Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
...Which would probably work better if I had something to offer, but hey, huge, gaping flaws have never stopped me from attempting any of my plans before!
---
"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
I suck at writing. I've written out like, 20-30 different articles for TFN on various things, but in the end I'm justr like "Fuck this" *Ctrl+a delete*
<->
"What the fuck is Alice doing in Wonderland anyway? Who the fuck told her she could leave the god damn kitchen in the first place?" -Random guy on Xbox Live
http://www.backloggery.com/kodan882
Liberal Arts Major
Bill Gates had a huge, gaping patent infringement in his plans, and that didn't stop him!
I suck at writing. I've written out like, 20-30 different articles for TFN on various things, but in the end I'm justr like "Fuck this" *Ctrl+a delete*
I've written like a hundred articles for this site, and yet there are only 9 still available - not to mention the fanfiction I've written that is conspicuously absent. I've never considered my writing to be any good, so I only produce it because other people seem to like it, and when interest disappears I quietly hide all the evidence. I also do my fair share of deleting work or, more commonly, never finishing it, but once in a while something makes it through the cracks, and in those cases I don't really care if anybody calls it bad because, well, it is.
Anyhow, the point is that the quality of my writing is never a factor in my deciding to contribute or not. I write primarily for myself: to develop ideas, to organize thoughts, to satisfy random linguistic whims by writing out pithy phrases and alliteration. When I post something here it's not because I feel the need, necessarily, to share my glorious work of masterful wordcraftery but because, hey, I actually finished something!
One possible advantage to contributing, in the fantasy world where people would actually do this here, is that others would comment or write out entire replies and, in so doing, either point out errors in your thought process or make you more confident that you are, in fact, correct. One memorable time this actually happened, xp caused me to abandon an entire flawed architecture of metaphysics/bullshit which I had been musing over for the better part of my adolescence. That I just went out and found some other bullshit to fill in the hole is beside the point.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
New Moderator
---
"That was pretty interesting. But dropping a warship on me is cheating... Take it back!"-Id, Xenogears
Editor
I leave my old stuff up as I reminder to myself that I used to suck significantly more than I do now.
However, knowing that you've done this, I think I'm going to go kill one particular article for reasons mostly unrelated to its quality. <_<
Convincing for me means 'having at least one other person show constant interest in reading what I write'.
Oh.
Well see, that could be a problem.
For the record, though, articles on TFN do manage 100+ views way more often than seems plausible.
---
"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
Quality aside, I myself killed one article because Andrea showed it to her former seminary instructor. It was not well-received.
EDIT: The whole "gee my articles are embarassing" thing is actually the reason I implemented the ability to take down and delete your own articles from the database.
Well see, that could be a problem.
Sort of true: I, for one, eventually read everything that gets posted, though on certain articles, like the ones about video games, I don't know anything about the subject that would permit me to consistently comment on them.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
Damn. And that's the only thing I write about anymore. =/
---
"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
It's because they're not cool.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
---
Alestra77: you seem to have glossed over the fact that you treat all women like prostitutes
Alestra77: "k, so, I bought you coffee... when do I get my handjob?"
Goddammit, I hate you so much. ~ Kenri to me (3 times)
Alestra77: who the fuck is porky
Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
You other guys need to start posting how exactly the convincing would occur, ASAP!
---
"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
asdfghjkl
---
"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
As far as the more standard idea of submissions goes (articles mainly) that's a very strong maybe. At the very least I'd probably need to think I had some kind of feedback. Otherwise I'd be too demoralized and would fail to see a point in continuing. After all, if there's no feedback, I'd get further by conducting whatever the article's topic might be within my thoughts. For example, it's that very reason why I basically stopped participating in the different topic series floating around on the boards, outside of commenting, at this point.
In theory (and probably quite long term) I might have other ideas, but I'm not sure and so I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, including mine. I'm not even sure these ideas would be possible.
---
xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
... What's this now?
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
Well, for example, I think in Kenri's video game playthrough topic a few months ago, I mentioned that I'd be willing to do write-ups for the game(s) I would be playing at the time. However, when I asked this, I was basically told, "Sure, go ahead, but we won't read them." (Or alternatively, "we might read them, but like a really, really long time from now")
Met with this response I no longer saw a point in bothering to do that, I mean, I'd be writing it for only myself at that point, and really I don't need to write my thoughts down to post them in that case... because they're already in my thoughts - which I feel is probably a "better" place for me to analyze/explore/whatever those thoughts, in the absence of any feedback. Or something - it's possible what I meant to convey by that got lost somewhere in that sentence.
---
xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Editor
what if I instituted an Article of the Month contest where the winner would get some shrines
would that be sufficient
Well, for example, I think in Kenri's video game playthrough topic a few months ago, I mentioned that I'd be willing to do write-ups for the game(s) I would be playing at the time. However, when I asked this, I was basically told, "Sure, go ahead, but we won't read them." (Or alternatively, "we might read them, but like a really, really long time from now")
The trick to those topics is:
1) If you people to read your posts, write about games other people have no interest in every playing.
2) If you want people to read your posts and reply, write about games other people have already played.
Now, me, I write about everything I play, pretty much. But I also don't care about getting replies. <_<
---
"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
1) If you people to read your posts, write about games other people have no interest in every playing.
2) If you want people to read your posts and reply, write about games other people have already played.
Now, me, I write about everything I play, pretty much. But I also don't care about getting replies. <_<
Yeah, but there's not much I can do about it if the games I'm playing fall under a category that doesn't work for this.
---
xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
I have a similar approach, except after stewing for a while (sometimes quite a while) I'll try the writing process to clarify my thoughts... and of course, once I've done that, I will employ the handy CTRL+A+delete trick to purge my HDD of the impurities I wrought upon it. Sometimes I also write by hand, in which case I don't erase anything because due to my excellent filing system (throwing things on the floor) I'll never see that again anyway.
This does bring up a good point, in that authorship here is rather pointless if you're looking for an audience. I mean, we have me and Kenri who read articles regularly, and then a bunch (<6) of other people who are unaware that TFN even has a contribution system. People don't even need to contribute articles so much as they need to read what's already there and start contributing comments, if this system is going to get off the ground. Not everyone is willing to write for an audience of 1.
what if I instituted an Article of the Month contest where the winner would get some shrines
would that be sufficient
This would be mighty swell, however at this point you would end up choosing between 0-4 articles by me and X of your own, so uh, not exactly a game changer.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
1. Read and/or commented on articles.
2. Used the expletive deleted poll queue.
TFN's "golden age", despite how distinctly silver it was, existed because (1) used to be true. In fact, it was probably that mediocre YSB fanfic I wrote an established my reputation as a gimmicky failure of an author that managed to get people to sign on to a joint ns-Ogor blogsite of the future. If the response to that thing had been anything like the response I get on articles now, TFN might not even exist today.
[Aside: A lot of the decay has been my fault. I've been really temperamental and melodramatic about TFN. (I blame hormones.) Together with the Gensou-ns drama and the multi-year vacation the site took before Tiger/Pavel convinced me to wake the sleeping beast, the attrition in the user base was to be expected. However, had I been more vigilant in maintaining the site by means of weekly rampages of idiocy in article form, that attrition could have been stemmed. Instead I opted to not write anything substantial for like three years. The results were obvious. Meanwhile, we lost Epsilon to real life and Burgess, by far the most respected contributor/user (and highest-ranking administrator?!), opted to reallocate his time toward doing, you know, anything.
The brief renaissance caused by SS was stifled by the fact that SS is extremely hard for me to maintain and in its current form still is completely unplayable.
=(]
For me, (2) is really heartbreaking, because I expected people would want to do something with their windfall of useless shrines after the cron fix, and because regularly-updated polls are good news for everyone. But so far we've got polls from, what, Kenri and CG7? Kenri could add polls already. Ugh.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
...I guess there could be some common ground that nobody has stumbled upon yet, but...
And as for polls, yeah, I don't know what to say about that, except that people are bastards. <_<
---
"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
I don't think this is a big problem. With the exception of yours truly, everyone here plays video games, for instance. A number of us like (American) football. And I write articles like that one about What Will They Learn?, whose only constituency is "people who have been anywhere near a college".
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu