Year One, Then Year Two

UPDATE: It is true that the Same Universe Wiki, launched back in 2011, failed to get off the ground, largely due to difficulty in navigating a home-built platform.  Such are things with computer programs, I trust that people understand.  Dear reader, please take note that the child of the SUW, Tao at Wikispaces, is doing very well and has a total of five editors working on it.

The below is left unchanged for the sake of historical posterity. 

Alexis, August 2015


It is just about a year since the first steps were taking to developing the Same Universe Wiki ... which has been a troubling project from the beginning.  It began due to some posts I wrote about getting the community to work together (here, here and here), describing how it might be done and what it might try to accomplish.  Not surprisingly, the message was not well received in the beginning and in the last year, that circumstance has not changed.

Carl and I went ahead with the wiki and built the thing up.  I then went ahead and put more than 200 pages of general description, some useful and some not, hoping others would add maps or descriptions of their worlds, for the general benefit of the community.  And, not surprisingly, they didn't do that.  There have been a number of reasons, mostly having to do with my involvement and concerns about my attitude.  Someone else with the same idea might have done better overall with contributions, being a nicer and fluffier person.  This I don't doubt.

Motivation was never my intent.  If I wanted to motivate people, I'd invent some conspiracy, pump that conspiracy up to eleven and get people really scared about the end of RPG's, and then use that fear to encourage people to 'save' their hobby.  My personal plan was just to see if there was anyone brave or tough enough to take me on.  I'm convinced now there isn't.

So ... there's no sense in wasting any more time with this.  If I'm going to have a wiki that is going to be all me (and I still like the idea), then there's no point in presenting it as if it is something for everyone.  It might as well just be called Tao's World or something like that.   And with all due respect to Carl, who is very busy these days climbing the Great Ladder of success, I'll have to search for some technical source I can control.  But the wiki idea is too convenient, and there's too many visual problems with blogger to just put material on this blog.

I don't know what steps I'm going to take in this direction at this time.  It is part of the reason why I haven't been contributing further to the wiki (though I have things to put there).  I suppose I'll have to go look at the system Wikipedia offers.

Haven't got much else to say.  Been working on researching the cities of France, still mapping India and still developing my background generator for characters.  Those are the upfront projects these days ... that and starting the online campaign, which is a time sucker for sure.  Fun, though.  I remember how much fun it was the first time around, and it feels good to have that again.  I guess I just needed a long break.