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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit Eleven-ThirtyEight and stuff

Discussion in 'Literature' started by CooperTFN, Jul 8, 2013.

?

Well?

  1. I don't care

    20 vote(s)
    17.7%
  2. Hm, neat

    49 vote(s)
    43.4%
  3. OMG COOPER IS MY HERO

    44 vote(s)
    38.9%
  1. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    You're fired.
     
  2. instantdeath

    instantdeath Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 22, 2010
    Glad to see most people live in nicer places than me. I wouldn't want to befoul the list.
     
  3. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    You would miss me to much! I am calling your bluff. [:D]

    --Adm. Nick
     
    CooperTFN likes this.
  4. Lugija

    Lugija Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2009
    Something for a possible future article:
    CooperTFN has used the sentence "You're fired" for four times during the last 6 months, and "This entire forum is fired" once in last November.
    Someone has been "dead to him" for five times during the last 9 months, one time it was an entire thread.

    As a Crusader Kings player, I have to wonder how he manages to keep his vassals happy.
     
    Point Given , RC-1991 and CooperTFN like this.
  5. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    The article will be titled "what am I still doing here?"
     
  6. instantdeath

    instantdeath Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 22, 2010
    Well, it's sweet that you've kept track O:)

    (what did the whole forum get fired for?)
     
  7. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    Jello ran a round in One Sentence or Less on BFatRotDF. I stand by my ruling.

    Edit: and to be fair, the time I said OSOL was "dead to me" I meant that I'd forgotten about it. :p
     
  8. Force Smuggler

    Force Smuggler Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    You really are the Donald!
     
  9. The Loyal Imperial

    The Loyal Imperial Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 19, 2007
  10. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    Gorefiend and The Loyal Imperial like this.
  11. s65horsey

    s65horsey Otter-loving Former EUC Mod star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 24, 2006
    Thank you for not making me pink. It would ruin my naughty word using bad girl image.
     
  12. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    Oh, I refused.

    Responding to this here so I don't derail the Rebels thread:

    FWIW, a conversation is ongoing with the people who actually decide what is and isn't allowed on TFN--but there is very, very, very extensive precedent here for people linking to relevant articles on other sites. Whether the ETE thread itself is over the line is a different question, but I do try to be very careful about the circumstances in which I post here (I even pointed out that I wouldn't mind them closing it, but clearly they haven't yet seen the need). That said, I don't need everyone here to love us, but we really are trying to use the site in a way that strengthens Lit. You'd be amazed how many people out there reflexively roll their eyes at TFN, and I'd like to think that our existence does something to address that.
     
  13. Robimus

    Robimus Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 6, 2007
    There is a difference between dropping in a link to your site and every example you give as a precedent. The first link is to a relevant report from a convention that supplies us with new information we don't already have. The second is more of a source post and the poster is actually kind enough to include the image so one doesn't have to click on the link. The third is a VIP letting us know that an interview he did, that many of us would be interested to read, is now available to be read.

    Your links are links to a fan blog, an elite fan blog to be sure, but still a fan blog. Should TF.N just allow everyone to constantly link to their own Star Wars related blogs in every single thread? That would be setting a precedent.

    There is also the issue of you promoting your own site yourself, over, and over and over again. If it was perhaps people not associated with your site saying "check out 1138, it is so cool" that would be one thing, but that is not the case.

    You already do a lot to try and strengthen Lit, Coop. You make great thought provoking threads often, and at times make great posts in other topics. But this isn't about TF.N, this is about 1138. For instance I have a ton of images of my Star Wars collection posted on websites which I am involved with as staff. When I want to show those images to someone here, I don't just drop in a link to that other website - I actually take the time to post the images here - which contributes to the discussion here.

    As Grey1 mentions, I think contributing to the content here(and elsewhere) may be changing. A lot of people seem to now feel that offsite links are now equivalent to contributing to discussion here. Sometime they can be(like with links to VIP content), but most often they are not.

    When 1138 does its interview with JJM, I'm sure that is something that a lot of people here would be interested in looking at. Conversely if you had me do an article on how many Jawa's can fit in a Sandcrawler - a lot of folks won't care, nor are they going to want to link to it in the Rebels discussion thread just because that show may have done a Jawa centered episode.
     
    CooperTFN likes this.
  14. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    We don't need to derail this thread with a discussion about this. It's a matter of board policy, and the decision has been made. Essentially, yes -- there's one set of rules for everyone: namely that we don't allow spamvertising. As Robimus notes, there's a difference between linking to an interview or content that provides useful new information, and simply advertising a blog post. The latter is not permitted, whether the blog is of a user who just registered yesterday or the head admin opining on the latest Episode 7 news.


    However, the blog does pertain to materials that Lit enjoys discussing, and there is often a parallel discussion in this thread. So this thread will be the place where updates and links will be posted from now on -- but the site will not be advertised in other threads.
     
    Robimus likes this.
  15. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Does that apply to sigs?
     
  16. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    No. We're just applying long-standing board policy against offsite advertising. People have always been allowed to advertise non-competitive and/or personal sites on their signatures.
     
  17. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    Yeah, I admit the distinction between the examples I cited above and "spamvertising" is one that eluded me at first, but I've come around on it and I'm very much at peace with what's been decided. For my part, even in this thread I'm going to make an effort not to bump it for every little thing; my feeling is, if something on ETE is worth bringing up at all, it will happen organically (LI has certainly demonstrated that), and bringing it up myself could just turn people off.
     
    JackG and Robimus like this.
  18. AlyxDinas

    AlyxDinas Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 12, 2010
    Just to add my voice, I know that when I saw the thread about Jedi diversity, I knew one of the first things would end up being a link to Hav's article about the topic. Whatever, there's relevancy to be had and he doesn't quite just drop it in the thread and run away. He stays in the conversation but I basically saw the thread title and went "Link Incoming." because...really....it's easy to tell when. We can debate context or anything (and, for the record, I think Hav did it in a way that was not obtrusive and important to the topic) but even if done well, it does get a bit self aggrandizing.

    This is a poor analogy but it's like when someone tells me about fanfiction they wrote when discussing how a series' plot could be better. It's relevant to the topic and the fic might actually be great....but there's also a profound part of me that just doesn't care and rolls my eyes at the same time.

    So, something like integrating it into discussion seems totally cool. But it's also not going to stop me from sighing a bit when I see it.
     
  19. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Thanks for clarifying Jello.
     
  20. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    That Jedi diversity thread (spinoff, anyone?) was pretty damned serendipitous, and probably not likely to happen often, but my own view now is that were I Hav I would just say "I wrote a thing on ETE that said, basically..." and just leave the link off. Treat it like an offline article, in other words--people can still always seek it out if they want to.
     
  21. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    I would like to say that not everything on 1138 qualifies under the label of 'blog post' my own articles (and some of the others too) contain actual data, calculation, and statistical analysis that represent facts about the universe that are not rendered elsewhere (like the fact that Rodians are 81% male in the GFFA), and can be referenced for factual purposes, rather like citing Wookieepedia. It is easier to link than to mass quote tables and graphs in such cases.
     
  22. Arrian

    Arrian Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 15, 2011
    Firstly, that comment ("rebellious" in the 'Rebels') thread was just a play on words. :p
    Secondly, I didn't mean to come off as so harsh in my opposition to your posts. I just didn't think it was right, and hindered good discussion on this website.
    I had no problem with your site's content, and I think the correct solution has been reached by the Mod Squad.


    In fact, Havac's essay on the idea of exploration is timely to thoughts I've been having about similar story ideas. Compare SW's universe to Earth: if I were to go to a small Indonesian island, would it necessarily be populated? The same question relates to planets in the EU recently. I feel that far too many worlds are settled and civilised, and not too rugged and wild. The chances of all these planetoids being tamed is slim.

    What about a story where the characters crash on a planet due to unforeseen circumstances and aren't rescued or able to contact other people within the space of ten chapters. I can think of Lando's oracular wanderings aboard the vagabond in the BFC and the far too brief crash of the Jedi ships in Cloak of Deception, but little else. I just don't think all of the universe is as settled and well accessible as the EU portrays it to be, most of the time. In fact, the environmentrarely plays a part in stories that much anymore. When are seasons or weather or natural environmental phenomena mentioned often? Half the stories just seem to take place in sunny midday, in a non-descript world with the exactly same gravity and day length as ours. Blah.
     
    Havac and CooperTFN like this.
  23. Lugija

    Lugija Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2009
    I remember that the moons of Bogden had changes of gravity every time one of the moons got close to another, but I think it has only been visited in the first Boba Fett book and only for a couple of chapters.

    And I agree about people finding civilization too quickly when they crash into a mostly uninhibited world. For example the Clone Wars episode Jedi Crash where supposedly the only village on the entire planet is a day's walk away from the crash-site. (Or ANH where the droids ended up to Luke in record-time :p)
     
  24. CooperTFN

    CooperTFN TFN EU Staff Emeritus star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1999
    Weather...that's a really good point. It's bad enough that so many planets only have one climate, but even those planets never seem to see so much as a rainstorm.

    As for uninhabited planets, I think the same way we see a vastly disproportionate number of Force-using characters because that's there they think the drama is, we also see a vastly disproportionate number of inhabited planets--as much as you could tell a cool story about it, "Cast Away" starring Lando just isn't something anyone's interested in pitching these days. Gulliver's Travels, on the other hand, they'll do.
     
  25. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    I think this is part of the general trend of not thinking through the universe, not taking it seriously. If you're not really thinking about it, then each place is just a place, and they go there and the story happens. If you take it seriously as a location, as if it was real, then you have to think about all those little things -- what time of day is it, what's the weather, what's the environment, are there other environments on the world, are there other places on the world, have you considered the fact that it's an entire planet and not just a city and you can't just set down "on Corellia" and find Joe as if you were searching for Joe in Cleveland and not Earth, what about the possibility of making this world different from a generic earth setting because it is sci-fi after all?

    That's one of the areas where I think we could benefit from hiring more sci-fi writers. The Forgotten Realms tie-in writers they're getting are all fantasy authors, who are used to writing fantasy -- stories set in Earth-analogue realms. Given the tie-in nature, stories set in highly-defined Earth-analogue realms. They're not used to creating their own settings in the same way, and not conditioned to think about things in terms of a science-fiction setting -- planets rather than cities or kingdoms, the logistics of galactic civilization, the ability of places and species and everything to be wildly different from Earth-normal.

    You combine that limited thought process with authors who just underthink the stories in general, who aren't putting a lot of thought into verisimilitude and bringing their creations to life and creating depth and you get stories that just don't tap into the potential of the setting, that go easy and bland all the time.
     
    The Loyal Imperial and Zeta1127 like this.