Talk:Conworld

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[edit] Conworld

Hmm. It looks like a good start so far. Nice job!  :P

Some comment/questions though:

Looking at the categories on the main page, I think we should fuse a few together. Conscripting should be merged with Conlanging (as I can already see you have a "writing systems" section in the conlanging one).

Also, what's the difference between "Concultures" and "Consocieties"?

And as for the "Conmusic", "Conart", and "Consports", well, couldn't those be merged into Conculture? Or at least merge Conmusic and Conart.

Also, what will you put in "The Way of Con-" and "Exemplary Conworlds"?

So far so good, though :D

-- Maknas

Ran, you really should leave Conart seperate, just so you can use it as a heading. Even it breaks the flow and structure. It's just that good.
-- Space Dracula

the above was moved from http://spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?p=120771

Yeah, Conscripting and Conmusic should probably be merged into Conlanging and Conart.
As for Consocieties, I was envisioning a sort of "Conpolitics/Coneconomics/Consociety" kind of thing. You know, like how the government is run, social classes, etc etc. Maybe there's a better way of putting that?
Exemplary Conworlds would be a list of well-made conworlds! Almea, for example, would be on the list. And as for the "Way of Con-", I thought of it as a sort of philosophy section. You know, some people make conworlds for fun, some make it to express their views, some make conworlds that are scientifically accurate, some people are freer with magical systems and such. The "Way of Con-" was meant to summarize all of it, as an overview of worldbuilding styles and such. -- Ran 14:40, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and merged the Conmusic and Conscripting sections. -- Maknas 16:08, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Use of Con-

I don't think that each of catogories should begin with Con- as this could scare of newcomers. We should explain the popular usage of the prefix in The way of Con- but limit it's use within the actual articles. --Ingolemo 15:01, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Duly noted... I've added a paragraph of explanation on the Conworld page. How does it look now? -- Ran 15:24, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The paragraph is good but, what I meant was that we should avoid the use of colloquial terms from the ZBB (such as con-whatever or natlang) which would not be understood by anyone who is not from the conworld community. Although we could refer them to the Glossary when such word appear, I don't think the wikibook should require the learning of colloquial terms when constructed whatever and natural language would suffice. --Ingolemo 16:26, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New ToC's

I've went ahead and made some starting Tables of Contents for some of the other sections off the main page. Ran, if you would, you should probably work out the base for the 'Way of Con' and 'Exemplery Conworlds', since I still don't exactly understand what you mean... And is there a way to see all of the new discussions in the ConWorld WikiBook? It's a pain to have to look through each page's Talk Pages. -- Maknas 16:48, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Related Changes might do that. - Circeus
You could always add each page to your watchlist and then check that every so often. --Ingolemo 17:01, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ooh, that works. Thanks! -- Maknas 17:17, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] conmusic

I am willing to write an article on conmusic to publish as a chapter of conarts Markus Miekk-oja 18:12, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Go ahead. Do you want someone to make a ToC for the "Conart" section first? -- Maknas 18:14, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That'd be preferrable, yes. Markus Miekk-oja 19:03, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done. I don't know much about the field, so it's still pretty simple. Just click on the "Music" link in it to start editing. -- Maknas 19:11, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Editing

Just a little suggestion. Please, when you make an edit to a page (excluding Talk pages), please describe the edit you made in the "Summary" box next to the "Save Page" button. This makes it a lot easier to track changes. -- Maknas 20:50, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Conscripting" considered infelicitous

The trouble is that English already has a word "conscript"; as a noun it means a person pressed into service (often against their will), and as a verb it means to press a person into service.

I'd just edit the page except that I don't have a ready substitute. Conorthography? Conwriting? I dunno.

We could say Con-script as the introductory title, and then use conscript everywhere else? I'm fairly sure there won't be much problems--Circeus 22:18, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't see any problem. English already has many such homophones that are easially determined by context (not vs. knot or poor vs. pour). I doubt the average English speaker would be able to confuse con-script and conscript to such an extent (especially as the naming priciples are explained on the front page) -- Ingolemo 12:58, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Conhistory, Fiction and the Lexicon RPG

I am not sure I see a great distinction between 'conhistory' and 'writing fiction set in your conworld'. Perhaps the latter topic would be better incorporated into the former. Seems to me the Lexicon RPG (Google it if it means nothing to you) would be an interesting topic to cover as it provides a tool for creating conhistory in a usable form and is a game activity in its own right.

I'm afraid I don't quite see your point. For me, conhistory and writing fiction are distinct subjects. The major difference between the two is the time; Conhistory takes place during the past and Fiction is set in the present.
I googled for "the Lexicon RPG" but I'm afraid I don't quite understand what this has to do with conhistory - Ingolemo 14:37, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Anybody there?

Hey there, I just found this wikibook and it's awesome, but I noticed that there hasn't been any discussion here since '04. Are people still writing? --Ajallan 17:12, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. 195.189.142.115 (talk) 15:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Where is everyone? Everything you've made so far is perfect. Does anyone still work on this? -- 78.0.230.128 (talk) 18:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki Link to wikia:Conworld and wikia:Conlang

Hello there,

perhaps it would be great to interlink Wikipedia articles and Wikia sites like these with this project:

Are there Templates for beautified interwiki Links for the above (WP and Wikia) on en.wikibooks? -- 80.136.66.147 (talk) 09:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What about even more ambitious conworlding projects?

So far this set of wikibooks are pretty good in covering more common con-world projects (e.g., creating a language, a culture, maps, or even planets), but what about even more complex or ambitious projects?

For example, I know of a project involving a universe where there aren't stars and galaxies and planets, but spherical worlds formed by the emanation of something called 'ley'.

One of my past personal projects also involved the creation of an entire universe complete with its own version of the Big Bang, its own physics and elementary particles (if it can be called that; those "elements" are completely unlike particles in the real world), resulting in a complex structure only a small part of which is inhabited. It was much fun to start with completely different premises than the real universe and discover the consequences of your choices as you go. (The resulting world was also extremely foreign, completely unlike "our" universe in almost every respect.)

And what about fantasy worlds where there aren't planets and galaxies as such, but planes (astral planes?) and other large-scale structures? It would be nice to discuss these different approaches to con-universe structure. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.181.115.4 (talk • contribs) 00:32, 8 July 2008.

[edit] Objectives of this series

I've rewritten the paragraph of the main page about what this series of books is for. It seemed too easy to infer, from the old paragraph, that each of these books is just a short summary of a subject for people too lazy to read an actual book on that subject — which would be a slap in the face to both the books and the readers. Poor form, to suggest either that the readers are lazy, or that if they aren't lazy they shouldn't bother with these books. Poor policy, to tell prospective authors of these books that they should aim low. I realize I'm setting the bar for these books almost impossibly high, but some of these proposed books should be able to reach that high — and in the long run, IMO, the ones that can't probably shouldn't be kept. Although it might not actually be practical to ask that the entire series eventually become Featured Books, it still seems that a book with no hope of ever achieving that status is underjustified.

The question I set out to answer was, what would make it worthwhile to read these books as something other than scaled-down versions of good introductory books on their subjects? Otherwise, the thing to do would be to make sure wikibooks has good introductory books on all these subjects. Before tackling the paragraph here I honed my thoughts on the subproblem of objectives for the Conlang wikibook, which is after all a particularly separable part of the series. (Conlanging is often logically, as well as historically, prior to conworlding: building languages doesn't require any peripheral constructions, while at the same time it tends to motivate and inspire them, as with Tolkien who created languages and then found that to make the languages sufficiently rich he had to build an entire cosmos to go around them.) But a good introductory book on linguistics isn't going to be a good introduction to conlanging (unless, perhaps, deliberately designed from that perspective), and in fact the Conlang wikibook has had to struggle continuously against the linguistics-book impulse. Pi zero (talk) 18:38, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

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