Reorganizing Species Descriptions (species Designers Read!)

eleazar · **Posted:** Sun Apr 04, 2010 3:23 pm

As has been mentioned in a few places, the use of the "Post your races here" thread in addition to threads devoted to a single species is confusing. It creates 2 versions of many of the same creatures, without an obvious way to tell which is up to date. I don't think the "Post your races here." thread is doing anything useful. That's why i locked the tread, but we also need to sort out the content in it.

For those who have already posted species description, please do the following for your species descriptions, or at least for the species you care about and want people to find. When it's possible, i believe the original authors are much more likely to do this right and avoid overwriting info.

Post your races here.

For all old and new species descriptions, please do the following:

first post

Summary

These and other less important suggestions have been added to the stickies in the subforum. This should go a long way to making sure that the species ideas are accessible and easy to use when they are needed. Once the still-active posters have taken care of their descriptions we can figure out what to do with the rest.

RonaldX · **Posted:** Sun Apr 04, 2010 4:07 pm

The "Post Your Races Here" thread is locked, and we can't remove posts from it.

-Ty.

eleazar · **Posted:** Sun Apr 04, 2010 5:18 pm

Apparently i didn't think that through.

Unlocked.

Thanks for starting us out RonaldX

eleazar · **Posted:** Mon Apr 05, 2010 4:30 am

As a replacement for the listing aspect of the "Post your races here" thread, i'm thinking that a wikipage with a sortable table would be ideal. Then anyone can add their species to it.

My "Personal Evaluation" thread has somewhat served that purpose, but i think it would be good to have something more objective, that more people can add to.

:arrow:

EDIT: I started a species listing wiki page, but i'm not going to fill it in with data just this moment, especially since some of the data would require a re-read. Feel free to pitch in:
http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Species

Tortanick · **Joined:** Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm **Posts:** 576

All done with a Pithy Summery for each one

Links to species of varying quality:

Etty
AEIOU
The Cray
Abaddonnians
The People
The Stonecarvers

eleazar · **Posted:** Wed Apr 07, 2010 4:33 pm

Tortanick wrote:

All done with a Pithy Summery for each one

Links to species of varying quality:

Great...
You aren't going to add them to the wiki?

MikkoM · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 1:05 am

eleazar wrote:

My "Personal Evaluation" thread has somewhat served that purpose, but i think it would be good to have something more objective, that more people can add to.

If we want to have something more objective, is it a good idea to have "Eleazar's Rating" on the wikipage? This doesn`t seem very objective to me.

Now I have nothing against your "personal evaluation of Species ideas" thread, as it offers a nice summary of the species currently in that thread and also puts them in some sort of an order (based on your evaluation criteria). And this is a very commendable effort indeed. However if we want to have something truly, more objective than your evaluation thread, perhaps we should only offer one general link to your thread from the wikipage, instead of an Eleazar's Rating after every species that has one. This way your ratings wouldn`t be the first thing that a new reader sees, when he/she goes to that page.

eleazar · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 4:00 am

MikkoM wrote:

eleazar wrote:

My "Personal Evaluation" thread has somewhat served that purpose, but i think it would be good to have something more objective, that more people can add to.

If we want to have something more objective, is it a good idea to have "Eleazar's Rating" on the wikipage? This doesn`t seem very objective to me.

Now I have nothing against your "personal evaluation of Species ideas" thread, as it offers a nice summary of the species currently in that thread and also puts them in some sort of an order (based on your evaluation criteria). And this is a very commendable effort indeed. However if we want to have something truly, more objective than your evaluation thread, perhaps we should only offer one general link to your thread from the wikipage, instead of an Eleazar's Rating after every species that has one. This way your ratings wouldn`t be the first thing that a new reader sees, when he/she goes to that page.

I certainly don't insist on my rating being there, if people don't like it. And yes, if "objectivity" was the only goal, it shouldn't be there, but i also want the list to be useful, and without it there's no way to sort the well-developed ones from the undifferentiated stereotypes. You are seeing sort of a "stream-of-consciousness" view of the process, where first i thought "hey, objectivity and getting other people to do the work would be good." And then i started the list, and realized the table could be sortable. So i though, "What useful metric can i sort this by? Oh, yeah, my evaluation thread."

I'm not trying to have a monopoly here. If someone is going to review a significant number of species based on whatever criterion they choose, i'd love to see that added to the chart too. There are probably other good ideas for columns that i haven't thought of yet.

Bigjoe5 · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 3:22 pm

I took the liberty of adding links to species music, which will be updated as more music is created.

eleazar · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 5:27 pm

Bigjoe5 wrote:

I took the liberty of adding links to species music, which will be updated as more music is created.

Cool, i hadn't realized we had any of that!

Tortanick · **Joined:** Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm **Posts:** 576

There's a Wiki page?

Adding them now.

[edit]I get an error trying to edit the page, here's the entry if it works for any of you.

Code:

|[http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2838 Cray]
| Cheerful enthusiastic robots. Physically powerful, extremely intelligent but few in number
| align="center"|?
| align="center"|?
|?
|?
|-
|[http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4684 AEIOU]
| Telekinetic macro-scaled amoeba searching for their god. 
| align="center"|?
| align="center"|?
|?
|?
|-
|[http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4685 Etty]
| Cyborg plants, peaceful traders yet introverted. 
| align="center"|?
| align="center"|?
|?
|?
|-
|[http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1900 Abaddonnian]
| A cave dwelling race ruled by a well meaning but tyrannical AI
| align="center"|?
| align="center"|?
|?
|?
|-
|[http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2141 The People]
| A species with the morality of Gandhi and the bodies of giant fuzzy worms
| align="center"|?
| align="center"|?
|?
|?
|-
|[http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1999 The Stonecarvers]
| A race of land dwelling nautilus who take paranoia to the level of clinical insanity. 
| align="center"|?
| align="center"|?
|?
|?
|-

Geoff the Medio · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 7:23 pm

Tortanick wrote:

I get an error trying to edit the page, here's the entry if it works for any of you.

You have to be logged in (and thus registered) to edit anything on the wiki. Some pages are also protected so that even registered users can't edit unless they are wiki admins, which is done to limit spamming.

pd · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 8:22 pm

Tortanick wrote:

There's a Wiki page?

To keep up with changes on the wiki, keep an eye on this page - there's even a rss feed.

eleazar · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 10:06 pm

Tortanick wrote:

[edit]I get an error trying to edit the page, here's the entry if it works for any of you.

It was formated fine. I added them

pd wrote:

To keep up with changes on the wiki, keep an eye on this page - there's even a rss feed.

Cool, i hadn't noticed the RSS before.

Tortanick · **Joined:** Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm **Posts:** 576

Ah that would explain it. Thanks

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Reorganizing Species Descriptions (species Designers Read!)

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