Some recent changes to the core software that we use for the site has finally allowed me to do some more involved changes with the CSS without losing it every time we update the software. I've done some things to make parts of the forums pop a bit more and put some color into the way the site layout goes. I'll be adding and playing around with some additional things as I have time, mostly as an experiment in whether we'll stick with this template or more to something more modern when the next big Joomla update happens (after all, this template is supposed to become obsolete once it does). A completely new template might result in a complete rework out of necessity... or we may want something new due to added features that simply aren't possible in this one.

Activity has started to pick back up as we settle into Fall, though we aren't nearly as active at the moment as we were last winter. It's difficult to tell whether that was a result of all the efforts to move old stuff here from to its new home or something else... obviously, forums discussions boost site activity in general. What sort of things are we missing that would bring people in to chat more often? Contests? Short stories at 20 paces with Halloween themes but set in the WU without using existing canon characters? We could probably arrange for some prizes. Do we need to advertise? Are there similar sites out there with web links that don't mention us? Ask their admin's to include us? Person that gets us the most new traffic as a result of getting added to web comic or blog site link pages wins something? 

While we ponder ideas to increase traffic, you may be happy to hear that tonight's content is the follow up story to Phoenix Spiritus' "One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another's Heel"... it's a piece titled "Life's But a Walking Shadow"  Enjoy!

Banking policies... intrigue me. Things have changed a lot in our economy from when I was young... when getting a paycheck cashed meant going to the bank and getting cash. Of course, you 'could' put your money in a checking account, but checks weren't accepted everywhere and you had to track your spending carefully because a check could sit uncashed for weeks before making it back to your bank and having an effect on your balance. Some people took advantage of that fact, of course, so policies were put in place for insufficient funds and 'bounced' checks.

Today though... banks are digitally connected. Running your debut card at a store both verifies the availability of funds and immediately places a charge on the account. A short period of time is allowed for chargebacks and corrections, but all that information is there. Available. And yet... if you deposit a payroll check to a bank... that information may somehow take days to be verified and your money made available to you? How can this be possible? If a verify from my debut card that there is money available for a purchase... how can a bank be unable to contact another bank via a routing and account number to do the same? Worse... the bank providing those funds for payroll from your company's accounts? Already gone from them. So for some 48-72 hours... funds have left one bank and your employer's accounts... but have not yet arrived in your account at your bank. And sometimes that's the same bank!

Is the money on vacation? Is it sight seeing in Rio? That's a long time for money to travel digitally from bank to bank... and I can't help but wonder who is making a profit off the fact that that money is in transit... somewhere?

Strange banking questions aside... we have a great piece from our newest canon member that's been sitting in review for too long and I'm happy to finally release to the public. This is "One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another's Heel" by Phoenix-Spiritus and like Elrod's "Veni, Vidi, Cutie" it deals with some of the remaining fallout from the end of the Spring semester, Gen 1 side. If you have tissues left, you might want to have them handy.

If you've been following the site news this summer, you probably are already aware that we revamped some of our system and policy for handling what we formerly called fan fiction. As a result, some of our non-canon authors have stepped up and begun the process of using these new systems by posting / self-publishing their WhatIF stories to the site. The eventual goal is to give them some direct access to present their stories on this front page along with the current news (which I hope to expand to include author blogging in addition to my weekly release notes and announcements). For the moment though, while we work out the policies and get the authors trained up in how to use the CMS; keeping track of the new stories will take a little effort. 

The 'quick' method of finding new stuff is to check your left hand side-bar, below the login module. There you should find a list of the "Newest Independent Fiction." These stories (with the most recently added/modified at the top of the list) will take you directly to those stories.The other way to get to them is to go up to the main menu in the upper right, select stories... and then find the submenu at the top of the middle section (right above the center advertisement) and select "Whateley Independent Fiction." That'll open those stories in a blog style format where you see just the title information and the blurb/jacket (if the author created one) or the first couple paragraphs of the story, depending on where the marker is set by the author. To read more of a given story, you can either click on the read more link or follow the story's main link to its own page.

At this time, we have three selections on offer from a few of our community members... and another three (only one of which is a continuation of one of these existing three) in the pipeline getting feedback now. Those will probably make their way to public release sometime in the next week or two. While I don't expect us to jump to have four or five new story segments available every day in the immediate future... we do hope to see a lot more regular release of material, to give you a reason to check in on us more than just on Monday or Tuesday for your weekly fix.

Speaking of that weekly fix though... it has been a little while since we jumped back from our new Gen 2 timeline and advanced things in the original timeline. We do have a few things in the pipeline for that, however, and some planning to do for the new freshman class; but before that, there are one or two... maybe three... things that we need to tie up on the existing stories before we move on to Fall 2007. It was pretty clear that readers weren't happy to wait until September 2007 to see how some of our girls dealt with their sims finals... and that good, because we don't intend to make you wait until then either.

From Elrod, "Veni, Vidi, Cutie" ... a continuation of the Wondercute end of the Spring 2007 semester. Enjoy!

Gonna keep it simple today, so everyone can just snag a story to read while they sit around and enjoy the smell of grilled burgers and munch on potato salad and cole slaw. The latter being one of my favorite picnic-ish things. Not that I mind fresh grilled burgers... or a good hot German potato salad (my mom has this recipe that....)

Anyway... to share for the day, a little Gen 2 piece from Morpheus "The Writing On the Wall" ... this is Part 1 of 3.

Now that the discussion with authors and votes have started us down the road towards a new way to handle non-canon fiction, I'd like to let everyone else in on some of the details and planning. It will probably still be a little while before we get everything worked out and the actual site changes, but here's a sample of what you can expect:

Over the years, we've struggled with some unusual perceptions with regards to the breakdown between canon stories, fan fiction stories, and what those things imply for quality and content. We've always tried to make it clear that the 'official' stance is that there is no definitive measure that canon stories are inherently better quality than those created by fans. We do spend a fair amount of time internally with reviews, edits, and preparing stories to be 'complete' in ways that doesn't always happen with fan fiction... but there is nothing preventing any non-canon author from doing the same and creating stories just as good (or better) than what the canon team does. In fact, the only 'real' distinction between a canon release and non-canon author's contributions is that only the canon release will impact the ongoing plot line of future canon releases... and only a canon release can be considered a definitive measure of how the universe works.

Outside of the Whateley Universe, of course, fan fiction is often considered a lesser form of writing - often just author substitution wish fulfillment or alternate pathway scenes/completion bits. And with comic book fan fic, there are many origin scenes presented as a means to show off a gimmick/character design... that wouldn't meet the traditional scope of a story with character, plot, etc. And some of that attitude/impression cannot be escaped simply because we say otherwise... especially while we use the same words to describe all of it... the good, well researched stories whose only 'flaw' is the author didn't have the inside scoop to the true 'evil' Mary Sue author substitution fan fic.

The solution is that we've decided to give non-canon fiction written for the Whateley Universe a new name. Going forward, it will be called "Whateley Independent Fiction" which may be abbreviated as WhatIF or more simply as IF. Authors of WhatIF can be noted as IFA (IF Authors) or Ifeers (Independent Fictioneers). Within the scope of IF, there will be 'fan fiction' - incomplete stuff more ethusiastic than researched... and there will be solid, complete stories whose only difference from canon stories is that they will not impact the official canon story line (even if they seem to). 

We will also be moving the IF out of the slums of the Forums, where they've been buried for close to a decade. The forum was always an 'easy' way for them to present because it gave them complete control over their material. But it doesn't give them the same level of visibility to readers and it prevents us from using the other site tools for feedback and voting and category tracking/sorting. So we're going to expand the system of IF to a multi-tier system. We're going to open up the ability to post scenes, stories, or whatever writing you want in the Fabrication Lab (even if you are not a promoted author - though you'll still have to be registered with the site). That will be the 'lowest' level of things... and we suspect that it will mostly be used by new writers who don't want the visibility of the whole community until they feel safer. The second tier visible to readers will be similar to how a blog listed story site works (like Stardust or Bigcloset)... where IFA can post at will with any sized story section that they want to do. Daily, or in larger segments, whatever they prefer. If you are curious what that will look like, it will work much as currently clicking on STORIES in the main menu looks (before you select a category list/menu). You'll see each story's header and blurb newest to oldest... or you will be able to go to a master list that will show published dates and so forth. These stories will include the commenting system and the 5 star voting system. And finally, we will have a featured IF system which will be a collection of the 'best' rated stories from the IF archives. We haven't decided officially what conditions will merit a story making this jump but it will be a mark that the story is considered just as good (or better) than the average canon piece.

As an added 'side' measure... we're considering implementing a small graphic 'stamp' to put on each IF piece that reflects of a measure of how close we consider it to canon. Where a '10 out of 10' measure would mean... this story is so close to canon, we could make it canon without more than an hour's clean up. And we'd have a number of 'stamps' all the way down to "This isn't even set in the Whateley Universe... are you sure you don't want this moved to the Library?" There was some suggestion of chibi versions of protagonist characters - Ayla chibi as the details oriented 'nigh canon' stamp and Jade chibi as "This is madness?!" level.

We're also working out a new disclaimer for the IF to add to the option of the old one: The old was refers to the stories as fan fiction so anything goes and includes a link to the main site (here). The new one also includes authorization for us to add any IF story to the main Whateley Academy web site for presentation and Archiving purposes - so no more stories are lost to the interwebs because we don't have authorization to copy/repost them. We'd still be required to take them down if the author asked us to remove them... but it'd keep things from being lost because it was in an old forums and no one had given authorization to repost on a new site.

That's the status for now. Feel free to open a discussion about the plans in the Quad... the IFeers have already discussed a lot of this in their private forums lounge (its where we store the cheap scotch), there's certainly plenty left about the concept to refine detail wise.

Now then... for this week's content release? How about another Gen 2 side story? NeoMagus and Malagua have whipped up a little something they're calling "Myriad Meetings." Here is Part 1 of that piece. Enjoy!