WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?

[Flagg]

I spent more than 8 hours in the car today, which gave me plenty of time to ponder.


I'm really happy with the way Lore5 is shaping up. So happy, in fact, that I'd like it to play a bigger role on the Redux.


Right now, we have what I beleive to be the best Exalted forums on the web. I think Lore5 has the potential to be the best source for fan-submitted content. Unfortunately, right now these are pretty much two independant sites that just happen to reside on the same server. If we can more thoroughly integrate the two, I think this site will kick some serious ass, and have an edge over all of the other places.


One thing I like best about the forums is the sense of community. There are a heady mix of personalities, and we all help eachother out. Unfortuately, the forum software here, while good at what it does, doesn't allow for much more than posting messages in threads.


Lore5, on the other hand, is a very flexible system, and we have a responsive developer for it as a community member.


I'd like to see Lore5 become the "main page" for the ECR. I have a few ideas on how to do this. I think it can be done gradually, and fairly easily, by extending some of the functionality already built into the system (memesis can correct me if I'm wrong on this).


I propose that instead of getting the forums directly when you type in "www.patternspider.net", that you get a page, in Lore5, with a welcome message and intro to the site. There's already naviagtion available on the menu to take you to the forums.


Once logged in, however, the your main page becomes something like this: Click here for a mockup.


The page will be populated with info from your forum profile (rank, posts, occupation, etc), info from Lore5 (ratings, etc), as well as some custom fields that you can enter (real name, birthdate, etc. for example).


The page will also have a place that you can enter your own content. Make the space an intro to your collection of submissions, a blurb about yourself, or whatever you want. That space would be fair game.


This page would serve as your own personal "homepage" on the ECR. When someone clicks the "profile" link on one of your forum posts, or clicks your name in Lore5, they would be taken here.


I think memesis, if he's willing, should be able to make this much happen fairly easily. I'm willing to tackle any hacks to the forum code that are necessary (my degree in Computer Programming must be good for something).


The site, and functionality, could be extended from there, with suggestions from you guys, but I think this would be a nice, relatively simple restructuring that would allow us all to add a little bit more of our personalities to the community, and make the site seem more "whole".


Thoughts?


-S

 

[Hand of Destiny]

Sounds great.  Not sure I have any practical suggestions.  Hell if you had that kind of system I might even get off my arse and post some material.

 

[Jakk Bey]

One of the problems that I have with the Exalted Wiki is that navigating it is a sum'bitch.  


And while the Wikizens are a helpful lot, the community has an almost antiseptic feel--in part, because folks can edit your stuff, and it leads to a shared environment that is far too damn polite for real discussion--because if someone really doesn't like what you're saying, they can erase it.  It leads to a kind of soma like forum where the politisse is overly enforced, and it lacks a lot of punch and verve.  


They've got a LOT of content, but little way to browse it comfortably. And while you can link, link, link to your heart's content, it leads you some circuitious paths that are just a pain in the ass.


I think that to get to a point where this site can really show off the community, and I think that we've got some great folks here, and I'd like to see us get a few folks back, we are going to have to make the content easy to browse and search.  The Wiki prides itself on its own labrythine nature, but it turns some folks off.  There are other forums that have an easier to navigate structure, but they moderate their forums and their content to the point of making their material insipid and boring.  


I will admit, I am a lazy bastard.  I don't browse Lore5 that often--in part because I usually just open up a window to the forums, and it's just easier. I am lazy in that way.  Were I directed to another page, and faced with new submissions, I might be tempted to review more stuff.  


I think that the idea is a good one.  I hope that we can continue to keep the same flavor in the forums, and the site as a whole, with the transition.  I would rather post up material here, than in the Wiki, just because the format I think is better.  And if we can draw more folks, I'd like to see that.  


We've seen a decent influx of new folks.  Every day I see new members, most of whom are lurking, but they're there from time to time, and if you're new, don't be afraid to pipe in.  We're wordy motherfuckers, but I like to think that we're pretty tolerant of noobs and supportive of each other. One of the things that I hope we can see, is a continued flow of new folks, and NOT feel the need to moderate too heavily--it may come down to it, if we get kids off the WW forums who are suddenly giddy with the joy of seeing words like 'motherfucker'--but I'm hoping that we can provide an example of the behavior that is apropos, as opposed to dictating it to them.


I think we can do this.  As a community, and it's the right thing to do.  I have no coding skillz, but I'll support the move as a member.  And if being a wordy mothefucker lends any help, I'll do that too.  Rock it out...

 

[Bodhisattva]

Yeah, ExaltedWiki is a real bitch to navigate.  I just did a major update on the Exalted article on Wikipedia, of course including a link to this forum and to the Frappr map.  I thought that while Exalted Wiki had the potential to be something very useful, it lacks any sort of cohesive organization.  I'd love to see something in the format of Wikipedia incorporate all kinds of information either as a subsystem of this website or a partnership, 'cause this forum format also has its plusses.  Too bad there can't be a marriage of the two, but I like your concept for the Lore5 ECR, Stillborn.

 

[Flagg]

I just did a major update on the Exalted article on Wikipedia, of course including a link to this forum and to the Frappr map.

Thanks. Could you change that link to http://www.patternspider.net ?


If people are given links to a specific page, it's hard to re-direct them to a new front page, like I'm proposing. I can direct http://www.patternspider.net wherever I want, dynamically.


-S

 

[Bodhisattva]

Done.

 

[Persell]

I was just thinking it would be nice to have them more integrated. I'll think some more about it now...

 

[memesis]

"More integrated" is nice.  As my employer has discovered, though, you need to think about just what this means.


Can you define specific work-items that fulfill the task of "integration"?  Some examples:


- User information (profile values, etc.) is available on Lore 5's view of a user, as your mockup suggests


- "Discuss this submission in the forums" would link to a new or existing discussion on the forums, for any given submission.  Conversely, the forum view would link back to the submission itself.

 

[Persell]

- "Discuss this submission in the forums" would link to a new or existing discussion on the forums, for any given submission.  Conversely, the forum view would link back to the submission itself.

This is the main thing I'd like to see.


Having private messages sent to notify of new ratings/comments/replies to ratings would also be cool, but maybe the Lore5 homepage could have similar functionality built in instead.

 

[Forn Clakes]

Sounds good.


Nothing else to say.


~FC.

 

[Flagg]

Can you define specific work-items that fulfill the task of "integration"?

I think we can put forth changes in phases, rather than trying to get it all done at once.


I would like to see the first step be to modify the "My Page" screen and make it the "front page" for the site, as I suggested. As I see it it would consist of the following steps:

1. Modify the Lore5 code to pull the profile info from phpBB into "My Page", as well as adding a few custom fields.
   
2. Code a mechanism whereby unregistered users see a "welcome" page, and logged in users see "My Page"
   
3. Point www.patternspider.net to this page in DNS.
   
4. Hack the phpBB code to replace its usual user profile view with "My Page".

Was this the answer you were looking for?


I can handle 3 and 4, if you can do 1 and 2.


Further "integration" projects, like the thread-spawning idea you listed above could be tackled once we get this working smoothly.


-S

 

[Flagg]

Note: That mockup is by no means comprehensive or definitive.


It might actually do better to have all the info pulled from phpBB (avatar, rank, AIM/Yahoo/MSN contacts, etc) in one column, and the Lore5 stats and custom fields in another, or one colmn for stats, and another for personal info -- or in some other way that makes sense to you.


-S


Edit: I updated the mockup a bit after thinking on it some more

 

[memesis]

Can you define specific work-items that fulfill the task of "integration"?

I think we can put forth changes in phases, rather than trying to get it all done at once.


Was this the answer you were looking for?

Yeah, pretty much.  Any good project is going to go in iterations.

 

[memesis]

Go here:  http://bugzilla.memesis.org/


Create a user account.  File bugs against the Lore 5 product.  If you can't reach the site, or can't file bugs, let me know.


"Bugs" includes problems with the code, feature requests, and so forth - basically any work that you want done.


I reserve the right to ruthlessly prioritize, or if necessary, delete bug submissions.  It's my machine and my time.

 

[Flagg]

Is this directed at me, or everyone?


-S

 

[memesis]

Is this directed at me, or everyone?
-S

This is directed at anyone who feels a need to file bugs in a semi-official fashion.


P.S. You will not get confirmation email if you sign up for a user account.  If you need this, talk to me.

 

[Flagg]

I wrote some sample copy for the "welcome" page. C&C welcome.

Welcome to the Exalted Compendium Redux, powered by the Lore5 submission management system!
This site is home to a community of fans and players of the Exalted Role-Playing Game.


From the Wikipedia:


"Exalted is a role-playing game published by White Wolf Publishing. The game is classified as high fantasy. It is strongly influenced by Japanese anime and manga, the cultures of China and Rome, and a number of literary sources such as the writings of Michael Moorcock.


The two main strengths of this site are the forums, where the topics range from Storytelling tips, to the nearly unclassifiable, and Lore5, our custom-built database for fan-created Charms, Spells, Artifacts, and more.


In order to post, submit your creations, or rate and review the material on this site, you must be a registered user. Click here to register a new account, or login to go to your personalized homepage.


Note: Certain email services, such as AOL and hotmail block emails originating from this site. If you have registered an account, but did not receive an activation message, please contact patternspider @ gmail dot com.

-S

 

[memesis]

What I find funny is that I wrote most of the intro copy for Wikipedia's Exalted article.

 

[Flagg]

Haha


-S

 

[Forn Clakes]

Damn, that sounds quite professional.


~FC.

 

[Flagg]

Damn' date=' that sounds quite professional.[/quote']
I clean up real nice like.


-S

 

[wordman]

make the site seem more "whole"

Have Lore 5 support the same themes as phpBB. This could be a bit tricky, but shouldn't be awful. The main reason to do this is that having the "theme" preference in phpBB carry over to Lore 5 would be a great visual clue that the site is integrated.


The secondary reason is that the theme used for Lore 5 is really, really fucking ugly. The themes I designed are also ugly, but at least they don't take up 30% of the page with useless garbage.

 

[Flagg]

Have Lore 5 support the same themes as phpBB.

I had the same thought, but I wanted to minimize the amount of work I dumped in memesis' lap.


-S

 

[wordman]

I thought that while Exalted Wiki had the potential to be something very useful, it lacks any sort of cohesive organization.

Actually, this isn't true. The site does have cohesive organization. It's just the wrong cohesive organization. I may have to add a page to the wiki to spell this out more fully (and really piss everyone there off), but basically, there are three main problems:


1) The pervailing philosophy of the wiki treats page names as an organizational tool, not as unique identifiers. That is, the name of the page is largely considered to be a pathname, not an id. This is a really bad choice for a wiki, as it forces a specific organizational structure on everyone, instead of putting the organization where it belongs, in the content of the pages. Take a look at the Wikipedia and notice they take pains not to do this.


1a) The "path" concept is bad enough, but it is made even worse for readers by the organizational choice forced into the paths: putting authors at the top level. This dumb choice, however, is made possible only by the dumber choice of using page names as paths.


Lore 5 avoids this problem, as it uses record ids.


2) Data in the wiki isn't granular enough. For example, when someone adds solar melee charms into the system, they usually add a bunch of charms to a single page. This completely prevents someone from linking to a single charm, but not others. It also prevents someone from building a multiple lists of the same charms, sorted differently. If people created pages one charm at a time, using just the charm name as the page name, this problem could be avoided. (It would, however, create another usablility problem that would not be correctable, due to problem #3, below.)


Again, Lore 5 avoids this problem because it uses records.


3) The software sucks. There is much better, free wiki software out there.    One feature missing from all of them (though the "template" feature in the MediaWiki may work) is the idea of creating a page that is just the embeded text of other pages. For example, suppose you've authored a bunch of charms and want a single page to list the text of all these charms in a continuous web page. In most wiki's, you can't do this without doing double entry. Could you do something like "include X, include Y, include Z", this would be trivial (though you'd need some way to filter the comments, another thing Media Wiki can do).


This is something that Lore 5 can't do yet either, but it would be reasonably easy to build. When this board first started, I posted at length about being able to build "custom reports" of content. See it here.

 

[Hand of Destiny]

as long as its usable and fairly straightforward, which it seems to be I'll be happy. Especially as I've just wasted half an hour of my life on a shitty badly designed web portal called Digital brain.