Question Displaying the First Generation Canon Stories

Does anyone else think that it would be useful to the readers if the individual pieces of First Generation Canon Content were displayed in an order conforming to the date(s) upon which the individual stories suppossedly occurred, rather than the date(s) upon which they were downloaded to the site?

This arrangement would allow readers to enjoy the Whateley universe saga in a synergistic way which would naturally link the individual stories together, forming a "chain" which was ever so much greater than it's parts.

I first learned of Whateley many years after it had begun and after the forward progress of the First Generation stories had seemingly ground to a halt. I was able to read them all in a chronological order reflecting the progress of the overall story rather than the dates upon which the individual stories were published. This option would be a nice one to present to your new fans.

Keep up the good work, guys and girls. Thank you for your stories.

It's being worked on. The fanfiction section where they were being posted originally before making them public was getting rather crowded, so Kristin threw them on to get them out there.
When she has a bit more free time she'll fix the dates.

Its a problem of access, the fan fiction authors are helping by copying the stories into the system, but we don't have the admin access to manually change them dates, so they go in with our names and the dates we moved them.

Kristin then needs to manually change everything, buts she's had a busy month with work and Valentine very obviously didn't and as he had eight pages of stories copied into the FanFiction section, making it hard on those trying to actually write fan fiction to edit their stuff

Kristin took pity on us and did a quick move of the stories to the proper canon section of the site, but still hasn't had the time to go and change all the dates and stuff to be correct.

Good arguments can be made for many different listing orders for the stories, Horrid. Some folks like to read the stories in chronological order of events while others like to go by the original release dates. Still others like to sort by Character or by Author, and those are just four ways that I can think of from the top of my head. It is almost impossible to please everyone when compiling a catalogue of so many stories in one single list. Even if the list were to be made as a database where the order could be sorted by your own preferences there would still be someone who felt that they couldn't sort for the exact category that they wanted!

There were several attempts at a suggested reading order in the old forums and every single one came up with a different order! Part of the trouble stemmed from the fact that the original batch of stories that launched the whole Whateley Universe all overlapped as they each followed one particular viewpoint. When you then consider that at least one major character lost their author and was then taken up by another, who needed to ret-con almost the whole of that character's existing stories in order to fit their work in properly with the other authors works that had continued on in the meantime, you have the makings of a real mess when trying to make a reading order that makes sense for everybody.

Kristin is, I believe, still bringing over material from the old site as well as managing this site, answering questions and making comments all while still holding down a paying job (which gets especially busy at this time of year). May I respectfully suggest that we let her finish up the transfers and de-bugging the niggles of this new site before we start pushing for any particular order for the various story listings.

John.

EDIT:- Blast I've been ninja'd with a far better explanation! JB.

Notice that I stopped when they weren't being moved, and I finished Diane's stories. Other author's aren't as prolific with story parts, so it should be less crowded from now on.

That's OK, I picked up the slack and decided to play around with the images options to,see if I could migrate over the stories with cover art

Oh, I copied it in again and linked in the copies I made, sorry about that. Is there a way for me to delete it?

Kristin Darken wrote: doubt it... delete is generally considered a super user privilege in joomla. and even then, delete is just a category that no one can see. taking out the trash is a nightmare around here.

Just give it to Jobe, then it will take itself out.

Going back to the original topic...

While yes, one could make an argument for ordering the stories by internal chronology rather than release date, it is not bereft of troubles.

The first one is that sometimes it is hard to tell if a story happens "before" another. I mean, there might be one story that covers an entire week... and another that covers only Wednesday. The long one BEGINS first, but the other ENDS first. Which should prevail?

Also, spoilers... in parallel narratives, there might be scenes seen from both points of view. Whichever is shown first will be a "spoiler" for the other. To take the extreme example, all of the Ayla 1-4 stories were written long after the other canon stories describing the same events. They were written *assuming* that the reader had already read those other stories, so they didn't expect a lot of those would be surprises (e.g., the events of "Bottle a Jinn"). If you go strictly by internal dates and read the Ayla stories first, the impact of those other (Jade/Fey/Tennyo/whatever) stories will be diminished a lot.

Finally, there are stories which are DESIGNED to be read out of strictly chronology. I mean, if you went by chronology, the first Whateley story you read should be "Forging Anew", which takes part entirely before the Sundering. That is not the best starting point by any measure.

Listing the stories by release date has a series of points going for it:

1. There's an objective way to determine ordering, with no opinion involved and no flame wars possible. THIS IS NOT A SMALL MATTER.
2. Spoiler issues and out-of-order chronology were usually dealt with back when the stories were released.
3. Finally -- and this is ALSO more important than you might think -- new releases are EASY TO FIND, since they are always on the top of the list.

Is there a place for an alternate chronology? Sure. The Forums and the Wiki are here for this sort of thing. The people who maintain the List of Canon Stories page at the Wiki took care to make it sortable in various ways -- including release date and internal date.

I read through the stories originally by the reader preferred order on the old site and i found it largely coherent, the stories do overlap a fair bit but it made it easier to keep track of all the events as i went through.

What could be down (depending on the limits of the website), is tag the stories by their Author, POV characters, their initial upload date and an in-universe relevance date. Then have a list sorting option so the user gets some choice.

The in-universe relevance date would be tricky but it could work like this: place the story at its relevant point in the timeline either based on the stories Whateley start date (minus flashbacks) or in the case of flashbacks the date in the story where its story becomes relevant to overall story (or the date of whoever is having the flashback is actually situated e.g. if there was a story of Nikki in 2007 having a flashback of the sundering, the story would be dated at the 2007 date).

Also i would like to thank Kristen and all the people uploading and organising stories on the new site. You guys are the real heroes!

Hi, it is me, horrid. The one who opened up was apparently a big can of worms here.

First off, gosh, kristen and all the cabal guys work very hard and in retrospect it was dumb and mean of me to suggest another chore for her.

Second, wow, Sir lee, you make a super great point about the "Sundering" story. I never thought of that. All you forum guys are smart!

Anyway, there is a page of the Whateley Academy Wiki that has all the stories in internal storyline chrono order. I don't know if it is still up but i downloaded it to my computer years ago and the links are still good. That was where I got the idea.

Anyway, i have begun reading all the old stories in their in-story chrono order, at least the one the wiki page had for them. i am working on Christmas Elves vs Hekate and the Syndicate at present, also known as Jade conquers the Martians.

I can not express how much enjoyment this stuff has given me. I apologize for seeming to try to add to your load, kristen. Hoenestly, I was not trying to imply impatience. i figured this idea of mine could be implemented when you guys have figured out how to monetarize Whateley. You could have your interns working in your palatial offices do it. Keep it up! One of these days you will be bigger than Disney!

Love you love you love you happy new year xxx ooo

and any other stories like this, that show vastly different eras within the WU.

Why not the Gen 3 category for them? Since Gen3 is proposed for non campus stories anyway.

This would then be the place for even same era stories set completely off campus, with no intent to put them on campus.
( a fanfic that fits canon yet is not on campus could be placed there as a canon story. )

edit to add:

Baker's Dozen is one Gen 1 canon story that could be in the Gen 3 category. There is at least one other story that can be moved there even though it fits within the GEO arc.

It's something to consider -- a category to highlight entries which are not Gen1/Gen2 per se, but part of the general background setting. (But not called "Gen3", please, which I think would be misleading; perhaps "NoGen" or "Gen0" (as in "Gen-zero") would be better, but I'm not terribly enamorated with those either).

Note that we are not tagging _just_ stories with those; there are characters and other sorts of entries which are clearly either Gen1 or Gen2 but not both, and should be tagged accordingly. OTOH, there might be things/characters/concepts which have active roles (not background roles) in both Gen1 and Gen2 and therefore legitimately "belong" to both -- for instance, if Carson is still Headmistress she would be both a Gen1 and a Gen2 character, and would get both tags.

But stuff like powers writeups? Background villains that only got mentions? I think they don't deserve being tagged. They are just... background. I mean, we never actually saw Deicide in an active role; he is as much "background filler" as, say, the concept of Devising. I wouldn't tag him with either Gen1 or Gen2 for just getting a mention. Now. if he actually appears in a story (and not as a characters in the simulators), that's a different matter.

There is a list of Canon Stories which pretty much meets all the needs I felt existed for a list of stories in internal storyline chronological order.

It is located on the web at crystalhall.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Canon_Stories .

By rights I should give credit where credit is due to the creator of this list, who is also a prolic contributor of some really good Whateley Academy Universe Fan Fiction.

However, I am stupidly unable to locate the name of this fine scholar who tirelessly labored to make this woderful document.

It is a good bet that one of the bright people who contribute to these Forums will provide the name of this person who so generously contributed his or her time and effort to fashion it.

Horrid wrote: It is a good bet that one of the bright people who contribute to these Forums will provide the name of this person who so generously contributed his or her time and effort to fashion it.

Use the History Page, accessed by clicking the dropdown menu of the Edit Button (Click the down arrow of the Edit button) and you get editing history: crystalhall.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Canon_Stories?action=history

And the page starter is Mittfh, with help from someone named Addiab, and more help from Sir Lee, XaltatunOfAcheron, Selenae and everyone else who appears in the 500+ entries.

When i first found WU, i was following the stories by Author, and found some of them a little confusing, as they discussed events that took place in stories that i hadn't read yet.

One of the most useful things i found in the forums was the Timeline graphic that tied them all together, showing how they ran chronologically in relation to each other.

I've still got it saved, if it hasn't been rescued from the old forums.

Please let me know if it's needed.

Mister D wrote: One of the most useful things i found in the forums was the Timeline graphic that tied them all together, showing how they ran chronologically in relation to each other.

I've still got it saved, if it hasn't been rescued from the old forums.

Please let me know if it's needed.

Oh! I wanna see! PM me if you're willing to share!

I've just checked my archive and the last version of the graphic made by OtherEric and or Xaltatun seems to be from March 2014. It's a very impressive piece of work but it must be a right bitch to keep updated. I should think that is the reason that it wasn't updated very regularly.

John.

I vaguely recall it was using some sort of script to generate the html used to make the page.

Malady: The PM system doesn't allow sending attachments, and sensibly, the forum software doesn't allow posting attachments that are html format, as that would be another source of security nightmares.

Drop me a line with an email addy i can send it to.

Or, if one of the site admin's wants it to look at first, then give me a shout.

Sir Lee wrote: Also, spoilers... in parallel narratives, there might be scenes seen from both points of view. Whichever is shown first will be a "spoiler" for the other. To take the extreme example, all of the Ayla 1-4 stories were written long after the other canon stories describing the same events. They were written *assuming* that the reader had already read those other stories, so they didn't expect a lot of those would be surprises (e.g., the events of "Bottle a Jinn"). If you go strictly by internal dates and read the Ayla stories first, the impact of those other (Jade/Fey/Tennyo/whatever) stories will be diminished a lot.

Actually, I read the canon the first time in reader-preference order and Ayls 1-4 don't spoil events in the other POV stories that much as Ayla is very good at glossing over stuff he finds weird. Yes, you see the Alpha battle early, but nothing about it is spoiled since you don't understand that Jinn is knocked unconscious when Jann is absorbed by Tansy. For example. Ayla's stories are barely teasers for the other stories.

OTOH, now I'm reading the stories in release order and I'll admit there's a certain organic feel to how the continuity builds in this order. If someone were to ask me what order to read in, I'd say release order. The only downside is Jade and Chaka disappear so fast in release order.

I'm the mad fool who's largely responsible for the current state of the Wiki's List of Canon Stories. While I didn't create the initial page, I seem to have acquired the role of primary maintainer and have added much of the preamble text as well as several additional fields (Other Date, Timeline, Word Count - possibly even Read First).

As stories get ported over to Wikia, I'm (gradually) updating their links and settling on a single release date for each installment. Most stories go into the 'Dated Stories' section, while those set at indeterminate periods in time sit in the 'Undated Stories' section (as for obvious reasons, they can't be sorted by in-universe start/end dates).

The default sort is by in-universe end date - if you want a comprehensive list of everything released (including Undated stories) in release order, Kristin's list here will eventually be the best option.

Suggestions for improvements are always welcome - except where it's adding another column - I've already reduced the font size slightly to squeeze all the existing columns within the maximum width allowable by Wikia without generating ugly scrollbars.