With the implementation of member boards, I find it fascinating to watch how everyone chooses to organize their character biographies and other related threads. I, personally, am a bit of an organizational freak (tables, I love tables, everyone should use tables!) and I’ve noticed that I tend to go about things a lot differently from the rest of Absit Omen!
I have noticed that the majority of people who have a vast amount of characters (including secondaries I’m sitting on twelve at the moment) tend to spring for character childboards because they make it easier to keep all of your character’s information in one place. Unlike the masses- I’ve chosen to keep everything in my member board, instead of branching it all out.
My board has master thread lists and networks- one thread to maintain the lists/networks of all of my characters. That way everything is in one place, making it easier to maintain my list of active threads and it also makes it easier for others to reply to my network. Instead of clicking into multiple places to post in networks, a person can post for as many or as few of my character networks in a single reply to a single thread. I was very excited about this whenever we made the change!
Of course that leaves the matter of all character-related information. What I have essentially done at this point is come up with a standard table of contents for a character biography thread- which includes: Original Biography, Network, Thread History, Plot Tracking, Schedule, Career Info/Special Titles/Special Ability, Family Information, Adoptables, Arithmancy, Astrology, Character Home, Place Holder, Place Holder. The network, thread history, and adoptables link to separate master-threads. I find that this level of organization in each bio gives me plenty of room to elaborate on my characters. By adding in a couple of place holders, it gives me the option of adding more in later.
The reason I go ahead and post the placeholders instead of replying as I become “inspired” is to maintain all of my biographies in alphabetical order. Our board organizes threads by last post, meaning that the order in which you post replies to your threads in your member board dictates the order they display. I have strategically replied to all of mine in such a way as to put all of my character biographies in alphabetical order by first name. When they fall out of alphabetical order it drives me just a little batty.
Since not everyone is a huge fan of organizing or coding, I’ve even posted “spines” (empty BBCode forms that can be customized) for each specific section of my board. I’m more than okay with others using them. I’ve noticed that my network spine has been used quite often across the board- which I love, because it makes everything so pretty. (TABLES I LOVE TABLES.)
Ideally my board would be ordered:
-Table of Contents
-Master Thread List
-Master Network
-Adoptables
-Spines
-Bios
However it is a bit inconvenient to maintain proper order of stickied topics. At this point I would have to delete the topics and re-post them in reverse order to ensure that the threads were in the right order. Chances are, after I finish filling out the spines for my characters, I’ll end up doing that.
I often wonder if other members of AO are equally obsessive about the organization of their member or character boards. How do other people on the board do things? Is there a rhyme or reason to the order? Are you indifferent? Do you find my organization techniques a little obsessive? I think it would be a great way to get some insight into how our brains works by realizing the different ways that people organize their own little corner of Absit Omen.
I tend to love lists rather than tables myself, but that’s down to ‘tables’ in web design having a different meaning to me.
May sound daft, but in InvisionFree/InvisionPower when the admin creates a forum there is the option to set default sort order to most recent posted, or A-Z, Z-A order according to subject title. Is there not the same in SMF that can be applied to Thea’s board?
I have pinned the three biographies of mine to the top of my list, and store extra information about them within the biography threads like a blog rather than in a set order requiring placeholders. I use networks less these days, most of my plotting comes in directly from PMs, AIM or cbox chattering rather than formal responses in those threads.
The plot tracking are the lists I use the most. I am hung up on getting my characters in correct canon, referencing recent events, especially as I’m often concurrently writing in threads that may be a week or two apart, and have to ensure I don’t influence them incorrectly. I’ve just expanded this to some notes on plots as in the last week I’ve gone from a few dormant ones long term to several evenings of plotting with Mai, Armiece, Ash and Thea over AIM (others invited to join me, I don’t bite)
I am less bothered about how people present the info on their characters in their member boards because I use the little icons (formerly the text links) under the avatars for everyone. I’m forever ferreting to cross check my details about different characters that way, and jumping back and forth on plot lists on mine using them.
Yay, Thea! You posted! I’m really happy you did.
I was one of the Curator originally against the Member Board idea, but man – I’m so glad I was wrong! The other staff convinced me and the implementation has been amazing! I’m so happy that they’ve allowed members to manage their impressive imaginations so much better than before.
I’m pretty organized off-AO (with my own excel sheets and timelines and photo galleries) but I’ve started doing more on-site. The wiki’s pretty key for me keeping track of stuff. I’m also pretty excited for the message icons that help us set threads apart at a glance.
It would be cool to find a modification that lets us re-order stickied topics. Hmm…
Awesome blog post!
I keep everything in one Member Board as well. I only have five characters, so I sticky all the biographies and keep them up at the top, and I choose the bio icon to make the threads more noticeable. Within each biography thread, I have posts that contain the character’s thread list, astrological info, class schedule, and any special titles or abilities.
Below the biographies in my member board, I have a plot tracking/network thread for most of my characters. I combine plot tracking and networking because the plots and character connections are all related. People can either PM me or reply to the character’s plot tracking/network thread if they want to plot.
Below the bios and the plot tracking/network threads, I have a thread for Fauna’s residence, which doesn’t really fit into the RP boards, and there are too many pictures for it to fit into her bio. All in all, it’s pretty simple, and I’ve only got 10 threads to keep track of in my member board.
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