Subject: So, I went Wiki diving...
Author:
Posted on: 2014-08-20 18:48:00 UTC
...at the request of a non-PPC friend who wanted to know how many people had Permission. I was sure there would be a list, but there isn't- or at least, not one I could find. Is there one? And if not, would it be possible to put one together?
And making one would be almost impossible, I'm afraid. Consider this:
- Every mission has been written by someone with Permission, but the Wiki doesn't have informations about all spinoffs (some ended up becoming lost, and a lot of spinoffs end up lasting just two-three missions).
- Not everyone with Permission is still on the Board.
- Not everyone with Permission has already posted his/her missions. In fact, it's even possible that someone got permission but lost touch with us before actually writing anything.
Making even just a partial list would be a nightmare, and we would still have few indications to say how much of a partial list it is.
... Okay, my knee-jerk response was "Oh LORD no, that's way too many people over way too many years, lol!"
On the other hand, I have been pondering the creation of a Glossary of PPC Members to go with the Glossary of PPC Characters for a while now. It may not be possible to find the names of all the old members, but we do have some good resources at our disposal: the old PPC Directory is one, and July's old censuses are another, and the Board Archives are a third, not to mention the wiki itself and the tireless sleuthing of people like me, doctorlit, and hS.
So, it would be a huge list, and it might never be perfect, but it's probably doable. For what should go on it, I'd suggest something like:
Board name - male/female/else - birthday - also known as - approximate time joined/active - Permission Y/N - names of main agents known for (if any) - website link(s)
What do you (plural) think?
~Neshomeh, Lover of Lists
There are 1551 names in the Board archives. Now, granted, some of those are probably typos - though I've tried to catch most of those - some of them are certainly single-use names (such as Badfic Game names), and one is 'Anonymous'... but that still means around one and a half thousand names. And most of them we know nothing about, so you're going to have hundreds of entries that look like this:
The Evil Old Woman - female? - unknown - none/unknown - Dec 2002 to Feb 2003 - unknown - probably none? - probably none?
Or maybe you want to tell me about digitai111? Agent S7? Perhin Gamgins? Unbridled, who has over a hundred recorded posts?
Crazy person. I'll throw you the statistics spreadsheet if you want it, but you're still a crazy person.
hS
What can I say, I like lists. I finally figured out the best way to get myself to do anything is make a checklist for it, and then the irritation of unchecked boxes will overcome any reticence I might have about the work involved or all the other things I could be doing with my time. This is why I like the wiki so much—everything comes in neatly organized units of pages and categories, so it's really easy to set a project and work through it one item at a time.
Also, the volume of names doesn't bother me. I dunno how many agents are in the Glossary of PPC Characters, but it's LOTS. It can be done, because it has been done.
However, I'm not THAT crazy. A list that doesn't tell us anything useful would be stupid, so I'd focus on names that people might actually want to look up—people who've done stuff and made a mark one way or another. Basically, I'd start with authors in the Glossary of Characters and add on from there.
That is assuming I actually start this at all, and other things have priority at the moment and probably will for the foreseeable future.
~Neshomeh
And since I'm the one who put the idea in your head, consider me and my services at your disposal!
-Iximaz, who will probably regret making such an offer
Make it a google doc form, and have the link to the spreadsheet itself ready.
The only thing is that I suspect it'd be easier to just have people add themselves after they've got permission and/or have been around long enough if they've no interest in permission/writing missions.
I am planning on throwing a new census up for 2014 on Friday probably, so unless you want to whip something up on your own, I could do it then as well.
Like the Glossary of PPC Characters. Then, like you say, current members could add themselves.
If you want to start it, by all means, do! I'll help as I'm able.
~Neshomeh
If you ever try to do it, good luck!
The granting of Permission, in one form or another, goes back to the days of Jay and Acacia. The archives simply aren't comprehensive enough. And since we neither expire Permission, or demand that people inform us when they're leaving for good...
What I can give you is Permission request statistics, from April 2010 to May 2014. 82 people were given Permission in that time. You can do a 'simple' extrapolation back to the founding of the Board in 2003, and get a total of ~220 people with Permission. Or, tomorrow, I can do a more complex comparison of posts/year to Permission/year.
Or, you can approximate that every person who writes for the PPC has three agents (ie, most have a single pair, but a few with heaps of them skew the maths), and do a quick estimate from the PPC Agents category: it contains 677 pages, and its largest sub-cat contains 330. That suggests there are about a thousand named agents in the PPC, which approximates ~350 writers. And since at some point I did a random sampling (can't find it now) which showed that only half of people with Permission actually use it... around 700.
Which is sort of why we can't have a list. ;)
hS