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FXcalibur
The shadowlands BBS seems to be different from current messageboards. An 'Open Forum' is like a thread unto itself instead of a forum divided into several threads. Non Read Only documents can also be commented upon by users, breaking up the document with banter (shadowtalk, is it?). There are rarely times the shadowtalk exceeds half a page. Flames and trolling are existent but seem very limited and signatures aren't always used, and are usually a single line.

Is there any forum in the world that can be set up like this?
Backgammon
Yes, the ones where authors of the books write up all the shadowtalk to say what they need it to say.
Adam
Yes. I've seen several proof of concepts for it.

Some things to bear in mind about Shadowland as how it appears in the books and how [I believe] it exists in the Sixth World.

1. The "Shadowland Style" was developed before the web even existed, and has evolved a little since then, but not a lot.

2. I believe that some level of moderation exists on Shadowland. For example, take Slashdot and other similar forum software -- comments can be rated up or down depending on how useful or relevant they are. I assume that many "useless" Shadowland comments are "moderated down", and thus simply don't appear in the book. This is obvious retcon logic -- there are flame wars and stupid posts in Shadorun books because [in the proper proportions] they are fun and interesting and provide plot hooks.

3. The size of comments is really an artificial limit; a single piece of ShadowTalk /could/ be pages and pages long, but that doesn't really fit the style. ShadowTalk is designed to provide supporting, additional, or dissenting opinions/evidence to the base text, not provide it's own standalone content.

The size of signatures is also an artificial limit, just like we have an artificial limit on these forums to prevent long signatures, signatures with images, etc.
Kagetenshi
It's clearly moderated, as we see more than one occasion of comments being deleted in whole or in part. One would assume that there are other deletions not mentioned because there's no need to set an example.

On the size of comments, though, ye're incorrect there. There are several occasions where a shadowtalker will insert an entire article into the discussion, though we've yet to see an example where a shadowtalker will, in shadowtalk, go on for that long.

~J
FXcalibur
While we're on the topic, do users need to 'sign on' into an account or somesuch to post, or do they simply enter something into the 'name' field when posting shadowtalk? Perhaps an option to make your posts anonymous?
hahnsoo
QUOTE (FXcalibur)
The shadowlands BBS seems to be different from current messageboards. An 'Open Forum' is like a thread unto itself instead of a forum divided into several threads. Non Read Only documents can also be commented upon by users, breaking up the document with banter (shadowtalk, is it?). There are rarely times the shadowtalk exceeds half a page. Flames and trolling are existent but seem very limited and signatures aren't always used, and are usually a single line.

Is there any forum in the world that can be set up like this?

A variation of a Wiki/blog/other collaborative hypermedia that prevents editing of the actual text and allows posting of comments within documents? I'm quite sure software for this exists today for remote collaboration on projects.
Crimsondude 2.0
The tech exists for websites now.

For example, if you really wanted to make it so that an article can be marked-up after every paragraph you can do that on Shadowland by inserting comment markers after each paragraph.

However, it rarely occurs do to the high percentage of pages focused on gaming in the meatworld where one comment marker is needed to ensure chronologically-correct posting; and generally, there is a lack of articles where it would useful to mimic an in-game SL sourcebook with multiple markers.

[edit]
Hmm... SL doesn't seem to be loading ATM.
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