Arcanum Feature Suggestions

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

This will be a thread for people to add their suggestions and requests for new features for the new WoB archive. I will try to update the original post when people add things so there is a complete list in the OP. If any of the developers for Arcanum have a better way of tracking this sort of thing, I'm open to that as well (and would offer to maintain/organize that list as well). I'm trying to grab things that people post on Reddit as well, but those may be harder to catch, so if you see anything I've missed there feel free to send it to me or post it in the thread. Also, if I grab one of your Reddit posts and you want me to credit you here, let me know.

Feature Suggestions:

Audio

- A way to scrub through audio clips to help with transcription (fast forward/rewind/scroll through). Status: Definitely wanted, hopefully coming mid-2018.

 

Browsing/Site Design

- Links at the bottom of event pages to the previous/next chronological event for ease of wasting hours reading through them without realizing how much time has passed.

- Search sorting, such as by date ascending or descending (from @neithan). Filtering by location or time might also be useful.

- A daily random WoB on the homepage (from @Steeldancer). Status: probably will happen at some point, but unsure when. It would be relatively easy, but it's low priority.

- Recent Entries/Recent Events pages (mentioned by Chaos on Reddit). Status: very likely but unsure exactly when.

- A dark colored theme (from u/Khalku on Reddit).

 

User Account Features

- A way of tracking which events/WoBs have been read (similar to 17th Shard user functionality). Status: non-trivial, would be mid-2018 at earliest, but may not be worth the trouble.

- A way to like WoBs and the ability to look at all your personal liked WoBs in a list format (from @thegatorgirl00). Specifically to have a saved list and to be able to make a sub-list from that. Status: High-priority!

- Once saved entries are implemented, a way to have public and private lists (from @Oversleep).

- User pages like 17th Shard has (from @thegatorgirl00).

- Linking named questioners to their user pages (from @thegatorgirl00).

- Notifications when something new is uploaded (from u/mbue on Reddit).

 

Integration with 17th Shard/Coppermind

- A way to easily quote WoBs in threads on 17th Shard with nice formatting (from @MasterJack). Status: Kurkistan is toying with an idea.

 

Editing

- Editing enabled for all users (both for actual text and for tags). Status: being worked on now. Until this is possible, corrections can be submitted in this thread:

 

Updated 11/09/17 at 4:37 PM EST

Edited November 9, 2017 by BeskarKomrk
Updated with more suggestions

[Oversleep]

22 minutes ago, BeskarKomrk said:

Audio

- A way to scrub through audio clips to help with transcription (fast forward/rewind/scroll through).

When you have edition privileges, there's a player bar on the edition page. Is it what you're suggesting?

Edited November 8, 2017 by Oversleep

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

37 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

When you have edition privileges, there's a player bar on the edition page. Is it what you're suggesting?

Probably, but I don't have editing privileges so I can't say for sure. It was suggested in the WoB Corrections thread because it'll help with making corrections.

[Chaos he/him]

A general audio scrubber is a thing we want but that will probably be a mid-2018 thing. We need to basically redo things to do that.

Good idea on forward/backwards on events. 

As for read functionality... That's a nontrivial feature. Mid 2018 at earliest, but I don't think it should be prioritized. I'm also not sure it is truly necessary as when new stuff is out you'll just read the new event once.

[thegatorgirl00 she/her]

A way to like WoBs and the ability to look at all your personal liked WoBs in a list format. 

[Chaos he/him]

26 minutes ago, thegatorgirl00 said:

A way to like WoBs and the ability to look at all your personal liked WoBs in a list format. 

That's high priority! 

[thegatorgirl00 she/her]

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

That's high priority! 

My initial thought was the ability to create personal lists of WoBs. So if someone was making a theory on Surgebinding, they could create their own list titled Surgebinding Theory and add WoBs to it. That seems like more of a long term thing, however, and the developers deserve a break from doing complicated programming. 

[Chaos he/him]

13 minutes ago, thegatorgirl00 said:

My initial thought was the ability to create personal lists of WoBs. So if someone was making a theory on Surgebinding, they could create their own list titled Surgebinding Theory and add WoBs to it. That seems like more of a long term thing, however, and the developers deserve a break from doing complicated programming. 

That's exactly what we will be doing. You'll have a button where you can add an entry to your saved entries, and you can make any list from it.

This is one the main features I'm very sad is not done yet.

[Oversleep]

11 minutes ago, Chaos said:

That's exactly what we will be doing. You'll have a button where you can add an entry to your saved entries, and you can make any list from it.

This is one the main features I'm very sad is not done yet.

Would we be able to share these? Or maybe just have them public and private?

[Chaos he/him]

49 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

Would we be able to share these? Or maybe just have them public and private?

Nice idea! Sure, why not.

[Carbonationspren he/him]

The Coppermind home page still links to Theoryland as the Interview database.

[Neithan]

It might be helpful to be able to sort searches in different ways, such as by date ascending or descending

Edited November 9, 2017 by neithan

[Chaos he/him]

1 hour ago, Carbonationspren said:

The Coppermind home page still links to Theoryland as the Interview database.

I knew I forgot something. Fixed  

[Toaster Retribution he/him]

How will the "like & save your WoBs" work though? Will we connect our 17th Shard profiles to Arcanum in some way?

[Chaos he/him]

3 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

How will the "like & save your WoBs" work though? Will we connect our 17th Shard profiles to Arcanum in some way?

Linking different systems is very complex. Arcanum has its own login system and unfortunately you will need another login, and it will be associated to that account. 

Logging in works (and you can adjust some settings there), but there's not much for you to do quite yet  

[Toaster Retribution he/him]

7 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Linking different systems is very complex. Arcanum has its own login system and unfortunately you will need another login, and it will be associated to that account. 

Logging in works (and you can adjust some settings there), but there's not much for you to do quite yet  

Huh. Didn't notice the login function, but I'll check it out!

[Reborn radiant]

More extensive tagging please? Or a functionality so that we can add tags? 

For example, this one doesn't seem to have any tags associated with it. 
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5991

I think tagging would make it much more easier to search.


Also, option to save or mark as favorite or star a partcular WoB, so that whenever we want, we can go through all the WoBs we have saved on the website itself?

Edited November 9, 2017 by Reborn radiant

[Pagerunner he/him]

17 minutes ago, Reborn radiant said:

More extensive tagging please? Or a functionality so that we can add tags? 

For example, this one doesn't seem to have any tags associated with it. 
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5991

I think tagging would make it much more easier to search.

Tags have not been applied completely to all entries yet, but that is in process. Until general editing has been implemented (which is being worked on now), you can make suggestions for adding tags to specific entries in the following thread: 

 

[thegatorgirl00 she/her]

Will there be specific user pages, like on the shard? If so, can we have links to those pages from the WoBs when that person is the questioner? 

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

13 hours ago, Chaos said:

As for read functionality... That's a nontrivial feature. Mid 2018 at earliest, but I don't think it should be prioritized. I'm also not sure it is truly necessary as when new stuff is out you'll just read the new event once.

Yeah I definitely agree it shouldn't be a priority. It would probably be most helpful for newer fans who haven't read all the older stuff yet.

[Steeldancer he/him]

A daily random WoB. 

Also, i already signed in! 

[Argent he/him]

1 hour ago, Steeldancer said:

A daily random WoB. 

We've been jokingly throwing this idea around, so I think it will happen eventually. It's not a difficult thing to do, just not a high priority one

[dendrophobe he/him]

A way to flag conflicting WoBs. That way, once flagged, a mod could step in and say "Superceded by [linked WoB]" to avoid confusion. Or if Brandon misspoke, or changed his mind later, we could seek clarification, or at least know that the answer isn't exactly what we first thought.

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

3 hours ago, dendrophobe said:

A way to flag conflicting WoBs. That way, once flagged, a mod could step in and say "Superceded by [linked WoB]" to avoid confusion. Or if Brandon misspoke, or changed his mind later, we could seek clarification, or at least know that the answer isn't exactly what we first thought.

Some of the WoBs already have footnotes in them (which is freaking amazing, great work by the people who entered all of those). Are you looking for something more extensive than that?

[Neithan]

Search results should have a maximum preview length. Having to scroll through a State of the Sanderson in search isn't fun.