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From Future
[edit] RyansWorld
Paranoid, RyanVG has created a large number of scenario articles which have a very distinct flavour. If I were new to the site I might conclude that all scenario articles were like this, which they are not.
Given the large number, I'm wondering whether replacing 'Scenario:' by 'RyansWorld:' on these scenarios would be a good idea. Those people who want to see these connected scenarios can see them. Those who want to easily find the other scenarios can too. I'm proposing this change because there are so many interlinked scenarios by RyanVG. Making this change wouldn't be a mandate for anyone and their brother to create a new prefix for themself. It's only something we'd do when the number of linked scenario articles is large.
I don't know for sure that this is a good idea. I think it could help Future Wikia to stay on track with its original mandate. There's a need to do something. If you're in favour of giving this a try, I'll go ahead and start renaming Scenarios. What do you think? Should I go ahead? JC 15:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I approve of this concept. You have my consent. Go ahead and do it. RyanVG
- Yes, go ahead and do it. Looks like a good solution. Paranoid 06:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Active pages (seen in recently changes) which need it now have 'RyansWorld'. Generally I'll move pages when they become active again, rather than try to catch everything all in one sweep. JC 09:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)JC
[edit] Proposed URLS
There are futurewiki.com wikionfuture.com futurismwiki.com [wikifuture.com] wikiaboutfuture.com, something sure is I wont build this wiki anymore on wikicities but on nanoaging.com, when you are ready to change let me know and we will take the wiki on nanoaging
Hello. Welcome to Wikicities. I love the new logo. I just wanted to check that it's ok in terms of copyright. Do you hold the copyright on the images that are used in the logo? Angela 10:59, 4 Feb 2005 (PST)
- "Such works shall include works of artistic craftsmanship insofar as their form but not their mechanical or utilitarian aspects are concerned; the design of a useful article, as defined in this section, shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article." (The Berne Convention Implementation Act, 1988)
- This does not seem to apply to the fragments of images that I used for the creation of the logo. So the source images are not copyrightable. It would appear that most simple renderings of various molecules are not copyrightable either. Various artistic images of DNA, however, are copyrightable. Paranoid 11:22, 4 Feb 2005 (PST)
[edit] Proposal for a Civil Society Quarter page on central Wikicities
Hello... Wondered if you might be interested in a proposal currently on the central Wikicities site, and associated discussion, exploring possibilities for greater co-operation and collaboration specifically between 'Civil Society' type wikicities (or wikicities on the slightly more serious type topics i.e. probably not gaming, sci fi etc). People new to wikicities and just seeing the most active section on the wikicities main page might conclude that there's not much (or enough) in it for them in if they're more interested in the slightly more serious stuff. The proposal is: Proposal for a Civil Society Quarter page. If you're able to take a look, or actually support the proposal if you feel able to, that'd be great! Thanks, Regards Philralph 14:28, 8 Nov 2005 (UTC) ps Please feel free to pass on this message to others if you feel it appropriate.
Thanks Alot Paranoid, can I get your email? Here is my mine: jonano@gmail.com, email me.
It`s nice to have partner to build the pages on this wiki thanks again for your collaboration, please god help us to become real and good futurologists.
[edit] Rainbow's End
I wrote a book review of Rainbow's End, by Vernor Vinge; I think you'd be interested in reading it. This book is the fabled forcast on life in 2030, and it does a very good job of avoiding the single advancement problem. (2030? Rather, somewhere in the 2020's; the book specifically avoids telling exactly what year it is.)
[edit] Congrats!
I just saw you made it a short hop away from Kurzweil's website..!
(I have to admit, I was a little surprised!)
- D Thanks. Paranoid 21:54, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] New Main Page
OK, so it's about a week since I told you that I was going to replace Main Page with New Main Page. I'll carry that out presently. Please bear with me, my New Main Page has links to some interesting new pages, a tutorial section for beginners, an introduction, and even a list of things to do if people run out of ideas. In addition, it still has the "Explore the Future" box, only without the boxes. It also has templates for users to easily access different areas, a guidelines link, and more. Please check it out and tell me what you think of it. If you don't like it, improve it; if you really don't like it, revert it (though you should have noticed it by now.)
--Yunzhong Hou 20:35, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- I noticed the proposed main page only 2 days ago, and I didn't have the time to comment on it. Overall I like the changes, I will probably tweak it a bit myself later. Paranoid 07:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Petition for Admin Rights
Since joining the Future Wikia team, I've made considerable amounts of edits. A few of them involved fixing other articles. More were spent on two scenario pages, Scenario: Battle of the Belt and Scenario: Battle of the Belt Outline which has hit #3 on the long pages list. But the most time went into streamlining the wikia by establishing Guideline, Concepts, and New Main Page, all of which made introduction of new members more easy and made the site more appealing and attractive. I expect to be able to continue to help improve this site, but I find that without admin rights to delete pages things will invariably go out of hand.
If you have trouble with the admin interface, send a message to Angela or someone who knows what's what. For more tips, check out the admins tutorial page on Wikipedia. You will have to learn all the functions available to you sooner or later.
Thank you for your time and effort.
Sincerely,
Yunzhong Hou 21:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you for your efforts. I think I did everything correctly. You should be a sysop now. Paranoid 16:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Deletions, Bans, Moves, Templates, Deals, RyanVG, and Petitions
OK, so lately I've made a lot of changes.
First off, I must thank you profusely for admin rights. With them I have gone ahead and deleted around 50 pages (of which about 20 were redirects), most of them from the Future:Pages for deletion list, and I have made a list of those that were on the list but which I have not deleted. There are plenty of pages that still need to be deleted, easily found via Short Pages, of which I have deleted all those with under 50 bytes. But the entire first page of that list is worthy of deletion. In fact, very few of the pages on this site have much content, and a lot of them came from RyanVG, who also happens to be the site's most prolific contributor.
RyanVG--the most prolific writer on your site--has been banned for a whole year! You certainly will not see him again. And with that, much of the hope to gain pages to your site will also perish. True, he makes a LOT of bad pages, but he does give some good material to work with as well. I've seen that you've also made a lot of bans since the creation of this wikia.
- I think RyanVG was the only questionable case. All others (very were only few cases) were adding nonsense/vandalism. I banned RyanVG because he clearly has a VERY different vision of what this wiki should be and overall his contribution is IMHO negative. Do you think that I should cancel the ban? Paranoid 18:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I have also made more than a few moves to make pages easier to find, merge pages, etc.
I converted the files in the Concepts page into templates, which we can then disperse not only onto Concepts but to the other basics pages wherever needed.
On Guideline you may find that item one is a "Deal" for attracting new members. I don't know if it'll do any good, but we have to try. If you disagree with the policy, go ahead and roll it back.
- I don't mind that. BTW, if you have some urgent questions/comments/requests and I do not respond to my Talk page, feel free to email me at danila dot medvedev at mail dot ru.
But the point of this policy is to encourage able but unrestrained writers, such as RyanVG, to pour their time into writing a balanced article or more in the hopes of landing an adminship. Now, whether you give it to him is a different matter. Another thing you may consider for people such as RyanVG--if he can succeed in writing good articles, and do so consistently, through this "Deal", then chances are he won't revert to his old ways immediately after getting an adminship. You just have to wean him off his old style. Well, that's over, I guess... RyanVG probably never will be back. And in his place you really don't have anyone else. I'm just good at organization and leadership, but without people--now that's when we've got a problem.
I've got another petition for you:
Please change the Navigation so that it reads "Main Page", "Concepts", "Guideline", "Community Portal", "Recent changes", "Long pages", "Pages for Deletion", etc. I don't know if you can do this, as I'm vastly unfamiliar with the admin abilities. If it requires a steward, you can ask Angela.
- I'll look into that. Paranoid 18:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
- Done. Paranoid 19:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Hopes
Well, hopefully you'll be making some more entries onto your own wikia, now that I've done my organization work and a new user has come to join us.
--Yunzhong Hou 00:53, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] New Look for Main Page
I've recently made some changes to the main page, so that it looks less boring. I've made it themed sky blue/azure, and I'm just commenting here so that you know to look at it.
I'm turned the "Explore the Future" component into a template table at Template:Future. It lists the most prominent and lengthy pages of the Future Wikia (those exceeding 3000 bytes). (I don't know how long the Future Wikia has existed, but that's quite a lot of progress!) It looks like this:
Thanks for the changes, they look wonderful. I am a bit busy right now at the start of the year (all future-related stuff: giving a talk on NBIC at a conference, running a cryonics company, etc.), but I hope to work more on the wiki in 3-4 weeks. Paranoid 10:32, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Explore the Future--All pages longer than 3000 bytes--pages longer than 10,000 bytes in bold--First see Standard Timeline
In addition, I've also added a welcome sign to the top, which looks like this:
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Then, I've also added blue title bars, so that the page is more visible and isn't just black and white. I've chosen blue because it fits with the hyperlink color--blue.
Other templates I've added:
Contribute to the Future
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Have you...
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Current Team Objectives
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Quality Standards (edit template)
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Have you...
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Please read Future:Style guide to learn more about the expected final result.
--Yunzhong Hou 21:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] A Heads Up
I would like to point out a few things:
- For the Category:Complex, Category:Vote, and Category:Dispute tags, simply add them twice, once with brackets [[]] around them and once with greater parentheses {{}} around them, to the top of the page. The former establishes the icon as copied from Template:Complex, Template:Vote, and Template:Dispute. The latter sets it as a certain category.
- As the founder, you need to take more time to organize the pages. I've been doing exactly that for the past month, but it will take more than just be to pull it off.
- Please try to consolidate stub pages' links and descriptions to the article Links. It will make things so much easier and help to tidy things.
- I have made a few additional changes to the main page.
[edit] Challenge-Response Style
By JC...
Hi Paranoid.
At this moment there aren't many active users of future.wikia. I would like that to change, but I don't want to cut across your intentions for the site. That's why I'm writing to you here first.
- I think people want provocative views of the future, that have a depth and believability to them.
The existing factual articles are a bit too dry. They consist mostly of links to other sites. If one wants the hard facts one quickly goes instead to those sites, or to Wikipedia. Meanwhile most scenario articles are rather fanciful. Some have good ideas buried in them, but many don't.
So how do we get that depth and believability without also losing the provocative ideas? I suggest:
- A challenge-response style of editing.
If some scenario writer writes:
- With Global Warming and increased population density, by 2040 severe problems of availability of clean water will be experienced. The Danube and Mississipi will become open sewers, and a barter economy with water as the main currency will emerge.
I can challenge with:
- Challenge: Already, in 2006, proven technolgy can purify water using osmosis. We have every reason to expect that by 2040 improvements in Biotechnology will lead to cheap, robust portable water purification systems based on osmosis.
This allows for provocative speculation, but it helps that speculation to stay grounded in actual fact. Which is what we want.
So what do you think?
--JC
- In some cases it is a good idea. Feel free to incorporate elements of this approach. Overall, however, I would prefer more solid writing without the controversy. But in scenarios and more "discussable" pages pro-contra may be a good idea. Paranoid 06:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Heads Up: StylusEpix
Recently I have promoted StylusEpix to adminship due to his solid contributions and in one instance pointing out an instance of vandalism on this site.
--Yunzhong Hou 19:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Questions
A few things I would like to ask:
- Where is Angela? Does she look at our site every once in a while, and does she update the Wikia Spotlight, the Wikia Messages, and the server updates? I ask this because lately all three things have remained stale. The record of the current day is still set at October 1st, and despite the creation of a few new pages the page count is stale at 222.
- Have you noticed the new Project:Copyrights page? Please take a look at it because something seems wrong though I can't pinpoint what.
- StylusEpix wants to introduce Category:Fiction. What are your opinions on this matter?
- JC wants to introduce Challenge-Response Writing. What are your opinions on this matter?
- Aside from MediaWiki:Sidebar, what other MediaWiki pages exist? For example, how did you manage to place your logo at the top left?
- Is there anything else that you think I should know about?
Thanks for your time and effort.
--Yunzhong Hou 19:59, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
- I don't know where Angela is. New Copyrights page seems to differ just in style (no content changes). I don't really want to have fiction here, there must be some sci-fi wikis better suited for that. Challenge-Response is a good idea for scenarios to remove some of the arbitrary statements about the future from them. For more factual pages it is unnecessary. Logo was done by uploading a properly named image (Logo.jpg or smth like that - see all images). That seems all for the moment.
- Just a quick note to explain why I don't spend much time at Future. I am also involved with developing a Russian Transhumanist Movement which takes quite some time, as well as a local cryonics company, which also takes quite some time. So trying to fit all my projects into 24 hours means each gets too little attention. That's just the way it is. Paranoid 07:11, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Email
I've left my email at the bottom of my user page. If you want to establish contact with me please send me an email from your primary email, so as not to expose your own email to spam. I would also wish that you take a look at any new posts on the community portal every day. Thank you. --Yunzhong Hou 21:26, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] New Future Logo
What do you think about using this as the new logo? Note that aside from this image I also have versions without the icons and shapes if you would prefer to see a different version. It's fully mine, created with Microsoft Paint, Microsoft Word, and ACDSee.
Symbolism:
- The idea is that one future breaks off into many.
- The trunk is the Standard Timeline.
- The branches, represented by dotted arrows, lead to different areas of the future.
- Dotted arrows leading to nothing represent scenarios and alternate possibilities.
- Each of the icons on the tree symbolizes a different area of the future.
- The right side has the timeline.
--Yunzhong Hou 15:50, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
- I don't really like that... Paranoid 19:49, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] On Recent Deletions
It has come to my attention that you have begun to delete articles en masse today, similarly to what I did shortly after joining the team. There are a few differences between our criteria, however. The following are my criteria:
- Extremely short pages without text (those with just links, for example) should be candidates for deletion because they bring the user away from the Future Wikia.
- We should respect others' opinions on various issues, even if controversial.
- Try to give the benefit of the doubt if possible.
- For tiny articles, add the stub tag instead of deleting it and giving the reasons of "banal" and "nonsense". After all, articles that are "banal" in the realm of futurology tend to be more reliable because they offer few wild cards, and articles labeled as "nonsense" generally have unusual wild cards which may still be possible.
- Instead of simply deleting pages with at least some content, we should group their contents or develop them.
- Unlikely articles should be labeled as Scenarios.
- Articles not written in English violate the project's policy and should be deleted.
- 1 - good point, except when it can be easily expanded. Otherwise it can prevent development of important topics.
- 2 - we should do no such thing. This isn't a soapbox.wikia.com.
- 3 - I do, except it's not a soapbox.wikia.com. Keeping average quality up is even more important than the quantity of articles.
- 4 - valid points, except in the extreme cases. Extremely
banal article is worthless and extreme nonsense is bad.
- 5 - agree. you can notice that I also did some considerable merging.
- 6 - agree. in most cases, yes.
- 7 - yes.
As to your deletions of my article Scenario: Nomenclature, I hereby provide the following reasons:
- It is about things that occur in the future.
- While it may not seem particularly relevant to you, keep in mind that it is relevant enough to me to warrant my writing it. Also note that certain types of people--in this case, the chemistry type--would find such articles interesting.
- The fact that the article may be confusing is not an adequate candidate for deletion. If you cannot understand it, then you are not qualified to judge it.
- It's my idea, and although it may be hard to prove right now, I can certainly state that I've tried it on over a hundred chemicals of all types and that they work better than the present nomenclature.
- It's a theory, and as a prominent futurologist once said, the objective of futurologists is to create the future.
- It's a scenario after all...
- Good points all of them. I suggest you add a "Specialised" template (similar to speculative), so that articles like that can be left, but ordinary people will not be frightened by them. Paranoid 05:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
--Yunzhong Hou 21:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
- Hi, Yunzhong Hou!
[edit] Troubles
I'm having difficulty getting a link under Template:Library to point to a category page, even though others next to it work. If you can, please fix this problem. Thanks.
Meanwhile, I've decided to throw out the Book pages because I have lately discovered added functionality in the Categories, namely sub-categories, which allow the creation a Time Tree (at last!). Soon, I think, we will be able to start on it.
It seems that we have succeeded in achieving out goal (400 pages by the turn of the month).
--Yunzhong Hou 23:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Transwiki to WikiBooks
Here's an idea for additional exposure: create a copy of this wikia and shift it to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ and there we can set up our own Futurology Book. It's also safer to have two copies on separate supporting systems, and WikiPedia is a lot more reliable financially than Wikia. --Yunzhong Hou 19:21, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
- Sounds like a good idea. Perhaps we should do that. I am also thinking about how we can make Future Wikia multilingual... There are plenty of Russian contributors willing to help, but so far the exclusive use of English was a barrier. (http://rtd2.pbwiki.com/ is a similar wiki in Russian) See http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Languages for more information on multi-language wikis. Paranoid 20:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
- Our new plan of action:
- Compile the information in similar pages into compact articles with a tag in the name so that we can upload it easily.
- I'm going to have to get admin status on Wikibooks, if I can.
- Then we've got to get this stuff uploaded...
- Our new plan of action:
- Multilingual would be good... I've sore need of more contributors to this site. If you know how, get us a Russian keypad on the edit pages (they have the likes on Wikipedia). I'm eager to see more pages on this site. Then again, I visited transhumanism.wikia.com a few days ago; it's a Russian site, but the place is dead--no contributions for the past month! If you're sure there are Russian contributors waiting, then by all means go ahead... get their attention, if you can contact them. --Yunzhong Hou 03:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
- Transhumanism.wikia.com is dead, but rtd2.pbwiki.com is not. Paranoid 06:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Get a grip!
Wikibooks has a pretty specific mission, and popping in, downloading a bunch of pages, and then asking for adminship is rather insulting to those of us who take the project seriously.
Paranoid: Yunzhong Hou has badly represented your project on wikibooks. You might want to weigh in on this discussion in the interests of damage control. SB Johnny 22:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Category Fiction?
The most recent scenario on inter-galactic war is not, in my opinion, a scenario. I'd ike a cleaner division between scenarios and future fiction, which is what this is. What is your thinking on this? Should we start a category fiction. Is there perhaps a collaborative writing science fiction wiki we can point contibutors like this one to - where more people would read and comment on and help with the writing? JC 12:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
- If there will be some great small write-up which is fictional, yet covers some aspect of the future well, we can create a category. However, this intergalactic war text simply doesn't add value. There are tons of bad sci-fi online on this topic if someone has a need. I removed that text.
Generally a criterion for deletion in such cases should be - does this (fictional or not) text tell us something important about the future. Paranoid 13:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] NIAC input
I noticed that there aren't any mentions of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC) on this site. I haven't tried to sift through to find if there are any references to NIAC sponsored studies (see the NIAC site), but there are many concepts there that come out into other media. These studies seem pertinent, do you think there would be much interaction if I made sure NIAC was ok with their stuff being published here? Jwiley80 02:46, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
- I think it's a good idea that is worth trying. Thanks Jwiley, go ahead. Paranoid 10:04, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] RyansWorld
I have moved all of the content on the pages with RyansWorld: in their title, to the Fiction wikia at here. So if you wish, you can go ahead and delete those pages on your site, as I believe you have good reason to, since they are way off. There's some 70+ pages that have to be cleaned up in this way. --Yunzhong Hou 16:45, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Wow
It's amazing that you're still on this site, Paranoid! What's it been, 3-4 years already? :) Template:YZH22:46, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
- Well, it's my calling. :) But it's rather hard to efficiently process all the information I have (related to future, transhumanism and cryonics), while also managing the fledgling organisations - Russian Transhumanist Movement and KrioRus. Diigo.com helps track lots of my categorized input nowdays, but still, Future Wiki gets some of that too. Paranoid 11:45, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] who is paranoid
who is paranoid after all? are you from russia and with kriorus? is this, are you daniel?
