Pending WoB Compendium

[Shardlet]

Hi everyone.  Back when I got started sharding, I suggested that a compendium of Word of Brandon (WoB) be compiled to help new sharders get caught up quickly on the additional tidbits we love so much in our theorycraft.  Nobody seemed keen at the time.  The chief reason being that Theoryland in particular will be challenging to adequately mine the info from in a complete manner.

 

However, I have begun to work on a compilation of WoB from as many Q&A sessions as we have available text.  This compendium will have specific rules (that I hope people will be kind enough to follow for everyone's sake) about what can be posted and the formatting for posting.  This will not be simply transcriptions of Q&A's.  It will be filtered down meat (or tofu for the vegetarians).  What I mean is, it will be only questions and answers which directly pertain to the cosmere.  There will be no writing tips, interesting Brandon info, Rithmatist info, fanboy/fangirl gushing, etc.  The thread will have no commentary allowed in the thread (again, since I have no enforcement power, I'll set rules and hope that everyone follows them).  

 

I want to have a one-stop shop thread where people can come and get an undiluted WoB feast.  A single searchable thread that is unfettered from any commentary that gives false hits on our searches.

 

Now, this is a big job to be sure.  I have already compiled most of the info from the Events, Signings, and Stalkings thread (about 50 pages of WoB so far and much more to go).  But, I will need help from people who are familiar with and skilled with searching and moving through Theoryland, the Brandonothology, Twitter, Reddit, other fan sites, and any other sources we can find.  I am looking to put together a team of no more than eight people (probably about 6) to help me in this task.  If anyone would like to be involved please PM me with which particular sources you would like to help searching through.  This project will probably take a considerable amount of time to complete; but we will likely be posting stuff along the way (at the very least when a source has been tapped out).  I look forward to hearing from you.

 

 

[Argent]

I would be interested, but I see two problems - one mine, one general. First, I don't have as much time as I once did (but we don't get WoB too often, so that might be okay). Second, however, I am not sure a forum is the best medium for this. A website would be much better - Google sites might work here, since you can make an okay one for free and without needing to know HTML or CSS.

[Shardlet]

Maybe.  But one of the key things is I want it to be readily searchable and very easily available to our community here.  We have a decent search function on this site and I'd like to enable people (including myself) to take advantage of that when searching for WoB.  I am hoping that the powers that be will pin it to the first page of the forum it gets posted in.  (I am waiting to hear back on that). If we do end up with errant commentary in the thread, then I will ask the person who posted it to hide the post or edit out the commentary.

[cem]

I think the Coppermind wiki would be better than the forums.

 

• It has all the searching&organizing functions of the forums and a whole lot of others on top.
• Forum softwares are kind of limiting with their BBcodes and whatnots. We would be able to use html tags on the wiki.
• The wiki would allow multiple people to maintain the database. They keep the interviews on the forums on Jim Butcher's fan forums. It gets outdated from time to time because the person responsible for the job doesn't always have time to spare. And Brandon does a lot more interviews than Jim.

These are all the pros for wiki that I can think of at the moment but I'm sure there would be more if we gave it some thought.

Edited November 24, 2013 by cem

[Shardlet]

The thread would not be limited to just a small group of people adding to it.  I want this to be open source, as it were.  This is another reason why I'd rather not do a separate site like Argent suggested.  I do not want maintenance to be my job or even just the job of a select few.  I would hope that anyone who is posting a Q&A would also add it to the compendium, whether it is a single Q&A or a transcription of all the pertinent Q&A from an event.  This is one of the beauties of doing a continuing thread.  I also would kind of like it to be right by the Cosmere 101, Question and Answer, and Ultimate List of Questions threads in order to make the thread readily apparent to new arrivals.

 

Granted, I am rather programming illiterate and I have no real idea what an html tag is or it's advantages.

Edited November 24, 2013 by Shardlet

[Kurkistan]

I am unsure, Shardlet.

 

You've obviously put a great deal of thought and effort into this, so might well have answers to my concerns, but I'd like to raise a few anyway, just in case:

 

Why not lobby for an expansion of permissions for Theoryland, rather than start a somewhat-clunky setup here? The thing is, when you've got a few hundred WoB's, you need to be able to separate them out by keyword and subject and the like, which is what Theoryland is good for. Now Theoryland does have a flaw in that it lags behind on new WoB by a fair margin, but that's the kind of thing that can be worked on within the system (admins willing).

 

I don't see Theoryland as a challenge to "adequately mine for information", but as a challenge to the need for a separate compendium to exist.

 

---

 

On that note, such a thread might be helpful as an interim step to getting stuff into Theoryland. I'd like to think that my compendium of AMA answers relating to the Cosmere was helpful to those guys, and this could serve a similar purpose. Instead of being a copy-pasting of new WoB's, you could maintain a series of links to the relevant threads/posts, to be removed as Windy, Joe, and company get to them.

[Shardlet]

Why not lobby for an expansion of permissions for Theoryland?  Because Theoryland is not really amenable to a new sharder just pulling it up and reading through the WoB that is there.  That was the biggest weakness I found with it.  When I started, I wanted to click and read rather than hunt and search.

 

You AMA thread was helpful to me (although I thinned a lot out of it in my compilation).  Though it was a bit of a pain because of the individual quote boxes.  But that was only a pain for copying and pasting.  

 

A thread of links is tedious to work through and the reader must then filter through everything that is there.  Thus, it would not solve the need I perceive.

Edited November 25, 2013 by Shardlet

[Pechvarry]

I'm with Shardlet on this. We're the 17th shard; our direct link is right on the front page of Brandon's site.

And yet we have to go elsewhere, to a site that only helps if you have an idea what you're searching for, and with a great deal of information you're not looking for. Also, I was here for at least a year before someone explained that I have to hit search twice.

As for medium: you guys are seriously overlooking the obvious answer:

YES.

Start a big, comment-free thread (btw, consider making a second thread for comments and concerns and link to it in the OP very clearly and... Boldly). We will post new info to it just fine. WoB doesn't retroactively stop existing.

If people don't like the format, they can take info from the thread and devote a wiki page to it, complete with links.

I understand multiple copies of the same info runs the risk of not being concurrent, but both, thread and wiki, can easily be caught up.

[Aether]

Wouldn't it be possible to use the Coppermind wiki for this? Make a comment-free post and permanent post somewhere really visible on this forum linking to the Coppermind article.

 

The plus side for this is that it would make linking the sources for Coppermind articles much easier.

[Shardlet]

I am not very Wiki Savvy, but can a wiki page even functionally handle that volume of info?  I mean, with just the Events, Signings, and Stalking forum I will have a word document that is about 60-75 pages.  There is a lot of WoB out there.

[cem]

I don't see why it couldn't. For reference, this is the longest page on Wikipedia. It's over 750kb in size or 810 pages when I copy the content to MS Word.

[Kurkistan]

I would reach out to the admins/wiki-people about how it might work on the Coppermind. You might also be able to talk to the people managing Theoryland about altering how it works. It's a bespoke system, which is both a blessing and a curse: it can do just about anything, but takes a lot of work to get to that point.

 

On that note, could you articulate exactly how you might structure Theoryland differently so that it would be more new-Sharder friendly? Because that database already has just about everything there, with a fair amount of meta-data along for the ride. Would a "Cosmere-Relevant" tag solve all of your issues?

 

I agree that we are in need of some way of delivering all of this information to new members, but I want to be sure that the method is useful, sound, and does not require unnecessary duplication of effort.

[Moogle]

An idea: everything makes its way to Theoryland eventually, so it should be fairly easy to make a program that just scans the entirety of Theoryland and sticks it into one page (which could be organized by date) for easy moving around. It would have to be curated, so that WoT things are removed, but it would be an easy way to get the majority of WoBs floating around into one place with a minimum amount of effort. I'd be willing to put in some time on it during the Christmas holidays if anyone wants.

Edited November 25, 2013 by Moogle

[Joe ST]

please don't scrape Theoryland, I know that it's currently not set up very well, I'm trying to fix that. After all the work that Zach, Terez, and the rest of the team have put into it. We will eventually make it better. If you have suggestions that you think will help, please tell me/us.Regarding your idea, I think something like multiple-tag selections on Theoryland would be best? A collection of wiki pages on different subjects might be a good way of collecting condensed form? with lots of cites/links to appropriate questions. My opinion is that the wiki articles should be canon+WoB but I kinda can see why a collection of it would be useful.

[Shardlet]

Theoryland is great for a topical search or looking for a quote you are already aware of.  One question I have is, is substantially all the cosmere quotes tagged with at least one of the Sanderson tags?  It seems on first glance that the list of tags is a bit thin.  I may be wrong.  Also, to apply a "cosmere relevant" tag to each pertinent quote after the fact seems like a rather substantial endeavor in and of itself.  If the effort is going to be undertaken one way or the other, why not use that effort to create a comprehensive cosmere database, than to adapt a piggyback resource? 

 

Also, when clicking on a tag in Theoryland you get a single page of everything under that tag.  There are few people in this world which would have the time and the ability to read all the WoB in one sitting.  The natural page divisions that occur here every twenty posts would make it much easier to get up from your machine and then come back at another time and easily and quickly resume reading from where one left off. 

 

I would never suggest scrapping Theoryland.  Like I said, it is very good for certain uses.  Also, it would do a great disservice to WoT fans.  The biggest goal for me in this is to have everything in one location, easily readable, easily searchable, and unadulterated by WoT info, writing tips, general inquiries, etc.  The WoB is vast enough without having to sift through everything else.  All that extra stuff makes getting caught up on WoB a chore rather than a joy. 

 

Basically we have a number of sources out there.  Each of those sources has a particular way that must be discovered on how to get what you are looking for. Rather than directing people to 4-6 different sources (which they would then hav to figure out how to effectively use), we keep them on 17th Shard.

 

I think the best way to use the Coppermind in conjunction with the compendium is that the Compendium could be a general compilation of all the WoB while a sister Coppermind page could have all the WoB in the compendium organized by book (simlar to the organization of the Brandonothology).

[Moogle]

Theoryland is basically awesome already, it could just use some upgrades. If you don't want it scraped, then I will respect your wishes. It could still use a couple of upgrades:

• One way to view everything at once (which naturally includes adding 'pages' so as to divide things up better for multiple sittings) and/or everything Cosmere tagged with that.
• A way to crowdsource new entries or faster data entry. Perhaps something could be made that automatically copies all of Brandon's tweets and reddit posts into one place and they can just be one click away from being added to the database?

[Kurkistan]

@Joe

 

Thanks for chiming in.

 

One suggestion that I think might be relatively easy, now that you mention it: would it be possible to have a "Link to this question" option on both the tag-listed and signing-listed questions? Right now, you have to go through a rather annoying number of steps, including manually altering URL's, to link to specific questions/answers on Theoryland.

 

 

Theoryland is great for a topical search or looking for a quote you are already aware of.  One question I have is, is substantially all the cosmere quotes tagged with at least one of the Sanderson tags?  It seems on first glance that the list of tags is a bit thin.  I may be wrong.  Also, to apply a "cosmere relevant" tag to each pertinent quote after the fact seems like a rather substantial endeavor in and of itself.  If the effort is going to be undertaken one way or the other, why not use that effort to create a comprehensive cosmere database, than to adapt a piggyback resource? 
 
Also, when clicking on a tag in Theoryland you get a single page of everything under that tag.  There are few people in this world which would have the time and the ability to read all the WoB in one sitting.  The natural page divisions that occur here every twenty posts would make it much easier to get up from your machine and then come back at another time and easily and quickly resume reading from where one left off.

Thing is, I think adding "Cosmere-Relevant" tags (which would be a hell of a job, no doubt) would do just that, "create a comprehensive cosmere database".

 

As for page divisions: Maybe Joe could help us out there? I like how you can CTRL+F an entire tag-set at a time on Theoryland, but maybe some cosmetic alterations to put a line between every X WoB's or something?

 

I would never suggest scrapping Theoryland.  Like I said, it is very good for certain uses.  Also, it would do a great disservice to WoT fans.  The biggest goal for me in this is to have everything in one location, easily readable, easily searchable, and unadulterated by WoT info, writing tips, general inquiries, etc.  The WoB is vast enough without having to sift through everything else.  All that extra stuff makes getting caught up on WoB a chore rather than a joy.

 

Don't worry, Joe said "scrape", not "scrap". I believe he was responding to Moogle's offer to write program to "scrape" through Theoryland to find relavant WoB's.

 

Basically we have a number of sources out there.  Each of those sources has a particular way that must be discovered on how to get what you are looking for. Rather than directing people to 4-6 different sources (which they would then hav to figure out how to effectively use), we keep them on 17th Shard.
 
I think the best way to use the Coppermind in conjunction with the compendium is that the Compendium could be a general compilation of all the WoB while a sister Coppermind page could have all the WoB in the compendium organized by book (simlar to the organization of the Brandonothology).

 

I agree that we should slim down the sources: which is why I think we should ideally have one: Theoryland. If you could select multiple tags, you could just enter in "Cosmere-Relevant; Mistborn" and get all Cosmere-relevant WoB's relating to Mistborn, all in one page.

 

All the data, the most annoying and finicky aspect of all of this, is already gathered in one place, with a fairly robust way of accessing it. We just need to tweak the access method a bit and we're golden.

[Moogle]

One suggestion that I think might be relatively easy, now that you mention it: would it be possible to have a "Link to this question" option on both the tag-listed and signing-listed questions? Right now, you have to go through a rather annoying number of steps, including manually altering URL's, to link to specific questions/answers on Theoryland.

 

I'd like to echo this idea. An easy way to link to individual questions in interviews, and perhaps a button to click which automatically copies the question plus a link to the interview in question to your clipboard, would make it much easier to cite WoBs in posts.

Edited November 25, 2013 by Moogle

[Shardlet]

Well, I guess my next questions would be: How many people can update Theoryland content? How backlogged is Theoryland on un-entered WoB?  What changes are the Theoryland admins interested in making to make Theoryland more welcoming to sharders in addition to WoT?  I ask the last question because when a non-WoT person goes to Theoryland, they are met by a site which revolves around WoT and the only area of interest for such a person (like myself) is a portion of the search page.  It feels like an add-on rather than a feature.  Perhaps this has colored some of my perceptions of the completeness of Theoryland for cosmere WoB. 

 

Edit:  I know for my part, when I got started, I was pointed to Theoryland and found it too cumbersome for me just starting out.  I didn't know what to search for, so a search page seemed at the time rather useless to me.  Consequently, I largely abandoned going to Theoryland for anything.  Yet, there is some really fantastic info there that I have recently come accross.  I hate thinking about other new sharders who have similarly largely ignored Theoryland or are not even really aware of its existence.

Edited November 25, 2013 by Shardlet

[Joe ST]

These changes are in the works I think. I'm fairly sure I've already fixed it so that this works, but the theoryland dude is having real life things, so I've not pressed him for a while.

[tobar14]

soooo, did this ever happen, is there a centralized location of the WoB?

[Shardlet]

soooo, did this ever happen, is there a centralized location of the WoB?

 

Alas, no.  It seemed that those who put together/maintain the Theoryland database were opposed to doing this.  So, i did not feel it was appropriate to harvest WoB from that site which was the most complete collection of WoB.  Without that resource, it seemed a hollow effort.  I think I still have the compilation I made from 17th shard at the time, but it has not been updated since my last post so it is very raw and woefully out of date.

[Ari]

If Theoryland doesn't want to collect Cosmere stuff anymore, (which is reasonable given it was intended as a WoT site that ended up getting Cosmere interviews/Q&As mixed in with WoT ones) it does seem pretty reasonable to set something up for the Cosmere and any other Brandon works. Probably the easiest thing to do is to set up a wiki paralell to the Coppermind. (reference.coppermind.net would work)

 

Probably the best thing to do there would be to set up a page per event for normal Q&As, signings, etc... and then a page per month for relevant quotes scraped from social media, and have each page categorised according to what topics questions were asked about. (eg. book names, character names, locations, types of investiture or epic classifications, etc...) Then people can browse the categories if looking for information on a specific topic, unless someone wants to set up a full site customised just for this purpose.

[Shardlet]

It has been months since I checked, but I am pretty sure that Theoryland is still being actively updated by Joe, Zas, and I think Windrunner.  not sure though.

[WeiryWriter]

Okay so, to my knowledge (which as I'm one of the people who helps keep Theoryland up to date I'm going to assume is fairly complete) at no point have the Powers That Be over on Theoryland said that they no longer want the database to be updated with Brandon/cosmere stuff.  Now to be honest I've not really added much of anything in the last six months or so because I've been working on some other projects and real life stuff.  Hopefully that will no longer be relevant in the relatively near future (it really depends on when I can get certain things done).

 

My main objection to this idea is that there should really only be one Active database at a time, otherwise that is just duplicated effort (as inputting and organizing all of that information is time-consuming, and it having to be done for two separate places at the same time is a waste in my opinion).

 

Now that isn't to say that the current situation doesn't have issues, it does.  But bear in mind that this is something that we have discussed at length behind the scenes.  We are continually discussing ways to improve things, making the process more efficient and making the information more accessible, but any changes are going to take time.  There are a plenty of ideas for things I would like to do with a WoB database, unfortunately most of them just aren't going to be feasible any time soon.

 

There is work being done though, which I really hope people will like when the changes finally go public but I can't say for certain when that will be.