, I'm setting up a link to the OA Glossary in the Additional Information section of each Topic in the EG. I've also removed the Glossary link from the Related Articles section on the 4-5 pages it used to be accessible from.

I still have a ways to go, but when finished, this will make the Glossary accessible from the 300 or so 'backbone'pages of the EG.

Once that is done, I'm planning to synch up the Glossary with the Common Terms section in the Primer so that the definitions are the same in each.

Finally, as part of thinning out and consolidating the EG, I'm figuring to review the various minor articles on an ongoing basis and transfer some of them into the Glossary where appropriate.

Ok, I think that about covers it for now. Will keep the group posted on this and other EG remodel efforts as they move forward.

Thanks!

Todd

[Avengium]

That sounds great!