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Heh. Actually, the last time, kudu said he couldn't do something because only addshore knew how to fix it.
Also, I'm pretty sure no one is paid, so hiring's a bit out of the question.
In choosing Orain, we traded reliability for customizability, and they've been very good about installing and testing extensions for us. But at this point, we're at
-- ∇×V
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Ah, right.
(I'd suggest "look in the company documentation to see how to fix things", but so many techs think docs are irrelevant. Even if they're running a doc-host company. But that's my pet peeve = I'm a proc-and-doc guy.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Quote:However, if this continues, yeah I'm going to look for new hosting.
At least we'll have a mostly-converted tropebase to start with this time...
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Say, Brent, Geth, an idea. Part of the thing that we're trying to do with All The Tropes is more analysis/structural stuff than simply cataloging. Well, why not have a section of the wiki about the process and tools of writing fiction? More than a few of the existing pages -- like Chekov's Law, Tomato Surprise and many of the Sliding Scales -- could go in there, plus, well, I have a perennially in-progress http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/guide/fwg.txt]writer's guide that we could adapt into more wiki pages. Sort of a hierarchy for how to use tropes beyond simply cataloguing them. What do you think?
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:Say, Brent, Geth, an idea. Part of the thing that we're trying to do with All The Tropes is more analysis/structural stuff than simply cataloging. Well, why not have a section of the wiki about the process and tools of writing fiction? More than a few of the existing pages -- like Chekov's Law, Tomato Surprise and many of the Sliding Scales -- could go in there, plus, well, I have a perennially in-progress http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/guide/fwg.txt that we could adapt into more wiki pages. Sort of a hierarchy for how to use tropes beyond simply cataloguing them. What do you think?
I've read that (extremely good) guide, and I wholeheartedly support this idea.
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We're back up.
I definitely agree with your plan, Bob. I think that's something that should be at the core of our mission. Those pages you mentioned, in particular are important, because they're at the base of good writing. For Chehov's Gun, I'm reminded of a quote I read a while ago from JMS: Quote: Well, one thing we have to be thankful for is
that M,SW in particular taught me the importance of playing fair with
the audience, and that takes two forms: first, you have to make sure
that all of your clues or the information an audience needs is right
there in front of them, so that when they back up the episode (or the
season in our case) everything is visible, they just didn’t know how to
interpret it. Second, you have to provide proper closure to a story, so
the audience feels satisfied at the end of an episode (or a season)
that they’ve gotten a full story worth their time and emotional
investment.
The craziest thing about TV Tropes
is that its stated topic is "the tools of the trade of writing fiction",
but it's really more about consumption of media than creation. Most
subpages are for audience reaction. Pages like "genre" and "subtext"
are bare-bones, and "central theme" is hardly used anywhere. The end
result here is that people get writing ideas, but no real writing
context. And the "Tropes are LEGOs" troper/writers. So yes, I'd like to see All The Tropes become more of a writer's collective than a fan collective (though fans are welcome too, of course).
-- ∇×V
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Quote:We're back up.
Okay, this is weird. I'm at work right now, trying all the browsers available to me. Chrome sees it just fine, but IE and Firefox both report problems -- IE says "cannot display webpage" and Firefox says "server not found". Quote:I definitely agree with your plan, Bob.
Well, cool. I'll get right on it, then -- but first, what do we call the new section? "How To Write"? "Writers' Tools"? Before I start creating pages, I want a good title and category name to put them under.
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:Okay, this is weird. I'm at work right now, trying all the browsers available to me. Chrome sees it just fine, but IE and Firefox both report problems -- IE says "cannot display webpage" and Firefox says "server not found".
Have you tried flushing your DNS cache? If not, then I'd recommend at least giving it a try.
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Yeah, and it didn't do any good.
-- Bob
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...And today I can see it in IE. Which makes me happy but confused as to why it was invisible yesterday.
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Corporate DNS/cache refresh, I'd guess. I've seen similar behavior before.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
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But I could reach it with Chrome, just not IE or Firefox. That wouldn't happen with a DNS barf of some sort.
In other news. Brent, Geth -- did we lose more extra functionality than just the stuff that they were trying to install at the crash? I noticed that I don't have HotCat or AutoComplete any more, even though they're on the Gadgets tab of my Preferences page and activated.
-- Bob
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Okay, HotCat's back, but Autocomplete is missing still. If you're at work on this stuff, thanks. If only I had a better grasp of MediaWiki's innards, I'd offer to help in what ways I could.
-- Bob
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Our CSS/JS stuff is slowly recovering due to how Orain has the site cached.
Give it a few more days, and everything should be back to normal.
Also, currently working on a new forum system for our site, made entirely with in house stuff (no weird new extensions). Plans to post a link to the prototype once I have a decent beta ready, but I can say the following:
1. It will make heavy use of LQT, Echo, and the Thanks extensions. It will not use the DPLforum extension our current forum does (which will be archived, but any open threads there will be able to be addressed)
2. It will be entirely in wiki, not separated from the wiki by a degree like on TV Tropes, partially because of the design, and partially because we want to avoid the forum overshadowing the wiki.
3. Will have a TV Tropes like naming scheme for the forums but a Vbulletin like layout (like Something Awful).
More news once I have a decent beta scratched together.
Edit: Here's the beta version:
http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/User:GethN7/sandbox
It has no links to anything, this is just the basic design and proposed forums, any suggestions/opinions/criticisms welcome.
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I like the look of it. Let's go for it.
-- Bob
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Glad u like it, Bob.
I ginned up some basic forum rules here, feel free to edit them or make any suggestions to improve them:
http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/For ... opes/Rules
Also, I left the old forums so they can still be edited if need be, since I plan to give all the new sub forum pages custom headers and they haven't been created yet.
They can be found here:
http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/For ... es/Archive
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So, just to be clear, will we be using the same syntax that's already on the wiki for the forums? Because if we do there won't be any need to have to remember two different syntaxes, lessening confusion when going from the wiki to the forum and vice versa.
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If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'd say "use the same syntax on the forums until somebody needs something different."
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Yes, the forum itself (both old and new) is entirely in wiki, so all the same syntax applies. Still need to finish up the new forum subforum pages, so for now, please use the old forum.
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Our new forums are ready for business!
See here for more info:
http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/Thr ... finally_up!
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And I've started off the writer's forum with a thread for resources and tools -- which points to the similar thread over in Fanfiction, and to my guide.
-- Bob
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I've noticed that our new member rate is now something like 2 registrations a day -- looks like we're starting to get a bit of presence somewhere that's bringing in users.
On another topic, the only thing keeping me from starting up the new section on the mechanics of writing is the lack of a good name for it. I'm still at a loss for that.
-- Bob
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Not sure what a good name for that would be either, but I was going to include a sidebar link to it as well as adding it to the front page, so whenever you're ready, let me know. 
As for the new members, I've been trying to do some outreach on Wikia, not sure how much that is helping, but seeing new members is definitely encouraging. 
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I was looking for something short and pithy, but maybe "Mechanics of Writing" will do.
-- Bob
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I don't recall if it's come up, but I've noticed that if a nested bullet follows a quote, there's two bullet points on the line, instead of the single indented one.
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