Hi all,
For a while we had a Fan Article Directory, which chanman was kind enough to cultivate over the years. However, he's no longer here, and with the only people able to edit the thread being him or people with mod/admin abilities, it's fallen into disuse- it's so out of date at this point as to be essentially useless. The result has been a couple of times (for me at least) finding that I've put a lot of work into an article like the DI Schmitt or Eyrie only to find that it already exists, and I've spent a lot of time for nothing- or even worse, no article exists for a unit and we just don't realize it (I had this a while back with the Vulcan!).
With that in mind, I'd like to rebuild the directory in a new thread. But as you can imagine, that's a pretty serious undertaking- so in order to make it work as well as possible, I'll need this to be a community effort. Here's how you can be a part!
As with the current thread, permissions for edits are only going to be available for those with mod and admin powers. I'll be taking lead on that front as a result, starting a thread and updating it (more on that later). Updating is going to be a 'first of the month, compile the last month's articles' links and add them to the thread' thing. That part shouldn't be too difficult as an occasional but scheduled event for me to do (and if I'm unavailable I can have someone step in for a bit). What's going to be difficult is compiling the back list- and here's where I want your thoughts.
My plan is to go back several years, but honestly a lot of the older articles are so out of date that we may be better off getting new articles made instead. That may sound a bit cold, and I don't mean any insult to those who wrote the older articles (well, except the ones I did, those I mean dire insult to), it's more that I want to make sure that we have updated info and recent discussion at the forefront. So I'm thinking going back maybe ten years or so, pulling links for those threads, and not more than that. Again, no insult intended- think of it more as an opportunity to get new voices heard.
So here's my thought on this- and it may be controversial, but it'll make it easier for people to find articles, I think. Unlike chanman's system of going chronologically by article date, I'd like to build something based more on book index. So I'll be compiling, for example, TRO:2750's Mechs into a list, and attaching the links for each of those Mechs in order from the book. That means new people (or even us vets) wanting to find an article aren't looking to see when the Mercury was discussed, we just look on the TRO list for the article and go from there. That'll mean an easier index to use in-general- but building it is going to be a bear, with what little spare time I have between day job, family life, and occasional miniature painting. So I need your help.
WHEN this goes live- and it's not even started yet, so don't send me stuff yet!- I'll ask that people give me a hand with finding links for articles so we can start compiling them. These should be the link to the original post for the thread, make sure it's not to a comment somewhere within. What I'll ask is for people to take on parts of a book- so Person A compiles the list for TRO:3055's Inner Sphere stuff, Person B takes on '55s Clan stuff, so on and so forth. If you don't have a link for something, no sweat, it means we have an article needed. Those lists will be sent to me, where I'll build the list in the thread, attach those links you send, and move on to the next part needed. This will be a multi-step process that will require some time to get built, but once it's made it'll be a lot easier to keep up with for me to update, and a lot easier for us all to find what we need.
Questions? Comments? Ideas? Just want to throw a brick at me? I'm hoping to move forward on this starting later this month ideally, and the more people that dive in, the faster it will go and the more accurate our info will be.
EDIT: So here's what I'll need, when we get moving on this shortly. If you volunteer, I'll give you a parameter to work with- say, Clan Mechs of TRO:3050. Once I send that to you (and I'll be working these too, of course!), I'll need you to search for articles on that unit. Go back to 2012, let's say- if you find anything older than that, ignore it. Use the TRO's table of contents as a guide for what you need- find the article link, and send it to me as a list like below:
Dasher: [link here!]
Koshi: [link here!]
Uller: [link here!]
Puma: [link here!]
I'll be able to then compile these together, once they're reorganized, and put up the first iteration of the index. It'll be incomplete at first, over time we'll flesh it out to include everything we've got- Mechs, vehicles, fighters, warships, whatever else, but we'll focus on getting Mech articles done first.
Make sense? Again, this probably won't be organized in the actual index in the format above, it's how I'll break up the research work to people into smaller batches to work on, THEN we'll reorganize it before posting.
Stay tuned, more info coming!
