Subject: But, what makes a mission look interesting?
Author:
Posted on: 2022-02-28 16:53:47 UTC
I think this is what hS is trying to get at, and something I'd like to know, too. {= ) When you're browsing the wiki, what makes you stop and decide to read something? ETA: Also, where/how do you do most of your wiki-browsing?
~Neshomeh
Or, I guess - how do you find them to read?
I'm asking because I'm looking to update my agents' Wiki pages, and I have... no standard for how they should look. Kaitlyn Jackson has her links split between "Early appearances" and "Mission reports"; Selene Windflower has "Mission reports", "Other appearances", and "alternate universes". She also has a timeline, which doesn't link to any fics, but I know other agents do.
So my question is, do people use wiki pages to find stories to read? If so, do you go straight for a mission report with an interesting summary, or try to read from the start, or... what?
What I would like to do is have two lists of each agent's stories: one in timeline order which includes every appearance, and one "Reading list" which is curated to give you the best experience of reading them. I'd actually like to put the Reading List before their profile and history, so that you can start out by reading what the author thinks is the agent's story, and then go back to their description, history etc. But I have no idea whether this would be useful.
For my part, when I've read older PPC stories recently it's been because a) the author linked them from the Board (the early parts of Wink and a Smile), or b) I needed to research a specific point and trawled the agent's Wiki article until I found a promising looking link (eg for the PPCCUU). But I would fondly like to imagine that people will sometimes go "Agent Razzmatazz Shazeem? I love them! Let me read more about them!", and I just want to know how to enable that behaviour. ;)
(I've long since accepted that my website serves little purpose other than collecting things for my own reference; if I hosted the stories directly on it it would be different, as Nesh's sites prove, but as things stand it is a howling echo chamber in luminous green, and that's fine.)
hS
Continuing on the topic of how people use the wiki to find missions, I've been thinking for a long time that I'd like to dispense with the current organization of "Missions in This Continuum" in three sub-headings of "Agents Specialized in This Continuum," "Agents Not Yet Specialized in This Continuum," and "Crossovers." For example, see the current Harry Potter page.
I don't care for this because it creates redundancy: missions to crossover fics and missions that are crossovers between spin-offs end up listed twice, and a spin-off crossover mission to a crossover fic is listed three times. It's kinda bonkers.
I'd rather put missions in HQ Standard Timeline order, as I've done with "Missions Featuring This Character" sections—e.g., on the Harry Potter (character) page.
Even before this thread, I figured if people wanted to read missions featuring a particular agent, they could look up that agent to find all their stuff, and as of this thread it doesn't seem like that's a major way people find missions, anyway.
As for missions to crossovers, there's a page of the Killed Badfic list for that. If there's an interest in seeing this organized by continuum in some fashion, we might be able to work out a good way to do that, but I think that's a separate conversation?
What do you think? Please let me know!
~Neshomeh
P.S. "This" is a pronoun, right? It should be capitalized in titles, right? I keep second-guessing it.
Yes, everything in chronological order, excellent, this is what a doctorlit likes! I do see some value in having a separate crossover section buuuuuut chronological reading order go brrrrrrrr. : )
And "this" is most certainly a pronoun, and should be capitalized in titles, as shown by Mr. Hinton.
—doctorlit is totally going to read that novel at some point too
We could link the mission to both continuum pages and mention its crossover status somewhere in its entry. It'd help delineate crossovers from one-fandom missions, but still keep everything in chrono order.
I mean, we aren't listing all continua on continuum pages, since presumably you already know these are HP missions if you're on the HP canon or character page, but yeah, additional continua are noted. It would certainly be possible to scroll or search down a page for the text "crossover with" and find missions with that annotation.
(For the record, on non-continuum pages, any major crossed-over canons should be noted as "Canon A x Canon B", etc. Note x, not /. A little x denotes a crossover, a / denotes a pairing. So far, I haven't seen any fic slashing whole canons, and I never want to. {; P )
~Neshomeh
I was just thinking about the need to delineate crossover missions if we're looking to put all missions in chronological order. So maintaining the old notation could help make that separation while still letting people see a linear(ish) progression of missions in a given continuum?
Keeping crossovers split out might still be good? Not sure.
That's how I've always done it. Hence finding all your stories through your website.
So, second half of the question: how do you find the author's website? Because I know I'm terrible about linking it, and it's not like we have Board profiles to look at.
hS
Usually I find a character or story linked from a page and crawl outwards from there.
I originally found your website through... well it would have either been the DOGA page or the pages for setting backstory.
Attempting to jot down my current thoughts, which may not apply to everyone else:
hS
I know it doesn't necessarily pertain to me, but it's a question I've had for a while: What if an author has multiple websites? Should it just be the hub that is linked, followed by journals/other sites linked into it, or shpuld all site be linked to an author's page, with a little label saying "Main site," "Site for hosting Agent Whatever's missions," etc.?
-kA, who effectively has two sites, but forgot their password to their neocities one (and which one of the three emails they used). Whoops.
Answering anyway, just in case anyone else is wondering. And, yeah, I'm for linking all your stuff from your user page. Looking at mine right now, I think the only important-ish things I don't have listed there are my character journals, but there's not much on them, and anything really relevant IS linked from the agent's wiki page and their index on my site.
I could probably list my stuff more clearly in terms of where to find which spin-off (both my site and AO3). I might do that, and add the journals while I'm at it.
~Neshomeh
I'd love it if all spin-offs had good navigation between stories and all stories said who wrote them and when, too—just as a general practice, and especially in the absence of a hub site.
~Neshomeh has said this before and will keep saying it till it sinks in. {= )
since I've gone diving through the archives of PPC stories. I generally remember wandering through the wiki when I did, often finding authors via things like missions by continuum or even agents by continuum (my persistent like of stories from non-human perspectives was a thing even then), but I can't describe in too much detail what I did. I did often have the situation of wanting to read all/more of the stories with Agent So-and-So in them because I read one and wanted more of the same.
Sometimes, as someone mentioned below, I'll stumble into a story while looking up some PPC thing, but my pace of PPC writing is sporadic at best so ... yeah.
These days I mostly keep up with what's posted on the Board - the rate of publications is slow enough.
I wanted to read more of his missions because he was hilarious with his silly German accent and large brass instruments. I looked at his Wiki page, and I saw that he only had one other mission, which I read and liked. I think it would be great if whoever wrote him would write more stories about him.
I was going to mission a Greek mythology fanfic, but there was a discussion on the Discord about whether that would be appropriate because it's too close to religion. I need to find another fanfic to mission.
I would argue it absolutely is not. The Ancient Greek religion is a religion, but it's, y'know, ancient? And if there are active worshippers of the Greek pantheon, surely they're not more likely to be more offended by us writing stories about them than they are by the extremely long tradition of other people writing stories (and sagas, and epics, and poems) about them? Not to mention all the Greek mythology characters who aren't deities.
Anyway, nobody's out to dunk on the Ancient Greek religion like people can be out to dunk on Islam, Judaism, or Christianity. The taboo against writing missions based on religious fic has to do with the fact that modern religions can be very touchy subjects liable to seriously upset people. Ancient religions and the mythologies that sprang from them usually aren't—unless you get two literature geeks fighting over whose version of the myth should be considered more canon, naturally, but that's rather a different beast than actual intolerance based on religious faith, innit?
~Neshomeh
Otherwise, we wouldn't have Percy Jackson, would we?
I just read and review whatever new stuff gets posted to the Board, really. (Unless it spoils a novel I haven't read yet, in which case I skip.)
When I am reading through an older spin-off, then I do prefer to use the Wiki as my main reference; I see the Wiki as the primary catalogue of our published canon. (That's why, back when I had more free time, I made a project of going through things like Kippur's many LiveJournal accounts to sniff out all the PPC works that were published there, but not linked from the Wiki. It's best to have a master list for each spin-off, and the Wiki is well-equipped to serve as such a hub.)
I also like to read both spin-offs and published literature in in-universe chronological order, as I've mentioned before, because that feels most organic to me. (Again, a big part of my Kippur project was trying to slot everything into chronological order; I hope no other spin-off requires so much work in that regard!) So I absolutely go straight down the list in the Mission Reports sections. (Again, skipping spoiler fandoms.) That's partly why I don't separate Missions, Appearances and Cameos on my own pages; it throws off the chronology . . . though I'll be the first to admit, my character appearances sections be looking kinda disorganized. : )
I think that answers your question; is there anything else I missed?
—doctorlit sometimes reads for pleasure, but mostly he reads because reading is What He Does
Under Agent History, a Timeline which links to every appearance, in chronological order. If there are scenes in a story which sit apart from the rest in time, I might not mention all of them (this is the "I wrote a 30-year-long story that one time" exception). I'm not sure whether to do this descriptively - "[[Attends]] the first year of OFUM" - or with explicit linking - "[[OFUM, Chapter Two]] - Has a brief encounter with Lina Holling". Thoughts?
As a separate section, the Mission Log. This is the recommended reading order - it excludes minor appearances, and if an agent's origin is revealed late in their series, the full backstory will only appear there, rather than chronologically first. (An example from another spinoff: the Reader's story really doesn't start with her childhood on Gallifrey.)
I might head up each of these with "For all appearances in chronological order, see [[Timeline]]" or vice versa, so people don't get confused. Does that work?
(Yes, it's partial duplication of links, but I think it's worthwhile.)
An alternative would be hosting Reading Orders myself, but that just leads to broken links down the line.
hS
It makes sense, gets everything on there, and allows both my full-series binging and the "I'm looking for some interesting Narnia missions" style some folks have brought up in this thread.
As for the timeline presentation, I lean more towards the title+description myself, but there's also something to be said for giving the timeline and report sections different styles? That one might just come down to individual preference of each Boarder curating their own agent pages, so do whatever feels most natural to you, I reckon!
—doctorlit has a thing for titles, maybe
Which means posts here, mostly, sometimes the lounge, and I've found one or two on the tropes page. Sometimes I'll read one I came across while tabbing through the wiki.
Like a little toy train pushed by a bored child.
When I want good PPC stories to read, I look for a recent mission and then go through the back catalogue, then go on through connected stories. I follow link rabbit holes a lot. It's nice to have something to read while my brain ticks over. It helps me gestate ideas for how my own spinoff should look and feel, and especially how it should sound. I read agent dialogue aloud a lot to help understand how cadence and word choice works for other writers in the community.
Mostly, though, I just... lurk. And provide commentary that tries to be amusing. =]
IMO, one of the chief purposes of the wiki is to make PPC stories as accessible as possible so people are encouraged and enabled to read them. This is why one of my projects lately has been adding mission links to canon character pages, with the notion that folks might be interested in seeing what horrors have befallen their favorites. It seemed like a good idea at the time. {= )
There IS general guidance on how to structure an agent page. It suggests more or less what you have in mind: a Timeline section for cataloguing all things (important dates, missions, interludes, RP appearances, cameos, journal entries, whatever) in chronological order and a Mission Logs/Mission Reports section for cataloguing, well, those, and anything else you count as part of the agent's main storyline.
I would encourage following the page structure that's already established, so the same type of information is in the same place on each page of that type. Personally, I keep timelines as much for my own reference as anything else, and anyone who isn't interested in the side-stories can simply navigate straight to the missions in the final section of the page.
That said, if we find out this structure isn't that useful... Well, I'm not changing it all by myself. But we can figure something out.
~Neshomeh
Oops.
The only problem I see with the agent pages guide is that I wasn't sure if I should link missions in the timeline or not, so I did (and only on David Null's page for a reason I'll explain in a minute), but that then leads to double links and that's, honestly, quite a bit annoying. So I'll probably change that sometime soonish.
Which brings me to my next point: For whatever reason, my phone hates letting me edit wiki pages. Probably something to do with a) it's a phone and b) mobile editing isn't the best. Granted, I've had issues editing on my computer from time to time (if one looks into the history of RC numbers, for example, Nesh had to rollback one of my edits because Visual editor (the only thing my computer would let me use for that page) put extraneous spaces), but I have a lot more issues on my phone, hence the slow wiki-editing on my side. I really wish there was a way (besides marking a page as stub) to let people know, "Hey! You can help me with my agent pages!" on the actual pages in question, because I'm 90% sure there's someone else who has issues with editing the wiki.
(And it's editing that's an issue, not viewing. I can view the wiki just fine.)
So, that's really my only issues with the agent page guide and the wiki: a misunderstanding and a tech problem, respectively.
-kA
If so, I'm really sorry. It's been a busy few weeks . . . poke me on Discord, and I should be able to get that fixed today?
—doctorlit needs to start using a to-do list again, if only he had time to sit down and write one . . .
A lot of timeline sections seem to be low on links, so I was assuming the Mission Reports section would need to take everything. If it's meant to be the other way round, great. :) I'm working up a draft for Kaitlyn's article, and it seems to be working so far. (And I guess there's no real need for the Mission Reports section to be chronological either.) Do you have a thought on what to call it for people with no missions, such as the Illian kids?
Also: from this thread so far, it doesn't sound like people are actually using agent pages to find stories. So I'm not sure how useful it'll be.
hS
And my way is obviously the best way. ^_~ For staff members (e.g. Jenni) and kids (e.g. Henry) who don't have a spin-off as such, I just lump everything together under Appearances.
Some Action agents have combined timeline and mission sections, too, though. Trojanhorse springs to mind. I like it for not having repeated links, but I dislike it for making the spin-off index less concise, so eh.
And, well, I use agent pages to find stuff, but like you, I'm usually looking for specific information and not necessarily for casual reading material. You and I might be the odd ones out on things like this—but that doesn't mean the wiki shouldn't meet our needs, too, right? {= )
~Neshomeh
Agent Kaitlyn now has a partial timeline, ripped shamelessly from one of yours (Derik's, I think). The whole page needs updating, but from what I can see this will work well for what I think the page should do. :) I would appreciate if you could prod me mercilessly if I've done something wrong or daft.
hS
Okay, so, mostly this is awesome and I wish I had more time to read All Things Kaitlyn now. ^_^ Since I don't, some notes:
Aaaand I think that's it!
~Neshomeh
hS
Oh, that's gutting. Ugh. {= < I'm glad you have something left to work with, but buggerit, I was counting on having that to look at whenever I get around to adding dates to the LotR missions like I've done with the HP missions.
(Tangent: I want to dispense with the Specialized/Unspecialized/Crossovers sections and just have a mission timeline in each continuum. I figure people can look at agent pages to find missions organized by agent, and apparently that may not be a major use-case anyway. I may ask for opinions on this in a different sub-thread here, if that's okay.)
I'm fine with having "Miss Cam Courtyard" redirect to "Courtyard." I gueeeeess we could even rename the page to "Miss Cam Courtyard" and have "Courtyard" be a redirect... I've never been totally convinced it needed more of a name than anything else in HQ, but the name exists nonetheless, so I guess that's just too bad for me. {= )
Hmm, I should be able to tweak the redlink color. Does this shade show up any better than this shade does?
FYI, there are additional ways to spot redlinks, too: when you hover over a link, if the page doesn't exist, it'll get a dashed (as opposed to solid) underline and the hover text will be "Page Name (page does not exist)" rather than just "Page Name."
Also, you should get suggestions for existing pages if you start typing a link. No suggestions = no pages that start with the letters you typed. ... That's if you're on a PC and your connection doesn't suck, anyway. Can't speak for mobile.
~Neshomeh
I wrote most of the article in Notepad, so my links were added on faith. :) I know they'll auto-complete if you're sensible and use the source editor directly.
Dashed underlines on hover are all very well... but only if you know there's a link there. I was looking straight at the Miss Cam Courtyard text and couldn't tell it was a link at all. Sure, that's okay for a page I just wrote - but if I'm scanning older pages for redlinks, I just can't see them. (This is why inline hyperlinks should be underlined...!)
The lighter red does pop a bit better, but honestly, I'm not using the wiki enough to change the styling on my behalf. (I've had the same issue with people who like to edit Word documents by making changes in red rather than highlighting like sane people do... I cope. ^_~)
hS
PS: Yes, you're quite right that the Courtyard didn't really need a name. At the time, which was probably Crashing Down but may have been earlier, it wasn't clear that there was only one Courtyard. If it'll let me remove the snarky jab at the bottom of the article, I can even go back and edit the name out as unnecessary. ~hS
Might as well go for it on the off-chance that you're not the only colorblind person reading the wiki. {= )
Incidentally, I pulled that lighter red hex code from a site meant to help non-colorblind people come up with colorblind-friendly palettes. It's pretty spiffy. I checked the link colors of my site. I guess they're okay? (Apparently the gray background of my site looks pink to people with deuteranopia, though. Huh.)
Re. Courtyard... Oof, that comment was mine, wasn't it? Sorry about that; I don't think I meant it to be a jab, just keeping track of whether the name became more widely adopted, but I can see how it reads that way. Honestly, whatever you'd prefer is fine with me, and that remark can go away anyway. >.>
~Neshomeh
In mobile, if there is a red link, it appears a bright red and is underlined, while regular links, oddly enough, a darker maroon-y red. Here is how it appears. (that's a link to an image, btw)
If I tap on a red, underlined link, it redirects me to create the page (which is... nifty. I've never noticed that.); specfically, it directs me to the editor. Although it won't let me edit the dang thing, meaning I can't actually, but that might be an error on my end. Exiting the editor gives me the following text on the page: "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, search the related logs, or create this page." Rather than whatever the computer says.
As for linking on the wiki, that... doesn't happen in the editor, at least for me. I have to, if I don't know the name, use the link function available in the editor (I think in both versions, but definetly visual), then the first few letters will provide me the pages that fit. Here's what I'm talking about.
I know a fairish amount about mobile editing, since that's my primary mode, but not a ton about it.
-kA, who got excited for a second and thought they could actually create Matthew's page without needing to go into the phone's desktop mode, but nope, they can't. Whelp.
You cannot backspace an empty line on mobile. Try it, I dare you.
I'm pretty sure it deletes text, character by character, in the tect-filled line above. And I'm pretty sure that only applies to source editing?
-kA
Fandom has a pretty tight grip on that, as far as I can tell. They're focused on providing an optimal, uniform experience for mobile users (apparently that's about half the traffic across Fandom wikis), but ironically, I couldn't find much help specifically for mobile editors. I didn't spend too much time looking, but IMO, I shouldn't have to.
I did take a look at that page on my phone while I was at it, and had the same experience. Would not recommend. But I've never liked any iteration of the Visual Editor—it's slow and janky and imprecise; Source Mode all the way—and I despise doing anything that involves significant typing without a keyboard, so take that with an appropriate amount of salt.
~Neshomeh
I just mostly learned through experimenting. "Does this work? No, well let's try this" sort of thing. Never really bothered to look for mobile editing help.
And, yes, gods, the annoyance when I first started with mobile editing, but i got used to it, for whatever reason. I can now do things on mobile pretty easily, when it wants to work. When it doesn't, well...
But I've never liked any iteration of the Visual Editor—it's slow and janky and imprecise; Source Mode all the way
I'm 100% with you... when it's on the computer mode. Source mode on mobile is just plain janky and jerky. It tends to overwrite random bits of text when one pastes stuff in. For example, I was trying to pull something into Claimed by pasting it and got this... mess: "[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8759278/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Guardians-of-Hogwarts "Harry Potter and theClaimed by Kittyauthor, December 31, 2021.laimed by Storme Hawk March 25, 2016. Renewed as Novastorme August 15, 2018. Re-renewed April 11, 2020."
Thankfully, I caught it and fixed it, but still. I had to switch over to Visual in order for that not to happen again.
But, as you said, this is Fandom's territory, which sucks but okay, I have work-arounds if I need to use them. It could, of course, be a user error (although I'm not sure how I could have caused it) or a tech error (because phone) on my end, so, unless someone else has experience, take this with a grain of salt.
-kA, who understands nothing can be done, but wants to share their experences in editing on mobile nonetheless
(PS: If someone could create Matthew's page, even with a simple line of "Matthew is written by Kittyauthor," I'd be eternally grateful. Once it's created, I could coax my phone into editing it into a normal-ish agent page.)
Apart from one more picture, I think Kaitlyn's Wiki page should be in good shape. (Oh, I need to check if she was in any of the other Hunger Gameses, but other than that...)
hS
It was via OFUR, so then I went on to read all of Laburnum’s stuff and then read all of Ix’s, and then all of Neshomeh’s, then all of yours, and so on and so forth. However, after I went through my quarantine-induced attempt to read everything on the wiki, I just went to Killed Badfic and found one that looked interesting. The rest I read from off the Board.
I know how I'd find my stuff, or Nesh's, but I don't think Iximaz and Laburnum have websites. Did you go via the Wiki's author pages and click through to various agents, or what?
hS
I then forgot to save a link to the story and just googled it, and found the wiki. From there, I just browsed, basically.
I think this is what hS is trying to get at, and something I'd like to know, too. {= ) When you're browsing the wiki, what makes you stop and decide to read something? ETA: Also, where/how do you do most of your wiki-browsing?
~Neshomeh
I don't read the whole agents' collection of missions, typically. Exceptions exist (the TOS, one of Voyd's agents, I think I read a lot of Orangefox's stuff), but I choose the missions that catch my eye.
And it seems to be solely missions (with the occasional interlude), which explains why my interludes suck but my missions less so. I guess I find missions more interesting?
My reading of missions tend to go in a certain order:
New, interesting missions
Wander Killed Badfic and reading the interesting-sounding ones.
Read an Ix mission (preferably with Ix, but Zeb missions are also fun).
Read a Nesh mission (preferably with Nume, but I'm also okay with Derick).
Reread one of Voyd's missions.
Read an hS mission (preferably one I've read before).
And that's mostly it. I can deviate (I read all of Orangefox's missions in one go, as well as one of Voyd's agents' missions.) but not often.
-kA, who is half-asleep (apologies if this barely makes any sense)
(And thank you for putting me on your list! :) I appreciate it.)
So yeah, I definitely need to get my Killed Badfic entries up to date. I know how you'd find a TOS mission to read, but what about the others? If you wanted a hS (or whoever) mission, where would you go to find one?
hS
For Voyd's and Ix's, I usually look it up on the wiki. For hS and Nesh, I go through their sites.
Also, I'm glad it made sense.
-kA, who refered to you through third person because which pronoun to use (your or their?) is confusing in that case.
