Quicksilver and reality
From the Quicksilver Metaweb.
In creating a Metaweb that uses Quicksilver as a starting point, we are bound to encounter many people, perhaps even the majority, who would like to discuss the book and its own universe, just as Star Trek fans come up with questions, encyclopedias, timelines, and blueprints for that universe.
And I anticipate that beyond just a FAQ, users would desire to explore the book in a linked manner. In other words, they would be interested in a Metaweb about Quicksilver, in addition to a Metaweb about reality that happens to use Quicksilver as a starting point.
So, will the thousands of fan visitors have a place to build that part of the Metaweb which is about the novel?
I realized that this would be an issue when I created the entry for CABAL. In the book, the CABAL members are different than those in the real world. However, if I were to only define the real-world CABAL, then all of the page annotations that refered to CABAL would have to repeat who was in the CABAL in Quicksilver. Having book-specific topics is useful because then the page annotations can link to common topics and material.
So in the CABAL entry I addressed both the book and the real world. But this means that the entry is, in part, pegged to the novel. So I come back to the question of how we might organize a Metaweb that refers both to the book and to reality.
I am curious what you think about this. Feel free to edit this page and insert your comments. --Patrick 22:45, 13 Sep 2003 (PDT)
Patrick,
I hope there will be thousands! Thanks for the implicit vote of confidence.
Supposing that a lot of people do use this thing, they'll probably develop their own conventions, and there's not much you or I can do to influence them.
Having said that, let's talk about one concrete example: on p. 603, reference is made to the flying jib downhaul, which is part of a ship. A contributor who knew about ship lore might post an explanation of what the term means, perhaps even to include an illustration. This explanation could be couched in terms of Quicksilver's characters, plot, etc. and it would all make perfect sense to a reader of that novel.
However, let us suppose that some other reader, who had never heard of my or my work, encountered the same term in a Patrick O'Brien novel, and searched the Internet for a definition, and happened upon the Metaweb explanation. They'd be nonplussed by the Quicksilver-specific references, and so the explanation might end up being useless to them.
So I would hope that when a contributor was writing an explanation of something, they'd try to keep in mind that it might one day be read by someone who had zero knowledge of or interest in me or my work.
Let me put it another way. We should encourage use of this system to annotate other books besides mine. Hey, if it works satisfactorily to annotate Quicksilver, it should be just as good for other books. I'd hope that, one day, when someone goes to the main page, they'll see links to annotations of many different books. To the extent that these books overlap in their subject matter, there's no reason they shouldn't share explanations.
Nealstephenson 04:42, 14 Sep 2003 (PDT)
Neal,
I understand that, in order to make a universal reference, we should not peg everything to Quicksilver. Certainly, someone searching the internet for CABAL might not be interested in the Quicksilver definition.
I hope there will be thousands! Thanks for the implicit vote of confidence.
Well, why not an explicit vote? I think your book is going to be very popular, not only because I'm enjoying it, but because commuters and cafe patrons gravitate towards me whenever I start reading it. I already have a story similar to another person's fan encounter.
As people start thinking about the connections to the Cryptonomicon, they will probably have a greater interest in the world and the people that the books describe. I would not be surprised if Slashdot linked to this site and sent many readers and potential editors and authors this way.
However, let us suppose that some other reader, who had never heard of my or my work, encountered the same term in a Patrick O'Brien novel, and searched the Internet for a definition, and happened upon the Metaweb explanation. They'd be nonplussed by the Quicksilver-specific references, and so the explanation might end up being useless to them.
Certainly! However, our initial population of users will be here precisely because they are interested in Quicksilver. If we serve their needs, we may then have more of a chance to bring them from the fictional novel to the underlying truths.
I think of The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, and how it adapted itself to its reader. We know that our initial users are interested in a fictional world. If we allow them to create topics that describe their initial interests in this fictional world, then perhaps we can encourage them to build a broader and more universal site.
--Patrick 09:27, 14 Sep 2003 (PDT) (updated 20:01 PDT)
I agree with Patrick's opinions about the book and the likely future of this website.
I have a feeling that in order to address the question of novel-specificity in entries here, we need some sort of namespace mechanism. Quicksilver:CABAL is related to CABAL in some ways, and different in others. In order to have maximum utility as an annotation site, entries will have to be able to be very specific to a particular work. In order to have maximum utility as a general reference, entries will also have to be able to be general, and the distinction will have to be abundantly clear. Namespaces are one way to do that.
We could implement namespaces by convention, if we choose--or we could reify them by editing the code. I think that we should do it by convention. We could also extend this convention to do entries linked to page numbers, as in Quicksilver:p31:Frobnitz Industries.
--Jeremy
I moved the extended namespace discussion to its own page: namespaces and names. I hope no one minds. --Patrick 12:13, 17 Sep 2003 (PDT)