@MichaelKjörling Looks good to me. We really need some more users besides just the four who have edited it to be editing it. More thoughts = more things to talk about = better article.
I'm wondering about the "Software useful in worldbuilding" point, though. It seems to allow quite a bit, since much software can be useful in worldbuilding. (I could easily press PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress into service as a worldbuilding tool.)
Maybe we need to narrow that down to perhaps "Requests for software which specifically relates to worldbuilding", to go hand in hand with the "not welcome" "Requests for software that doesn't directly relate to worldbuilding" and "General computer software use"? Maybe also allow for "how the eff do I use this cool worldbuilding tool you showed me to do X?" though I'm not sure exactly how to phrase that.
> Software tools: > On-topic, as long as they're about specialist writing tools or features of generic tools that writers use. General tech-support questions should be closed or migrated to Superuser.
We don't explicitly mention software (currently) at all in our on-topic list in the Help Center. I think the thinking is that yes it's on-topic, but it's not a big-enough topic to merit being called out as one of ~5 bullet points. (But we're planning to update that help-center page due to some other scope changes, so that might change.)
Is software a major topic on WorldBuilding, or more of a tangential topic that will get only a handful of questions?
@MonicaCellio I can't recall us having seen a great number of questions, but it has come up in a few. "Software useful in Worldbuilding" was listed as on-topic in revision #1 of that answer.
With "Software that doesn't directly have to do with Worldbuilding" listed as off-topic in the same revision.
@MichaelKjörling yup. Just offering some phrasing that seems to work on another site with this issue (software as a minor aspect of the scope), but then I noticed we only list it on the more-detailed meta post, not in the help center, so that got me wondering if WB should do the same. But I don't know much about WB-related software; I've never used anything but text editors or wikis myself.
My only exposure to more writer-specific software is Scrivener, which I've given a try after so many practically praise it to the stars, but for the most part I'm ready to go back to a plain old word processor. :P World-building software? None. I guess like on Writers it makes sense to allow questions about software which relates to worldbuilding, but I'm far from certain how to scope it.
If we do allow software questions (generally speaking), IMO we'll want a clear demarcation between WB and SR/SU, and preferably Writers as well.
There might be overlap with Writers, and I think that's ok. For example, both writers and world-builders might need to build indexes, or manage links among concepts, and so on -- some of the same tools will probably apply to both. That's ok.
For technical writing I've used some specialized tools (and have recently asked a question on Writers about one of them), but for my "recreational" writing I don't.
WB is going to have some pretty serious overlap with several other sites in any case, and I don't mind that; I just want it to be clear for an asker (and closevoter!) where we draw the line between WB SE acceptable (for example) software questions and WB SE not acceptable software questions.
I'm currently writing a story based in another world. I try to keep the story outline and the world in fairly separate notes obviously dipping into the world notes when I need to remember names, locations, descriptions etc.
Currently I'm using trello because of it's flexibility. I've got lists f...
@MichaelKjörling agreed. And I think we're going to need to see a few more such questions before we can work out that line, so for now it might be best to say nothing in the help center/tour and work it out on meta as we get more data.
@DonyorM definitely not that. That's boat programming.
@MichaelKjörling programming is fine, and important to my livelihood. :-) Hang on -- "boat programming" is an SE idiom that I guess you haven't seen, so let me go find a link.
@MichaelKjörling yeah, people hate it when you take things away -- "you said that was on-topic and I put all this work into those questions/answers and now you're saying no? How dare you!" etc.
Better to acknowledge that we're early in beta and we don't know yet - caveat poster.
jjnguy's answer captures the part about the history of the meme, but I don't think he captures why it became a meme and what the meme represents.
Basically, the boat-programming question was at the core of what it meant for a question to be programming related. At the time, SO had a lot of quest...
@MonicaCellio You wouldn't believe how much controversy there's been on Amateur Radio SE every once in a while over whether a particular question gets closed or not. I think we've worked out the worst kinks in the site's scope now, though.
Ah. Yeah, early in a site there are going to be scope questions, and we're going to refine our ideas as we get more questions and start poking at edge cases. We need to be comfortable with that. And meanwhile, I recommend only calling out the main points, the almost-no-brainers, in the help center.
@MichaelKjörling ah, so you've been a mod there from the beginning? That should help if you become a mod here -- early beta is different. (I'm a pro-tem on Writers but I was a mid-term replacement, so to speak; the site was already something like 1.5 to 2 years into beta.)
@MonicaCellio I committed to and participated in the private beta, and self-nominated. Fared pretty well and then I got that email basically asking if I was still interested right around the time the site entered public beta.
Curiously, I got user ID 29 there, and user ID 29 here.
And yes, we had some fairly extensive discussion for probably the first 6-8 months or so of what exactly the scope should be. It has now been captured in reasonable detail in our help center though, which absolutely helps voting.
The Factory Floor
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