With all the stories being written about here on the BAR, the amount of reading required to keep up has grown, and keeping things straight inworld is problematic at times, especially for newer citizens who are not as familiar with the characters involved.
How about a short synopsis of events for each, that could be added to easily every week or so?
*cough* Current Events on the New Babbage Wiki *cough*
(Which, granted, aren’t always completely up-to-date, but that’s either because I’m busy, or I’m waiting for back-filling posts. Or both.)
I’m intending to post profile blog posts for my various NPCs.
Look out for a profile of The Rogue Portal Hunters soonish. ^_^
This gives me an opportunity to mention something I’ve noticed for some time.
The BAR has three forums -The Conservatory, The Newsroom and The Parlor. The original intent was that The Conservatory was where all the roleplay stuffs would play out… but I’ve noticed over time that almost everyone uses their individual BAR Blogs for roleplay now.
I don’t roleplay, and I rarely follow the stories. No offense meant, I just don’t have the inclination or the time to keep up. Especially with the tidal wave of tales that are the current norm. In the past, it’s been easy for me to poke into the Newsroom or the Parlor to keep up on the Babbage news that interests me, but now I find I need to also comb through the Blogs for any fun tidbits that may be hiding amongst all the roleplay.
Maybe the Conservatory isn’t suiting peoples needs. Maybe they just forget about it. Maybe something else. But for a non-roleplayer that is also a Babbager, it makes for lots of extra poking around. I have no answer for this, just bringing it to light.
Well, without any examples of what you look for, it’s hard to address this specifically.
My general idea has been that, if what I’m writing is of a more limited impact, so to speak (myself, alts, the characters I’m interacting with), I post it as a blog. If it’s something that has a more city-wide effect (such as the few Militia announcement posts I’ve done), I put that in The Conservatory.
I’d rather not see a lot of RPing move up into The Conservatory, as that would quickly drown out true news posts that get put in The Newsroom, or non-RP posts in The Parlor.
There can be separate “latest activity” lists for each forum if people would like that.
For me, going to the Forum tab at the top of the BAR, takes me to three categories. I can pop into the category meaningful to me, and it shows me the latest posts. It works very well, in my mind!
The key is actually using the categories as set up. I know there’s a book discussion post in the roleplay section, for example, that should have been elsewhere. Maybe the sections are too whimsical and aren’t clear to folk.
I’m not going to analyze out examples of what I search for where. Basically, there’s little nuggets of interest in the blogs, but they are mostly roleplay. I like the blogs where people share inspirational buildings in RL for use i construction in Babbage, or fantastical equipment out there. But those could also be in the Parlor, really.
I can distill the confusion down to this. We have three forum categories that cover all needs. We also have a blog system in here. When to blog, when to forum? That is the eternal question.
I don’t think there’s an easy answer, unfortunately. We could suggest “Blogs for RPing, Forums for anything else,” but there are probably people who wouldn’t feel comfortable posting a non-RP post in the Forum feed, which does have more visibility than the Blog feed, being higher on the page.
Perhaps flip the order then? I dunno. There’s no clear answer, and for most, it’s probably not even a problem. I fully realize I’m in a minority (again, stating as fact, not snarking whatsoever). I guess I just needed to talk about it since I struggle to keep up with what’s meaningful to me personally.
For me, the barrier to using the forums is that I can never remember what the names represent. I have to go look for some more descriptive list of the forums so I can see which one is for IC, which one is for OOC, and which one is for… whatever the other one is for.
So it’s much easier for me just to make a blog entry. I always know where that goes.
strongly agree with this.
The fora names are whimsical – could be easily changed to very straightforward, clear titles, right?
And it would be nice to retain some atmosphere. How about this?
* City Hall (for OOC Babbage-related business)
* The Streets of Babbage (for RP scenes)
* The Aether (for wild or off-topic chat)
I added a link in the resource guide to the Current Events in the wiki and the Babbage Free Press.
Speaking of those resource links, the one to everyone’s personal blogs is hugely out of date, and is static – so it’s never updated. I think I made that list in about 2009 or even earlier. It’s a Ning relic. I’d suggest pitching that page, really.
Will do then.
I rather liked Jimmy’s synopsis idea. A quicker read for people coming in? And I would like to apologize to Miss Writer if I in any way contributed to her feeling of disorganization. My initial posts didnt’ involve other people, and I didn’t think being alone qualified as role play? I confess, I’m one who lives by the home page as opposed to subtabs, I read “most recent activity” and follow whereever that link leads. Municipal gallery or anywhere else if its regarding a topic I’d like to hear about. In any case, I’m up for a move if its what we’re all going to do.
Oh and “thank you” to Miss Hienrich’s , I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a “current events” area in the wiki. I look through the archive type pages for history or to understand backstory for the town , but never thought there was a current events that was actually *really* current.
No apology needed, but thank you for the sentiment! I’m certainly not asking anyone to stop roleplaying, and the precedent of the Forum/Blog split was well-set before you arrived. :)
We all use this Forum as suits us best. Being a roleplay-predominant place, it does cater more to that, simply because that’s the mass of the content. In my perfect world, there’d be more sectioning off of roleplay vs. Steampunk conversation and other New Babbage topics, but in the end, it’s on me to cull out what I want to read – as it is for all of us.
I would guess that folks went to using the blog rather than the conservatory forum is for ease of tracking. I thing the Ning was set up so that you could track your own activity without digging for it.
perhaps a reorganization of the front page would be in order, since this one reflects the old Ning, but works differently.
*nod* It was a slow slide to the Blogs, and I can understand their appeal. Am not sure how the front page could be re-designed, as some people like the left sidebar newest updates, others dive for the blogs, others go for the fora… you’ll get as many opinions as you have members. :) HAVE FUN!
The fact that we have different kinds of posts landing in different kinds of places pretty much as it suits the writer makes me wonder whether we need “places to post” at all, or whether we need perhaps only one repository and simply use tags to sort it all out.
Personally, I’d like to have some sort of aggregated view of *everything* posted anywhere in a given time period that I can specify AND/OR with tags that I specify so that I can catch up. It’s very difficult, as Ceejay said, to keep up with everything, especially when RP posts are rolling along quickly and things get buried. (It is for that reason that I gave up on Dark Aether…I simply didn’t have the time to read the volume that was being posted and had a terrible time keeping track of what was going on.)
Now we also have another site to keep track of in the New Babbage Free Press. I really love how that is coming together, but I’ll admit that I’m still not used to looking there also for RP happenings (like the curfew…that took me awhile).
Anyway, my $.02!
I thought personal blogs were where all the inside rp stuff happened anyway and that was the impression I got myself. I’ve noticed that with New Babbage some people have “character” while others are simply themselves and try to keep the IM’s where I do OOC (old fashion text based roleplayer and all here).
Rather things are stated plainly here, there or anywhere there’s going to be some things dropped and eggs broken but currently, it does seem that much is rather scrambled if you are new and trying to find a comfortable footing. I’m lucky I do have a couple relations already settled in New Babbage to help explain what’s going on as I’m still trying to figure out what is exactly PC as not everyone would be comfortable with a *Ping* “HEY! Was that an IC thing or are you OOC” message.
I look forward to seeing how things are going to pan out and can’t wait to figure out all the resources too! I would also like to say I’m RP friendly if anyone cares to play the game with me. :)
Sorry about unintentionally posting the book discussion in the wrong area, which perhaps underscores the need for clearer catagories. Or more coffee, perhaps.
The blog is for me mostly a way to … well to be honest it a way to kill some time at work.
But i have no intention to sum up a rp plot in it. not really furrther a plot on wither. For me a RP plot is seldom stuck to a laid down set of scenes and always subject to a changing nature by those choosing to interavt with it. And by that..i cant even do a synopsis since i dont really know where others have taken it. Comming with a ‘official’ synopsis then might kill somomne sidetrack, just cos i had no idea of it.
i think that OBs paper is one of the best way to keep up with how things are going. There you get a general idea, and a inclination to talk to others IC to get to know more. Hence getting involved. You also only get information abut things IC witch to me is much more usefull, to know the official status of whats known, not what has actually happen… that i cant really use for RP
Excellent points. The paper definately brings you up to speed and does keep you clear of knowledge you didn’t gain while in character. (love the paper, I look forward to it). The only thing is how likely is a really new person to know about it? I was one who had even read the thing before, but without having marked it that first time, caught a lot of trouble finding the link again. I even asked in group chat if anyone had it and at that given time no one did. It’s not “part” of this site, and I don’t even know that theres a link buried here someplace. So then new person “x” is still lost.
Cyan added a link yesterday to the New Babbage Free Press under the Resource Guide, which is right under the ‘City of New Babbage’ header.
Just saw it lol I spoke too soon.