First Legend posted on New Mernac site

Well, the first Story at the new home of www.mernac.com has been published!

Stranger in the Traddlebow Arms

Ugg, what a lot of work just to get it up. I have about 500 more (already written) to go up from the old site. Not all the old content will be published there is close to 1,000. Some of it was marginal… at best.

I do, however, expect that publishing will become quicker and quicker. Much of what took so long for the first one was putting together some structure and format. Not just for that story but for all future stories to come. Templates and patterns and that sort of thing. Not done yet. Not by a long shot. Will continue it tonight…. Still mostly formatting stuff. I expect I will be in the structure and formatting stage for a few weeks. Sighs… wish I could do this full time… but there is that eating thing. – One day.

I have decided not to go full steam ahead on adding content (though I am really, really, REALLY temped to… to give me a sense of accomplishment). This time I am going to practice what I preach. I always said that all stories need to be inter-connected and each need to be referenced in a previous story before being published. So as I add Content, it will all start with the Stranger story. To add another it must be referenced in that, and so on and so on. Link created, then story. Then move on from there.

Besides, one of the things I learned from the first Mernac site was putting things up too quickly or starting projects too haphazardly. A character flaw of mine, I am afraid. Well, in any case, I will try and curtail it as much as possible. That said, I should note that I chose the Wiki format for Mernac to somewhat play to that character flaw. This is the forth application I have played with (and dozens were looked at) since the old Mernac site by playing with I mean mocking up a site. My criteria for testing was to use something well established which could be used WITHOUT custom programming. Custom programming and little budget was part of the death of the old Mernac. It also needed to be Open source, so when it the far future, when there is a core group of programmers in the “Mernacian” family, customization could slowly be implemented… But until that date, most of everything we need can be accomplish with the Mediawiki platform. This by the way is the exact same platform and software that is used to run www.Wikipedia.org … so it is certainly robust enough.

But those were not the only reason I chose the Wiki format. As I said, it plays to my character flaw of posting something that still needs to be edited, updated. The Old Mernacians may remember what I called my “raw writing”. I think I will stay away from the pure “raw” stuff, but there are times when something with only a quick draft or two will need to be added so I (or someone else) con complete something else. By the way, in this blog, don’t expect revisions like you can expect on the Mernac site. I consider this more therepy and brainstorming and organization than needing to be perfectly written.

One of the things that Mernac sometime needs is a reverences to some information… even before all the information is available (think sapling) or it is needed before it is properly edited. This is exactly what Wikimedia is designed to do. Allow progressive updates by multiple users while still historically saving all the previous versions. That and it is somewhat easy to navigate through… something the old Mernac was notoriously bad at. Yes, I am quite pleased with it. My only fear is that some users may find the adding content and editing a bit intimidating… need to think of how to put their mind at rest so they will just contribute without being afraid they will do it “Wrong”.

Guess the best way is to just tell them. Note to self: add how to submit “just do it” page to my to do list. Hmmm, this diary thing is good. Helps me organize and focus while still allowing me to ramble…

I must say, my mood has improved drastically since I started back working on Mernac. There was something missing in my life for the last year (actually a bit longer).

That missing thing was Mernac.

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