BlogNomic: Column Millimetres

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Proposal: Column Millimetres

Timed out and passed. 13-1-2 by my count.—Clucky

Adminned at 06 Feb 2007 06:21:27 UTC

[ Simplifying the scandal idea, and trimming the gossip stories back to one or two words each, so that the GNDT columns don’t get too bloated. ]

If “So whatâ€™s your scandal” passed, replace “Each Actor may be the subject of zero [...] with respect to any number of Actors.” in the Gossip rule with:-

Each Actor may be the subject of up to two “Gossip Stories”, summarised as adjective-phrases in the “Gossip” field of the GNDT, and separated by an “and” if there are two of them. Whenever an Actor becomes the subject of a new Gossip Story, it is added to the end of the list; if this would result in three Gossip Stories for a single Actor, the first is forgotten, and deleted.

And replace the list with:-

Available Gossip Stories are:-

Pretentious
Drunk
Alcoholic
Philandering
Sex-addicted
Right-wing
Left-wing
Kleptomaniac
Paternity-suited
Cult-worshipping
Divorced
Eccentric

If “Column Inches” passed, replace the vanity project list with the slightly-abbreviated and tense-altered:-

Touring with childhood band
Adopting African child
Directing an indie film
Attacking government policy
Launching underwear line
Attending festival in home town
UN Goodwill Ambassador
Living in Britain
Appearing in sitcom cameo
Working for charity
Investing in new technology

Comments

Doremi: Idle

04-02-2007 15:38:41 UTC

Is the “and” thing easy to do? Or would it be a do it yourself thing? Drop down menus might be nice for these, with two columns, like spike proposed. This does fix a lot of things though.

Kevan: he/him

04-02-2007 15:52:16 UTC

It would just be a do-it-yourself text string. I agree that drop-downs would be easier to edit, but plain text would keep the GNDT table a bit narrower.

Text is probably better than drop-down, since it makes it possible for new gossip stories to be quickly added to the ruleset without needing to change the GNDT. I would suggest a “comma” rather than “and”, but it’s fine as is.

spikebrennan: Idle

04-02-2007 16:18:53 UTC

spikebrennan: Idle

04-02-2007 16:26:04 UTC

If the text width of the selections for “Gossip Stories” and “Vanity Projects” is thought to be problematic, then have the text that is in an Actor’s row in the GNDT be a placeholder symbol (such as numerals 1 through whatever for gossip stories, and letters A through whatever for vanity projects). Then have a key at the bottom of the GNDT page: (i.e., 1: Pretentious, 2: Anorexic, 3: Attacks paparazzi, etc.; A: Touring with childhood band, etc.