Lexicon Noodling

[jeregenest]

Today is the day for round P, Q, R, and S to be due at the Lexicon of Untold Ages. I’m pretty darn excited about the Lexicon lately, but a recent post by shiffer and attendant comments by sben, has got me thinking of what next I want from this, if anything.

The original intent was to use this to seed various stuff for the campaign, and so far it’s been excellent for that. There are some things that will appear in each of the next incarnations, and the modern day. I like the whole Far East push-shove thing going on, especially the links to the Great Game. I find the early history of Christianity thread fascinating. And the whole sacred map-making wars is just too cool. Someone eneds to do some indexing/concept-mapping soon.

I can leave it where it is. Or I can do something else. Its what that something else is that I’m debating. I’ve long wanted to do an editing round ona Lexicon, and then use that for a next round of Lexicon. Use the editing to give a specific direction for the next round. Or heck, maybe try Trevis’ Revisionist History.

Comments

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

[I'm presuming that you're at least obliquely referring to some of my work in the Jesus Mystery Cult entry.]

I was playing off the Grail stuff as best as I could, but I wasn't sure if someone else wanted to actually treat Jesus as a legitimate savior later, so I tossed the drunkenness on top to lend the entry an air of illegitimacy, should someone want to take it in that direction.

I'm still not quite sure what I want to do on this round, but I would be interested in trying to do another round on the same lexicon, although I suspect that the mass of required reading might scare off newcomers.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I definitely had you in mind when I made the early Christianity comment.

And its the cocnern about masses of reading that is one of my worries about doing a new round. Diminishing returns as you shrink the user base.

[vaklam.livejournal.com]

I’ve long wanted to do an editing round on a Lexicon, and then use that for a next round of Lexicon. Use the editing to give a specific direction for the next round.

You’re moving towards meta-lexicon territory with that idea. I like it. When you say “editing round” are you talking about a single person (in this case, you) cleaning up/focussing the entries or would the original authors be given directives to do the same thing?

I can see serious benefits to either method.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Lets discuss those benefits.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

I don't really see the big difference between a single editor making a pass on all the entries or everybody writing their entries to comply to some pre-determined directives set down by the same editor. They're both about "forcing" the flow of the Lexicon to go in a certain direction, which is not necessarily bad.

Main difference I see would be stylistic - if you let the writers do it themselves it'll look more "organic", and if a single editor makes his pass the result should be tighter and closer to what he had in mind.

Only... Jere, what did you mean when you said "use that for the next round"?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Not sure, I'm thinking aloud. But I like this idea of doing a Lexicon where the past entry ahs to be an entry from a rpevious round and an entry from this present, give it a more deth link in. But then I worry that may be cumbersome.

[vaklam.livejournal.com]

I see what you mean about the potential for it to be cumbersome but that's the kind of thing we can't determine until the weight is on top of us.

I like the concept of building on a previous lexicon thus ending up with (it is hoped) a much broader but very interlinked setting. The Lexicon of Lord Entropy's Rule contained a reference (http://www.respectstartstomorrow.com/oceanwiki/QuentinBreslau) to Monkey Shuffleboard from the 2nd Age Lexicon. I thought that was cool. What you are proposing would be like that only more intentionally linked.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Yeah thats one of the things that interests me. Maybe by scoping down on one era or theme from the man Lexicon. Maybe by just doing another brush-pat over the world.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

That actually happened quite a lot in LER, mostly because a lot of the writers were also in on the previous Lexicons. For a newcomer (i.e. me) it was pretty daunting.

I think sben was on the money when he suggested choosing a small pool of entries to choose from (it can be expanded as the Lexicon's progressing) and allowing an optional "extra" backlink. Round-tying is kind of silly, though, if we're looking at expanding a setting.

[sben.livejournal.com]

"Silly"? Hmf.

(I sort of tangented off the whole point of "expand the setting" and into "how do we enrich lexicons?". I agree that it's a nonsensical restriction, but it is easy to understand, and I find arbitrary restrictions can be fun to work with.)

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

It's arbitrarily silly, I say.

When looking at a completed Lexicon there's no clear distinction between entries of any specific round (or round-range) to any other. Even the level of complexity is only vaguely related to the relative progression of the Lexicon, so that's out too.

Not everything has to be about the setting, I agree, but it all has to be about something, otherwise you might as well say "on this round you may only backlink to entries whose names translate numerologically into an odd number".

[sben.livejournal.com]

I suppose I don't see your numerological suggestion (e.g.) as intrinsically a bad thing: It narrows down the scope of the previous lexicon for the purposes of backlinking, which we've agreed is a good thing. I just don't think that every "sequel" lexicon necessarily needs to have a focus. If one does want some kind of focus to the sequel, I agree that numerology probably wouldn't help that goal.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

If one does want some kind of focus to the sequel, I agree that numerology probably wouldn't help that goal.

Unless this sequel is beyond the ken of mortal men!

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

So basicaly there is the cncept of a sequel that is focused, where you'd thn ened a way of defining a focus. And ten a new Lexicon. The question about the new Lexion would be, do you just loop around again or do you start fresh?

[sben.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "loop around again" vs. "start fresh"; I'm going to assume you mean having links from the new lexicon to the original, vs. keeping all links within the new lexicon. (Please prod me if I'm missing the point.) Given that:

My initial response is "it depends" (on the goal of the focussed lexicon), which isn't entirely useful. So I'll think/talk out a specific case, since that often helps me. Let's say we wanted to expand the Lost 500 (which I'm more familiar with than Untold Ages), and that we define the focus to be, oh, the role of love in the Lost 500 and in the Loss itself.

Even if we aren't going to require/encourage backlinks to the original lexicon, the editor should pick some entries which highlight the theme, so that everybody (the editor and oldtimers and newbies) start from roughly the same point. (Really, this is just another approach to what goes into any new lexicon: Defining the playspace.) So, we'd pick a bunch of relevant entries (including General Absolutivity (http://www.respectstartstomorrow.com/oceanwiki/GeneralAbsolutivity), Mary Roberts (http://www.respectstartstomorrow.com/oceanwiki/Roberts%2CMary), and so on).

Hm. At this point, contrary to my "it depends" above, I can't see much downside to requiring/encouraging inter-lexicon links. With some caveats:

• There will probably still be some newcomers, especially those new to lexicons in general, who will by shy about backlinking to the original lexicon. So we shouldn't require these backlinks, at least not in the first few rounds.


• I don't think we should ever sacrifice intra-lexicon connectivity to gain inter-lexicon connectivity. Thus, I'll propose that the standard "one back, two forward" requirement remain as-is, and specifically should mean within the new lexicon. There should also be an additional backlink to a relevant entry in the previous lexicon. Thus, a first round entry will have two forward/shadow links within the new lexicon, and (assuming the author is comfortable) one backlink to the original lexicon; all subsequent entries will have two forward/shadow links, one backlink within the new lexicon, and one backlink to the original lexicon.

Thinking about it, I don't know that the backlinks to the original lexicon must be to one of the subset of highlighted entries (though they often will be). I do think that they should be required to be related to the focus of the new lexicon. If someone finds a connection between the lexicons that's relevant to the new focus but wasn't in the original list of highlighted entries, they should go ahead and make that link anyway; this seems to keep with the decentralized/do-whatever-you-want spirit of the lexicon game.

[sben.livejournal.com]

I suspect that a big chunk of the cumbersomeness (cumbersomosity?) would be for new contributors who hadn't contributed to the previous one. In which case, old-timers would be required (or strongly encouraged) to make a second "official" backlink pointing to the previous lexicon (alongside their first "official" intra-lexicon backlink), while newcomers could skip or include the second backlink as they're comfortable.

Another way to narrow it down would be to narrow down the allowable legitimate inter-lexicon backlinks -- i.e. "only backlink to the same round" (so a Lexicon 2 ABC entry could only backlink to Lexicon 1 ABC), or "only backlink to one of these 20 entries that I want us to focus on for this lexicon", or something. This would help newcomers contribute and backlink without getting crushed by the weight of the previous lexicon.

Like Jere, I'm thinking aloud here.