Raph's Website » Updating the timeline

Updating the timeline — help needed

May 5th, 2006 (Visited 4014 times) Tags:

So here I am at the Metaverse Roadmap Summit and we’re about to talk about history…. and I realized that my timeline is hugely out of date — like, four years. And someone says the phrase, “Wisdom of Crowds,” and I figure, hey, it’s time to ask all the readers of the blog to help fill this out more.

For those not familiar with the way I have editorially chosen the timeline material, here’s my criteria:

It’s about online worlds, so non-virtual-world stuff only gets listed if it was a clear influence.
I care about people, because a lot of folks have never gotten the credit for the things that they contributed to the field.
I like anecdotes.
I am not interested in listing every world, especially now.
Launches and closures and important events are what I want. I include cultural and political stuff like lawsuits, significant tochstone events, controversies, etc.
FWIW, I think that ARGs, stuff on the margins like the geospatial web, geocaching, world annotation, and so on, are relevant, so submit on that front too!
Social worlds definitely count. So do other computer-mediated-communication things like social networks and IM. I’d love to have thelaunch dates of most everything on Betsy Book’s site for example.

Send it all over to the contact form on the left side of the sidebar, and feel free to crosspost to the comments as well. I need year, I need to know who contributed it, and weblinks for sources would be nice to have. Don’t restrict yourselves to just the missing recent years, either…

Thanks for the help! I suppose this ought to go on a Wiki at some point… But for now, I like having the editorial control. Mu ha ha, power!

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categories | The Cesspit. wrote on May 5th, 2006 at 12:29 pm:

[...] Bloggers Updating the timeline — help needed 53 min 59 sec old, Raph’s Koster Website [GM]Powah! 3 hours 46 min old, MMODIG - unbeliever Friday Links 5 hours 28 min old, Amber Night Let the Games Begin 6 hours 13 min old, AFK Gamer - Foton SDForum: CNet’s take 6 hours 13 min old, Raph’s Koster Website O NOES, FOES 7 hours 55 min old, AFK Gamer - Foton Friday Humor: New Expansion 8 hours 29 min old, Aggro Me Who finances spoiler sites? 11 hours 1 min old, Tobold My first guild 12 hours 6 min old, Tobold Serving Two Masters 14 hours 39 min old, Moorgard (Steve Danuser) There can be only one… 15 hours 26 min old, SunSword For those who didn’t notice 17 hours 36 min old, MMODIG - unbeliever A Third Tale 18 hours 41 min old, KillTenRats - Ethic Shifting Social Tides 20 hours 2 min old, Terra Nova - Academics playground Spring 2006, Week 5, Day 4: Mystery Solved 20 hours 21 min old, Geldon SDForum: Joi Ito’s keynote 20 hours 41 min old, Raph’s Koster Website SDForum: friends and strangers 21 hours 46 min old, Raph’s Koster Website Not again… 22 hours 4 min old, Raph’s Koster Website SDForum & user-created content 22 hours 57 min old, Raph’s Koster Website More on message busses 1 day 39 sec old, Mischiefbox Wii 1 day 2 hours old, Jeff Freeman - Dundee Re: The Death of PVP 1 day 3 hours old, Zen of Design - Ubiq A brief shoutout 1 day 6 hours old, BrokenToys - Lum Innervate Please 1 day 6 hours old, AFK Gamer - Foton The State of Warcraft Address 1 day 6 hours old, AFK Gamer - Foton more [...]

f13.net forums - Timeline help needed wrote on May 7th, 2006 at 11:49 am:

[...] I screwed up in my email transfer from SOE and lost 4 years worth of submissions to the mud timeline.I have a blog post up with criteria: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/05/05/updating-the-timeline-help-needed/Help? [...]

Grimwell Online :: View topic - Help update the timeline wrote on May 7th, 2006 at 12:18 pm:

Wonderland: May 2006 wrote on August 17th, 2006 at 10:58 pm:

[...] Raph Koster is welcoming assistance in updating his comprehensive timeline of developments in online worlds. Fancy pitching in? Info and guidelines are over yonder. [...]

Morgan said on May 5th, 2006 at 2:28 pm:

OT: Your biography needs to be updated too. Metaverse Roadmap has a link to your biography.

As for ARGs, the IGDA operates a Alternative Reality Games SIG. You might be able to get some help there.

Orrey said on May 5th, 2006 at 5:29 pm:

significant tochstone events, controversies, etc - Hmm I’d think Fansy the Bard would count there. 2001-07

http://www.notaddicted.com/fansythefamous.php

Richard Bartle said on May 6th, 2006 at 11:10 am:

Will we get to see a preview of the result before you publish it formally? Just in case there’s a clash of memories. Oh, and will you want pictures/screenshots?

Richard

Kim Pallister said on May 6th, 2006 at 11:56 am:

I haven’t checked, but you’d think such a list might exist up on wikipedia, and if not, you may want to post it up there, rather than have to do all the housekeeping yourself.

Raph said on May 6th, 2006 at 12:54 pm:

I have avoided simply making it open in the past because of some of the controversies actually. The PLATO stuff in particular seesm to cause a lot of contention between people arguing about which program was written by who first…

I’ve avoided pictures in the past because of the load time on the timeline, but it’d probably be nice to gather some of them. There are advantages to having it exist as just a text file.

I can post a preview, but usually I just update as new comments come in and let inaccuracies stand until corrected.

anonymos said on May 6th, 2006 at 6:52 pm:

Might want to check out this site, forgot where I found it: http://www.gameinnovation.org/index.php/Main_Page

Raph said on May 7th, 2006 at 11:35 am:

Blargh, I just found that in the transition out of the SOE email system, I forgot to grab the four years worth of accumulated timeline submissions that people had sent me. So now I need submissions even MORE, because I lost everything I did have.

Richard Bartle said on May 8th, 2006 at 1:30 am:

Raph>The PLATO stuff in particular seesm to cause a lot of contention.

Apart from the fact that the PLATO people tend to argue among themselves over what came first, there’s a very strong “PLATO did everything worthwhile years before anyone else did” lobby that can get quite revisionist at times. Often it’s true, they did do it first there, but for virtual worlds it’s in the “Chinese explorers discovered North America before Columbus” category: not part of the audit trail.

It’s one thing to categorise games such as Orthanc as being the earliest virtual worlds, but another thing entirely to claim that they have in any way influenced, say, World of Warcraft.