...We should create a Corporation.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

As someone who loses their shit fairly frequently, I don't see how JaronK did so. I do question his integrity, but I don't see how he "lost his shit".

[fectin]

I hate JaronK as much as the next guy, but Frank is outright lying

This is not uncommon. The idea that two people cannot come up with similar (or even the same) ideas without one copying the other is, well, horseshit. Alfred Russel Wallace totally cribbed off of Darwin, right?

Unsure if sarcasm.

No he didn't. Also see Leibniz vs. Newton on calculus, Scheele vs. Priestly on oxygen, and a surprising number of other examples.

[fectin]

Okay here's what I'm planning ... probably never going to finish it, but nice to have plans.

I'm planning to setup a Calenco repository and port a mix of PF, 3.5 and 3 SRDs to Docbook with it, with selected bits of Tome material. For things like classes, spells, magic items, skills and feats I'm going to try to use structured data ... (concretely each entry of these would have a relaxng schema). Which gets transformed to output formats with a stylesheet.

if I ever get far enough that I could see others wanting to contribute I'll open it up for people to create branches, but the stylesheets will stay private and the only output I'd allow users to generate with them would be HTML (although obviously anyone would be free to export the XML and create their own stylesheets as well).

Then I could get some cheap/free fantasy art and print out a pretty dual column PDF to sell (Docbook can't do fancy things like flow text around graphics etc, but for an amateur RPG PDF it should be good enough).

What do you think?

Good god, that's an open source IETM viewer! Kill it with fire before it infects something.

[MfA]

Had to look that up ... apart from telling me that it meant Interactive Electronic Technical Manual Wikipedia was nice enough to inform me that "The Richard Mark VII Missile is the most commonly used carrier of the IETM manuals.". I take it you don't like Docbook?

So what document format would you suggest and with what existing collaborative editing framework?

Wiki's are fine for producing websites ... but it's never going to make for anything decent looking in print without a ton of extra work. While a Docbook version could be transformed to a decent website and a decent book from a single source. Wiki's also will also promote unstructured text ... when you really want to have all the inherently structured data actually edited and stored as such, also the ability to build things like indices and glossarys automatically.

PS. it's not really a viewer.

[fectin]

It looks startlingly similar to SDL and XySoft's viewers. Those would be a terrible, terrible platform, and the standards they work with are unsuited for this project. The layout in the screenshots had me fooled.

I'm still not really sure what the advantage is over using the wiki for planning and google docs for writing up the sections. What am I missing?

[MfA]

It's a versioned repository of a XML project with tracks dependencies (xinclude) to make a nice hierarchical tree view of the content. Think of it as a CVS, but for a Docbook book. I hope you see the value of versioning for a collaborative project?

As for the advantage of Docbook ... Google Docs does not support index generation for one, only ToC. More advanced word processors get closer to what you need to write a real book, but the WYSIWYG aspect will still just get in the way ... might as well let people hand in plain text and have a single editor put it in the right place in the right formatting, that's what you're going to end up doing anyway. Also these kind of formats are almost impossible to parse to turn them into a decent website. There are so many reasons to write books in mark up document format like Latex or Docbook, google them.

Also as I said I want to get rid of all the fucking text/table mismatches resulting from manually typing identical text in multiple places which occur in RPG books ... so I want to do things like auto-generate class tables. At which point you're looking at XML and schema aware editors for entry. So Docbook becomes the natural choice over Latex.

[fectin]

Agreed, that or DITA. But they're still overkill. You're going to have to do the "single editor arranging everything" stuff either way (it just depends whether you say he's a layout or schema editor), and the main reason you'd want a thoroughly xml-tagged dataset is if you were planning on reusing parts of it ("applicability"), or were doing wierd interfaces to software.

[MfA]

It would make creating spell cards easier, integration with things like Maptools or PCGen too.

Really though my main wish is to have something which can automatically generate a decent website AND a decent document from a single source ... and which has near the ease of editing of a Wiki without someone having to redo layout after each edit.

[MfA]

Nice example of what someone who is actually good at this sort of stuff (ie. not me) can do with Docbook. He was even nice enough to share the sources and scripts to build that.

[Caedrus]

I hate JaronK as much as the next guy, but Frank is outright lying, and his own "source" proves it. Anyone in doubt needs only read that page and, um, a single link. Not exactly hard.

Yep...

Caedrus/OneWingAngel copypastaed some of my writing into his super special secret forum and that did not bother me at all. The fact that he threw a temper tantrum and started accusing people of being in a giant cabal to destroy his special game forum and tarnish his good name kind of vexed me. But that had nothing to do with him putting essays of mine into his forums via Ctrl-V.

-Username17

*Sigh* This is a blatant falsehood, and I'm pretty sure you know it. And frankly, for someone who "isn't bothered at all," this seems downright trollish.

And here I thought this nonsense was resolved long ago, but here I see you dragging up your own dirty laundry. Neutral people from the Den were granted access to the records of my site and they echoed that, indeed, none of your essays were copied there. The whole claim was entirely made up, and indeed you were never even able to mention what essay or essays were supposedly "copied."

And I'm not sure what your big objection is to me speaking with people through a private forum. It was no more "super secret" than if I had an IM chat with some friends.

It really seems like you're just mudslinging at me for no apparent reason, which is strange, since I don't think I've ever done anything but show you respect.

The accusations you are making have long since been proven false. Of course, I'm sure you'll call pointing that out "having a temper tantrum" and otherwise sling insults at me. And call me pointing out that those statements are false as "thinking a secret cabal is out to get me." I might expect this kind of shit from the idiots at GitP or Paizo, but I have no idea why you're doing it, Frank.

I'm starting to think you just hastily believed something some random person told you since the idea of someone copying you flattered you, and then felt that admitting you made an error would simply be unacceptable to your ego.

I never used any of your works, and this was proven ages ago. If you want to falsely claim I did, either show some bloody evidence or get over yourself already, please. While I know you'll say that it doesn't matter or something like that, I hope you have the maturity to respect that I *do* care about you casually spreading a lie about me. My writing is important to me and I work hard on creating my own content. I never took anything from you, so stop saying I did. I think this is a pretty reasonable request.

[Aryxbez]

Caedrus/OneWingAngel copypastaed some of my writing into his super special secret forum and that did not bother me at all. The fact that he threw a temper tantrum and started accusing people of being in a giant cabal to destroy his special game forum and tarnish his good name kind of vexed me. But that had nothing to do with him putting essays of mine into his forums via Ctrl-V.

-Username17

I was actually part of that "super special secret forum" that you speak of. In the ideas presented there, I don't recall seeing any stuff that was of your writing. Also looked at the past conversation about this, and believe the "tantrum" was due to no one showing any proof of what was being copied/ripped or what have you. Seemed Frank, and ubernoob, kept saying how it was ripped, can't access it due to private forum crap. Yet they wouldn't specify what that was, claiming work they had looked at as evidence, yet when asked, had refused to show it???

Well I think it would be nice to hear whatever the hell it was that Caedrus had apparently taken of Frank's Writing. Otherwise, seems like Frank's just bringing up the past with nothing to base it on.

As for about this whole giant "cabal" thing, I've no clue on that one.

However, the whole corporation idea, of everyone all banding together Justice League/Avengers/Planeteers style, is something I support! As hell, this forum is pretty awesome compared to the others, think with people of such skill here, that we would've made 5th edition (or whatever next iteration to be called) helluva long time ago. Seems main things stopping this, is basically Life, being truly busy by their jobs and such. Otherwise hope it wouldn't be about ego's, I'm pretty sure we all know our favored medias enough to know, that banding together to a common cause is much better than bickering amongst each other getting nothing done. After all, if Frank, K, and others, have the time to post on here as often as they do, sounds to me could gear that time more towards making the next super awesome Fantasy RPG.

[RobbyPants]

Caedrus/OneWingAngel copypastaed some of my writing into his super special secret forum and that did not bother me at all. The fact that he threw a temper tantrum and started accusing people of being in a giant cabal to destroy his special game forum and tarnish his good name kind of vexed me. But that had nothing to do with him putting essays of mine into his forums via Ctrl-V.

-Username17

The accusations you are making have long since been proven false.

I think both sides are inflating their positions a bit. I don't remember Caedrus accusing people of trying to ruin him so much as getting angry at being accused of stealing Frank's work. This seems perfectly reasonable to get pissed about.

However, I didn't think the accusations were proven false, so much as they were never proven true. For whatever reason, Frank/Uber/Mr. Sinister never actually produced the sections, so it was all super vague. I thought the conclusion of the neutral person who checked it out was something along the lines of not seeing any of Frank's work there, but seeing several posts edited by OW4. Not really conclusive for either side.

[Caedrus]

I don't remember Caedrus accusing people of trying to ruin him so much as getting angry at being accused of stealing Frank's work. This seems perfectly reasonable to get pissed about.

That is exactly what I'm pissed about.

However, I didn't think the accusations were proven false, so much as they were never proven true. For whatever reason, Frank/Uber/Mr. Sinister never actually produced the sections, so it was all super vague. I thought the conclusion of the neutral person who checked it out was something along the lines of not seeing any of Frank's work there, but seeing several posts edited by OW4. Not really conclusive for either side.

Not conclusive? You're like the people who have trouble with the idea of the scientific method because it produces theory, not theorems. Either that or you're just not remembering completely.

Let's review and think about it like a halfway intelligent person for a few seconds, shall we?

-Fact: People edit posts from time to time on a forum. What are you going to say, mfa is hiding plagiarism because he edited a post right before yours? This is not evidence of anything out of the ordinary.
-If essays were stolen from Frank, replies from other people (that, you know, I couldn't bloody edit) would reflect that context in an obvious fashion. Deleting an entire essay and replacing it with something else would make the replies to the topic seem pretty awkward, and that would have been reported.
-Further, if edits were made to hide essays, the dates would correspond to the claims being made. They *don't.*
-There were dozens of members on that forum (for all that Frank emphasizes the "super secret" nonsense just to troll me, I let in pretty much anyone who so much as *asked* to look at it. They're hardly all cronies who would lie on my behalf), and yet the members corroborate me.
-I gave the neutral observer access to the freakin' administrator logs so he could see the history of admin edits on the site. And he came back and told you nothing was up.
-Username17 was never a visitor to my website. Uhhhm... yeah. Therefore, his own claim is at best hearsay.
-Username17 continuously refused to even give a clear allegation. He would not say which "essay" was supposedly plagiarized. You're comparing a person who can't even make a complete claim to a person who's offering full disclosure. Nevermind that others in this thread are claiming Frank did the exact same thing to other people (See Bigode's posts).
-I even made the forum public after that nonsense, since "secrecy" wasn't really an important part of it, as much as Frank likes to add that to his trolling. I just didn't want to be bothered with random trolls or bots registering when it was simply intended for private use, and at that point, keeping the forum private was just attracting Frank's inane trolling on TGD. And yet in the public freakin' forum none of our discussions of our game ideas nothing ever came up that had anything to do with Frank's overglorified essays. This was probably just some vast conspiracy by me to cover everything up, wherein I made some 50 screennames and talked to myself, right?

If that's not enough evidence for you to draw a reasonable conclusion from, then what the heck *is*? Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. So is, you know, the evidence of absence I just listed. Nevermind the concept of burden of proof or anything else an honestly investigative mind might care about.

[RobbyPants]

Not conclusive? You're like the people who have trouble with the idea of the scientific method because it produces theory, not theorems. Either that or you're just not remembering completely.

There's a big difference from someone looking at two sides of an argument, each full of holes and drawing a conclusion, and having one side completely proven false. In general, I agree with you in that there was never any actual proof asserted that you took anything, but I don't think you can say that Frank was proven wrong.

[Caedrus]

There's a big difference from someone looking at two sides of an argument, each full of holes and drawing a conclusion, and having one side completely proven false. In general, I agree with you in that there was never any actual proof asserted that you took anything, but I don't think you can say that Frank was proven wrong.

It surely doesn't look like you're looking at two sides of an argument, since you've not responded to any of the points either side of the argument made, just declared them of equal merit, which is silly.

That's as "Fair and Balanced" as a news network presenting both sides of an argument as inherently having equal merit when they put the random creationist on the bench against an evolutionary scientist.

And of course, it doesn't seem like you plan to answer the perfectly reasonable question "What would you consider conclusive evidence, if this isn't?"

[RobbyPants]

You're not going to drop this until I say I 100% agree with you, are you?

[mean_liar]

It is the internet, after all. No one is ever wrong on the internet.

[RobbyPants]

You're not going to drop this until I say I 100% agree with you, are you?

Yep, dodged the question "What would you consider conclusive evidence" in favor of a childish barb. Typical.

Fairynuff.

I guess the best case would be for Frank to say he was mistaken or that he cannot come up with an example as opposed to accusing and then quickly saying he doesn't care.

The problem is: yes, he could have made a baseless accusation, and yes, you could have quickly ninja-edited anything incriminating out of your forum. There's literally no way anyone can know. So, I'm not saying you did, I'm saying I can't possibly know.


Also, I note that you edited your post above mine three times, at least one of which was after I posted. Now, I'm not accusing you of anything here, but once you start editing things, it becomes impossible to tell what was originally said. I'm not saying you stole from Frank. I'm saying that you can't possibly have a neutral person come into the forum and prove that you didn't. There's no way this can be conclusive, and you're looking at it (understandably) rather one-sided.

[RobbyPants]

Wait. Did he delete his fucking post while I was replying to it? See, you really have to stop doing that. It makes it impossible to carry on a fucking conversation.

[Kaelik]

Welcome to Caedrus. Even when he's probably totally in the right, no one will believe him, because he edits every post a minimum of twelve times, at least once two days later.

Like the JaronK thing, where he accused Caedrus of super editing so well that the forum software forgot it was edited.

That's pretty fucking crazy, but less so because it's Caedrus than anyone else. Because that man has a macro on his keyboard that goes in and edits.

[Caedrus]

Wait. Did he delete his fucking post while I was replying to it?

Heh, I thought at that point that it would be better to drop the conversation rather than post a reply, didn't think you'd be responding to it.

There's literally no way anyone can know.

Sure there is.

So, I'm not saying you did, I'm saying I can't possibly know.

While absolute certainty is a fool's game, you can analyze alternative hypotheses from a probabilistic perspective quite easily.

Now, I'm not accusing you of anything here, but once you start editing things, it becomes impossible to tell what was originally said.

This is not necessarily true in the context of the question at hand, for various reasons, some of which were mentioned above when I suggested thinking about it critically.

For example:
1) Contextual clues. Consider the implications of copying a full essay and then editing it out. The context of the thread would indicate something was up, such as people's responses not fitting in with what was said, etc. If someone posted up Races of War, claimed it as their own, implementing it as part of a larger project with dozens of people involved, and then just changed it so that it no longer resembled any part of Races of War, the context would be conspicuous.
2) Witnesses. People would notice if the meat of a game mechanics post changed.
3) Some forums have administrative logs showing information on edits and such. I made these logs publicly available.
4) Edit timing. IIRC (and I may not, Frank is bringing up old dirty laundry here), this was something Leress (I think? Was the neutral party) actually commented on, saying that none of the edits in question were after Frank made his accusations.
5) As a basic rule in logical reasoning, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

And while one could argue that it's still a *possibility* despite all those things, it is a *less probable* possibility. And of course, there's the other evidence, unrelated to evidence (Such as, you know, Frank never even visiting my site, ever).

Evidence does not give absolute answers, it just points you in a likely direction.

And frankly, believing baseless accusation (e.g. unsupported accusations, which Frank's accusation is) is a bad habit for anyone who wants to find the right answers.

[echoVanguard]

The hardest part of a new system isn't the classes and the skill descriptions. It's the framework, and that's a one person job. It's getting something that you can hang the entire system on, guidelines, etc. Once you have that, honestly writing material is EASY. It's writing that that's the problem - that's Frank's hidden skill that nobody seems to recognize, getting a good framework going.

This caught my attention from all the way back on page 1. What, specifically, defines a framework? It seems like this sort of thing would be hard to pin down, since you have everything from design intent to statistics as part of your mix. I have to wonder how much of design at this level is really intentional, or if people just lucked into a cohesive system.

echo

[CatharzGodfoot]

...nothing to see here...

[RobbyPants]

For example:
1) Contextual clues. Consider the implications of copying a full essay and then editing it out. The context of the thread would indicate something was up, such as people's responses not fitting in with what was said, etc.
2) Witnesses. People would notice if the meat of a game mechanics post changed.
3) Some forums have administrative logs showing information on edits and such. I made these logs publicly available.
4) Edit timing. IIRC (and I may not, Frank is bringing up old dirty laundry here), this was something Leress (I think? Was the neutral party) actually commented on, saying that none of the edits in question were after Frank made his accusations.

#1 and #2 make sense. #3 might not matter if you're an admin or mod, depending on the forum. However, it's #4 where I have to agree with you. I thought that he was saying that there were some edits that made things ambiguous, not that the edits were made before Frank's claim.


If that's the case, then yes, I agree that's conclusive enough, and I retract what I said earlier.

[Caedrus]

Wait. Did he delete his fucking post while I was replying to it? See, you really have to stop doing that. It makes it impossible to carry on a fucking conversation.

Just quote the whole post that you're replying to.

Yeah, please do. I am prone to making edits, but it's never meant to be deceptive or cause confusion. I just often feel a compulsion to elaborate, correct, etc whenever I re-read one of my posts.

For example:
1) Contextual clues. Consider the implications of copying a full essay and then editing it out. The context of the thread would indicate something was up, such as people's responses not fitting in with what was said, etc.
2) Witnesses. People would notice if the meat of a game mechanics post changed.
3) Some forums have administrative logs showing information on edits and such. I made these logs publicly available.
4) Edit timing. IIRC (and I may not, Frank is bringing up old dirty laundry here), this was something Leress (I think? Was the neutral party) actually commented on, saying that none of the edits in question were after Frank made his accusations.

#1 and #2 make sense. #3 might not matter if you're an admin or mod, depending on the forum. However, it's #4 where I have to agree with you. I thought that he was saying that there were some edits that made things ambiguous, not that the edits were made before Frank's claim.

If that's the case, then yes, I agree that's conclusive enough, and I retract what I said earlier.

Cool.