I’ve said it often and in many places that the Library of Ivory is a labor of love. Here, I’d like to give out some background information on its history, what it means, and how it works. While this isn’t a “How to” guide (I’ve already written one), I hope it offers some light into what makes it tick and how it was brought about.
In 2006, members of the City of Ivory had come into possession of a large bin of scrolls recovered at an event. When I mean big, I mean the bin was crammed with rolls of paper, pieces of string, and little folds of paper. To paint a broad picture of the “what do we do with all of this crap” conversation, Jay Bonci (then Cain/now Graham of Folkekstone), Dave Kapell (Iacob of Ivory), and myself (possible a few others) came up with the idea of making an online resource to host all the recovered documents. Information was hard to share and papers could be lost at events. This was also a time when Bad Guys ™ were reading the IC lists, so sharing information via email to the masses wasn’t an option. From this, the idea of a wiki came up.
Dave wrote the wiki from the ground up, did all the coding, and set up the frame work. Jay bought the hosting and helped Dave with the technical aspects of site maintenance. I worked with them and other other members of the group to organize the papers and tried to figure out what we needed from the wiki. It turned out that what we all came up with was a nation page that had a cool side benefit /store of information.
We did something a lot of wikis don’t do. We set up privacy group and locked down editing. This made it so we could use the wiki for our plots and event write ups. We all had pet projects to work on and would throw up notes online to share with the group. We even added an “Auroran only” privacy group for people who wanted to play in that aspect of the game to get a small cookie and share private histories and information that was located in Aurora’s holy city. This also meant we could keep bad guys from coming in and reading the information. We farmed out the idea that plot marshals could seed information and lore into the Library for plot hooks (none were more successful at that than Randy Gordon). We also tried to keep the information without biases and retained all the spelling errors, mistakes, and such that were in the original documents.
All members of the nation would be editors and would throw information on the site to share. Admin privileges were locked down to the national leaders. Every member of the group could contribute as much or as little to the project as they wanted. This was our gift to the Realms. This was something we spent a lot of OOC time and money on that we thought would benefit our newbies, our group, and maybe even the Realms community at large. The one golden rule would always be for plot “You do not touch the Library” because it was a gift for everyone.
Fast forward to 2014 (the time of writing this).
The City of Ivory now belongs to the Kingdom of Coventry. Jay has moved on to another nation and character. Dave makes a few guest appearances at events a year. I now work with a small group of people (Coventry members and close friends) who maintain and add content to the Library. The wiki has grown from a national resource page to what Dave Dolph once called “one of the most important resources for the game”. The Library has over 1200 individual pages, 20 pictures/maps, and various “project pages” for Realms resources and private “to do” lists. Editors have come and gone and I’ve take over curating the site’s content. Jay still owes the site hosting. Dave still works as the senior admin resolving technical issues and being incredibly gracious about random emails and phone calls when something breaks or there is an issue. We’ve all grown up and are in different places in our lives in terms of involvement in the game and doing that careful balancing act with real life (for many of us that now means having a family, continuing with grad school, work, and other hobbies and commitments).
When site edits happen, usually there is a sudden burst of activity as someone (usually Janna Oakfellow-Pushee or myself) added or edits huge amounts of new content. Amanda Sieracki will add a month or two worth of rumors to file away. Dave will update a broken feature. At times, the “to do” list is daunting. Edits are out of date. So-and-so stopped playing and there is a new plot marshal. Someone wrote 50+ pages of plot information and wants to share it. Someone misspelled another person’s name20 times on content that was originally from another site or letter. And oh god the formatting….
Maintaining the site can be a full time job. It’s as involved as you let it be and sometimes is extremely demanding.
It’s also a careful balancing act between the “wants” of the community and the desires of plot staff/marshals. We try to honor the requests of plot marshals when we deal with “their” property. Lands, gods, lore, all of that stuff. We leaving in spelling errors on primary sources and recovered scrolls. We make notes and comments about updated information or things what were proved wrong. We try to preserve the original intent and build on it in unobtrusive ways. In this we are very, very slow to make sweeping changes to new threats, new gods, or changes in the ebb and flow of the game’s players or environments. One day a new nation of 50 players shows up, and by the end of the year they are gone. In the end, we err on the side of small changes and side with the original intents of plot marshals. If something is going to persist for many years at a high level, it will generate its own content and drive other people to perpetuate it in the game and our culture.
When the nation choses and adds new editors, we have a very careful vetting process. We look for people with little bias, a knack for organization, and a desire to help build upon this crazy idea that information should be preserved and shared. Being able to add content and curate the Library is also one of the perks of being a member of Coventry For those who aren’t members, they must have to have a good working OOC relationship with the group and adhere to the same principles of content editing as everyone else.
The Library has grown from a crazy idea of plot sharing to a community resource. It’s truly a beast of thing to keep up with and is a thankless job. If you have edits or comments/suggestions you want to make, feel free to email me (or anyone in the nation) or talk to us at events. We don’t know if something is inaccurate unless you tell us. We also won’t make changes because someone thinks a piece of content is “stupid” or “wrong”. We go with the original intent and limit sweeping changes. We also don’t host purely OOC information though we have had requests to change the policy and are looking into it.
I hope everyone enjoys the Library for what it is. It takes time and resources that many people don’t necessarily know about to keep up with. I could not do with without my small, yet feisty editing team of Coventry members and it owes a lot to the founding members of Ivory and their hard work. I ask everyone to please be respectful when using the Library or in suggesting edits and content additions. Like many things in the community, it’s the hard work of volunteers that even makes it possible. And above all, it’s a gift.