The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

...So long as the policies are amenable to us.

I still consider the Wiki to be extremely important and definitely don't want it to go away. It's effectively the central repository of PPC information at present.

I said this above, but so it's here too, it may not happen today, but the rest of this week I have time.

~Neshomeh

You haven't been way outvoted yet, because only a handful of people I know to be active have said a single word in this thread one way or the other. For all I know, the prevailing opinion might well be "I don't care about the wiki at all, it could be deleted entirely and I wouldn't notice."

I'd much rather hear people say "change is hard and I think it's fine to stay where we are for now," because that's at least a feeling of some kind about it.

So, I think I will make a poll. That way no one has the excuse of a message board allergy, at least. It may not happen today, but the rest of this week I have the time and the interest.

~Neshomeh only gets salty about total apathy, not valid opinions.

It's been an unusually busy week, and I just couldn't get around to watching that video before last night. But also, I could tell from some of the post titles on this thread that my stance of "moving too hard though, let's just not bother" had already been way outvoted, so it seemed kind of pointless. But I guess if most of the community is willing to make the move, and the WikiTide folks are explicitly willing to have us . . .

And as I always say on such posts, I'll help where able, but I really am getting more and more wiped out by work lately, so I don't have a lot of non-sleep time at home to work on fun things . . .

—doctorlit is sad another element of July's PPC legacy is disappearing

. . . doesn't mean you didn't plan it unconsciously!

re: the Department of Efficiency, and its cohort, the Department of Author Correction, appear in a future, alternate timeline Huinesoron had written in his End of the Beginning series. (Specifically read "Slippery Slope" and the titles from "Thirty Years On" through "Sacrifice" for the Efficient, and "Trousers of Time" for the point where our timeline prevented the Efficient from rising to power.) The Efficient enforce time limits and other capitalist strictures on agents, punishing those who fail, while Author Correction dissuades bad fanfiction from being created by torturing the authors! It is a bad future, and as you can see from "Slippery Slope" taking place a year before "Trousers of Time," (in 2024!) we're on the cusp of that kind of attitude starting to leak into HQ for a couple years, even though the full blown department won't come to be for us. Hence, my headcanon that George may have contributed to its rise, and heck, might even still be alive during The End of the Beginning?

—doctorlit, thinking way too much about alternate timelines—but it's just so fun!

I figured for something as climactic as the maze that telling it in media res would be more exciting.

The Sphinx's riddle was pretty obvious, wasn't it? :P

I'm glad you enjoyed (term use loosely) the scene at the end of the maze. I chose the title "Cursed Cup" to refer not only to the Triwizard Cup, but also to the Quidditch World Cup and the Goblet of Fire--all of which were very cursed cups this year. So although it's a little on the nose, I think it fit thematically!

Myrtle Warren/Peter Pettigrew is certainly an odd combination that I'm sure has at least 2 or 3 fics written about it... the HP fandom truly is vast. And yes, seconding Nesh's comments on the JJR polycule: there's other things to be taken into consideration for why Jacques' connection to the two of them is kept secret!

Thanks for catching the typos. And I totally wasn't inspired by Tolkien's Dwarves at all with these goblin customs and (some) names, nope, definitely not.....

Glad you found it fascinating! Though, you've noticed a lot of depth in George that I... did not think about too much when planning this, to be honest. Just felt like writing someone based around some Internet comments that rubbed me the wrong way, and using said character to explore the question of 'why doesn't HQ just revive killed Agents?' I could probably work on my intentionality in these things, haha. The implied partner patterns with Molly, on the other hand, were definitely intentional, so that's nice. Though if my current writing plans are anything to go by, Molly's next partner might not be much better than George was...

I'm unfamiliar with the Department of Efficiency, but I might check that out when I have the chance - if there's one thing consistent about my writing, it's my tendency to take one-off characters and explore their pasts and motivations more than I probably should. Thanks for the comments!

I'm not sure how much I can be of help, but once the move is underway I'm willing to spare some time to help with it.

Loving the contrast between George and Molly’s descriptions, with George so tall and well-dressed, while Molly is hesitant and some tiny little Pokémon thing, or something. And yet Molly is the one stuck carrying the bag! I love that this foreshadows George’s lack of regard for others, and that his kicking rocks off the street foreshadows his controlling nature. He literally can’t “let things lie,” can he? And I’m fascinated by the idea that you introduced us to this character at the very end of his story, only to see this plan of his, which he's presumably been planning and working towards for weeks, if not longer, end in literal fatal failure! (Because I assume that entity couldn’t have ended George prematurely, any more than George could have unended anyone else’s?) He was a jerk, that much is clear from even this small story, and he took it for granted that he was only limited by what he could do, not what he should do. And here’s the downfall! It’s quite an impactful story! (I’m also headcanoning that in that certain other timeline, George is one of the PPC staff who pushed for the Department of Efficiency to rise to power! He fits right in!) Man . . . imagine escaping from being an Auror in the Potterverse, which features villains obsessed with overpowering death itself, only to wind up deleted from reality because you became obsessed with outsmarting death! I guess he interrogated one too many Death Eaters or something . . .

Poor Molly, I’m glad she got away, but it’s not right for her to be blamed for something she didn’t do. Hopefully her next partner will be a little more down-to-earth, although the Fig’s line about a partner “who lasts longer than a month with you” makes me wonder if she regularly winds up stuck with partners who make choices and get themselves deleted from existence?

—doctorlit eats the death everyday for breakfiss

Though I'd want to make sure they'd de able to import our archives (also, I went and grabbed an XML archive including history and all the weird namespaces, like File:, just in case)

By which I mean, any misgivings I have are mainly anxiety to the tune of what if we didn't look around enough, what if there's something important we missed, what if I secretly have no idea what I'm doing, and so forth.

At the same time, I can't think of any real reason not to go with WikiTide.

So, barring any rational objections, it should be fine!

I am going to demand more of a community response on this decision before action is taken, though. It is a Big Deal to relocate the chief information repository of our community. Do we need to make a poll or something to get engagement?

~Neshomeh

Thank to you both for taking this delicate job on yourself!

They're cool with us discussing R-rated stuff in academic terms (e.g. to say a sex act took place in a fic, educating a reader about a story's content), but a wiki article shouldn't go into graphic detail about what was done. Extra-especially as concerns minors.

But yes, linking to fanfics (including missions) with explicit content seems to be okay.

The person we spoke with also said a few pages on adult topics are probably fine, ideally if they include education such as "how to write this thing well."

(Also I want to share that Ls was very helpful in providing details I didn't think of while losing my mind with nerves about Having An Important Discussions With A Third Party On Behalf Of The Community, haha. Good show, sir!)

~Neshomeh

"After chatting with the others, we're glad to offer you a spot at WikiTide, should your community choose to migrate here." They also are willing to change their fanfiction policy to include us.

As for explicit stuff, they don't want the wiki descriptions themselves to be graphic (unless trying to be educational), but are okay with linking to things.

--Ls, summing it up.

Also, from what I've heard, Miraheze is having trouble with getting new wikis out, so there's that.

--Ls

Let us know if they throw you in the Bog of Eternal Stench for your trouble. {; P

For the record, I've just gotten a new XML database dump of all current pages, including their history. Will do so again right before we take any drastic action, but at least this is more current than my last one from March.

~Neshomeh

WikiTide has a section in the Terms of Use called Links, which states:

WikiTide has not reviewed all of the sites linked and is not responsible for the contents of any such linked site. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by WikiTide. Use of any such linked website is at the user's own risk.

IMO, that's a strong point in their favor!

However, for legal reasons they may still have qualms about linking to anything that could be considered pornography, especially involving underage characters. The exact line between "a story that has underage sex in it" and "child pornography" is one that they (and we) may not care to test. It's something else we can ask them if they say they'll have us at all, I guess.

~Neshomeh

I can get in their Discord, too, if it would help for them to speak to an admin?

~Neshomeh