Argent

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Posts posted by Argent

  1. Posted

    14 hours ago, The Unknown Novel said:

    this is the internet, diversity shouldn’t matter, skill should, if the only skilled people are of one group, only take from that group.

    I want to address this because I think it misses a very important angle - a cultural (or racial, or sexual, you name it) background we don't currently have within our team is a skill. Even if we weren't looking for anything else (and we do), this alone would be valuable. It not only helps us understand and moderate our community better, it helps tremendously in growing it as well, attracting people who might've never joined otherwise, or ones who would've joined and just lurked, uncomfortable to fully open up. 

    You say that diversity shouldn't matter, only skill should, and I hear what you are saying - but this is also a view that, in my opinion, missed important nuances in the reality of the situation. I don't want to dig too much into this here and now, but you establish a scenario here that's not necessarily true. You say that if the only skilled people are of one group, we should take from that group - but this premise is not necessarily true, not all "skilled" people are from one group, it's entirely possible (very likely, even) that a big reason we don't have a more diverse Staff is because we've never put in the effort to find those quiet people and invite them in. 

    Just some food for thought :)

    14

  3. Posted

    An interesting theory, good job! I think other have speculated along similar lines, e.g. @LewsTherinTelescope asked a relevant question that got mostly RAFO'd:

    Quote

    LewsTherinTelescope

    Does "Ba-Ado-Mishram" mean "child of the light of Cultivation and Honor"?

    Brandon Sanderson

    RAFO, but you're doing a pretty good job picking apart the linguistics of that.

    There is quite a bit to read in this thread (and it might not be the original birthplace of this idea), but one of the things I like from it is the linguistic examination of Ba-Ado-Mishram's

    • Ba, similar to "bah," a Thaylen word that seems to convey the relationship between a master and an apprentice (e.g. Rysn Ftori bah-Vstim) but that could've easily started off as one suggesting parenthood. It is notable here that the Thaylen language may have been derived from the Dawnchant, so it's plausible that the ancient word for "child of" could've morphed into "apprentice of" or something like that
    • Ado, half of adoda, the Alethi word for "light" and also the way you'd "read" the adoda glyph (you would "write" the characters for A, D, and O, and let the symmetric nature of the glyphs "autocomplete" the rest so it's symmetric)
    • Mishram. The similarity to Mishim here is clear, but you go even further. If you treat Mishram's name the way you would some other names composed of Alethi words (e.g. Kholin is khokh + linil), you can break it into Mishim + Ramar. That's not super useful to us, but other names break differently - Sebarial's glyphpair, for example, comes from sebes + laial, and if you apply this logic to Mishram you get Mishim + Maram... which is awfully close to Mishim + Merem, and merem is the Alethi word of honor. 

    All together, I think there are more connections that we can discard easily. I particularly like the idea that the two Hoid stories were inspired by the same historical events. Some of the details don't quite work for me, but I think the general shape of it is very sound and I am happy to support the theory :)

    6

  4. Posted

    13 hours ago, Frustration said:

    For reference what coding languages are you looking for?

    We are not looking for anything specific. We don't usually have projects waiting in queue until we "hire" someone with the right skills to make them happen - most of what we've created has been someone on the team going "I am going to make this thing with whatever tools I have" and then doing just that.

    1

  9. Posted

    12 minutes ago, storm0001 said:

    hi I'm I have been writing my book I am also interested in any help I can get it's on paper but I need help with the rest like publishing etc please help you will love it and if it wasn't for your books I wouldn't be writing mine

    respectfully yours.

    Hey, @storm0001, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Brandon is not actually on these forums (technically he still has account, but he hasn't had the time to visit us in over a decade). We are just a fan community that likes talking about his works. 

    Also, and I hope you find this helpful, we don't usually expect these kinds of... direct messages in a forum. Forum topics (or threads, as they are sometimes called) are usually meant to share an idea or an opinion, or provoke a discussion with the wider community - take a look around and see how others do things. 

    If you really want to contact Brandon, his website (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/) has a contact form, but there is a very good chance he won't be able to respond to you, let alone help you; he's become a very busy man lately.

    0

  11. Posted

    We don't know how these are going to be handled - using Reddit for the last couple of streams seems to have worked well, but who knows if they'll keep that up. There are some questions here that I like and will either ask or upvote, mostly about the worldbuilding - planet's name being my top choice. I personally would say anything over 2 questions per person is pushing it, but I can't tell y'all how to live your lives. I would also suggest posting the questions as separate posts (especially on Reddit), so people can more easily upvote the ones they like best, without having to deal with the dilemma of liking some but not all questions in a comment. 

    1

  15. Posted

    2 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

    Janci also wants to name Spensa's mom Linea (sp.) 

    Linnea. @Otto Didact suggested it during the Sunreach spoiler period, and Janci liked the name, so she's been rolling with it.

    Regarding readings and Arcanum audio, things may either not happen, or take a little while. The official release event was livestreamed (privately) on YouTube, but I expect that one to become public at a later date (personal speculation). I am being told that the Spoiler Q&A was also recorded by Dragonsteel, presumably with the intent to post it at some point, but we don't know anything more there. Until these things become public, the only stuff we'll be putting in Arcanum are people's personal reports here, and elsewhere on the Internet. So if anyone has WoBs still fresh in their memory, post away :)

    3

  17. Posted

    Hey, thanks for reporting these, and also doing a bit of extra work to find the correct citations!

    Let me start addressing this by saying that the Coppermind is a public wiki and everyone can help keep it accurate (in fact, we kind of depend on that, because there's only a handful of regular contributors). As it turns out, updating citations, especially from chapter to another, is one of the easiest changes you can make - so let me walk you through the process, in case you find any other issues like that. If you touch the pencil icon (or click on the Edit button) next to the section you want to edit, you should see something like this:

    Quote

    === Appearance ===
    Jezrien has dark eyes{{book ref|sa3|38}} and black hair.{{book ref|sa1|part=prelude}}  He is tall and appears almost [[Alethi]], although his skin is a little darker than a typical Alethi man and his features are slightly off.{{book ref|sa3|38}} As a Herald, Jezrien appears to be about thirty years old and wore a short, neatly-trimmed black beard.{{book ref|sa1|part=prelude}} He stands confidently{{book ref|sa3|38}} with a royal bearing.

    ...

    The {{book ref|sa3|38}} there at the end is what generates the citation - "book ref" to create a reference to a specific book, "sa3" is our special code for Oathbringer, and 38 for chapter 38. So if you wanted to change that to 42, all you'd need to do is update the number.

    Would you like to try your hand at this? You don't have to, but for things like these, it's often both easier and faster for the person spotting the error to fix it, than to write a report and wait on the regular editors to pick it up.

    6

  21. Posted

    I am curious how you even managed to dig this up :P

    Looking throughout the pages, I might get some amount of merch to be shipped to me, but I don't like the (mini)con's COVID protocols, so I think I'll skip on the actual attendance. I hope there will be more release parties / conventions like this one in the future that I can attend.

    1

  22. Posted

    We have a couple of WoBs coming from Sandertrack director Billy Todd, which he reported verbally to me soon after he got them, and in text to @Kaymyth. Instead of including Facebook Messenger screenshots, I am just going to transcribe them verbatim:

    Quote

    Billy: You previously said that there's a Shard that has decided to go into hiding, looking to survive.

    Brandon: Yes.

    Billy: It's sort of practicing the art of not being seen.

    Brandon: Yes.

    Billy: Is that Shard the same Shard as Autonomy, or is it a different Shard?

    Brandon: I like the way you worded that; no, it's not the same Shard as Autonomy.

    Billy: The other Shard, have we seen it on screen?

    Brandon: RAFO.

    Billy: Have we seen it "practicing the art of not being seen" on screen?

    Brandon: RAFO.

     

    0

  23. Posted

    The Arcanum tag system is useful, but not quite 100% polished, so there are some quirks. Let's use this thread to report them. Specifically we are looking for:

    Duplicate tags. Sometimes, when adding tags to an entry, you might notice that there are multiple tags that express the same concept, but are phrased or spelled slightly differently - for example, both #truthwatchers and #order of truthwatchers exist right now. This is not ideal, and it doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and we'd like to fix things like that by choosing one of these, and updating all the entries using the other one (and then deleting the obsolete tag).

    Tags without entries. There is no automatic system that cleans up orphaned tags (i.e. tags with no entries under them), so we have to delete those manually. This happens sometimes when we accidentally misspell a tag (which creates a tag with a bad name) or when we learn the name of a new book and have to replace the old placeholder tag with a new one (e.g. right now we need to replace #stormlight 4 with #rhythm of war).

    Tags with bad names. Sometimes typos and other spelling artifacts sneak into our tags (e.g. #sadeas 10 is a tag that exists now, presumably because somebody wanted to apply the #sadeas tag, and there were 10 entries with that tag, and the count got attached to the tag somehow).

    0

  25. Posted

    Discord is definitely going to be your best bet, it's much more real time. 

    I don't know if anyone has anything planned at this point, but I imagine I and the people I know will set something up and generally move as a single group, with individual people coming and going at times.

    0