Talk:Main Page

Open Asset Category on the Main Page?

What does everyone feel about including this category on the main page? Would it be useful? Personally, I feel that just about everything I write in the story is an "open asset" and every time someone uses a character or place I've put some time into I feel flattered, but sometimes I realize this feeling isn't universal. Perhaps a category would nudge people, and show in a more open way that we're not as intrinsically attached and defensive of our plots, characters, and places as we can sometimes appear. Would this help usher us into a more serious bout of interactivity? ... what do y'all think?--Nick 13:50, 31 December 2006 (CST)

A second thought... listing characters as "open assets" probably would not work. An IS more or less that every character be an "open asset." But for places and organization (and perhaps nations) it very well could... --Nick 13:50, 31 December 2006 (CST)

I dunno, I think just writing stuff into the wiki is kind of brinign to the suface what assets are open to writers. So in a sense, th whole wiki is a list of open assets.Michael 20:25, 31 January 2007 (CST)

I think by "open asset," what is meant is that a character/location/thing is owned/created by one writer, but they wouldn't mind letting another writer take it over. --Scen 21:39, 31 January 2007 (CST)

I agree with this assessment, and would add that I think it also applies to "dead" assets, ie characters/settings that haven't really been sketched out and have been languishing for years. (FWIW, I love when people reference/use my stuff, contrary to how I act sometimes, hehe. I just like a heads up first.) --Aurora 00:09, 1 February 2007 (CST)

Re-Organizing the Main Page

The portalbox for Neo looks kinda fugly, and probably has more categories than necessary. Xstryker 12:46, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

No it needs more categories it needs a category for bitchin so that i can be in it and possibly another category for fucken rad --JD 13:30, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Adam, think that looks better? I tried it with everything in rows of three, but then technology hung off way to the side by itself. So I removed creatures, since I don't remember many of them from Neo. If it still doesn't line up right with the other box (tough to tell on this monitor) it's probably got something to do with percentages. (ITS ALWAYS PERCENTAGES) --JD 14:31, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

It's better, but I'd like to see the box cut in half and right aligned. Xstryker 09:37, 28 July 2006 (CDT)

Is the wiki broken for everyone, or just me?

So I was looking at the main page, and I think a couple of the portals should be changed, and their contents shifted around a bit. What follows below is a proposal for this re-ordering. Please add comments and let me know what you think.

• Affiliations is fine the way it is. Could do with some cleaning up, but for the most part it's basically serving the same purpose as the OmniNet's Organizations section.
• Artifacts- I don't like this portal. The segregation of non-weapon and weapon technology strikes me as being an artificial one, especially in this story. All technology should probably be moved to the Technology portal (where an internal distinction between weapons, vehicles and other sorts of technology seems more natural), and the magical apparatuses should be moved to the magic portal. That done, this portal should be destroyed.

Agreed Xstryker 10:08, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

I agree too! ... Oh wait. Scen 11:02, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• Characters- there's already been some talk about re-organizing this portal. But other than that, I think this one is fine and is serving its purpose.
• Creatures- K.I.S.S. If anything, we should re-name this portal to Races/Creatures, because that should be primarily what is found here. Re-naming it "Biology"... I dunno. The theme of this portal shouldn't be expanded to include all living things in the story, but should be kept to a catalogue of creature types that can become characters in the posts people write. Remember that this Wiki is a writer's reference first and foremost.

Fair enough... but do you have a suggestion on where diseases could go? Shoud we just put it in Potpurri/Misc? Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Yes, I think diseases should go into Misc. Misc should basically be fielding all of the categories that don't have a lot of beef to them yet. Maybe if we start expanding Kupopolis' realms of fantasy biological/medical sciences, a big lumpy disease-filled portal would be appropriate. But at the moment we have a total of two diseases, so they should be Misc, IMO. Scen 11:02, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Actually, I could see creating a Science portal and putting Diseases along with portal theory.Xstryker 15:06, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• Culture- This portal is severely underused at the moment, IMO. If more articles were filled out it could provide a lot of information about our story universe, and that could be really helpful to our guest writers in Iron Writer (who sometimes still seem to think Tasnica = USA, and Rainericism = Christianity).

Underused because it was just recently created, and because our standard nation profile template lacked a culture section (I have a half finished FTSR culture essay I'd been working on to rectify that). In any case, Strongly agree. Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Fair enough re: only recently created. As for handling culture in an NP... I personally wouldn't do that with any of my NPs (especially since we have a culture portal that is so deeply pregnant with various culture-developmental possibilities), but I suppose it's a bit more manageable than writing up a separate "Culture Profile" for every single country in the story. Culture, then, might focus on broader cultural topics, like exploring Web-wide political trends, or Howard Zinn-esque essays on Kupopolis history, or other stuff that might not immediately deal with guns or giant robots or miles-long spaceships.Scen 11:02, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• Geography- This portal needs a better title, because there's almost nothing in it that pertains to the science of Geography. I'm not sure what that title should be; possibly the Kupopolis World Factbook, or something? Dimensions and Nations? Settings? Maybe Places and Nations?

Disagree, although Places or Settings would be OK. You're completely wrong about the science of geography, though. We've created a text map of the Kupopolis Universe and worlds therein. Nation profiles are a key component of political geography. Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Political geography, yes. But not physical geography: we don't currently (nor do I especially think we should) have the climatological, seismological or other environmental patterns tacked down for all of our Kupoplis worlds, except for "it's like Earth." I'm not suggesting we do away with that blessed simplicity: I'm just saying that the label "Geography" doesn't accurately describe what this portal contains, because in my mind when you say "Geography," I'm thinking "FUCK! I didn't study for the midterm, omg quick wtf is Coreolis effect again!?" So, if you're okay with Places and Settings, I'd be down for that. Scen 11:02, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Matt, your borderline-psychotic word associations aside (zing!), I was also planning on putting pages on continents and bodies of water for Light III on the geography page, so the inclusion of physical geography is appropriate. Thus, I think we should put this one to a vote. And I vote "Geography" is fine and accurate.Xstryker 15:06, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• History- I think once Travis' life settles down a bit we should POWWOW about transforming this portal into something resembling a cohesive timeline, complete with dates. A timeline has been on our Kupop to-do list for a while, and this new Wiki seems like the prime opportunity to actually get it done. The current layout of the History portal has the beginnings of the timeline-format, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Also, thought that just hit me: could we move the Neo history to the Neo History portal, and make it into a kind of timeline/reader's guide?

Agree - The Neo part should be easy, just need to dig up Tex's final timeline post from Neo.Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Agree also. More! Scen 11:02, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• Magic- This portal is fine, but as I suggested above I'd like to move the magic items under artifacts over to this portal, and maybe see a few of the other magic articles filled out (yes, I know, I have a lot of articles to work on myself, including under Magic).

Agree. Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• Meta- This portal is fine. I'll talk about it more below, with Potpourri.
• Potpourri- Come on, people. This isn't Jeopardy. Let's change this portal to "Misc," and move all the Out-of-Character articles over to Meta. I don't like the idea that we have two portals dominated by OOC articles; I'd rather have a Misc portal where we can temporarily (or permanently) dump stuff that doesn't seem to fit in with any of the other portals (like diseases), and confine all of our OOC articles to Meta.

Strongly Agree Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• Religion- We might consider changing this portal to "Gods and Religion," and move any CPs that we get for the various Gods over here. On the one hand, it seems natural to put the Gods in with our Characters, but since some Gods play more conceptual roles in our stories we might be better off moving them here.

Disagree. I think the Gods are Characters and the Religions are Culture. I favor moving the whole Religion portal to Culture. I may be in the minority, though. Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Well, I can see the argument for Gods as characters, so I don't think I'll push this point too strongly. I would be in favor of rolling Culture and Religion together. Would you be okay with combining the name "Culture and Religion," or just leaving it as Culture? Scen 11:02, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

I favor just Culture, for simplicity's sake. Xstryker 15:06, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

• Technology- As I discussed above, I think that all technology should be moved over to this portal, both weapons and non-weapons tech.

Agree Xstryker 10:27, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Just throwing out ideas. Holla back. Scen 05:56, 29 July 2006 (CDT)

Re-organized the main page per what's discussed above. I finished moving Magic and Technology items out of Artifacts, and did away with the Artifacts portal. I changed the names of portals "Creatures" and "Potpourri" to "Races/Creatures" and "Misc", respectively. There was an issue with am ampersand, but thankfully no one was seriously injured. I'm unsure if we want to move the Religion portal into the Culture portal just yet; Religion and Gods seem to be getting a lot of attention lately, so I think that for now it might be a better idea to leave them un-conjoined. --Scen 18:41, 14 August 2006 (CDT)

Neo Portals

I reduced the number of portals for the Neo Wiki. Neo should be more streamlined since it only spanned a year. Xstryker 15:07, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

I changed Magic (not really enough for a whole portal in Neo) to Miscellaneous, to cover all the stuff that doesn't get their own portals for Neo. --Xstryker 18:59, 23 September 2006 (CDT)

Main page news

Can I clear off the Major Updates message and the bit about moving the stuff from the other wiki now? Xstryker 12:31, 4 August 2006 (CDT)