Suggestions for Althanas

[Earthwalker]

A wiki would be neat - I've seen them used to great effect before. We would need people who know how to make and maintain them, though - I know I don't have those skills, but perhaps some of us do.

That would allow people to put up what they know, and add things when they invent something new. Also, once we can get a good guide on how to do things, we can start being fancy and citing the threads where the information shows up - someone who updates the Wiki with a new town in Salvar would cite the thread where that town was used, allowing people who are interested in using that place to see what was there when it was last visited.

[Mathias]

I'm pretty good at editing wikis.

I can't do some of the more advanced stuff, like make icons and article grouping, but I'm familiar with some of their coding.

And an Althanas wiki is an amazing idea. /signed.

[Veatrix]

Membership Purge
There are a LOT of inactive, never-posted accounts on the Members List. It's kind of hard to scroll through to find someone, alphabetically, because of all the crap accounts. It also inflates our membership statistics...[/b]

I also agree with this. So many people post just to talk to people. I'm not saying that's bad, but Althanas isn't the place for spammers and socializers. Write as well, people! I've been on Althanas since... like two or three years ago. With changing accounts and never reaching level one, due to laziness, but nevertheless, I've seen some pretty useless accounts.

ALSO.

Maybe it's just me... but I like seeing avatars... it's like a visual representation of the character. Requirement for avatars? Sounds a bit... picky, but that's just my thing.

[Sighter Tnailog]

You forget, I judged the Ice Reavers-Facade War!

I think it would be easy for players to put their piece of Althanas history into a Wiki! I lend my support to that proposal yet again.

The Ice Reavers - Facade war was originally judged by Lorenor, who caused a ruckus when he awarded Eleric Hybrid Hero a straight board of 10s for his work, which many on Althanas deemed, while good, not quite perfect 100 material.

I remember this, because I participated in this war as Death by Fire, character name Dhraghrae Rhionnach, way back when. It is especially good to remember because Eleric was using at the time the weapon that made him famous: a railgun. I specifically recall having to defend against that railgun, and it was NOT FUN AT ALL. In order to fight back, I managed to teleport a helicopter around and chaingunned the whole damn building.

Let's not claim more credit than is due, shall we? In some ways, this underscores the danger of a wiki: unscrupulous individuals could edit in all sorts of things they didn't do, and we wouldn't really be able to keep track of what was truth and what was shameless self-promotion.

EDIT: The only difficulty in creating canon and doing what you describe news-wise is the sheer time involved.

As the author of the Radasanthian Readers, I know for a fact that it takes a LOT of work to put them together. Now, if we could pull together a crack news-writing team, that would help, but my efforts in that direction have so far resulted in only one article not written by me in all of Althanas history.

[Cyrus the virus]

Maybe it's just me... but I like seeing avatars... it's like a visual representation of the character. Requirement for avatars? Sounds a bit... picky, but that's just my thing.

We have requirements for avatars?

[Veatrix]

I suggest that we have avatar requirements, but even I think that's a little too miniscule of a suggestion. ^-^

[Mathias]

I do remember, Madison, you putting together more writers for the Radasanthian Reader, a long time ago.

As a matter of fact, one of the goals of it WAS to summarize some of the outstanding quests and battles that were taking place.

I think it'd be a daunting task, trying to read through plenty of threads and then attempting to organize all of it. But, then, that's also where players summarizing their threads would come in handy; it would lessen the actual workload. I wouldn't want it, however, to result in the "reporters," simply reading the summaries; that would be... blah. But, it would give them a sense of whether or not they want to report on that particular thread.

Also, as a tweak to the suggestion itself, I think it'd be better to report and document completed threads. I don't know if that went without saying, but I figured that, if this were implemented along with the Teaser, then they'd fulfill two distinct, complementing roles.

[Max Dirks]

There were three people who judged the war, Findelfin.

Stop being a pompous ass.

[Sighter Tnailog]

You're right, there WERE three people. Which means that you didn't judge it by your lonely, which is the impression you tried to foist on everyone. And I'm the pompous one?

The only person I ever got to write for the Radasanthian Reader was Silence Sei, who wrote as "Moe Wordsthanu" and did a little gossip column for me.

[Mathias]

*re-rails the thread*

Regardless of who judged or witnessed or did what, I think it's safe to say that those who were involved in any way, shape, or form, would have a valid contribution.

And yes, a wiki would be unprotected from mistakes, but you're relying on a mass of people, rather than just one hopefully omnipotent editor.

In a wiki, other people would be able to correct other peoples' mistakes and work towards the agreed-upon, perfect facts. I think a wiki is an excellent idea and fits Althanas perfectly. This is a collaborative website, and a collaborative wiki would simply only further the accessibility and easily-consumable information ABOUT that world we wish to roleplay in.

EDIT:
Also, Madison, I really would like to see more Radasanthian Reader... maybe there'd be others who would be willing to put forth a conscious effort into reporting for it? It would be a nice feature to have, and have it take off well.