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Recruiting Skalds
Sunflower:
Hey, Forum members!
Do you enjoy the content you read here? Have you ever seen a post quoting something clever from the Disqus pages and thought, "Wow, I missed that when I read that comic page"?
Or, conversely, have you ever thought, "What hapless, ham-handed editing! I could provide better Forum updates with one hand tied behind my back!"?
Either way, you're invited to join in the proud Skaldic task of retrieving good stuff from the daily Disqus discussions to the Forum. After a marathon day of archiving yesterday, I realized there's no way I can keep up with the flood of Disqus comments, as they reach peaks of 1,000+ a day.
"But Sunflower," you say, "I thought you needed training and permission to become a skald."
Nope! You just need to have an eye for good stuff (your definition of "good" may vary) and some patience.
HOW TO DO A SKALD'S JOB
1. Topic-Oriented:
* Spend time reading the Forum attentively till you feel comfortable with how content is organized.
* Pick a topic you'd like to search for interesting, informative, or funny material in. Examples: Character Development of one of our main 5, Sports in the Known World, pets, agriculture.
* Check the list of existing topics to see if your subject already has one -- maybe more than one. (We have several for armor and weapons, even one specifically for nukes. Trolls, Beasts, the Rash, evil spirits, and magic fall into several overlapping topics.)
* Go forth and search the Disqus comments.
* When you find quote-worthy content, ask if you can copy it to the Forum. One post per discussion topic is fine. If nobody replies within 24 hours, I generally assume they're OK with it.
* Copy the Disqus content, create a post here, and paste the content in. (I typically erase all the "Avatar/Votes/Days Since Posting" stuff. But leave the original posters' names in.)
* Note that links posted in Disqus get truncated. If you just copy-and-paste, the shortened links won't work. You'll need to right-click on the links and copy them separately.
2. Spontaneous preservation:
* Wander around in previous days' comments (which tend to get overshadowed by the current day's load).
* Before you create a new Forum topic (or if it's in a popular area such as Trolls or weaponry), do a search to see if there's an existing one lurking in the archives.
* Copy, paste, edit.
Poems (original or song parodies) are archived pretty reliably by the most prolific authors -- slim kittens, LOOney_DAC, corncobman, and so forth.
Be respectful of original posters' intent, but be selective. In a long, rambling discussion, I sometimes omit irrelevant parts within a post. But I'll always show the deletion with "...".
I silently fix obvious typos (when I think of it).
If you want to reply in-Forum to the Disqus comments you're posting, that's fine. But I advise you to do so in a different post, quoting the part you want to expand on or disagree with. Don't give the impression you were part of the original discussion.
Forum content standards are a bit tighter than the Disqus pages. Swear words are ****'d out, and the Admin doesn't approve of non-family-friendly content. It's OK to say something like "[CHARACTER] is totally hottt!" But it's not OK to refer to body parts covered by a swimsuit.
If you have questions, feel free to reply to this post or PM me. Or confer with fellow Forumites. This is a spontaneously self-organizing operation in large part, so if you come up with better ways to do things, we may end up following your lead.
Go forth and may your searches be fruitful!
Sunflower
A (not "The") Forum-Skald
Richard Weir:
I must make an effort to join in and help - you've been sadly left to carry most of the burden of doing this!
Sunflower:
--- Quote from: Richard Weir on February 17, 2015, 08:40:34 PM ---I must make an effort to join in and help - you've been sadly left to carry most of the burden of doing this!
--- End quote ---
To paraphrase Sigrun:
"Left to carry the burden"? Hah, honey, I elbowed everyone else out of the way! (I just realized that there's such a thing as obsessive archiving, and I'd never be able to stay on top of the -- happily proliferating -- Disqus comments.)
Eris:
This excites me. Like, the idea of having threads with lots of information about around Weapon-smithing or Weaving or something. Oh, I feel all flustery. I'm getting all into this.
Sunflower:
--- Quote from: Eris on February 22, 2015, 09:39:10 AM ---This excites me. Like, the idea of having threads with lots of information about around Weapon-smithing or Weaving or something. Oh, I feel all flustery. I'm getting all into this.
--- End quote ---
Eris! I'm so thrilled you're taking to it. I've already seen your post amalgamating a lot of the "prior art" on Sigrun's sweater. Yaaaay! Keep up the good work! (The rest of you, go and do likewise -- if the spirit moves you.)
The delighted,
Sunflower
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