Worldbuilding Workshop

5:47 AM

@githubphagocyte, I agree about the licence, this world should be available for use in commercial products

@overactor let's see how people vote - we can improvise in the starred posts panel.

The world we create should be available for all projects including commercial ones

2

Are there licences that allow users to put copyright on any additional characters and content the put in it, but make sure that tbe 'core' stays unambiguously open source?

Exactly

The world we create should be available only for non-commercial projects

(star the one you agree with and we'll see which gets more votes)

Argh, i'm on a tablet

lol

5:51 AM

Getting laptop...

People should be able to copyright their own projects based on the world we create, provided they provide attribution for the original world

3

I'm glad i got a tablet, but it is rubbish for typing.

To get the best out of a tablet you need peripherals - mouse, keyboard and monitor

at which point,

you might as well get a pc

Is my 3rd option what you had in mind?

5:54 AM

yes

Do you agree with that option?

Once we see how the votes go we can start looking for a licence that covers what is settled on.

Yes those 2 would have my vote too if I hadn't posted them...

Even as room owner I can't star my own posts...

you're no god around here

Pinning them seems a bit excessive at this stage, but I'll pin the winners (which will allow me to tie-break)

can mods star their own posts?

No I don't imagine anyone can - mods only get powers that are relevant to their role, right?

5:58 AM

did you have any ideas as to what kind of world you want yet?

The original question that started all this was a near future science fiction one

I saw that

I like Monica Cellio's comment about their weekly writing competion on writers.SE

Yeah, but how would you apply that concept here?

For us it would be collaborative rather than competetive, and probably rather longer than weekly, but I like the idea of being able to create multiple worlds (perhaps concurrently)

6:00 AM

I see your point

So perhaps we'll work together on a near future sci fi for a month or two, and then someone will suggest also making a prehistoric world, so we'll set that up (unrelated) and work will continue on both

Are users allowed to make any adaptions to the world?

The core will be a world on which others can base their own worlds, or just base a story in the world as is. So for their own stories or games anyone in the world can use the world and change it as they see fit. The core itself would only change by consensus based on the discussions we have here.

Does that sound about right?

yeah

I realised after writing that that I've used "world" to refer to both our world (that we live in) and our world (that we're making). How confusing.

6:03 AM

near future seems like a good starting point

hah

it seems like as good a start as any.

do we want it to be on earth?

I like the idea of just focusing on one world to start with to prove we can make it work, and only branch out once we're established with plenty of contributers.

I mean one universe

I feel like near future scenarios make most sense on earth

Yes I think Earth is implied by near future

near future anywhere else could mean absolutely anything

6:06 AM

@githubphagocyte well, it ~~implies~~ demands a certain level of technology

:)

yes I suppose it could be an Earth arbitrarily different from ours provided the technology is just ahead of what we have

Working on earth also makes our first project more manageable

I was taking it literally - in our near future another civilisation could still be in a stone age

yes - not too much to build up from scratch

@githubphagocyte that's one (weird) interpretation

I tend to take things literally at the best of times, but when I'm tired it gets worse - if I read this back when I'm more awake I'll probably shake my head and groan.

So Earth, near future, how much of the solar system do we want to be accessible?

The original question specified "spaceships, lasers, aliens" but we can be flexible as that was a rough guide rather than a demand

6:11 AM

well

hmm

I'm assuming we have travel within the solar system and some degree of bases on planets and moons, but probably no terraforming

Maybe we're at the brink of interstellar travel?

That's not entirely probable though

Bases seem probable

At the brink meaning we have everything but, or meaning we believe we are on the point of a breakthrough that needs ~~foolish~~ brave volunteers?

rather the latter

I think a big decision to make as a definite up front is aliens. Having them brings extra opportunities for stories but also a lot of extra work (explanation of how they travelled here, society, biology, attitudes, abilities, technology, communication...)

6:14 AM

it really does

So that decision will affect most of our other decisions

I want this critical first universe to be manageable so we have it usable in a reasonable amount of time, but still interesting enough to attract writers, artists, game designers

Maybe we have aliens that visited and we describe the world as it was right before, how the visit went down and right after

If they make a passing visit that does cut down the required work enormously

We can start with the world before

We should probably have a rough idea of the other two stages first, and then we can focus on the world before knowing what restrictions we need

It's likely to be quiet in here over the weekend, so perhaps we should settle on what's definite and then make lists of options for voting when more people are available.

6:19 AM

sure

Do you think the aliens/passing aliens/no aliens question is big enough to leave open for now?

so near-ish future it is?

yeah

yes I think near future can be a definite, and we'll narrow down exact technology levels next week

I guess a presence on Mars, the moon, and some asteroids is probably plausible any time in the next 50 to 100 years. We can decide whether to let that happen naturally as commercial space flight gradually grows, or we could have an event that triggers setting up bases urgently (perhaps hints of aliens, or perhaps some major celestial event).

Stuff for later

does anything really need to be up for vote?

A lot of it may just be unanimously agreed on once we have people chatting - at present it's hard to judge. I think some big decisions will become questions on main, but things that don't matter we can vote or not depending on whether there's conflict.

For the moment I think just making some decisions and getting them written down is a good idea. Then unless someone objects to any of it we don't need to discuss it further.

I'd prefer that to voting on every minor decision

Where shall we host the world?

6:28 AM

I saw the idea of making a wiki

DonyorM recommended further back that we find a free forum and docu wiki.

yes

that seems appropriate

is wikia free?

Comparison of wiki hosting services

I don't have wiki knowledge so I'd have to look it up

This comparison of wiki hosting services details notable online services which host wiki-style editable web pages. General characteristics of cost, presence of advertising, licensing, and Alexa rank are compared, as are technical differences in editing, features, wiki engine, multilingual support and syntax support. == General comparison == The following tables compare general information for several of the more than 100 wiki hosting services that have been created. The Alexa traffic rankings are not accurate for those wiki hosting services that allow some of their hosted wikis to have separate...

I gotta get to work

Thanks for the input :)

6:31 AM

I'll be back online in aN HOUR OR TWO

caps '-_-

I may be around then too

I assume we want the wiki to be cost free and ad free, so it'll be a decision based on the licence they impose.

Which we can make once the star votes are in for commercial/non commercial licence

Fulli

7:53 AM

this is new isnt it?

8:27 AM

@Fulli yes very new - just 16 hours old. See the pinned star in the right hand panel for the reason this room exists.

8:49 AM

OK apparently I can't repin an unpinned post, so my attempt to change the order has backfired. See the starred meta post comment in the right hand panel, which I now can't pin...

For those interested in this meta post

2

Right, it's back at the top of the list now. Once the old one drops of the bottom of the list it will all look as it should.

9:34 AM

@githubphagocyte in case you're around, I'm here

@overactor yes I'm around

hi.

Are we okay with ads on our wiki?

I think deciding on a wiki provider will have to wait until we settle on a licence (although some allow different licences)

Wikia limits to Creative Commons

WHich is likely what we'll be going for, no?

Not definitely of course

I was assuming we wanted ad-free, but if everyone is fine with ads and there is one that is significantly better and has ads, I wouldn't object too strongly...

Likely one of the Creative Commons licences

9:41 AM

to get ad-free and a free service, you ahve to travel quite a bit down the alexa rating ranks

On SE we're CC BY-SA

I don't know what the alexa rating measures

Basically, how many users visit a site

(I also imagine that this corresponds loosely to available features)

Is visits important to us? Are we expecting visitors other than those that arrive through SE?

I see what you mean about features though - probably works as a rough guide

CC BY-SA allows commercial use but imposes the same licence on derivative works, so you could base a world on the shared one, but you couldn't copyright it.

It wouldn't be bad if people can stumble upon our wiki by accident

Yes that would be a welcome bonus

9:44 AM

@githubphagocyte Can you copyright characters you make up for your work of fiction?

I'm assuming the Free/Paid wiki services hide a bunch of their features from non-paying users

@overactor I would assume so. I imagine that changes you make to the world that require the original world as a base count as derivative works and must be creative commons. A character shouldn't be linked quite so closely to the world unless it derives from it directly (like being a species that was defined as part of the world).

As long as none of the paid features are ones we might ever need I have no objection to free/paid services

@githubphagocyte Agreed

PBworks

PBworks (formerly PBwiki) is a commercial real-time collaborative editing (RTCE) system created by David Weekly, with Ramit Sethi and Nathan Schmidt, who joined shortly thereafter as co-founders. Based in San Mateo, California, United States, the company operates on a freemium basis, offering basic features free of charge and more advanced features for a fee. PBworks' investors include Mohr Davidow Ventures and the Seraph Group, as well as angel investors Ron Conway and Chris Yeh. == History == In 2005, David Weekly began developing software to build privately hosted wikis through a website, which...

maybe

One for the shortlist

seems to be designed more for internal use though

wikia isn definitely a contender for me

PBworks restricts size for free members. That probably won't be a problem for us any time soon, but I'd rather not choose something that will eventually become a problem

9:50 AM

Your free account includes:
• Up to 15 internal users
• Up to 5 external users
• Up to 5 wikis
• 50 MB of storage
• Free email customer support
• No credit card required

yeah

Unless their size limit is huge

That won't do I think

@overactor Is that for wikia?

PBWorks

I don't know what "internal users" are. Does that prevent remote work??

We're going to have a lot of visual content so 50MB sounds problematic

9:52 AM

I'm not entirely sure

yeah that won't get us far at all

we could of course host visual content elsewehere

but...

If we had an independent WYSIWYG html editor we could use github, with no limits, but I don't know if that would add enough awkward steps to put people off.

@githubphagocyte I don't see github as a great option here

I'm also doubting myself on the no limits - was just looking and can't see whether that's true or not

10:19 AM

@overactor reading more about wikia I'm not keen on the advertising and a little cautious of trusting them. It's not a definite no but I'd like to try and find something suitable without advertising.

In particular no ads keeps it consistent with SE.

There are reports of adverts overlapping the content

10:46 AM

@githubphagocyte That is indeed worrying

I don't know how recently that has continued but the fact that we'd have no control if it did, and no option of moving elsewhere without renaming and losing all our links, makes me prefer something we can trust

google sites might be an option

@overactor I've used google docs for a collaborative golf on PPCG, and that seemed to work well

lessannoyingcrm.com/blog/2010/08/155/…

11:00 AM

Sounds good.

google is a pretty cool guy

The important thing is that everyone involved can edit and add directly, without needing to have experts

eaxactly

a good cms is vital

or a decent one at least

5:29 PM

Hi all. This looks like an interesting project. I'd like to throw out a few random thoughts and comments for y'all to consider:

Hosting content: we probably want a wiki to facilitate editing and collaboration, but we don't need the final answer today. For now, consider picking some smaller project (maybe not a whole universe to start), host it anywhere that's convenient for the people on this site to collaborate on (a wiki if you've got one, or Google docs, maybe), start working, and see what issues emerge. You'll be better able to pick a suitable platform with some experience under the belt, and stuff can be moved.

License: I'm not up on all the licensing schemes out there, but there are parallels to what I'm reading here out in the open-source world, e.g. there's a standard or baseline version and anybody who wants can customize & commercialize it. There's prior art, in other words.

@MonicaCellio I like this approach. I was trying to keep it a simple universe for our first one but just narrowing down to perhaps a single planet as a practice attempt sounds more manageable.

And one question that I think will shape how the community goes about this project: use cases. What do you, as a potential consumer of this world, want to get out of it? People are talking about maps and that's part of it, but what else is important and how do you want it to be presented? "CIA Factbook for worlds", where each region/political entity/etc has a stand-alone description with a common template? Q&A? Per-science overview (this is how physics works here, etc)?

@githubphagocyte maybe even something narrower to start, e.g. (just making this up based on the transcript): Earth, 50 years from now, no alien contact.

@MonicaCellio That's good to know :) The star votes so far are suggesting we'll be allowing commercial use and ideally permitting copyrighting of derived works. I certainly wouldn't want to have to make such a licence from scratch...

@githubphagocyte it might be worth looking at what Apache does for this. People take some of their stuff, add features, and sell it, but reuse Apache's base content. So whatever license they use seems worth looking at.

@MonicaCellio It sounds like we need a better place for gathering such information than the starwall - I might set up a Google Doc where people can add their usernames to show their preference on a range of questions

Provided that's accessible to most?

5:40 PM

@githubphagocyte that might be a good idea. Oops, gotta drop off for a while; I'll check back later.

@MonicaCellio Thanks very much for the help

7:13 PM

Please indicate your preferences on the Google doc

3

8:18 PM

@githubphagocyte I added a section to your doc (hope you don't mind) and renamed another. I think I wasn't clear enough about what I meant by "use cases", so tried to illustrate by example there. Broadly, who are we making this for? What are they trying to do?

@MonicaCellio thanks very much. That makes sense now.

@githubphagocyte glad that helped! We want to approach from both sides -- what do we want to make and what do people want to use. Understanding who our users are and what they're trying to do will in turn help us think of areas we're not covering but should -- or, alternatively, point out things we're worrying about that maybe people don't care about.

That last bit - what we can afford to miss out - sounds like something that will save us a lot of effort...

8:57 PM

Right -- there's always a risk when designing a product (and that's what this is, ultimately; that has nothing to do with money/sales/etc) of spending a lot of effort on something that seems important, only to find out it's not. If it's something that somebody's really psyched about then it may get done anyway -- nature of volunteer communities -- but for all the rest, it seems worth asking about uses first. :-)

9:18 PM

:-)

I'm going to sleep now. I was imagining that we could just hand out editing access to whoever requests it so that people don't have to wait for me to be around (especially with different time zones). So feel free to give people edit access so they'll be able to do the same for others.