Since you keep wondering who we are (especially vorticity), we decided to list up a bit about us. But since we prefer to keep our privacy, we don't include personal data. Or we anonymized them a bit by throwing our jobs and interests into a pool. Now try to seperate us into individuals again...
Our names: Secret. We prefer not to tell anyone. If you still manage to find out with the data we gave you, then we're probably not good enough to care for the security of a big website (which may attract crackers, trolls and haters) anyway.
Our friends, family, s/o etc: Secret, for twice the reason.
Our addresses: Planet Earth (northern hemisphere), System Sol, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Universe, Multiverse.
Our phone numbers: Secret.
Our sexes: Male (No girls on the internet? Yeah, sometimes it is true.). Sometimes feeling a little that being a lesbian might be cool.
Our ages: From precocious youngsters over not-over-the-hill-yet mid-agers to young at heart oldies. Between 1000 weeks and 1000 months. (Decimal system.)
Our MBTI: Rather on the introverted side. Other than that, all over the place.
Our political beliefs: Have read quite a bit about political ideologies (mostly Communism/Socialism and Anarchism/Libertarianism), political history and political systems. These days, mostly pretty disillusioned. And by that, we mean ALL parties from the extreme left to the extreme right.
Our religious background: Mixed, very mixed. In no case dogmatic, so don't be afraid. Somehow, the various religions all have a point, somewhere. - Know about Discordianism too, even used it for at least one RL decision. So don't hold back with the Illuminati references.
Our education: Minimum: Finished college. Studied computer science, computer linguistics, mathematics and political science. Sometimes finished it too. Highest level of education: Started studying for a PhD.
Our jobs in the past: Programmer / web designer at various state institutions (including, but not exclusively, research centers). Assistant / sysadmin / webmaster at various colleges / universities. Oversaw tests and held lectures there too. Independent programmer/database expert/internet security guy. Seen a bit of the start-up scene too. Most interesting job, maybe: Intern in a small firm dealing with fans of celebrities.
Our abilities: Programming in C, C++, Java, Perl 5, Python (not in that order). Also, AJAX, Javascript, JQuery, for good measure. Databases, those using SQL and the object-oriented ones. HTML/CSS. UML and OCL (but don't think too highly of them). Wikibots. SEO. Content Management Systems. How to prevent website attacks, e.g. SQL injections. Some areas from AI, like neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, various tree searches, constraint programming and game theory. A bit about game programming. Extreme Programming - it's cool. Have accounts on sourceforge and github, but didn't create anything widely used. Take/took our informations from slashdot, Stack Overflow (and related sites), Coding Horror, Joel on Software and various security experts. Don't ask us to program anything in BASIC, COBOL or PHP.
People we'd put on our wiki's "Special Thanks" page: The demigods of the computer world - James Gosling, Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, Richard M. Stallman, Bjarne Stroustrup, Ken Thompson, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall (not in that order). And Michael Widenius, for MySQL and MariaDB. And since this is about troping: Fast Eddie (not the assholish one - the old one, who kickstarted a very fascinating, very funny wiki, which we still should be grateful for. Yes, it was a long time ago, but he was a good guy once, just like Saruman.) and vorticity for providing the Tv Tropes site rip (yes, we are that broad-minded).
Media we like:
(First: As administrators we have to be fair and impartial, so we don't want to state too openly what we like most. Don't want to give the tropers the opportunity to suck up to us.)
Advertising: Commercials are, well, commercial and only there to get our money. Doesn't prevent some of them to be entertaining, though. Ever seen a compilation of funny international ads?
Anime, Manga etc: Prefer the former, for having more color and needing less place on the shelf. Not as deep into it as some of you reading here, but still saw several very good ones we'd recommend. - And learned a lot about those we didn't watch on Tv Tropes. Even read a non-fiction manga once.
Comedy: Like all kinds of jokes. British humor, Chinese humor, Jewish humor, Russian humor and many more. Know century-old humor that has survived the tests of time and jokes that will be old in a week. Know jokes about all kinds of topics (especially computers). Have seen the one or other stand-up comedian (also political ones) in our respective country on stage.
Comics: From some of the oldest ones over Disney classics to modern stuff: Superheroes, OEL Manga, Franco-Belgian, Alternative ones and some others.
Fanfics: Read a few based on media we like very much. Also found some of the 10% that are worth it. Not deep into it, but know what terms like Slash and Shipping mean. Once had some published on the internet, but rather consider them Old Shame now.
Films: Tried to rival Tarantino in watching movies for some time. Thought about going to film school and becoming a scriptwriter, but decided against it after seeing that they're the Butt Monkey of Hollywood. Watching blockbusters and indie movies alike. Left thousands of bucks at movie theaters and haven't stopped yet. Visited several film studios on more than one continent.
Literature: Classics for children (e.g. old Kid Detective stories). Classics from before 1900. Well-aged Speculative Fiction (Tolkien, PTerry, Asimov and others) and Pulp. Bestsellers from today. Often been in libraries in several countries. Have on average several hundred books at home. Wouldn't mind to have many more.
Live-Action TV: Let's just say: What Hollywood and western Europe have to offer. In recent years, there has been quite some good stuff.
Magazines: Read too many to mention, about all kinds of topics. MAD too (but it used to be better in the past).
Music: Like all main genres, as long as they're well done: Classical, Country, Filk, Folk, Metal, Pop, Rap, Rock... Visited several live concerts. Learned to play the piano.
Oral Tradition: Started with fairy tales (from the western world and other places) and later dug into mythology (western, classical and more).
Play-by-Post Games: Tried them out, both by paper and on internet fora, but never got the hang of them. Still think they might be done in a cool way, but can't tell how exactly.
Pro Wrestling: Have seen at least one live show. With a cool local hero, evil heels, tag teams and some really mean moves. A belt was at stake too. Doesn't hurt to know about this topic.
Radio: We'll pass on this. Sometimes have radio music running in the background.
Tabletop Games: Visited many RPG cons, also often GMed there and in private groups. Know that there are many more Tabletop RPGs than D&D, V:tM, GURPS and Shadowrun. Contributed stuff to RPGamer websites and magazines. Tried to invent our own, but didn't finish it. Didn't play WH40k, but find the world fascinating somehow.
Also have experience with Eurogames, Munchkin, War Games, online poker and classic card games like Euchre and Rummy.
Theatre: Started with school plays (acted in at least one too). Seen classics, including the bard's plays, on stage. More modern artists, like Brecht, too. Also been in a real opera at least once. Ditto for musicals. Oh, and circuses (old and new ones) too.
Toys: Plushies, LEGO and such, caleidoscopes, puzzles in 2D and 3D, model building, toy robots.
Video Games: Oldest experience (speaking for all of us): Some game with Snoopy on a C64. Played VGs on more than one console, handheld and big ones. And of course on PC, cell phone and web browsers. Genres played: 4X, Adventures, Fighting games, FPS, Puzzle games, RPGs, Shmups, Simulations, Strategy/Tactics.
Webcomics: Loved this medium since we got aware of it. Will tell our grandchildren one day how we witnessed the birth of a new medium.
Web Original: Troping Wikis! (OK, that was too easy.) Responsible for more than a hundred new pages, more than a thousand new examples and ten thousands of edits. Now let's see further: More than one account at WP. Once, admin at a wikia wiki with many thousand pages and many users. Read stuff on Facebook, Twitter, reddit, voat, and tumblr. Spent too much time on YouTube. Had our own domain as early as the last millennium (not anymore). Moderator at a big internet forum (as in, millions of posts).
Other than that: Read many lolcat comics, SCP items, Polandball webcomics, Alternate Histories, and at least one Slenderman vlog. And much more.
Western Animation: Oh yes. Seen everything from b/w classics over Disney/WB works to deranged modern stuff. Traditional animation and CGI. Many European and some non-western works too. Been in Disneyland too. Definitely know that not all animation is for kids.
Our other geeky interests: 3D printing (Manager in a FabLab). Architecture. Artificial Intelligence. Astronomy. Chaos theory. Cryptography. Cybernetics. Dinosaurs. Douglas Hofstadter. Drones. Einstein's physics. Fractals. Maps. Riddles. Sport statistics. World records.
Our other interests: Betting on events in sports and politics. Bodypainting (just as spectators, neither as artists nor models). Cycling. The gym. Hiking. Shooting airguns. Swimming.
In short: We think we might be qualified to run a troping wiki competently. If you still have doubts, feel free to make up a quiz (some dozen to a hundred questions would be fair, we think) with answers that aren't easy to google. Troping is Serious Business after all. But if you want to include questions about NSFW or other embarrassing stuff, let's do this per PM. Also, please try to leave out personal opinions.
More about what we want (especially when we're talking about community building) tomorrow.
Our names: Secret. We prefer not to tell anyone. If you still manage to find out with the data we gave you, then we're probably not good enough to care for the security of a big website (which may attract crackers, trolls and haters) anyway.
Our friends, family, s/o etc: Secret, for twice the reason.
Our addresses: Planet Earth (northern hemisphere), System Sol, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Universe, Multiverse.
Our phone numbers: Secret.
Our sexes: Male (No girls on the internet? Yeah, sometimes it is true.). Sometimes feeling a little that being a lesbian might be cool.
Our ages: From precocious youngsters over not-over-the-hill-yet mid-agers to young at heart oldies. Between 1000 weeks and 1000 months. (Decimal system.)
Our MBTI: Rather on the introverted side. Other than that, all over the place.
Our political beliefs: Have read quite a bit about political ideologies (mostly Communism/Socialism and Anarchism/Libertarianism), political history and political systems. These days, mostly pretty disillusioned. And by that, we mean ALL parties from the extreme left to the extreme right.
Our religious background: Mixed, very mixed. In no case dogmatic, so don't be afraid. Somehow, the various religions all have a point, somewhere. - Know about Discordianism too, even used it for at least one RL decision. So don't hold back with the Illuminati references.
Our education: Minimum: Finished college. Studied computer science, computer linguistics, mathematics and political science. Sometimes finished it too. Highest level of education: Started studying for a PhD.
Our jobs in the past: Programmer / web designer at various state institutions (including, but not exclusively, research centers). Assistant / sysadmin / webmaster at various colleges / universities. Oversaw tests and held lectures there too. Independent programmer/database expert/internet security guy. Seen a bit of the start-up scene too. Most interesting job, maybe: Intern in a small firm dealing with fans of celebrities.
Our abilities: Programming in C, C++, Java, Perl 5, Python (not in that order). Also, AJAX, Javascript, JQuery, for good measure. Databases, those using SQL and the object-oriented ones. HTML/CSS. UML and OCL (but don't think too highly of them). Wikibots. SEO. Content Management Systems. How to prevent website attacks, e.g. SQL injections. Some areas from AI, like neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, various tree searches, constraint programming and game theory. A bit about game programming. Extreme Programming - it's cool. Have accounts on sourceforge and github, but didn't create anything widely used. Take/took our informations from slashdot, Stack Overflow (and related sites), Coding Horror, Joel on Software and various security experts. Don't ask us to program anything in BASIC, COBOL or PHP.
People we'd put on our wiki's "Special Thanks" page: The demigods of the computer world - James Gosling, Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, Richard M. Stallman, Bjarne Stroustrup, Ken Thompson, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall (not in that order). And Michael Widenius, for MySQL and MariaDB. And since this is about troping: Fast Eddie (not the assholish one - the old one, who kickstarted a very fascinating, very funny wiki, which we still should be grateful for. Yes, it was a long time ago, but he was a good guy once, just like Saruman.) and vorticity for providing the Tv Tropes site rip (yes, we are that broad-minded).
Media we like:
(First: As administrators we have to be fair and impartial, so we don't want to state too openly what we like most. Don't want to give the tropers the opportunity to suck up to us.)
Advertising: Commercials are, well, commercial and only there to get our money. Doesn't prevent some of them to be entertaining, though. Ever seen a compilation of funny international ads?
Anime, Manga etc: Prefer the former, for having more color and needing less place on the shelf. Not as deep into it as some of you reading here, but still saw several very good ones we'd recommend. - And learned a lot about those we didn't watch on Tv Tropes. Even read a non-fiction manga once.
Comedy: Like all kinds of jokes. British humor, Chinese humor, Jewish humor, Russian humor and many more. Know century-old humor that has survived the tests of time and jokes that will be old in a week. Know jokes about all kinds of topics (especially computers). Have seen the one or other stand-up comedian (also political ones) in our respective country on stage.
Comics: From some of the oldest ones over Disney classics to modern stuff: Superheroes, OEL Manga, Franco-Belgian, Alternative ones and some others.
Fanfics: Read a few based on media we like very much. Also found some of the 10% that are worth it. Not deep into it, but know what terms like Slash and Shipping mean. Once had some published on the internet, but rather consider them Old Shame now.
Films: Tried to rival Tarantino in watching movies for some time. Thought about going to film school and becoming a scriptwriter, but decided against it after seeing that they're the Butt Monkey of Hollywood. Watching blockbusters and indie movies alike. Left thousands of bucks at movie theaters and haven't stopped yet. Visited several film studios on more than one continent.
Literature: Classics for children (e.g. old Kid Detective stories). Classics from before 1900. Well-aged Speculative Fiction (Tolkien, PTerry, Asimov and others) and Pulp. Bestsellers from today. Often been in libraries in several countries. Have on average several hundred books at home. Wouldn't mind to have many more.
Live-Action TV: Let's just say: What Hollywood and western Europe have to offer. In recent years, there has been quite some good stuff.
Magazines: Read too many to mention, about all kinds of topics. MAD too (but it used to be better in the past).
Music: Like all main genres, as long as they're well done: Classical, Country, Filk, Folk, Metal, Pop, Rap, Rock... Visited several live concerts. Learned to play the piano.
Oral Tradition: Started with fairy tales (from the western world and other places) and later dug into mythology (western, classical and more).
Play-by-Post Games: Tried them out, both by paper and on internet fora, but never got the hang of them. Still think they might be done in a cool way, but can't tell how exactly.
Pro Wrestling: Have seen at least one live show. With a cool local hero, evil heels, tag teams and some really mean moves. A belt was at stake too. Doesn't hurt to know about this topic.
Radio: We'll pass on this. Sometimes have radio music running in the background.
Tabletop Games: Visited many RPG cons, also often GMed there and in private groups. Know that there are many more Tabletop RPGs than D&D, V:tM, GURPS and Shadowrun. Contributed stuff to RPGamer websites and magazines. Tried to invent our own, but didn't finish it. Didn't play WH40k, but find the world fascinating somehow.
Also have experience with Eurogames, Munchkin, War Games, online poker and classic card games like Euchre and Rummy.
Theatre: Started with school plays (acted in at least one too). Seen classics, including the bard's plays, on stage. More modern artists, like Brecht, too. Also been in a real opera at least once. Ditto for musicals. Oh, and circuses (old and new ones) too.
Toys: Plushies, LEGO and such, caleidoscopes, puzzles in 2D and 3D, model building, toy robots.
Video Games: Oldest experience (speaking for all of us): Some game with Snoopy on a C64. Played VGs on more than one console, handheld and big ones. And of course on PC, cell phone and web browsers. Genres played: 4X, Adventures, Fighting games, FPS, Puzzle games, RPGs, Shmups, Simulations, Strategy/Tactics.
Webcomics: Loved this medium since we got aware of it. Will tell our grandchildren one day how we witnessed the birth of a new medium.
Web Original: Troping Wikis! (OK, that was too easy.) Responsible for more than a hundred new pages, more than a thousand new examples and ten thousands of edits. Now let's see further: More than one account at WP. Once, admin at a wikia wiki with many thousand pages and many users. Read stuff on Facebook, Twitter, reddit, voat, and tumblr. Spent too much time on YouTube. Had our own domain as early as the last millennium (not anymore). Moderator at a big internet forum (as in, millions of posts).
Other than that: Read many lolcat comics, SCP items, Polandball webcomics, Alternate Histories, and at least one Slenderman vlog. And much more.
Western Animation: Oh yes. Seen everything from b/w classics over Disney/WB works to deranged modern stuff. Traditional animation and CGI. Many European and some non-western works too. Been in Disneyland too. Definitely know that not all animation is for kids.
Our other geeky interests: 3D printing (Manager in a FabLab). Architecture. Artificial Intelligence. Astronomy. Chaos theory. Cryptography. Cybernetics. Dinosaurs. Douglas Hofstadter. Drones. Einstein's physics. Fractals. Maps. Riddles. Sport statistics. World records.
Our other interests: Betting on events in sports and politics. Bodypainting (just as spectators, neither as artists nor models). Cycling. The gym. Hiking. Shooting airguns. Swimming.
In short: We think we might be qualified to run a troping wiki competently. If you still have doubts, feel free to make up a quiz (some dozen to a hundred questions would be fair, we think) with answers that aren't easy to google. Troping is Serious Business after all. But if you want to include questions about NSFW or other embarrassing stuff, let's do this per PM. Also, please try to leave out personal opinions.
More about what we want (especially when we're talking about community building) tomorrow.