Besides, we only have 43 "avid" users according to Area51. I don't know the exact definition for avidness, but I imagine we have a number of users who have contributed minimally. About half of the 210 Worldbuilding users appear to only have the association bonus, for example.
So it's more like a hundred people who have even ever actively participated on the site. Which makes the number 43 avid users seem rather reasonable, actually.
That said, every site goes through periods of higher and lower activity. I seriously doubt that a slightly lower activity level toward the end of the private beta period is going to be what causes SE to pull the plug on a site, as long as the questions and answers posted remain of high quality.
Yeah, they said they would hold us back for another week after the first one. We're at 12 days now, so we'll see what happens, but probably something will happen soon.
BTW, we are staying well above the "5 questions a day needs some work" limit on Area51, and there are betas out there below that limit, so I think we are actually doing ok.
That's true, 5-10 is apparently healthy. We were on 15 and have sank to about 10... I'm not too worried. As Tim B there are only so many questions 200 people have in them without resorting to outside inspiration.
@DonyorM Even if we were to drop slightly below that for some particular day, I believe it would still be considered in the context of previous activity. Again, there are only so many high-quality questions that a limited number of people can ask in a short period of time.
@DonyorM Right. The extra time was mostly to sort out the scope a bit, and it seems that has largely been done.
I'd still like to address the conversation I and Monica had though (see above), where the two of us ended up pretty much in agreement that perhaps it's better to not say anything about software-related questions at all in the help center for now until we have managed to figure out just what scope we want to take on with regards to those.
@MichaelKjörling Yeah, I read you're conversation, then I deleted the section in the on-topic area. But I think leaving it as off-topic is good, because those kind of questions can be annoying.
@Liath @TimB When the reputation requirements for a privilege change, users are subject to the new limitations so may gain or lose privileges according to the new limitation and their current rep.
@TimB About your "realistic world map" question; I like it as a concept, but I feel as it stands the question is really quite broad. Any way we could narrow it down a little?
When trying to create a realistic world map what are the basic geographic and geological principles I need to take into account in order to create an "earth-like" world?
I'm not sure if it's a great way but I was thinking maybe in terms of per type of area. That would at least narrow it down somewhat. So maybe "what are the geological factors causing mountains to form and grow to various heights?" as one, and "what are the geological factors that cause flatlands to form?" as another. Just as examples.
This is part of a series of questions that tries to break down the process of creating a physical world from initial creation of the landmass through to erosion, weather patterns, and the result biomes. This is assuming an earth-like spherical world in orbit in the habitable band.
This question ...
I think it is. I don't think though that you need to call out in the title that it is part of a series; that adds nothing of value there. However, by the time you have posted the questions, consider linking among them (but I strongly suggest if you do it, do so at the bottom of the question text to conserve preview question text space).
I'm going to ask some question about creatures that I want plausible explanations for, but they don't have to be routed in hard science.
Magic isn't involved, but weird evolution could be.
Talking with @TimB, this seems to be part of the Hard science through to "A wizard did it" spectrum, so I'm trying to think what the points on that spectrum might be. Hard-Science, Soft-Science,Mythic,A wizard did it?
With "A wizard did it" meaning that its not really suitable for this site (too broad)
This question focuses on the initial creation of landmasses.
What are the processes that causes land-masses to form, and
continents and islands to rise up from the sea and sink back into it?
How can those processes be easily drawn upon to create realistic
looking maps?
This is the first of a...
cartography is about the actual process of making maps, this is more about how a world forms...which would then feed into cartography but I don't think actually is cartography
@Mourdos I'm not sure we would have that much use for a tag for that purpose. I absolutely see the value in the [science-based] tag because it makes it easy to filter for those questions if one wants to ("I want hard-science answers to geology questions"), but for soft-science... what would be the advantage? Keeping in mind the discussion we had that not everything needs to be a tag.
We need to prepare for our site to enter public beta, and one of the things we need to do is define what goes in the help center and the tour. This is one of The 7 Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta.
Here's what the 7 Essential Questions page says about creating documentation:
Much of th...
@DonyorM I would imagine that one is about as good as we can make it for now, at least. It is going to evolve once we start getting more users and we start testing the limits of what we consider to be on topic and off topic. I imagine quite a few questions will be borderline and we're going to have to work it out as we go.
I must admit I really haven't paid much attention to the tour text, but it's worth noting that on Amateur Radio (which launched into private beta around a year ago now) we still have the default Tour content.
I figured that would happen, but it was worth putting it in there. Maybe someone will have a stroke of genius and want to edit that. It's not real important anyway. If someone is going to read the the help center, they'll read it. If not, it won't matter to much what you say in either way.
Maybe it would have received more attention if it had been posted as an answer to a separate question. The question being "What should the X help center page say?".
@DonyorM That's how it happens on MSE, by the way. That's a meta site where you actually earn/lose rep, just like a regular main site. It's sort of a hybrid in that sense.
Personally, I like how that proposed help center article also suggests other places to go to for questions which are considered off topic on WB.
Obviously that doesn't mean that all questions which we might close as "not about worldbuilding" would fit on those sites, but it gives people some idea where their question at least might be on topic.
@MichaelKjörling I agree with the science-based, the reason I'm thinking soft-science is because it saves typing up a definition of what I want to base this on. I always tend to see tags as common terms for a question. For instance on RPG.SE there is a RAW tag, for Rules-As-Written, which generally means that the question must as part of its back it up, reference rules books, not personal experience.
Its a tag that people see and know "this person don't want advice on how to handle, they want a hard rule". I was thinking that Soft-Science would be a similar to this and hard-science "The answers should be plausible, but don't need to rely on hard science to explain how they work. Feel free to come up with new organs for creatures that wouldn't have gradually evolved "
@Mourdos Except didn't we already determine that even fantasy-based questions should receive plausible answers? That's the whole reason for the proposed help center text about including details on the magic system if magic-based answers are wanted.
If one doesn't care about plausibility, then there's no need to come to a site like this anyway; just hand-wave it away. There is certainly precedent for doing so in fiction.
I suspect I worded that wrongly. I'm not looking for "Magic causes it". I'm looking for answers that are internally consistent. I'm not worried about how they came to be, but I am worried about them making sense now that they are.
I was tempted to suggest something like the gods thing for our tag line, but I feared that it would offend many people (and some ways it could branch off would offend myself)
I'm not going to star you for talking about how you never talk about not getting stars. Firstly, it makes my head hurt, considering how meta meta it is and secondly, just no :-)
No, no, no! At first you must ask on Meta if you should. Then you need to ask whether we need an [underground-castles] tag. Only thereafter may you consider asking how to structure an underground castle, assuming that the meta discussion on structuring finds that such questions are sufficiently broad for the site's scope!
The tour isn't that big of deal, is it really worth it's own question? It's basically the same as the on-topic/off-topic lists of the what to ask article
How would the fundamental design of a medieval castle differ if it was designed downwards instead of upwards? The premise for this question is that walls have become irreverent (due to a penchant for siege engines) and therefore defensive structures have been built into the ground.
I'm trying t...
When you say siege weapons do you mean trebuchet levels or are we talking explosives yet? I'm just thinking about the very deep holes in Lochnagar crater in Normandy!
The biggest problem I see is that there's no way to see an enemy coming. You could siege the entrances and send 50 different teams to dig entrances in different places. How could you defend against that!?
I've got a number of question along this topic. I'm planning a warlike game, and castles are going to be quite an important defensive structure, but I want something a little different, so I'm going to be asking about a number of different ways of building castles.
@MichaelKjörling I might ask it anyway. What are the smallest changes that would need to happen in a medieval world for it to be more effective to build castles as bunkers as opposed to above ground?
@Liath Doesn't work very well though when your enemies are of the same species as yourself and neither side has any particularly large advantage over the other.
@MichaelKjörling yeah, I'm trying to think why we'd dig down instead of taking the height advantage. Best answer so far, because someone else has a better advantage in the skies
One of the questions I want to ask is "How could a creature make tunnels that didn't flood under the water table?" Assume the creature is the size of a large dog.
I want to lead it down the biological route though
Although in making it less broad you at the same time (IMO) made it more opinion-based, because you present no criteria for judging how "subtle" or "small" a change is.
Maybe attack that problem from a different angle, and just say "assuming a world otherwise like ours, at a technological level of medieval Europe, what might cause people to build defensive structures underground rather than above ground?" -- I think it gets what you are after, but without the problem of being opinion-based at least.
I'm just saying that without something concrete to go on, "small" or "subtle" change is difficult to quantify, and thus risks pushing the question into the opinion-based portion of the spectrum.
Except that in this question I mentioned large riding flying creatures already and asked for other things.
Changed the title to "alternate world"
I'm pretty sure I shouldn't need to
I want to yell "Do you not read?" at the latest comment on my question. Seriously, that is two people who have not read the question. Is it really that non-obvious?
Apparently, my questions are not clear enough. I personally think that a couple of them need to read?
Maybe I'm a little spoiled by RPG.SE where people read tags, but I would have thought that the medieval-europe tag would have indicated that the basis for this question was medieval technology and set in a place like... europe?
@Vulcronos Yes you can. As far as I am aware, Europe doesn't tend to suffer from that many earthquakes.
When posting a question that uses a previous question or answer as a premise, is just linking the question/answer good enough, or should we quote the question/answer as well? If the latter, how much quoting is too much?
Today, Tomorrow or Wednesday? I saw the post earlier, just wondering when our Beta will finally go public, we seem to be slowing down without the influx of new users.
@Donald.McLean As was mine...I was simply pointing out that I appreciated the GHD reference. hahaha. Bill Murray, Groundhog...driving off the cliff, he tells the Groundhog "Don't drive angry"