[FEEDBACK] Worldbuilding/Zone Articles

[skinstealer]

we're looking into revamping how we as a team handle the morbit zone articles in order to help accessibility/readability for y'all as readers, as well as manageability/workload for us as writers. they are currently Very information-dense, making them a lot of work to write, and potentially challenging to read. we have observed that while they can be very informative and interesting for some, they can be pretty intimidating for others. we can definitely rehouse some of this information in more interesting and accessible formats, specifically in-universe and/or exploratory materials, such as:

-tour guides
-climate reports
-in-universe materials such as posters, pieces of media, etc
-interviews
-"trading cards"; think illustrations paired with informational blurbs. card subjects could include things like specific places, objects, people, events, customs - think like trainer cards in the pokemon tcg. a library of these little modules of information could make for an easily expandable storytelling/immersion aid.
-[12:04 PM] molasses: explorable stuff
[12:05 PM] molasses: that could be derived from the cards idea actually, just connecting them
[12:05 PM] molasses: like, putting landmarks in a city, putting items in landmarks, then you could click through like youre exploring the place

we do not plan on eliminating the zone articles as they are now entirely, but we do plan on reworking them quite a bit depending on how this and our own internal meeting(s) go. what we want to know from yall is:

-how do you use/interact with the zone articles? how useful are they to you in your own worldbuilding endeavors/understanding of morbit/etc
-how accessible are the zone articles currently- and how can we improve them?
-what sections of the zone articles are the most interesting to you? what sections of the zone articles are the ones you want to see expanded on the most?
-what other forms of portrayals of this information (both in-universe and otherwise) would be most interesting to you?

please discuss away as much as you like and give us As Much Feedback as possible, this is really important to us and while we are definitely making the final calls ourselves for what lines up with our vision and what works for our workload, we want to hear what your thoughts are as well.

[BlueCrowned]

In-universe stuff would be Great but I'd hate to see the articles go away. However like I mentioned on discord it could be beneficial to you to present it in a story or tour format and let the fanbase create the wiki articles, considering that's how most fan wikis work! But I have to say I have really enjoyed digging in and really getting to know the zones as you've released some of these recent articles, they've helped me have a way better understanding of life on Morbit/in Taverne than I did before you started releasing those. It's hard to be trying to learn more for character creation and RP purposes and wind up on a blank page all the time and I don't have confidence in my RP if I don't have a resource to check the lore as needed.

[dediles]

The zone articles as they are are really great imo. yeah they're info dense, but like, that's just par for the course with wiki stuff. If I had to pick something to be expanded, it would be geography/wildlife. I'd love in universe stuff too, so long as they don't take anything away from the usual articles, having the information in context would be super useful.

[Shifter55]

There is a lot here, so please PM me if you need clarification.


-how do you use/interact with the zone articles? how useful are they to you in your own worldbuilding endeavors/understanding of morbit/etc
When reading the zone articles: I'm often cross referencing information both on the forums and in other parts of the article, though as of Precipice's article being released the Pinterest boards are being browsed for better understanding of aesthetic.
Generally I use them to get a better understanding of organisation (government/cultural) in the zones, and as a counterbalance to my tendency to visualise simpler, utilitarian aesthetics that fit a broader range of species without need for specialisation. Lack of real understanding and confidence in fashion/design aesthetics is a problem I have.
For my own worldbuilding they are useful for stimulating internal discussion for working out details about government, biomes, and inter-zone relations in particular. They also help get an idea of where I would place characters in the regions of team members.

-how accessible are the zone articles currently
(While writing this I was looking at the Hearth article in particular)
For accessibility, I feel as though there is less issues with info-density and more with the sequencing of information in each segment, as I am used to the style of Wikipedia and the SCP foundation I find some of the content, especially in Origin/History and Climate/Geography to be out of order, such as detailing historical events before development of the zone, and seasons before geography and general features of the zone, etc...
Arrangement of information feels like it is best left to the community though, and I encourage readers to experiment with moving around the paragraphs in local documents to find what feels best for them. I don't know if this is a feature, but bullet points or tables could be used to present some info more cleanly.
I see this issue as being more a consequence of the articles being so young, and the need to get the information out into the open where it can be discussed and refined. If you look at niche vs. general wikipedia.org articles you can see a similar thing happening.

-how can we improve them?
One thing you could do to improve the articles, is possibly using media and captioning more? This would break up the paragraphs and possibly give readers something to focus on while/after reading a section, and also support the article through examples and compressing descriptions to a comment or diagram. I see this as being useful for the Wildlife, Culture, and Aesthetic sections in particular to give ideas of scale and specific items involved.
My main concern with doing this is the extra work, and IP rights, though there would also be increased bandwidth needed. Given Pinterest boards are used for a lot of the visual aesthetics, what would be required to make media for the wiki that is at minimum royalty-free and doesn't require much labour or mechanical skill on the end of the creator?
Molasses' work with Grandma seems applicable to this, as colour and pattern overlays on RL photos and collage could be used to produce something very different in feel from the source images.

-what sections of the zone articles are the most interesting to you? what sections of the zone articles are the ones you want to see expanded on the most?
Locations, Aesthetic, and Culture are the most interesting sections to me, and I often use them the most for cross-referencing when reading other parts of the articles, I think Wildlife could be expanded on by the team, and I'ld be willing to fund bounty boards for this in the second quarter of next year.
History also needs work, but that is due to a desire to re-organise how it is presented, and I feel that most of the work for that should be left to the community as stated earlier.

-what other forms of portrayals of this information (both in-universe and otherwise) would be most interesting to you?
Currently I feel there is a gap between character-focused storytelling and the worldbuilding articles, that results in a lack of practical and evocative description of Morbit.
To a degree this is what motivates my interest in the Winds' and Comorant's projects, and I feel doing descriptions of scenes and daily life that ties into worldbuilding without need for a character focus could help fill that gap. I do not read all the works on here, and in particular avoid quests and RP, so I'm certain there may be things related to this that I am missing.


Of the five things you listed for other formats, I would especially like to see Tour Guides, Cards, and Interviews, though audience participation is a struggle for me.
In-universe material seems like it would combine well with other works, as background elements or further explanation of aesthetics and fashion, but I really like the idea of Cards for doing things on a similar scale to TCP illustration, and as an alternative in terms of work and variety of choice. I don't see the need for any game mechanics, but they could be useful for character generation in a similar way to drawing hands of cards in Tarot (and possibly tie into Como's tarot themes for more abstract cards).

[skinstealer]

couple things



1) messing around with testing photo editing- with some collage work and running royalty free photos through grandma we might be able to make some assets we can use on the wiki pages themselves along with illustrations and more delicately made assets

2) this feedback is great, keep it coming- but also, something to keep in mind is that we ARE trying to also gear this stuff towards newcomers as well, and i should have mentioned that in the first post. how do you think we can help with that?

[dediles]

I'm not sure you can gear this stuff to newcomers. It's wiki stuff, lore, backstory. you only dig into this stuff once you're really engaged. The only thing I can think of would be to like, summerize. have a codex or something, with the most important bits from each article or thread along with a visual aid or two and make it like a virtual book maybe. then provide links to the full thing for people that want to dive deeper. I dunno, that's the only Idea I got, but it seems like it would just make more work.

[BlueCrowned]

I adore the photo edits, these would go great on zone articles!

As a newcomer myself, being able to dig into the articles and consume as much info about the zones as possible has been a lot of fun for me, but idk if other new people will feel the same; I'm autistic and tend to go REALLY hard with new special interests. I think a quick guide to Morbit kind of guide for projects that explains where to find them on the forums would be helpful but ultimately has nothing to do with the wiki. But that and filled out wiki pages are what I missed the most when I initially joined, it took me a good bit to figure out how to browse projects in the forums.

[Shifter55]

I think this photo edit works quite well, and downscaling to 15% resolution still produces a legible image to me. On Discord it was mentioned that the Bluster article was recently changed to have image edits like this which can be viewed here.
I think this works quite well for breaking up the article and giving examples for the descriptions, and the images could be repositioned and resized depending of how much whitespace people want.

I'm not sure how typical my experience was to being introduced to Morbit, but I found Waterlogged and the Oneshots regarding deities and daily life to be useful. The older wiki helped with some of the worldbuilding concepts, but it was out of date at the time I read through it. I hope the new wiki helps with introducing the setting and projects, and provides a base for audience participation.
One thing I'm wondering about is how to have a presence on other sites and the internet in general where people are browsing content. The oneshots that demonstrate what issues you want to portray, and the way the setting explores them, seem useful for that. The 2018 holiday special felt good for non-word of mouth introduction. Maybe something to consider next year.

Also, what timescales are you planning on making changes and reworks over? Since this is happening over Christmas I feel it has put added pressure on the team, and while the quick turnaround is helpful for testing examples, is it straining the internal organisation of the team?
As you've mentioned on Discord, the wiki project is a first for many team members, and involves a lot of information to be written down, do you think you are giving yourselves enough time to research how others have accomplished similar things before you make decisions on priorities?

[skinstealer]

after some talks with the team and a lot of thinking on my own, here's the new schedule being put into place starting january 1st (with the caveat that i can and will take breaks any day where i'm not feeling it or i'm too sick to work):

[BlueCrowned]

If this works for you this looks like a great schedule Very nice balance

[Shifter55]

I hope this schedule works out for you, don't be afraid to change it up if you are finding multiple days in a row of any project is too stressful.