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[Matariki Rain]

I'm not sure I understand the problem of there being a "Herko-ness" to anything. I always felt he was good at evoking the mixed horror/beauty that was the EVE setting. He influenced my perception of the EVE universe heavily, at least, and I know he did several others as well.

He was a loved and influential chronicler of EVE. I, personally, find that his writing tends to push through my zone of "this is deep and intense" to "I'm having trouble accepting this seriously any longer". That's a matter of personal taste. I think it's great that people like you and Graelyn loved an EVE-writer's work so much, and I agree that exposure to Herko's writings strongly colours some players' perceptions of the world of EVE. And every player of a Caldari character should know at least Cold Wind.

As for the gender roles, we unfortunately only see a single female spirit. So it's difficult to draw gender conclusions too greatly simply from that one example, especially as Heart-of-the-Forest is depicted as both protected by the Winds and harmed by them, while being a protector and a teacher.

Indeed, we don't know whether we're seeing a biased selection. Do you think we are, though?

First for a question from me: have we heard of Heart-of-the-Forest before? My recollection of the Caldari pantheon was that it was all male and only the winds, alongside a Shinto-like ancestor cult. My impression of the Caldari homeworld was that it was either an ice planet or tundra, too cold for trees, although I'm less certain of that and the current description of the world gives it a temperate equatorial zone and good productivity.

I find the addition of Heart-of-the-Forest makes for an internally-plausible mythic balance, and quite a powerful one. And I find myself thinking of it as "Wendy and the Lost Boys". I also wonder how it would be used in rhetoric, cultural references, and the personal branding of aspiring executives.

Edited to clarify, though, that I read this as the mythology of a society with definite default gender roles, and I'm now trying to work out ways to reconcile this with the rest of my assumptions about Caldari society. The Caldari dark age might want some fleshing out: what happened to Caldari society when conditions were really hard on Caldari Prime?

The gender relations in most of the empires are poorly defined anyway, aside from a few references in character creation that don't really paint much of a whole picture. In general, New Eden appears to have almost utter equality between the genders. Considering the societal level of New Eden, plus the age of the religion, it doesn't seem too surprising that there might be gender roles defined in it that are not supported in the modern society.

Oh, there's been a long, hard dark age living in tunnels under the surface while the marooned planet progressed through its partial terraforming, followed by huge changes. It's quite possible--even likely--that there have been major social changes. But what was the dark age culture, and why? And what are things really like now?

[Yoshito Sanders]

The Caldari Spirituality page seems appropriate in tone to me. The article is about the religion itself. Compare it to something like the Wikipedia article on Thor, which contains passages like this: "Thor's exploits, including his relentless slaughter of his foes and fierce battles with the monstrous serpent Jörmungandr—and their foretold mutual deaths during the events of Ragnarök—are recorded throughout sources for Norse mythology" and "The ferryman, shouting from the inlet, is immediately rude and obnoxious to Thor and refuses to ferry him. At first, Thor holds his tongue, but Hárbarðr only becomes more aggressive, and the poem soon becomes a flyting match between Thor and Hárbarð" (emphasis mine). Articles about religion are allowed to be mildly more flowery in nature, thanks to the subject matter involving things like beliefs and myth.

Additionally, I believe it takes a very cynical view to label the article with such simplistic terms as "Caldari r teh awesum". It does not posit that the religion is superior to others, or that the Caldari are superior thanks to their beliefs. Aside from the descriptions of the spirits, it is fairly straightforward and factual.

How is it a good thing?

You can edit (and I did) the New Caldari page to remove the description of the Gallente as being "ultrasocialist."  Now, the same cannot be said for you wanting to provide additional information to build an article up.

For example the Black Eagles article, might be one you are interested in contributing to; perhaps by providing a timeline of news events in which Black Eagle involvement is likely or by fixing their broken image link.  Or maybe just fixing small things like typos that create bad links.

It's a good thing because it sets information in stone and allows the fiction to be explored in much greater depth. Yes, it prevents people from adding to the articles themselves. But could players, for example, add in the information given here: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Khanid_Family ? I think not. And an article that is constantly open to player editing would get messy, especially if players happened to disagree with certain interpretations of PF.

There are obvious downsides, such as the inability to quickly correct typos that players notice. But the advantages of having CCP control over articles outweigh them, I believe.

[orange]

How is it a good thing?

You can edit (and I did) the New Caldari page to remove the description of the Gallente as being "ultrasocialist."  Now, the same cannot be said for you wanting to provide additional information to build an article up.

For example the Black Eagles article, might be one you are interested in contributing to; perhaps by providing a timeline of news events in which Black Eagle involvement is likely or by fixing their broken image link.  Or maybe just fixing small things like typos that create bad links.

It's a good thing because it sets information in stone and allows the fiction to be explored in much greater depth. Yes, it prevents people from adding to the articles themselves. But could players, for example, add in the information given here: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Khanid_Family ? I think not. And an article that is constantly open to player editing would get messy, especially if players happened to disagree with certain interpretations of PF.

There are obvious downsides, such as the inability to quickly correct typos that players notice. But the advantages of having CCP control over articles outweigh them, I believe.

A picture of the actual seal?

Maybe a picture of the region which bears the name Khanid?

Maybe a section between Rebellion & Modern Day on what the Khanid Family has investments in (like the various Khanid corporations) and the ties to the Caldari corporations, based on data presented elsewhere?

The Khanid Family page is a great example of a page based on other CCP-generated content.  The page is not the original source for most of the material in the article.

If a CCP lore related article gets messy, with a few users going back and forth and destroying each others work, I think that is when volunteers/staff steps in to moderate and lock the article in question.  They can then decide what the page should show.  Are there some pages that should be perma-locked?  Sure, Chronicles or CCP-generated content that has no outside references.

Now, consider a PC Corporation's or Alliance's page.  If a load of Goons decide to cause havoc on the Band of Brothers page, should CCP revert & lock the BoB page to  further edits indefinitely (for how long)?  What if a member of Band of brothers wants to improve upon the page, adding content at a later time?

Lastly, if you connect various plot lines or think it would useful when reading an article that it link to another one in order to explore the fiction in greater depth, wouldn't it be nice if you could do that for others?

[Yoshito Sanders]

I guess we're just looking at this from different viewpoints.

I want the Fiction Portal to be a sort of "source book" for the EVE back story. The kind of thing you'd get if you picked up a tabletop game supplement, which has set-in-stone data for players to use as a reference. 

I don't disagree that you've got definite points in favor of leaving it open. It looks like CCP's gone in the direction of keeping them closed, but maybe they can figure out some middle ground. Alternately, Abraxas said he's watching the discussion pages for all the FP stuff. So I guess leave comments on them and they'll possibly add stuff if they believe it to be necessary.

[Silas Vitalia]

That just doesn't seem like the Gallente style to me. The few pictures we have of Gallente cities, such as the art for the Crystal Boulevard and Hometown Heroes chrons, show skyscrapers with big, open skies behind them. I'm sure they could build giant hives, but do they want to? Do they need to? There seems to be plenty of space for them to inhabit without building massive arcologies.

I'm far, far from knowing terribly much about Gallente PF, but didn't the very early "Gallente" Racial paintings look extremely, I don't know, 'cyberpunk'? with sleek green future-cityscapes and goggled neo-tokyo looking background characters? Has that sort of imagery been pushed to the back these days?

I seem to remember a lot of early Gallente Imagery like this:

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/1/17166/1190606-gallente_large.jpg

[Matariki Rain]

I'm far, far from knowing terribly much about Gallente PF, but didn't the very early "Gallente" Racial paintings look extremely, I don't know, 'cyberpunk'? with sleek green future-cityscapes and goggled neo-tokyo looking background characters? Has that sort of imagery been pushed to the back these days?

I seem to remember a lot of early Gallente Imagery like this:

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/1/17166/1190606-gallente_large.jpg

I'm not sure that that image tells us much about the population density of Gallente space.

[Louella Dougans]

If a CCP lore related article gets messy, with a few users going back and forth and destroying each others work, I think that is when volunteers/staff steps in to moderate and lock the article in question.  They can then decide what the page should show.

from the devblog, it looks like they just don't have the staff to do that.

For a short while, some of the pages, like chronicles and other pages, item descriptions, various other things, were open to player edits. A player edited many of them, inserting self-promotion things everywhere. And that was just 1 player. reverting things, locking things, takes a non-zero amount of time for a volunteer/staff person.
The articles in question have been reverted and are now locked.
Maybe this experience has led to a policy here. They've looked and seen what happens when players can edit PF stuff, and found that the potential benefits are outweighed by the amount of repair work needed when something goes wrong.

In Shae Tiann's blog thing a while back, I think she mentioned that the people that lost jobs, a large number of them were in Content, i.e. people that would be doing stuff with the Evelopedia and other PF related things.

So, unfortunately, I think that the locks and things are needed because for the time being, there just isn't the staff to do things in any other way.

[orange]

Again, I think there are articles that should be locked.  These are articles which there is nothing a player can add to, like Chronicles.

Item descriptions are an area players might be able to add useful content and have in the past.

Consider Moon-Material Reaction or Planetary Commodity chains as an example of item descriptions where player editing makes them more useful and relieves CCP of having to do the leg work to connect the dots.  It was* immensely helpfully to be able to click through the reaction chains from the T2 component down to the basic moon material and understand what was in between.  CCP does not have this setup yet in the database.  Luckily Items are not locked, so users can add information along the bottom.

*It appears the update has broken some links or should spend a little time when I use it adding basic content to the items page.

At the end of the day it is CCP's decision what they want to make Evelopedia.  I respect that, but it does not mean I cannot complain about the decision.

If it is meant to be a sourcebook, then some of us (myself included) need to reduce our expectations of what Evelopedia can be.  We might be lucky enough to have a record of some of the history players help create, like the Great Northern War or a history of Band of Brothers.  But it would mean that pages for Lai Dai Infinity Systems or NARAKA. would not exist.   They are not important enough to rate a page in the greater story of Eve.

On the other hand, if it is meant to be a wiki, then I think a much smaller portion of Evelopedia should be locked.  In my opinion, only when CCP is truly providing content through Evelopedia would the page be locked.  Chronicles are an example, but even they are not just posted to Evelopedia, and arguably links of references at the bottom and links to eve-unique terms might add to the Chronicle.

As for player abuse, it becomes the duty of the community to fix those errors as much as CCP.  Its a wiki, the reader is warned.  The benefit of a wiki is if you see a problem (like someone calling the Gallente ultrasocialist), you can fix it!

Immediately seeing a page is locked/with CCP edits makes it a scared page that is forever immutable, even if it is wrong and in exact opposition to something CCP's other material.  A knowledgeable user might select an area they are knowledgeable about and watch the pages for changes, checking the changes to Drone Regions or Black Eagles for what changes are made, by whom and with what references.  You can be a steward, a volunteer without CCP's "official" blessing other than that it is a wiki for every user to edit.  Players are the staff to watch pages and point areas of conflict to the staff.

[Yoshito Sanders]

EVElopedia at large and the Fiction Portal are two separate, but related entities. The Fiction Portal, which is locked, has backstory information in it. This is information that a player can, theoretically, add to by updating backstory as it is released by CCP, but cannot actually add any original information to. And if CCP is putting out backstory, then they can just as easily update the pages at the same time to account for it.

The greater EVElopedia, which contains things like the Item Database, player alliance and corp profiles, or guides to gameplay mechanics, is not locked. They are open and editable by players. As they should be.

If you're afraid that the entire EVElopedia will become like the Fiction Portal, I think your worries are unfounded.

[orange]

Are player events from 5-years ago backstory at this point?

[Seriphyn]

Anyone else get the feeling CCP and co have been watching these forums for ideas? Lots of player interpretations snaking there way in I noticed

[Senn Typhos]

Anyone else get the feeling CCP and co have been watching these forums for ideas? Lots of player interpretations snaking there way in I noticed

Don't make me dream, Seri, you'll ruin my bittervet potential. :c

[Silver Night]

Anyone else get the feeling CCP and co have been watching these forums for ideas? Lots of player interpretations snaking there way in I noticed

While it's possible, keep in mind also that a lot of player interpretations have become so widespread people sometimes mistook them for PF - and they come from Chatsubo, IGS, the better-known player fiction, and IG discussions too, among other places.

[Vieve]

Anyone else get the feeling CCP and co have been watching these forums for ideas? Lots of player interpretations snaking there way in I noticed

While it's possible, keep in mind also that a lot of player interpretations have become so widespread people sometimes mistook them for PF - and they come from Chatsubo, IGS, the better-known player fiction, and IG discussions too, among other places.

If something shows up about voice activated holographic sticky notes or Mannar holonovelas, I'ma gonna start wearing a tinfoil beret.

[orange]

Anyone else get the feeling CCP and co have been watching these forums for ideas? Lots of player interpretations snaking there way in I noticed

While it's possible, keep in mind also that a lot of player interpretations have become so widespread people sometimes mistook them for PF - and they come from Chatsubo, IGS, the better-known player fiction, and IG discussions too, among other places.

If something shows up about voice activated holographic sticky notes or Mannar holonovelas, I'ma gonna start wearing a tinfoil beret.

Why?  Both seem like simple enough applications of what appears to be pretty standard technology.  It would seem straight-forward today to develop software for mobile devices which is a voice activated sticky note.  You have only added the holographic part.

I think we (those who care about it) have a lot more influence on the details of background than we give ourselves credit for.  Our interpretations and extrapolations of snippets and pieces of fluff lead to "world facts."

Sometimes we get lucky.  Lai Dai Employee Justice Code mentioned by me (via alt), totally made up.  Followed by comments by retired Lai Dai Tribunal Justice.  My post is 5 days before the news article.  Are they related?   It could have been any of 8 megacorporations and could have been any type of "executive."  Would the news article have contained a retired Lai Dai Tribunal Justice if I had not mentioned the idea of a Lai Dai Employee Justice Code 5 days earlier?  Ask ISD Katerina Markova.