Chaos

Don't you worry about that. The beautiful thing is that wikis are all crowdsourced, so don't worry, we can all edit each other. It's great!

Ooo, I certainly would not dissuade you from editing There's certainly a lot to be done. There a lot of sinfully bad stubs which aren't at all useful. Here's the list of Mistborn articles: http://coppermind.17thshard.com/wiki/Category:Mistborn I don't know what you're thinking of editing, so hey, pick whatever tickles your fancy. I'd recommend you away from the magic-related articles, since while those ones aren't necessarily the best, they at least display most of the necessary information. People, places, and lore need the most help. Some particularly awful ones: Urteau. So... descriptive, especially for a city we've actually been to. Hero of Ages. This could be radically expanded, since there's a ton to talk about when it comes to the Hero of Ages, with all the backstory with Alendi and Kwaan and everything. The Ascension. Again, vast expansions needed. The Final Empire. This one has stuff, but it isn't displayed very effectively, and could be a far more complete analysis on that time period's history and culture. Anyway, there's plenty to do. Pretty much any article you click there, there's improvement to be done. I seriously appreciate you editing even one thing, man.

Welcome to the new technology discussion board. I have moved a few tech-related topics in General Discussion here, and hopefully this will let us blab about smartphones, tablets, gadgets, Windows, Macs, and whatevers here. Let's keep game consoles in Entertainment Discussion, however. So! What kind of phone does everyone use here? Are you guys more of smartphone guys, or loving your feature phones (or hating data plans)? I have a Galaxy Nexus, which is pretty much the best phone ever, if you can get around its size. Android 4 is awesome.

It's called the Admin Control Panel, up at the top. I'll show you around tomorrow. Well, as long as you can stand all the blood...

Agreed. We were just slow on the ball

My Transformer just got Ice Cream Sandwich!!! Ahhh! It is SO GOOD! I am so happy I am actually tearing up!

I know it's not a weird foreign country, haha. But trust me, the spambots love to use foreign domains like that. Most of them try something of that nature. It's fairly stand-aloneish, but you get more out of the book if you had read the trilogy first. Brandon made a delicate balance and he did a good job on not alienating new readers, but I can't imagine going into it without reading the trilogy.

The bolded part you mentioned is not something I am familiar with. It's poorly phrased at best. Technically, the "power" you would get from Hemalurgy would be the base Allomantic ability, and certainly you don't need to "turn on" your Hemalurgy to get Allomancy; it's just always on. I assume the "usually (but not always) related to the function the misting served" could refer to the fact that you can have human attributes, which aren't related to Allomancy. It's an awful sentence, really.

My theory is that Owayn's email address was a yahoo.ie address and a lot of bots use weird foreign emails. Who knows? IPB didn't say the particular reason.

You can definitely add them to the Coppermind. It's less a copyright issue and more of a "no one has gone through the effort to grab the image files and uploaded them yet" thing

Oh, our good Zas tweeted Brandon about it recently. Sorry for misunderstanding. The tweets (god, I hate the new twitter interface): https://twitter.com/#!/zas678/status/171708690532012032 https://twitter.com/#!/BrandSanderson/status/171711832069910528 https://twitter.com/#!/BrandSanderson/status/171712198421389312 There ya go.

No, the spam filters caught him on that username, and he emailed me to sort it out. We at 17th Shard try and make the best first impressions, you see Well, I'm glad that's finally been sorted out, and you didn't go ragequitting! Welcome!

Not the only atheist. Well, I suppose I'm not an atheist, since I'm agnostic, but I do definitely lean to the atheist side of things. It means, Link, that though Brandon said Alloy happened concurrently with Warbreaker (and thus before Way of Kings) he changed it so that now Alloy happens concurrently with WoK. This apparently is due to a behind the scenes conflict which he has since resolved

I'm okay with keeping it at Theoryland for as far as I can reasonably see in my mind. Both Matt and Terez have been super helpful on it. I suppose if we really had a desire to move it in a decade or two, we can figure it out. However, since it's coded by hand, there are technical difficulties involved. For at least the next five years, I'm very satisfied. Besides, we've always said we are the Theoryland for Brandon's stuff. This makes the connection even more obvious I really, really like the interview database. Terez and Theoryland have been amazing, and it's such an achievement. The most immediate benefit for us in the short term is the ability to link to individual entries. (Which means, Joe, that we need to make the Coppermind standard of citation.) But the searchability and everything... it's just so awesome.

It's 16*8, naturally Don't you guys know your powers of 2? Er... we've seen both Slivers and Splinters. The Divine Breaths of Returned are Splinters, and the people who touched the Well of Ascension were Slivers. For a complete look, go to the wiki (I'm pretty sure it'll redirect you to the applicable segments in the Shard article). Though if you were talking about the rankings, both Slivers and Splinters have always been in the rankings here

I posted it in "I would like to announce". It's cool. These are what the new levels are: 17th Shard Trainee - 0 Awakener - 5 Misting - 10 Mistborn - 16 Elantrian - 24 Shardbearer - 32 Full Shardbearer - 40 Knight Radiant - 50 Worldhopper - 64 Sliver - 75 Splinter - 100 Shard - 128 There are three other ones after, though. You'll just have to (as Musicspren suggested in "I would like to announce") UCAFO: Upvote Chaos and Find Out.

I would like to announce that Zas is amazing. He and my girlfriend both go to BYU, and Zas IMs me this morning wondering if I want him to go drop something off for her for Valentine's Day, like a note or something. I was incredibly flattered, and suggested he drop off a note and dark chocolate. Turns out he totally managed to pick her favorite dark chocolate (which I had no idea). Zas, you are a god. (Hence, Zas gets a very specific "Messenger" award. If you bring things for staff member's significant others, you might get it too )

It is not clear the exact mechanism which is required for an Allomancer to burn atium. It is an open cosmere question. But still, it must be a power specifically coded into the Allomancer for it to work, and as I said above, I doubt the Tears can even be specifically encoded.

I would like to announce I got into MSU's math graduate program with a TA position! I'm going to grad school, baby!

Yeah, so I went ahead and upvoted that post for you. Well, that post struck me as wrong because neither atium being metal nor being the incarnation of Ruin is sufficient to actually burn atium. You need the Spiritual codes to do it, which kind of critical. So I could see why someone may have gotten annoyed at you missing that. (And, as I said, the fact that it is the incarnation of Ruin is more or less irrelevant until the final step of the Allomantic process) That's just my take on it. But yeah, your opinions are your own and I thought the discussion was sufficient, so sorry you were downvoted

I've rarely ever been able to get my DS and my router working properly.

You know you're tired when you read this topic as "17th Shard on Satan." Just a little different... I joined the group. I just play Magicka and Terraria, though.

Firstly, I agree that the Tears are most likely not able to be burned on account of being a flower. Equally important is the fact that the most we know about the Tears is that: 1. They are flowers, 2. They make dyes. 3. Awakeners use colors for their magic. There are a lot of uncertainties about the Tears and what they do. We don't know for certain if they are of Endowment. We don't know how an Awakener can directly utilize the Tears. It's not like they eat the flower and get power; Awakening doesn't operate on that paradigm. Maybe draining the color in the Tears grants some weird effect. This is wild, wild speculation, so let's be aware of that. But let's assume that the Tears are directly related to Endowment. That's a reasonable hypothesis. The question is, could a Mistborn use it, or there be Mistings for it? I think it's a little misleading to talk about this in terms of atium. If a Mistborn is granted any power from the Tears, it probably acts much more like lerasium. Remember, lerasium making you a Mistborn is more of a side effect. Atium, I believe, has some sort of side effect as well, but it's impossible to know what that would be. I'm pretty sure Brandon RAFO'd whether atium has a side effect. The Tears, if they are the physical manifestation of Endowment, would have some sort of side effect. Shards, after all, do weird things. But we are talking about the Tears operating as a specific Allomantic ability. In which case, Allomancy has some prerequisites. The first requirement for Allomancy is that you need metals for the conduit to open. Flowers are not metals. That's kind of key. Why is this such a critical distinction? Because Ruin and Preservation are blind to metals. The fact that the Metallic Arts are metal is of absolute critical significance to Ruin and Preservation's magic systems. We are not privy to why Ruin and Preservation are blind to metals, or what other Shards are blind to, but you can bet I'm not ignoring the fact that focuses are extremely important. Why do you think that Focuses on Roshar topic is so long? Because identifying a focus is essential to our understanding. Aha, see, that's not entirely true. What's happening with Allomancy is this: 1. Get enough Preservation in you. This grafts the ability onto your Spiritweb to burn either all specific metals, or one specific metal. (this is the primary prerequisite to Allomancy) 2. Eat the specific metals. 3. Since you have the Spiritual ability for that particular metal, the metal acts as a conduit, leading to more power. This process is true whether we are talking about atium or the basic metals. The only distinction with atium and malatium is step four: 4. The process of grabbing more power from an external source creates an Investiture, which grants an effect. With the base metals, that power is coming from Preservation. With atium, that external source is the metal itself. So, atium isn't burnable because it is a substance of power, it is burnable because Mistborn (for whatever reason) are given this specific Spiritual ability to burn it, and because atium is in the correct form--metal--for the conduit to work. Once you have that, only then is the fact that the power is derived from the metal important. Any old dude on the street can eat atium, but they don't see into the future. Likewise, Vin probably could not have burned Ruin's Shardpool, just like she could not Allomantically burn the Well of Ascension. She would have had some ability from Ruin's pool, just as she received power from the Well of Ascension, but neither of those powers would be Allomancy itself. It is Allomancy-like because it is the direct essence of Shards, and if you work them correctly, you can simulate Allomantic abilities, as when Vin pulls on the mists. If the question is, Can the Tears be used to do some crazy stuff? then the answer is yes. Shards do weird stuff. But any stuff like that is not actually Allomancy. Since it is not a metal, a Mistborn can't burn it. And before that, you need to have the Spiritual codes to make it work. I will say that it is odd that Mistborn can burn atium and its alloys. How in the heck did that happen? It is probably because of Preservation's direct intervention that he could hack it to work. I think it's an extreme logical leap to say that because Mistborn have the Spiritual codes to burn atium--one pure physical form of a Shard--that Mistborn have the ability to burn every pure physical manifestation of a Shard. So, even separate from the fact that "flowers aren't metals", we have a hitch in that there's no indication Mistborn have the right Spiritual codes to burn other physical Shardic manifestations. After all, Ruin and Preservation were pretty special cases. Perhaps Sazed or some other Shard could hack that Spiritual code in, or perhaps Hemalurgy can do it, but it seems too much of a leap to say the ability comes free. Even beyond that, Awakening operates on a different mechanism than Allomancy does. Allomancy can do awesome things, but it only has a finite number of actual effects. AonDor doesn't have that restriction, and Awakening can do a lot more different things than Allomancy can. Step #1 in the Allomantic process doesn't apply. And because of that, I don't think the Tears are directly compatible with Allomancy. Different paradigms entirely. Now, none of this is saying that the Tears might not have some effect on a person who eats them, like lerasium does. Anyone who eats lerasium is affected by it. I am sure the Tears have some ability like that (this assumes they are pure Endowment, of course), but that is not Allomancy. That's some deeper effect. Allomancy is using specific metals to get specific abilities, and I find it unlikely that the Tears have a direct Allomantic property like atium does.

I cannot possibly agree with this statement more. You matched my thoughts exactly.

I am not opposed to this initiative.