lyht Posted May 13, 2014 Report Share Posted May 13, 2014 So... I sometimes go wandering through the WoB stuff found around the webernets, and I usually find it to be a frustrating experience. First, while much of it is on Theoryland, there many other sites and locations, including this forum. Second, it is all combined and grouped by event. Third, the searching and tagging features seem to be hit-and-miss. None of that is a complaint against existing sites. Theoryland's is awesome and I am grateful for it. However, the current state of affairs does not work very well for me when I want to do research. So, I got thinking it might be nice to make a new site that brings everything together in one place. Maybe it could even be "Official" like this site. I started looking around at different FAQ systems, and decided to come here and get some feedback. Is this something that would be useful to people other than me? Here are the features I would want in an ideal world: Categories as well as tags. I would like to be able to just search through Cosmere sometimes, and not be distracted by WoT, or general questions about writing. Or visa-versa. Ability to browse a single QA session, or browse all topics in a single category or tag Simple way to link to an source (i.e. Theoryland, TOR, etc) Clean tool for entering a bunch of questions from a new event. In addition to categories and tags, an easy way to link related questions Anyone should be able to sign up for an account to contribute. Thoughts? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lyht Posted May 14, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2014 I went ahead and set one up that fits most of my wish-list. It does not give the ability to browse a QA event, but maybe that doesn't matter since that is what Theoryland is for... But just about everything else is there. What I don't know is if anyone else cares. Entering all WoB into one site would probably be a ton of work, which would be wasted if it doesn't really serve any new purpose. Anywho, here is the link to the test site: http://wob.orbsix.com/phpmyfaq/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe ST he/him Posted May 14, 2014 Report Share Posted May 14, 2014 FYI, we're in the (very slow process, admittedly) of updating the Theoryland system, and I plan on adding most of these features eventually. Categories as well as tags. I would like to be able to just search through Cosmere sometimes, and not be distracted by WoT, or general questions about writing. Or visa-versa. I plan on making the search much more comprehensive, including tag grouping, and tag trees, and the ability to search only in subsets of tags and all sorts of ways to make it easier to read/find only what you want. Ability to browse a single QA session, or browse all topics in a single category or tag This already exists for theoryland questions Simple way to link to an source (i.e. Theoryland, TOR, etc) Theoryland already has source links, including per-quesiton links (for twitter feeds) Clean tool for entering a bunch of questions from a new event. I will definitely be making it much easier to add/edit questions on Theoryland (atm the editing interface is dire) In addition to categories and tags, an easy way to link related questions I am up for suggestions on what kind of relations and displays and things are useful for future implementation on Theoryland Anyone should be able to sign up for an account to contribute I plan on making it a lot more open, with submissions for review by the Theoryland moderators (along with potentially adding edit submissions too) and edit history. I also might add user-voting per question so we can find what are popular questions. I know the feeling that you want a system that has all the bells and whistles, that is able to collate and display all interesting info in unified nice modern clean fun easy to use interfaces. But for one thing, you wouldn't be able to just copy all the data from Theoryland (en-bulk), because it's probably licensed to them, and it's also totally and utterly unfair to rip all their data after the thousands of hours they've put into it. And splitting effort (on input) between two sites just reduces efficiency and quality over all. I'm sorry it's taking so long to improve/fix Theoryland, but it will get done. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lyht Posted May 14, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2014 I know the feeling that you want a system that has all the bells and whistles, that is able to collate and display all interesting info in unified nice modern clean fun easy to use interfaces. But for one thing, you wouldn't be able to just copy all the data from Theoryland (en-bulk), because it's probably licensed to them, and it's also totally and utterly unfair to rip all their data after the thousands of hours they've put into it. And splitting effort (on input) between two sites just reduces efficiency and quality over all. I'm sorry it's taking so long to improve/fix Theoryland, but it will get done. I agree with everything you said. It brings up another question to me: Does Theoryland currently attempt to consolidate all WoBs? I know they pull a bunch in, like annotations, etc. But is it even possible to get everything? Do they have special permission to get content off TOR, or other sites? Could my dream to have a single clearing house be a dream of smoke? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe ST he/him Posted May 14, 2014 Report Share Posted May 14, 2014 no, single place for WoB is unlikely. Theoryland is (I think) aiming to do just q&a (tho they do blogposts because Robert Jordan's blog posts are potentially unstable given that they were hosted not by RJ or something? I agree that it's an imperfect system for blog posts and twitters since it's for q&a and I also agree that a central place would be lovely, but it's unlikely. Maybe a search engine which indexes all these places (or where you can insert just links with tags which get scraped and indexed for better stuff or soemthing?) I am planning to possibly shoehorn an api into Theoryland somehow... I don't know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterAhlstrom he/him Posted May 29, 2014 Report Share Posted May 29, 2014 Theoryland does post tweets. Honestly, I think the Theoryland database is supposed to be everything you want. It's just not all implemented yet. 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pechvarry Posted May 29, 2014 Report Share Posted May 29, 2014 Perhaps I'm very strange, but what I really want most is all Brandon Sanderson Q&A stuff (sans WoT and general/writing questions if possible) in a single plain text document. Does anyone happen to have something like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurkistan he/him Posted May 29, 2014 Report Share Posted May 29, 2014 (edited) @Peter I agree (for what it's worth). Why not include everything, really. It's not exactly like plain text is big data and we're already most of the way there. @Pech The Theoryland backend likely as a big fat database that they could scrape for the content. You might have to ask Joe very politely, though even then there are concerns that their hard-won data could potentially be misused (we all know what a monster you are, Pech ). Edited May 29, 2014 by Kurkistan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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