The KneeQuickie still exists [Discussion]

[Neek]

So I've been absent from the board and conlangery in general. My most recent project, Pontic Kurian, has taken on a pause as I start to work on a series of naming languages for a bronze-age fantasy story I've been desiring to work on. Part of my absence has to do with the fact that I'd rather produce stories than backdressing. There's nothing wrong with conlangery. I love it as a hobby, but my motivations have shifted. As well, I've family and life to attend to.

That being said, there's one thing I've noticed: Participation in the KneeQuickie is pretty much non-existent. I'd like to change that. I don't just pay for hosting because I love being vain. I like to think that the KQ can be an excellent resource for conlangers and conworlders. Yes, the site has had some issues. The great Spammening was a solid breath of mustard gas that about killed the KneeQuickie. Since then, we switched to a new registration process which requires manual approval, and that also crippled interest. I've been lackluster in porting over old articles as well, though from time to time I work on a few.

So, I'm here to say it again.

THE KNEEQUICKIE STILL EXISTS

The KneeQuickie doesn't solely exist as a place for you to dump your conlang information. It's also a place to provide conlang and conworld resources. These would be topics to help language makers and world builders to produce better content, and act as more than introductory overviews. What can the KQ do to be a better service? And barring that, is there any real interest in using the KQ at all? Let's discuss this.

[Haplogy]

THe main thing I always used KQ for was the Correspondence Library, which, for whatever reason, seems to've been emptied a while ago.

[Neek]

It hasn't. The correspondence library still exists in the pre-Spammening archive. It needs to be ported over to the new wiki, which I should be able to do soon. Here's a quick link for reference: http://www.kneequickie.com/archive/The_ ... ce_Library

[WeepingElf]

I think the main reasons for the demise of KneeQuickie are two: the various downfalls it has experienced (I remember at least two), and the existence and vitality of FrathWiki. Few people maintain pages on both; myself, for instance, I prefer FrathWiki, and put my stuff there.

[Matrix]

There is also Anthologica, which is my repository of choice. And then there are yet other sites that I can't name off the top of my head.

[GreenBowTie]

i use anthologi.ca too, although it's been down for a couple of days

[Travis B.]

i use anthologi.ca too, although it's been down for a couple of days

Try dynamic.anthologi.ca. That works right now.

[GreenBowTie]

! thanks!

[Neek]

@WeepingElf, few people, if any, utilize the KneeQuickie anymore. I think I somehow cranked out 2.6 GB of bandwidth this month, and most of that was through webcrawlers, not living people and users. To be blunt, it's a sad state of affairs if I want to keep the KQ alive. I'm glad there are resources that are available to users that aren't Wikia, rendered absolutely unusable by invasive advertisements.

@GreenBowTie, Anthologi.ca! I completely forgot about them!

I think, at the end of the day, I'm not trying to steal anyone away from their favored platform. I'd rather focus less on people's own IP -- there's so many better platforms for that than MediaWiki. Instead, I want to move towards providing resources and information to conlangers and conworlders, but I think Anthologi.ca does a better job at that than I could possibly try.

[Pabappa]

Yeah sorry. I was getting embarrassed when I went to recent changes and found nothing but me for over a month. I had been a FrathWiki member since 2007, but I only moved over recently because I felt the KQ might not last much longer. I was even getting a bit embarrassed about making up most of the recent changes feed over there, too, but right now it seems to be shared by several other people.

I think what i liked most about the KQ at its peak was the cooperative projects. Unlike many conworld related websites it wasnt just one person posting his own conlangs etc which would be never edited, and in all likelihood never read, by other editors. If we could get the cooperative atmosphere back Im sure the KQ will do very well. As it is now, I know nobody's reading my stuff on FrathWiki either, and the only reason Im posting it at all is because I can get to the site from my cellphone and thus read/edit when Im on the road. So my presence doesnt really mean much for anyone right now ... Im sure if that if I moved back to the KQ, or posted on both sites equally, it wouldnt bring any other people over.

Thank you, though, for keeping the site online for such a long time and not asking for financial help. I definitely have appreciated it.

[Tropylium]

I'm guessing one problem ended up being that there never was a very clear division fo work between KQ and Frathwiki (and other places); they regardless had slightly different functionality etc., which in principle could have been leveraged. But at this point, it seems that that ship has sailed.

[Neek]

Eh, I'm not looking to compete with Frath. They've got their thing going with that awful ziggurat logo which is plastered across conlanging continuum. I'm more interested in just providing a hub for conlanging and linguistic information, as well as hosting information to whoever wants it. I'm not pulling one way or the other, and part of this post was a self-promotion attempt at giving the word that the KQ is still operational and maintained.

[gestaltist]

that awful ziggurat logo

KneeQuickie’s logo isn’t exactly pretty, either, you know...

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

that awful ziggurat logo

KneeQuickie’s logo isn’t exactly pretty, either, you know...

It is IMHO a poorly-drawn humanoid penguin. But I don't expect everyone to be an artist.

[jal]

Well, I've never visited the KneeQuicky much, or Frathwiki for that matter, so I'm not sure what it's meant for. Also, putting stuff on a platform I do not control I find a bit dangerous. No offence Neek, but I don't know how good you are with backupping :).


JAL

[Torco]

yeah, I find it difficult to justify to myself as well: I mean, most of the stuff is just text anyway, and taking stuff that's hosted on google servers and putting them on the KQ, which I have like a vague sense that it has went down in the past... I'm not sure I can find a reason for such a change, to be totally honest.

[Pabappa]

Interestingly FrathWIki has now crashed and thats why Ive always saved my pages to my computer as HTML on both wikis. Nothing is forever,

[Torco]

sure some things are forever: big megacorp hosting that lives in some huuuge petabyte datacenters :V

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Interestingly FrathWIki has now crashed and thats why Ive always saved my pages to my computer as HTML on both wikis. Nothing is forever,

How did you do that?

[Pabappa]

Manually. Just clicking "Save page as..." every few edits. Its a good emergency measure, but it doesnt actually save the wikitext, so i cant transfer it to another wiki and even the internal links dont work. Nevertheless, Im glad I was paranoid enough to do this because I have spent the last 6 hrs or so writing about yet another war in my conwolrld, and I wouldnt have been able to do it if I didnt have http://www.frathwiki.com/Babakiam baacked up on my PC.

[alynnidalar]

sure some things are forever: big megacorp hosting that lives in some huuuge petabyte datacenters :V

Even big companies can do dumb stuff with their data centers. Them being huge and having tons of servers only makes it less likely they'll lose your data, but it's not impossible. Always have multiple backups!

[Neek]

Well, I've never visited the KneeQuicky much, or Frathwiki for that matter, so I'm not sure what it's meant for. Also, putting stuff on a platform I do not control I find a bit dangerous. No offence Neek, but I don't know how good you are with backupping .


JAL

This is fair (I say three months after the fact). I kept monthly backups, but as activity dropped off I went to quarterly. Now I'm at semiannual backups, if only out of time constraints in my personal life. Which are about to open up a little. Yay! Getting back into conlanging.

[Pole, the]

Manually. Just clicking "Save page as..." every few edits. Its a good emergency measure, but it doesnt actually save the wikitext, so i cant transfer it to another wiki and even the internal links dont work. Nevertheless, Im glad I was paranoid enough to do this because I have spent the last 6 hrs or so writing about yet another war in my conwolrld, and I wouldnt have been able to do it if I didnt have http://www.frathwiki.com/Babakiam baacked up on my PC.

I think there's an easier way to do so:
http://www.frathwiki.com/Special:Export

[Viktor77]

Well, Neek, if ever you do close Kneequickie (which I use BTW), then please warn us because I sometimes get lazy about saving my information there to my computer after edits.

[Neek]

I will, Viktor. I don't see myself doing that anytime soon, though, even if it gets virtually zero use.