Good day all you who are fond of Penny's Anmarian Universe.
You are probably aware that I maintain all the Appendix information as well as write a few tales there too.
Well, in the lockdown, I turned my attention to those Appendices, thinking that it would be a great opportunity to maybe tidy some things up, streamline others and so on.
BOY - was that ever an enormous task. Far, far larger than I anticipated.
And it threw up a major question I need to ask you all.
That Index thingy is getting far too large and unwieldy.
I would like to know just how the users of the Index (and indeed all the other Appendix thingies) actually use it/them.
What do YOU look up?
My aim is to identify the areas that are most required. Try to make it all a bit more efficient.
Thank you so very much - in anticipation.
Joolz.
Comments
Organization
Maybe a wiki is in order?
Very slightly helpful
Wikis, in my experience, are only as good as the people who maintain them. In my previous lives and, indeed, presently, I am forced to use several wikis which appear to be the only documentation for certain Open Source products I use. To say that it can be hard to find stuff would be no exaggeration.
Like any good documentation, a wiki requires management by somebody both with the subject knowledge and also who can anticipate the kinds of enquiry likely to be made.
So, I think that what Julia is really asking is, if you use the Appendices, why? How often? What do you go there searching for? I would add that she may have other motivations for this post. I merely write stuff.
Penny
Maintenance of wiki
Well, who else do you plan on doing maintenance? I doubt anybody will be allowed to randomly barge in and update it. I am no expert on wikis but a wiki should be more flexible to implement and adaptable.
I am mainly suggesting it in the sense it can be made more searchable on the user side.
Hmm
Look at most of it, a lot of the time its the timeline, but I know that you update it in spurts to avoid spoilers, the character list i use less so, more because it is hard to figure out where and in what stories specific characters are from, I reference it when I see a character that I don't remember, from time to time. Maps and illustrations, basically any time the subject of logistics, and associated infrastructure comes up.
The chapter and story indexes are fine.
Biggest area that may be able to be made more efficient IMO is when there's a bunch of characters that are traveling together or something to that nature, have them grouped together, for example, the group in JoB that traveled to the capital from Blackstone currently, it's hard to remember whom all is with them, and whom is still in Blackstone
The index
I have read Somewhere Else Entirely and the story of the servant girl who becomes an engineer several times. I've read some of the other stuff too. But I really haven't used the index much. My brain has sufficiently gone to mush in recent years that when I read the stories I'm always coming across references to stuff I can't remember well and there is too much of it for me to bother using the index.
Sorry. I think having an index is a GREAT idea. Especially for anyone writing new stories. But I'm usually not using it myself. Ten years ago I would have been going through that index for every little thing and thoroughly enjoying myself.
I Use the Information Very Infrequently
I looked through the pages just now. My comment in 2014 still applies "Wow! Lots of Work Here". I'm pretty sure I've read all the posted Anmarian tales (SEE itself several times), but I've hardly ever referred to the Anmarian Appendices. The time line which I just looked at for the first time today is cool. The character list is a good reference. I'm not sure how to make it better as it's quite good now. I do recommend that you think about use of the appendices vs. the time you put into them especially the time you would invest in a redo.
People
Between SEE, WMD, VotV, and several other stories; I have to refresh my memory of who is who and where they came from. A more responsive character index would be nice. An index for each character would be nice.
Also, a table of ranks would be nice, especially if it was in column format so you could check equivalencies in ranks. I know exact equivalencies are not possible, what military rank is equal to a prince?? But as there are so many petty royals running around, when a group of lordlings shows up in a combat zone who can command who?
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Thanks for the comment
This was very helpful in overview.
However, I am not at all certain about the detail.
At the moment, in the Index, there exists at the top a row or two of letters. If the character you want starts say with 'J', then simply click on the 'J' in those rows. This will skip you down to a list of each and every name that begins with 'J'. Is this not what you mean by an Index for every character?
Click on the entry for the name you require and you will be whisked away to the section of the Index where a (usually) deeper explanation can be found.
Some of the entries in the name list (which are shown WITHOUT titles) may have more than 1 entry after their name. This is because the character is mentioned in more than one place.
The entire thing is arranged alphabetically within the respective groups.
I hope this helps.
Joolz.
Anmar Appendices
I'm not necessarily a good person to ask for input from, given my current hobby is aiding in fan translations of Japanese Light Novels,,.
With that activity, keeping track of when something first shows up inside the story is very useful. At this late date, I can't see adding that information.
Some method of visually flagging affiliations, but that too seems rather late in the game to attempt.
If there is a specific character string being looked for, the ctrl-f command does bring up an in-page character string search so for those the organization is somewhat irrelevant. If there isn't a specific string, or it's one that isn't being used within the document, things get trickier.
What's the most significant thing about the item? That would tend to drive where it falls classification-wise. The problem then being how one pulls up items by sub-classifications; how are those indicated, and are they command searchable or only visually searchable?
Dunno.
My brain is fried just now, and my reference librarian background is looking at this from the perspective of possible future uses rather than my own use history.
Yours,
John Robert Mead
Maps and overviews
I use the map repository constantly in order to help me visualize and localize the action.
Then some kind of genealogical table of the main actor bloodlines would be very helpful to sort out the relationships. Especially when get into the regions further afield.
The list of chapter links is nice, and I use it every time I reread the universe. It is really nice and helpful to have a ToC of all tales by all authors in a single place.
Though having a "chronological" list of chapter links could really broaden the "knowledge" by reading the epic opus without too much jumping back and forth in the timeline.
The glossary of time-keeping names and concepts is also very helpful. And I do reference it repeatedly when I re-read the universe.
If the timeline was a HTML table or list, I would find it easier to use and reference than as a downloadable PDF from a spreadsheet. But that is my personal opinion and preference.
Thank you for maintaining the appendices. And thank you to all the authors who write these wonderful tales.
Jessica Nicole
I think if ...
... possible a list of the various flora and fauna (different to those we know of) with descriptions
In an early part of SEE you mention a plant (tuba) used for food if I remember the section right and so you didn't have to write paragraphs to explain it in the story you added a note at the end to refer the reader to the 'Appendices' for as full an explanation as possible.
Also
Maps are good as it really does help the reader picture (mentally) the world especially when there are travel sequences