The Factory Floor

7:39 AM

Nice story. I'd use dots or something like a dash instead of commas for ", my sister" and ", there she was." It reads like you want a pause there and it doesn't make a lot of sense to continue the sentence with a comma. "I'm coming," should have an exclamation mark instead of the comma and a comma right after the quotation mark. You need a dot after "Nothing".
A dot instead of a comma after "tasty" and "wrong". Comma after "Well". "I have to think of a plan" instead of "I got to think of a plan". Some different formatting for the proverb from the mother. Comma after "Oh". "That I can't desc…

@HaaruunI Another thing: are you sure it will be exactly two parts long? It might be a good idea to leave that open, depending on what kind of inspiration you get from others. You can just write "1" in that case.

dot_Sp0T

8:56 AM

11hrs til nomination; I don't like UTC

Journeyman Geek

UTC is the least confusing timezone tho

Secespitus

@dot_Sp0T Yeah, everyone should convert to CEST :D

dot_Sp0T

9:22 AM

@JourneymanGeek GMT is the least confusing, also it's closer to my timezone - thus objectively better suited for everything

Journeyman Geek

gmt isn't a standard ;p

dot_Sp0T

@JourneymanGeek And you're not a real dog

Journeyman Geek

for certain values of real

so.. its called UTC (or CUT) because the french would be upset ;p

also UK switches between GMT and BST

SO GMT isn't in use parts of the year

Feeds 4026

11:24 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

why would Santa and Krampus be the same person? Santa is a spirit in the form of a fat jolly man who enjoys rewarding children for good behavior. Every year he keeps a list of kids who have been naughty and nice, and gives the good ones presents. This gives him great PR with parents all over the...

Shalvenay

@JourneymanGeek well, I'd call British Winter Time a separate timezone than Greenwich Mean Time for algorithmic reasons: DST(BWT) = BST, while DST(GMT) = GMT, no?

FreezePhoenix

@Shalvenay hey!

Shalvenay

how're things going?

FreezePhoenix

Good. You?

@RoryAlsop hey to you to!

Long time no see :)

Rory Alsop

Good afternoon. I have been popping in and out, but you are right - been a bit light in here: some extra mod business in other rooms has kept me busy

Shalvenay

11:36 AM

doing fine here

FreezePhoenix

@RoryAlsop Anything you can tell us about said "Mod Business"? (General trend of impact on community)

Rory Alsop

11:55 AM

No, not really. Mod work always comes in fits and starts, and is different on every site. Done sites attract trolls, some have confrontational folks, others just need general cleanup every now and then

It's all good

So while I am active on many sites, my non-mod activity is what takes the hit when there is more modding to be done

Ash

12:25 PM

@RoryAlsop You're on the English Language stack, I've had a couple of questions migrated that way of late but as a native speaker of the language I don't feel I have the technical qualifications for the site based on it's description but how much of that background do I really need to make a contribution?

Rory Alsop

12:47 PM

@ash - I sometimes feel like that as there are some on there with language degrees etc. My solution is to answer the ones I know how to answer, as long as there is no better answer already there. If you can include references, pronunciation, grammatical guidance etc., then your post has a better chance

Ash

@RoryAlsop Okay fair enough I might just register anyway even if I don't go there much it'll give me access to my own migrated material as a minimum.

dot_Sp0T

1:26 PM

oh dear, are we having a voter-influx?

wazzup @RoryAlsop?

Secespitus

@dot_Sp0T "voter-influx"?

dot_Sp0T

@Secespitus well, there's some faces I have not seen in a while in the chat

To compare: recently Malaisia (I think?) had votes for a new President, and they even started flying in exchange students and expats to have more people voting

Secespitus

@dot_Sp0T The election hasn't even started.

dot_Sp0T

@Secespitus well, the nominations start today

Secespitus

@dot_Sp0T In six hours or so.

dot_Sp0T

1:34 PM

six dreadful hours

I'll likely be shitfaced by that time

Secespitus

You seem a bit nervous.

dot_Sp0T

I am not making progress at work

Secespitus

@dot_Sp0T Do a meeting. You will feel less bad about not making progress.

dot_Sp0T

@Secespitus no, I am swamping and idk

Secespitus

@dot_Sp0T "Swamping"?

dot_Sp0T

1:39 PM

idk, it sounded right. probably not even a word - swamped maybe?

or no, not swamped apparently, if the dict translation is correct. bc I can do that stuff, I just feel really slow at it

Secespitus

@dot_Sp0T As in: there is so much stuff to do, you are thinking about ignoring everything and just taking a nap, hoping it will all be gone when you wake up?

"In over the top of your head?"

dot_Sp0T

Na, aber wollte Heut Abend mit ner guten Freundin was trinken gehn und überlege gerade sie zu versetzen

Secespitus

Du willst eine gute Freundin für die Nominierung auf SE versetzen...?

dot_Sp0T

nee, um auf Arbeit voran zu kommen

Secespitus

Achso. Wenn du so viel zu tun hast, was sagt dein Chef was am wichtigsten ist? Es gibt immer zu viel zu tun, egal wie schnell man ist.

dot_Sp0T

1:44 PM

das was ich jetzt tu

^^

Secespitus

Oh man :D

dot_Sp0T

jo

Secespitus

Lass dir nur nicht das Privatleben komplett von der Arbeit kaputtmachen.

dot_Sp0T

tu ich nich, will das fertig kriegen. bin seit langem wieder ma bei ner Arbeit motiviert, und das is toll

Secespitus

An dem Punkt wäre ich auch gerne mal wieder...

dot_Sp0T

1:47 PM

evtl. Job wechseln? Oder Abteilung?

Secespitus

Schwierig aktuell...

Jedenfalls würde ich an deiner Stelle nicht den privaten Termin verschieben wenn es sich vermeiden lässt. Ab einem gewissen Punkt ist man irgendwann eh nicht mehr richtig produktiv, dann lieber morgen in alter Frische (und mit neuem Kater) ans Werk.

dot_Sp0T

Ne werd ich auch nicht machen, aber bin halt genervt ab mir

Secespitus

Hab mal irgendwo gelesen, dass man sich regelmäßig, egal ob es einem gut oder schlecht geht, sagen soll "Auch das geht vorüber." Hilft durch schwierige Phasen zu kommen und in guten nicht zu sehr abzuheben, sowohl kurzfristig als auch langfristig gesehen.

Hosch250

Is this the Deutschopocalypse?

Secespitus

@Hosch250 Ja :D

Sorry, happens sometimes.

dot_Sp0T

1:53 PM

@Hosch250 Gerpocalypse seems to roll of the tongue more easily

Hosch250

@Secespitus NP :)

Secespitus

Never leave too many of us alone or your chat will soon be ours >:)

Hosch250

@Secespitus Not mine, I just follow it because I'm sick of the main chats I'm part of.

Mithrandir

ಠ_ಠ

FoxElemental

Yes. I'm from Koln

Trying to learn the language back, though

Hey: Are there any alternatives to "unobtanium" in the name sense? Like "handwavium" or "phlebotonium" but less corny/obvious?

Like for fictional elements?

Secespitus

1:58 PM

@FoxElemental It's all the same.

FoxElemental

oh

Secespitus

It's all just a placeholder for whatever name you come up with.

For example Star Wars uses "Midi-Chlorians" I think.

Or many fantasy works use "Adamantium/Adamantine/..." or "Mythril[...]"

FoxElemental

gtg

brb

Secespitus

I am currently reading an RPG that uses "Resin" as the name for a newly found fictional substance.

@Hosch250 Which chats are you normally part of and what is making you sick there? I know we are great here, but I always love to hear in which ways we are better than others ;)

@Mithrandir You don't seem too happy. Trust me, nothing bad happened here... yet...

Hosch250

@Secespitus Some CR chats, and simply I've been there too long.

Basically, fish and visitors stink in three days. I've been there for over three years, and it's just time for me to take a break.

Secespitus

2:07 PM

@Hosch250 That's an interesting proverb. A change can be good to remember what was great about something in the first place.

Hosch250

BTW, anyone besides Andy involved here?

♦ Story-go-round

Lets write a story together. Meta: worldbuilding.meta.stackexc...

Working on the next paragraph, but it's taking a bit.

Also, there are a couple plot lines I'm somewhat interested in developing that appear to have been dropped. Including A) the attackers (they need to meet up with them again) and B) their friends who quit.

Secespitus

8

Q: Story-Go-Round Background & Info

As some of you have already noticed, over the last days a collaborative storytelling effort has been started here on WorldBuildingSE. This question is meant as a means to keep everything surrounding the story organized. Community answers will provide different kinds of information & data on the ...

I was part in the very beginning for a sentence or two I think, but then activity in the room dropped a bit and I am not in-the-know about the current plotlines. @dot_Sp0T was quite active in the story-go-round I think.

Hosch250

@AndyD273 ^

As the main party involved still.

dot_Sp0T

@Hosch250 there's a meta somewhere with background data and other stuff

Hosch250

@dot_Sp0T Already linked.

I read the whole story.

dot_Sp0T

2:14 PM

nice :D

I wish I had the energy to get involved with it again

Gryphon

@FoxElemental Plotium Devicide is a favourite.

Hosch250

@Secespitus Updated to specify Brokhem is a he based on

in Story-go-round, Mar 30 at 16:57, by AndyD273

Brokhem picked up his scoop, grabbed a bottle, and headed toward the slug, which was moving away at a bit over a walking pace. He pulled slightly ahead, found a flat root to put the bottle down, and walked toward the slug. As he got close he reached out his hand, trying not to get too close, but as he strained a flickering blur of shadow began around him. He stepped back, closed his eyes, and could be seen to try and collect himself. After a minute the blur stopped. He stepped forward again, scooped, poured, and capped, before walking back to the others.

Hemdul could potentially be the jerk who succeeds (setting up conflict on the void ships), the guy who decides he doesn't know it all and comes back to the party (like the guy in The Long Vacation by Verne), be found dead, or be never heard of again, or something, I think.

The challenge of light could potentially be how/where they create phylacteries?

Anyway, I'm not going to do any of these plot changes--not a good enough writer, and they aren't my characters.

Just things to think about, perhaps.

TTYL.

dot_Sp0T

2:29 PM

@Hosch250 wrong, and wrong;; you are a great writer, and they are your characters as much as anyone else's - the whole premise of the SGR is that the whole thing is a shared story

Secespitus

@Hosch250 They are everyones characters.

The whole idea behind that room was to create a story together and that someone will take your characters and put them into situations you would have never thought of is an important aspect of the whole experience. By all means: go ahead and add a paragraph to the room! It would be great to see that project be more lively again.

On a similar note: We have a Blog! If you are ever interested in creating your own characters in your own story or something that relates somehow to worldbuilding you can post it in the Universe Factory. There will be links in the chat rooms and a featured meta post with a link to the post to get some eyes on the result.

2

Secespitus

2:55 PM

@Gryphon Please don't just change British English to American English

Gryphon

@Secespitus Where did I do that?

Secespitus

@Gryphon worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/posts/106685/revisions

Gryphon

Ah, I apologize.

I will watch my edits more carefully in the future.

Secespitus

@Gryphon No problem, just wanted to point it out. Thanks for taking the time to edit stuff on the site!

It's something that often slips through because one is more accustomed to one spelling or the other. I just noticed it and thought I'd point it out.

Gryphon

@Secespitus Thanks. Anything that makes my contributions to the site better is great with me.

Hosch250

3:25 PM

@dot_Sp0T Wait, how do you know I'm a great writer?

dot_Sp0T

@Hosch250 you did the effort to read through the SGR stuff

Hosch250

I mean, I'm quite a competent "writer", in that I have a good vocabulary and grammar. I'm not very creative, though (at least, I don't think I am).

@dot_Sp0T Hey, I love reading. Reading isn't writing :)

dot_Sp0T

Being an avid reader is probably one of the cornerstones of being able to write

2

Also it's all about making an effort

Hosch250

@Secespitus I added a paragraph.

If that's the case, I guess I'll feel free to try to work Hemdul back into the story at some point.

FoxElemental

Hey yall

Hosch250

3:36 PM

Hey!

FoxElemental

How are you?

Hosch250

@dot_Sp0T I wonder what would happen if I listed all the tropes on TV Tropes and wrote a story that included all of them?

@FoxElemental Great!

FoxElemental

Good.

@Hosch250 But it is!

Hosch250

Have you caught up with Invisalign?

FoxElemental

Speaking of which . . .

Invisalign: 17. Me: 15

Gryphon

3:38 PM

@Hosch250 That would be a very long story.

Hosch250

(Finally, I think I spelled it right :P)

@Gryphon Actually, not necessarily. Most people can portray multiple tropes.

FoxElemental

I'm getting closer. But 2 days till the next trays, and then agony again!

Anyways. Writing a short story on Medium

Gryphon

@Hosch250 There are a lot of tropes on TV Tropes.

Hosch250

Yeah.

Plot twist: That's really what the author of A Song of Fire and Ice is trying to do.

OK, now here's a different challenge. I should write a story in which a single character portrays as many tropes as possible.

With flashbacks, I could even portray them with different level tropes (hero/villain, for example).

Maybe write it in 500 words, or something :)

FoxElemental

Maybe

see you

Hosch250

3:54 PM

I love this: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/166938/…

FoxElemental

Finished the first draft. It's pretty crappy, and I'd like some advice. Here is the draft. Read it through and please tell me what I can fix with the plot/characters. Anyone?

Hosch250

4:20 PM

@FoxElemental Too many special characters.

FoxElemental

@Hosch250 You mean the Golden Alliance Comlink Frequency stuff?

Hosch250

Yeah. Think about what the people would have heard.

They wouldn't hear the metadata like that.

FoxElemental

No, but that's literally the title heading of each "page." I'll shorten the numbers though

Hosch250

A simple bolded Agent X: would delineate who was speaking good.

Also, with that many expletives, I'd choose a single character sequence to represent them (or one per expletive if you want people to be able to tell reused ones).

FoxElemental

Editing . . .

Hosch250

4:23 PM

Also, with BEGINNING TRANSCRIPT RECORDINGS, I thought it replaying recorded messages, not displaying them on the screen.

FoxElemental

Fixed

BRB

But keep up the advice :)

Hosch250

Don't have any more, really.

The characters are pretty good, although IntelliCorp wouldn't have broken into that conversation, I don't think.

They would have wanted to gather every shred they could. But, it does add suspense.

Secespitus

5:01 PM

You repeat "*on* charges of" throughout the first paragraph, but you are missing it with the transport of dangerous/illegal substances. I'd prefer consistency or more frequent changes of the style, but currently the one instance stands out a bit. Two colons in one sentence look a bit weird, too. Is there some way to change one of them, for example by replacing it with a dash? Or by changing it to something like "Our evidence will be presented by *The Computer*. Computer, begin [...]"
After that the first part of what I presume the computer says is in quotation marks. But the rest is said by…

HDE 226868

3 hours to nominations!

Hosch250

@HDE226868 2:50 :)

HDE 226868

I round up. :D

Secespitus

@HDE226868 As my physics teacher always said: "Everything up to 100% difference is an acceptable error margin."

Hosch250

I just got a new globe the other week. It has a time thing on it, so I can always see the (non-DST) time now.

HDE 226868

5:12 PM

@Secespitus Last week, I was modeling abundances in the stellar wind of Zeta Puppis, and found a discrepancy of ~1900%. Does that count as acceptable?

3

Secespitus

@HDE226868 I understood some words of that.

3

So I'll go with a Jein as we say in german.

Which is something like a yes (Ja) and no (Nein) and at the same time neither

HDE 226868

@Secespitus Our models predicted that there should be 19 times more iron nuclei whizzing out from a massive star than a satellite actually measured.

Secespitus

That seems like quite a difference. But then again I've ran programs that were supposed to end at some point, but forgot to add a sensible abort condition in a loop. The difference between "predictable 3 to 4 seconds" and "when the program dies" can be quite big if you are not allowed to kill processes.

Hosch250

@HDE226868 Maybe a troll attached a magnet to the side of the satellite so the iron nuclei never made it to the sensor :)

Secespitus

@Hosch250 Troll physics === best physics

Hosch250

5:19 PM

Or, more realistically, there was a measurement error, and most realistically, the model is wrong.

HDE 226868

@Hosch250 Well, that satellite cost $1.65 billion, so that would be problematic.

Secespitus

Every model is wrong. It's just a matter of whether it's good enough until someone finds a better model.

Rory Alsop

5:51 PM

@dot_Sp0T I found out about it from coming in here - as most days I access the site on mobile, and notifications of things like elections are not visible.

FoxElemental

6:03 PM

I'm back.

@Secespitus Thanks for the feedback, I'll edit (still reading through.)

Haaruun I

@Secespitus Thanks for editing my story, and when I called it "Chapter 1/2" I meant "Chapter One Half" because it is clearly not a full chapter just the intro

Hosch250

@HaaruunI It might be a touch clearer if you A) used .5 or B) used Unicode ½

Haaruun I

ok

@Hosch250 Can you read it? medium.com/universe-factory/…

Hosch250

Interesting. Reminds me of Nazeebo.

In HotS, it's a character that creates a circle of zombies that pops up from the floor.

Secespitus

@HaaruunI No problem, though I didn't edit it. I merely suggested things you might want to edit.

Haaruun I

6:17 PM

@Secespitus Thanks anyway.

FoxElemental

@Secespitus the tags were meant to be the "display style." The charges were those of all 3 initiatives: I removed that and fumbled my way through an explanation

Hosch250

I don't think you could cut a circle of dog heads off in a single swing, FWIW.

Secespitus

@FoxElemental But you are also using them for commands.

FoxElemental

Good point . . .

Haaruun I

@Hosch250 Its Fiction

FoxElemental

6:19 PM

Perhaps I should end the tags with the / as perscribed . . .

Haaruun I

what do you expect

Hosch250

Well, there are all kinds of fiction. It depends.

It kind of depends on how you take it from here, but it was a big shock factor for me. I thought it was in a sort of city environment at the start. Then I thought fantasy, then I was like, wait, how did that happen?

Also, how could he reach all around the circle with the girl in the way?

Haaruun I

He never reached her

Hosch250

I mean the guy who jumped off the roof.

Haaruun I

oh

Hosch250

6:22 PM

NVM, I'm crazy.

You didn't say it wasn't multiple slashes:

> Before I could figure out what to do, a dark hooded figure leaped from the roof and slashed their heads off.

It's good.

Haaruun I

Didn't think of that

Hosch250

Sorry for the mixed advice, doing this at work, and not as focused as I could be.

Haaruun I

oh

FoxElemental

6:38 PM

I think I cleaned it up, though I might have missed something. But I tried to shorten the numbers/etc.

Here is the linky for the current version

Did I leave any plot holes? Anything that should be redone?

Anyone?

Hosch250

@FoxElemental I'll re-read it later.

FoxElemental

@Hosch kind of you, thanks.

Hi @Aify @Green

How are you doing?

Aify

burgers and cake

breakfast of champs

FoxElemental

. . . sure. . . .

Secespitus

@Aify That's a great answer to the question "How are you doing?" :D

Aify

6:48 PM

"good" is a bland answer tho

Green

@FoxElemental hey!

FoxElemental

How are you?

See you all later

HDE 226868

8:01 PM

The nominations have begun! Please take all election-related discussion go the 2018 Worldbuilding Moderator Election chat room. Best of luck!

8

Worldbuilding Meta

8:34 PM

0

Q: I forgot my account credentials and now I’m locked out - what can I do to recover my account?

I know I’ve been out of the site for a while, but I’m the user DT Cooper and I was locked out of my account. I never saved said account, and now I’ve been locked out. Is there a way to fix this?

discussion user-accounts

4

Q: 2018 Community Moderator Election

The 2018 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Community moderator elections have three phases: Nomination phase Primary phase Election phase Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are. Please visit the official election page a...

discussion moderators election

5

Q: 2018 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. Not every question was compiled - as noted, we...

discussion featured election

James

9:37 PM

@Green Go put your name in the hat.

Hosch250

10:53 PM

@FoxElemental Looking much better.

FoxElemental

11:33 PM

@Hosch Thanks

Gryphon

@James Please do, Green, you'd make an excellent moderator.

nitsua60

@HDE226868 @MonicaCellio I see the questionnaire answers are coming in as we speak. Can I suggest that one of you (or another WB mod) drop a comment on the post suggesting that meta readers not vote on the questionnaire posts? (Or use their votes to keep scores "level.")

2

Given that users will have a chance to vote elsewhere, voting here and biasing which answers even get read (since we know not every reader will get to the end of the eventual list) seemed to us (on RPG) a poor signal to capture last time we had an election.

As has been brought up before during a former election, should the answers here be upvoted/downvoted? They have no effect on the true elections and may influence how people vote artificially. — user27327 Apr 18 '17 at 7:57

HDE 226868

@nitsua60 My first reaction is one of caution, insofar as we haven't done that in the past. I wouldn't want to do that unilaterally.

I'd want a meta post before doing it.

There are also other things we can do, and already do, to mitigate this.

I also kinda doubt people would see that comment. Many will see a user's nomination on the nomination page, then jump to their questionnaire if the link's in the nomination.

nitsua60

11:51 PM

@HDE226868 All I can say is it was successful for us, a similar-sized site. We pegged all the scores at 4 through the whole process. You don't need everyone to see it, you just need enough voters to see it to keep the level.

In any case, I'm just suggesting. Hopefully I've left enough breadcrumbs here for you and others to follow if you're interested.

HDE 226868

@nitsua60 I do see RPG as a sister site to Worldbuilding, in a way. I'm curious as to what Monica thinks (and I'll ping @James; he's often around). At any rate, thanks for the suggestion. I'll do some reading.

nitsua60

@HDE226868 We do both have @Shalvenay in our chats =)

HDE 226868

That we do. :-) And some user overlap, I hope.

Gryphon

@HDE226868 I certainly hope so, given the number of questions we have that mention the world they are building is for an RPG.

♦ Story-go-round

Transcript for