Welcome to pweb rebirth.

[Jebus]

Found Taalcon's post about the founding of PWeb in the caches.

The Origins of Pweb as we know it:

My Sophomore year of high school (in 96 or 97) I saw an interview on the Sci-Fi Channel with Orson Scott Card, and he was talking about how his book 'Ender's Game' was being made into a movie ( <grin!> ). The book was described as being a 'very different' type of science fiction, and I thought it sounded interesting, so I kept it in mind. Then, one day at the library, I happened to see EG on display. I was already in the middle of another book at the time, but peeked at the first chapter. By the end of the week, the book was finished. I devoured the rest of the books in due order (Children of the Mind was then just recently out in hardcover). I went online, found Hatrack (but didn't pay attention to the forums), and did searches for any other Ender's Game comprehensive fan sites. There were none. All the other sites I saw were very slim, and most hadn't been updated in AGES.

Anyway, around this time I was already into making a comprehensive website (with encyclopedia, book synopses, etc - sound familiar?) for the movie WILLOW and it's recently published little-known sequel novels. Basically, the main reason I got into it was a bet to myself - I bet I could make the most comprehensive site about the world of WILLOW on the net. And I did. And I eventually joined with two other Willow-webmasters who focused more on the merchandising and behind the scenes info of the film to make one huge mega-site. We got attention, we got cool hints and tidbits, and even got the cover artist to send us a raw-version image (without copy type) of the cover art for one of the newest books before anyone got it.

So, I figured, why not do this for Ender's Game? (I've always been the ambitious one).

But I wanted to use tons of quotes directly from the books, and, seeing how protective Card was of copyright, I sent him an email, telling him what I wanted to do for the site, and even included a link to my first 'movie poster design' that I had just made, as an example of 'the quality of images I would have on the site'. (In hindsite, the image was HORRIBLE, and nobody but him and I have seen it. It is now LONG gone, and I hope it stays that way!). I mentioned my desire to make a comprehensive encyclopedia of all the people, places, things, events mentioned, and could I possibly use quotes? Oh, and I wanted to name the site THE PHILOTIC WEB.

Well, that NIGHT I got an email back saying that he was flatterred that someone would want to devote that much work to his characters. He gave me the legalese I'd need to include on the site, as well as his blessing.

I was totally wowed. An Author I admired actually emailed me back PERSONALLY the night I mailed him - and with permission and his blessing to boot!

SO I started work on the site - and almost immediately realized that with both maintaining my other site AND accumulating the info for this site, I was in over my head. Sadly, THE PHILOTIC WEB was put on the shelf.

Cut to a couple years later...

I now decided to visit Fresco again. Ender's Shadow had recently come out, and I had recently re-read EG, and had made a NEW movie poster design in photoshop, MUCH better than my previous one, in my mind. I created a thred called Movie Poster Design and Tagline. (the link within it to the original poster art, which you can see was from lucasfan.com/willow , is outdated, and no longer works) asking others to make their own designs.

It was in the course of this, along with (was it Adam's?) Ender's Game Movie Trailer thread that the creative juices at Fresco really began picking up. I had a ton of fun, and in the course of all this I met Nathan (idemosthenesi), Adam (lockeender), Steve (ssywak) and Ethan (Cypriat6).

Eventually in a chat, the lack of a good Ender fan site was brought up in conversation. I shared with them my original idea for The Philotic Web, and they became totally interested in wanting to work on it. We each were assigned positions, and we jumped to work!

I had a design and layout that I liked. It was kind of clunky, but it was working for me.

And then I was introduced to someone called AmkaProblemka, who told me that this wasn't going to work, that we needed to do this, to do that, and to basically revamp everything I was thinking of.

First, I was kind of angry at this 'pushy person' who just comes in and tries to take over.

Then I realized that everything she said was absolutely right, and I knew crap about html.

Working together, we all made a site we were, in fact, incredibly proud of. Each of us was an incredibly important member of the team, and the site wouldn't have been what it was without each and every one of us working on it. MY dream had become OUR dream. We joked about the unrealistic goals we wanted from this site. "Maybe we'll get an early copy of his next book!" we said, and laughed at. "Maybe we'll get IN one of his books!" said another. "He'll take us out to dinner sometime." We all laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Now, before we went public, we sent an email to Card asking him to check out the site. We wanted his approval. Eventually, after long waiting, we got it. Ami noticed a new registration on the boards, and looked, and saw that it was OSC. We also got a series of emails from him pointing out some things, and praising others. He then proceeded to offer us electronic manuscript copies of Shadow of the Hegemon.

We were all, of course, piddling our pants with glee.

Then, after our little 'publicity stunt' of a countdown on Hatrack, The Philotic Web was first made public.

During the course of the next year, I met Kenn on the boards, and Ollie (Rahl22)and I (who had originally met online, and befriended each other through a bit of a writing project) would be driving to Greensboro to catch a signing where we'd meet Kenn in person as well. It was great fun, and we even ended up being taken to dinner by OSC.

Now, around this time, we were revamping out encyclopedia to be searchable, and requested that anyone with other entries NOT already in please submit them. Well, Kenn submitted BOOKLOADS of new terms we had somehow passed by, and had even gone thorugh a lot of work cross-linking them. Within a short amount of time, Kenn was now a full member of the PWEB team.

However, soon His Nation called, and Kenn had to leave for an anknown amount of time for military duty, on a 'secret mission'. A new mod being made necessary, Ollie became our first and best choice to fill the hole that Kenn left.

Oh, and Ami spotted an error in the SotH manuscript, and (eventually) had both her name, AND Pweb's address printed in the paperback edition of that book.

The first EnderCon came around, and PWEB was now an undeniable presence (you couldn't look around without seeing one of us either there, walking around, videotaping, or running a Panel!)

And we just picked up two new staffers, Noah (CalvinMaker) as our local Investigative Reporter (IE, Newshound), and Josh (Zevlag) as our assistant coder/site maintainance guy.

So The Philotic Web, -our PWEB- is here. And we aint goin' anywhere.

Oyr tagline should be: "The Philotic Web: Where Dreams Become Reality" - because man, they really do.

-Taal

[mr_thebrain]

you do realize that john already found that and posted it. it's the second post in the Pweb FAQ thread.

[Jebus]

Well... I realise it *now*...

[Paul]

What pweb really needs is a wiki...

*rubs his hands together excitedly*

that would be so cool...

[eriador]

what good would it be?

what could we do on a wiki that would be sooo much better?

[Paul]

well, forums and wikis dont really do the same thing....

forums sorta sucks for orginizing info on the ender books. Think of what we could do using the old ender's game encylopedia from pweb v2. Then we could really fill it out.

The ULTIMATE sourse of info on EG....

kinda like http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Html only we could do better...

wikis are just damn cool.... sides, they're easy to set up and moderate, im sure the mods would do a great job... then we the users could really go nuts... detailed list of the characters, places, relationships, timelines... you name it...

how could you not find that cool?

[eriador]

i like it. in addition to detailed lists we might want to have some plot summaries / spoiler pages for those of us who rely on libraries for their osc fix.

[Paul]

what good would it be?

what could we do on a wiki that would be sooo much better?

man, you had me worried for a minute... someone that doesnt like wikis... in the words of my good friend Vizzini, "Inconceivable!"

[AnthonyByakko]

You keep on using that word.

I don't think you know what that word means.

[Paul]

No more rhymes now, I mean it.

[zeroguy]

"Anybody [...] peanut?"

What pweb really needs is a wiki...

*rubs his hands together excitedly*

that would be so cool...

http://ansible.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

[Yebra]

It's nice to know other people have the kneejerk 'hmm...I'm not sure what the issue is yet, but I do know that you could solve it with a wiki' response.

Having said that, this is proberly one of those times where it's valid.

[Paul]

It's nice to know other people have the kneejerk 'hmm...I'm not sure what the issue is yet, but I do know that you could solve it with a wiki' response.

geez, everyone is so negative.... oh and i thought wikis can solve every issue.

care to explain?

[Yebra]

If you read the other sentence in my post, I said that it was a good idea here.

I just have a habit of using wikis to solve everything.

[Paul]

It's nice to know other people have the kneejerk 'hmm...I'm not sure what the issue is yet, but I do know that you could solve it with a wiki' response.

If you read the other sentence in my post, I said that it was a good idea here.

I was also speaking more in general, not to pweb in specific... i guess i just misunderstood your "kneejerk" comment.

I just have a habit of using wikis to solve everything.

This happens to also be my opinion.... wikis will solve all problems, from world hunger to african literacy. Heck even the FBI have started one....

[anonshadow]

I think that someone (Josh, maybe, or Nick?) made a wikipedia article of PWeb awhile ago.

It got deleted.

[eriador]

that stinks.

[v-girl]

didn't know where else to put this.



does anyone know what the heck the symbol means on the left side of all the topic titles? i mean, i know it indicates whether there are posts you haven't read in that thread. but why is that paper symbol sometimes moving, and sometimes not? it doesn't seem to have to do with polls, page number, or anything else i've thought of.

haven't been able to figure it out, and it's driving me nuts.

[Hegemon]

Means it is popular.. 25 posts of more.

[Gravity Defier]

Not Found

The requested post was not found.

[v-girl]

ah. thanks.

[v-girl]

*double post*

ok, so we can't delete posts unless it's the last post in the thread?

[eriador]

go to edit the post, at the bottom is a check box that says "delete this post." check it and hit submit and your post will be no more.

[v-girl]

i don't have the option unless it's the last post in the thread. do you?

[eriador]

haha. I lied.