TLS reaches 500 articles

Hey everyone,

TLS is going to reach 500 published articles on the front page very soon - we're currently at 497. I think we should mark the occasion. I'm just not sure how.

One idea I had was that we could choose one particularly exceptional article from the 500 - preferably one that came before last summer's redesign - and publish it again. Except this time around we'd edit the article to make it feel more professionally written - a lot of old articles were written in a very informal style, with "I" instead of "we", in-jokes and so on, which was fine for the time, but doesn't fit so well now - update it with any new information if necessary, put together some awesome graphics for it and present it as the best of our archives.

That would require a fair amount of work, though, and it would obviously require the consent of the original author, if they're still around. So I'm open to other ideas.

We could publish some statistics on our articles, like which games have been written about the most, how many articles we've published in each month or year, the ten articles with the most comments (no surprises for guessing what's number one), and so on. That would be much easier to put together.

There's no reason why it should be my final decision, of course, as I defer to both our admins and Content Manager. I just thought I'd throw out a couple of ideas in the hope of getting some more in return What would you like to see?

If re-writing an article would be too much work (which I wouldn't mind helping with, if author/site staff are ok with, I love editing and the like), you could at least link to a few that really showcase our site/member contributions. I also like your ideas about highlighting some statistics.

I definitely think highlighting some of the member contributions from over the years would be a great idea. Polishing them isn't a terrible idea either if the original author agrees.

Also, given what our most viewed article is, it would be really appropriate timing if I could get a certain revised edition of an article I'm working on finished. I'm so close now.

I think it should be about me and how great I am /contributive member

Splintered said:

I think it should be about me and how great I am /contributive member

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this.


Also, great justice, . We definitely should do a looking back kinda deal, mostly about the website, the content, the evolution thereof (if any), the professionalization we've been going through lately, the widening subjects and formats (podcasts / audio things, weekly roundups to name a few), and how awesome Splintered is.

use the opportunity to announce a change of direction to 'splintered fan site'

Hodor said:

Also, great justice, . We definitely should do a looking back kinda deal, mostly about the website, the content, the evolution thereof (if any), the professionalization we've been going through lately, the widening subjects and formats (podcasts / audio things, weekly roundups to name a few), and how awesome Splintered is.

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That would be awesome, but someone other than me would have to write most of it, as I haven't been around all that long, in the grand scheme of things I only mention that because *cough* I've written 15 of our 22 articles in 2013 so far, or 17 including the ones that Jiro and Ghost X helped me to put together. I'll still chip in with graphics and whatever else is needed, though.

498 now. In other words, not long until we need to have our 500th article ready to go. Would anyone be willing to write a brief history of TLS, as Yop described? It doesn't have to be just one person doing it, by any means. Like I said, I'll definitely help where I can.

I nominate Tres, Ryu or Mako for this task. Or anyone who has contributed to the front page since its early days really

Featurette on the history of TLS and/or rewritten standout article - but which article? There should be a poll.

I think there should probably be multiple writers for the "history of" article. I'm definitely willing to play a role, but as a reflection of the fact that TLS has been a community endeavour from the beginning, I think it needs to have the voice of the community.

There are a number of people I can think of who should have a hand in it, both from the earliest days and the past year and a half. In fact, the best thing I can think of is to have one of us introduce the topic, and then have a lot of comments from users talking about their time with the site, how they have seen it change, what their feelings are about TLS then versus now, where they would like to see it go -- stuff like that.

Certainly there should be a unifying voice, though, going over the big changes that we have seen along the way. Perhaps there could be a section on each major development in the site's history -- its beginnings as an attempt to be what ACF should have been, with the 10th Anniversary Ultimania stuff reposted here; the introduction of the audiobooks and commentaries; the spearheading of the site redesign that brought more awesome people to the forefront; the ongoing translation efforts (truly, that will never be a complete project); a word or two on the LTD shenanigans since those articles have been so highly viewed; the recent introduction of the Weekly Roundup and monthly podcast; article series that have really stood out like Shademp's "Unused Text" series, S and G's summaries of stuff players outside Japan may have missed, Force's look at the final dungeons of the FF series or Mog's look at the towns of FFVII; and that would still leave room to highlight some awesome stand-alone articles.

Comments from the community could then be inserted between each section.

Yeah, I'm liking this idea. Any other takers?

As for reworking a classic article, a poll would be a good idea for that, yeah.

Hawkeye said:

Certainly there should be a unifying voice, though, going over the big changes that we have seen along the way. Perhaps there could be a section on each major development in the site's history -- its beginnings as an attempt to be what ACF should have been, with the 10th Anniversary Ultimania stuff reposted here; the introduction of the audiobooks and commentaries; the spearheading of the site redesign that brought more awesome people to the forefront; the ongoing translation efforts (truly, that will never be a complete project); a word or two on the LTD shenanigans since those articles have been so highly viewed; the recent introduction of the Weekly Roundup and monthly podcast; article series that have really stood out like Shademp's "Unused Text" series, S and G's summaries of stuff players outside Japan may have missed, Force's look at the final dungeons of the FF series or Mog's look at the towns of FFVII; and that would still leave room to highlight some awesome stand-alone articles.

Comments from the community could then be inserted between each section.

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In a word: perfect. Will you be our unifying voice?

Oh, what the hell. I guess I could do it if there aren't any objections.

Any suggestions on what order those sections should be in? Or ideas for pictures?

Hawkeye said:

Or ideas for pictures?

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If you don't want to worry about the pictures, leave them to me I'll put them together once you've written a draft of the article.

Sounds great. Thanks, dude. =) For some reason, I hate deciding on pictures.


To everyone interested in having their comments included in the article:
Go ahead and start thinking about what you would like to say. The sooner you can get those comments to me, the better. I'm looking at putting this up in a couple of weeks, perhaps in place of our usual Weekly Roundup for that week.

If you have your comments prepared, go ahead and send them to me via PM or e-mail me at [email protected]. Mention what name you would like to be credited as; whether screenname or real name. If you don't mention what you would prefer, I'll just choose based on what I think you're best known as around the site.

Anyone and everyone who wants to comment is eligible, whether you've been here four years or four months. In fact, I would like a wide array of tenure across contributors for this.

Don't concern yourself with length either. I may end up editing things for space or content where necessary, but just say whatever you would like. Comment on things like how long you have been visiting the site, what drew you here, what made you stay, what you have seen change, what you have appreciated ( or not appreciated) about those changes, what you hope TheLifestream.net becomes, etc.

By the way, if it helps with your brainstorming at all, I'm probably going to entitle the piece "500 articles later: TheLifestream.net looks back."

Shademp changed one of his posts to a page (if you don't understand the distinction, well, join the club), so we're back at 497 now. That's probably no bad thing; we can have two more articles before the 500th, at least one of which will be a weekly roundup, most likely published on Monday

I would definitely be up for having a comment included, my years on this site have been interesting and I come to care for the site and many of the people here.

Well, I would love to have a word or two from you. =)

Flintlock said:

Shademp changed one of his posts to a page (if you don't understand the distinction, well, join the club), so we're back at 497 now.

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The distinction is that Posts appears in the News history, Pages do not. Posts also have comments at the bottom, but Pages do not. Many of the so-called index pages are not posts, such as Guide Book Translations, Essays & Analysis, Site Goals, Social Networks etc.

I take the liberty of changing my Unused Text articles from Post to Page because I want them to look more neat, without comments. The downside of course is that they will not appear in the news history. Except for the publication of Part 7 and Part 8, because I made a Newspost that links to those two new Pages.

To avoid deleting part of our news history, I guess what I could is simply create a new version of each article. The Unused Text "Post" for each update can remain, only I have them link to the newly made Unused Text "Page" which has the actual content. That way the number count in the news history does not go down. Although that means I will have to update some links...

I admit that this is needlessly much work for the purpose of making the UT articles look "neat", but I have an obsessive personality and I will do what I desire with my own articles.


Maybe one thing is worth questioning though. Should article count only be based on news history, or should it also include the number of published Pages?

EDIT: Another example, I (or rather, Prince Lex) published a single Newspost about the Toshiba DVD, which then in turn linked to two Pages which do not appear in the News history, the Review and the Comparison Analysis. These Pages also do not use tags.

Shademp said:

The distinction is that Posts appears in the News history, Pages do not. Posts also have comments at the bottom, but Pages do not. Many of the so-called index pages are not posts, such as Guide Book Translations, Essays & Analysis, Site Goals, Social Networks etc.

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That much I knew, but I always wondered why we didn't want certain articles - beyond category indexes and the like - appearing on our news feed. A good example was Jiro's Biggs and Wedge article from a while back. It was published as a page, and then simply mentioned in that week's roundup. It probably deserved more exposure than that, which it would have got had it been published as a post. I suppose publishing multi-article projects as pages makes some sense, but we should post regular news bulletins when it has been updated to a significant degree in that case, otherwise nobody will see it, and what's the point of publishing anything that nobody will see?

IIRC we can disable comments for individual articles, so that alone needn't be a reason not to publish something as a post.

Anyway, we're at 498 now, thanks to the latest weekly roundup. I want to make a comment for the 500th article, but I'm completely at a loss for what to say. I don't want my comment to be just "TLS is the best, yay"; I'd like to be more objective than that, even critical if necessary, but then who am I to say anything about our history when I haven't been here for most of it?

You've been here for a very important part of it, are an important part of it, and I will not be doing an article if you don't have some comments in there. =P

If there's a significant page being posted then there should be a news post about it, but I'd rather it be discussed first. Information pages like those in the Franchise Guide are inappropriate to feature as a front page news post. The translations, community creations, opinion pieces, Dissections etc that get their own pages should have a news update. Reviews and actual news should get "Posts" only.

We're at 499 now. Better get working on the 500th article Tres. It needs to be finished and up before the next roundup.

I'm probably going to do it as the 501st article. Makes more sense as a look back at 500 that way.

Vaan said:

We're at 499 now. Better get working on the 500th article Tres. It needs to be finished and up before the next roundup.

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Sorry, Matt, but who are you to say when it needs to be up? Tres said he's handling it, so let him handle it. You say "better get working" as if he hasn't done anything yet, but you have no idea if that's true. As it happens, he already asked me if it could be the 501th article, and I said that it was fine.

I don't mean to sound overly defensive, but I think it's a bit strange of you to say something like that when you're not a contributor to the front page yourself. Of course, if you want to be, then I wholeheartedly encourage you to write something. We're always willing to publish pieces written by members of our community.

Just want to remind everyone who wants to have comments included in the 500th article to get them to me. So far, only three folks have.