[Spoilers for all books] Theories index

[Tami Seven]

It's a very difficult problem. Scientists spent hundreds of years trying to solve it, so we are not going to find a perfect solution anyway.

 The problem is that many theories fit the same lifecycle: they start as a single sentence in a thread, then there are many discussion threads of increasingly high quality, then comes a discussion which is so good that all the info on the subject is gathered, then comes a reference thread which wrap-up everything in a single post. For the Blackstaff, the entire cycle took less than three weeks. Who should we credit?

I credited no one, as you can see, for the most basic assumption (Blackstaff is MW's walking stick), but I gave credit for derivative theories (MW is Death, Blackstaff=raven Banner). That's a very subjective process, any idea on how to improve it is welcome.

My ego isn't so great that I would need to have my name attached to a theory.  If others feel the same way it might be best to not use names but keep links to the most relevant discussions on it. 

[Elegast]

Omogh is of the same species a of giant as gog and magog
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,35845.15.html

Could you start a thread about it?

Gog and Magog are also biblical figures, but I'm too ignorant about them to rate the theory without seeing the reaction of the community.

As a rule, if your theory is new or obscure, plz start a thread about it, or it's really hard for me to estimate if it's a good or not.

[Elegast]

My ego isn't so great that I would need to have my name attached to a theory.

But some theories are clearly the creation of a single poster. The Molly=Mab of Ms Duck being the most famous example.

Concerning ego, mine is big enough to be proud of my Maeve theory.

[wizard nelson]

'bag man' is a firbolg. source^-wizard nelson
i'm proud of this one, if its wrong i'll eat my fedora

Added.^Elegast

[wizard nelson]

black court vampires have gone beyond the outer gates.source^-wizard nelson

Added.^Elegast

[Ms Duck]

Oh, lemebeclear, I think you are doing a great job, I just wanted to point all that out for the sake of all the citation suggestions that have been coming out.

This is a huge project that you are taking on, and the index framework that you have hashed out works really well (some committee input did take place, but you are the executor, and get to take ownership of the awesomeness of the results )

agreed !

a lot of these theories are very much joint efforts; Molly/Mab may have come out of me having way too much starbucks icecream one night but without the input of Landing, Piotr and the two of you it never would have become remotely coherent or plausible.

maybe when making theories, a citaiton/ thanks note would be appropriate?

[Cenphx]

Hey Serack-having read your comment about the citation suggesion, of which ive made a couple , I was wondering if you and/or Elegast could provide some direction on what would be helpful suggestions for us forum-ites to make? I remember that for the Reference Collection thread nominations, there were some critieria you all used to decide which theories/threads would count? Could you outline some criteria you would like us to use here? That might help keep our suggestions to the most useful ones.

[Serack]

Hey Serack-having read your comment about the citation suggesion, of which ive made a couple , I was wondering if you and/or Elegast could provide some direction on what would be helpful suggestions for us forum-ites to make? I remember that for the Reference Collection thread nominations, there were some critieria you all used to decide which theories/threads would count? Could you outline some criteria you would like us to use here? That might help keep our suggestions to the most useful ones.

Well, the whole DFRC concept is a living idea that still evolves, and we have 2 new great curators that have already started adding some of their own touch to it much to its benefit!

I am going to answer this question in two ways. 

First is a some emphasis on technical formatting of suggestions for this index:
From experience, what Elegast is doing here is a great deal of work, and the closest you can come to making a suggestion something that he can straight copy/paste into the index the better.  He also has the ability to pull the code directly from your post, so posting suggestions in accordance with his original guidelines really goes a long way in making things work well for him:

A theory is expected to come as a one sentence proposition (it can be right or wrong).

BAD:
Why has Harry build LC? (That's not a statement, it can't be right or wrong)

GOOD:
 A. A. Summers is Aurora's daughter (Slate as the father?)

BETTER: add a link to the theory
A. A. Summers is Aurora's daughter (Slate as the father?) (source)

BEST: add a link to the profile of the owner of the theory
A. A. Summers is Aurora's daughter (Slate as the father?) (source)^{-GrandPanjandrum}

Also, Elegast didn't mention it, but the reason why some sources have "* Date" tacked on is to emphasize to the Special Collections Division that these topics are still subject to autodelete monster consumption.  It is general policy to only move topics to the DFRC once they are "mature" and are not subject to active or feverent discussion/contribution.  (Hence this index we are currently discussing being in the "Spoilers" section as of this comment).  This keeps the bulk of active discussion in the Spoilers section, and keeps the DFRC set appart as a more quiet reference section with dusty tomes.  (I don't think I make a very hot librarian though...  I guess I could shoot for a Rupert Giles look though)

The second part of my answer to this question is a little less concrete.  I can't say what type of ideas/posts belong indexed because my limited impression of what makes a good theory post keeps getting stretched beyond my imagination by so many awesome contributions to the forums. 

However, I will say that if you remember a discussion regarding a theory that took place within the past year or so (or is contained in the DFRC or other archives) do your best to try to dig it up (the advanced search function buried in the search tab near the top left of the page is pretty powerful once you get good at tweaking your searches, although some of the recent forum code updates have caused it to throw lots of false hits that fill up the 25 hit limit crowding out the good ones).  And if you can't find a topic that you think does the subject justice, then I love seeing people create their own

Also, I posted a few suggestions for building a topic that is intended to serve as a major theory/reference thread here when the DFRC first was created

Edit:  it looks as though Elegast did an excellent job of answering this question from another (probably more pertinant) angle in a post below.

[Serack]

Woops, I hit post on the wrong topic, having multiple ones up at once... I reserve the right to add a few extra thoughts to the above post, since I wasn't quite finished with it

[Elegast]

I remember that for the Reference Collection thread nominations, there were some critieria you all used to decide which theories/threads would count?

We should check with Serack, who is the founder/owner the Reference Collection, but to my knowledge there is no formalized criteria to include threads on the DFRC.

The fundamental question is: do we want to save the thread from the auto-deletion monster?

In practice, the threads being kept fall in five categories:

Theory
A thread where a new theory is explained.
Example: Serack's Lash theory

Discusion
That's a thread where the OP is often weak, but the following replies are strong.
Example: conversation about the Blackstaff

Fun
Those are just fun threads.
Example:Knnn's code

Factual references
those threads try to collect all the fact on an aspect of the DF
Example: the legendary timeline of Priscillie

References about theories
A thread where the OP try to gather all the knowledge about a theory in a single post. (often the knowledge is spread in many thread, with no coherent organisation/structure).
Example: my Cowl = Kemmler thread.


Concerning the threads I would like to see: I'm hoping someone will make a post about the different possibilities concerning Victor Sells/HW belts, and evaluate the strength of the respective explanations. We have one thread about it the collection, which is heavily biased toward the Erlking hypothesis.

[Serack]

Elegast, I'm going to steal the contents of that excelent post to include in the "Suggest topics here" sticky of the DFRC

[Elegast]

First is a some emphasis on technical formatting of suggestions for this index:
From experience, what Elegast is doing here is a great deal of work, and the closest you can come to making a suggestion something that he can straight copy/paste into the index the better.  He also has the ability to pull the code directly from your post, so posting suggestions in accordance with his original guidelines really goes a long way in making things work well for him

+1.

[GrandPanjandrum]

I guess this is WAG indexed to Merlin/Demonreach

The real purpose of the Chichen Itza blood curse was to weaken the wards on Demonreach.

http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,35729.0.html

Added.^Elegast

[Elegast]

I guess this is WAG indexed to Merlin/Demonreach

The indexation is a bit random. I think I'll index it under Changes, then reword it as 'Harry is Merlin's descendant' and index it under Harry.

[Ms Duck]

there is a variation on that: Harry (and eb) and Odin's descendants


Added.^Elegast