[New Idea] Character Travel Log/Journal

[Tom]

We have been considering an idea for a new feature for both Skyrim and Oblivion character profiles: Travel logs/journals for each character.

With these journals, you would be able to keep a running diary of sorts for each of your characters on The Elder Stats, posting entries in it whenever you'd like. You could use this journal to document your character's day-to-day adventures in-game, talk about aspects of the character's development, give updates on what you intend to do with the character, and so on. Each character would have a "Journal" tab added to their profiles where visitors could view the journal and see the entries posted for that character.

This idea is still open to modification, so if you have any suggestions for how to improve it, or if you simply want to voice your approval or disapproval of the idea, please feel free to vote in the poll above or post your thoughts in reply to this topic. We hope to hear from you on this new idea that we feel will be of interest to many of our members.

[Alarra]

Here's my suggestion for a layout, since putting everything on one page would, of course, get extremely long. The user could add their own title; they could put a topic, the date, whatever they want. These names would then show up with a list, maybe with "Date Added". When someone viewing the page clicks on one of the names, it could either show the entry directly below the name (the name could toggle showing/hiding the entry), or else have it on a seperate page with a "back to journal" link. I think they should be editable too, of course, in case the person spots a typo or thinks of a better way to word something.

[Tom]

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! I'll respond to a few of your suggestions below.

The user could add their own title; they could put a topic, the date, whatever they want. These names would then show up with a list, maybe with "Date Added".

That sounds good. Now, I was wondering how the date input should be setup (i.e. how members would specify the posting date of each particular entry). To make it simple, the entry could just have the date that it was posted automatically recorded by the website and saved with the entry (so, if it was posted today, it would automatically be tagged with the date "January 2nd, 2013"). However, I was wondering if some members might want to insert their own dates for the entries, such as the date that their character "wrote" the entry in the time format of the actual game (for example, "27th of Last Seed, 4E 201" instead of "January 2nd, 2013"). We could always make it an option of whether they want to insert the date from in-game, or just use the current real-life date as the entry's posting date. It's something I'd like to discuss a bit.

When someone viewing the page clicks on one of the names, it could either show the entry directly below the name (the name could toggle showing/hiding the entry), or else have it on a seperate page with a "back to journal" link.

Both of these ideas would work well, but I like the former one better for its simplicity. The only problem would be if there was a particularly long entry, then clicking the entry's title to show it would cause the page to increase in length considerably; however, this isn't necessarily a big problem, as there could be a scrollbar implemented for entries that go beyond a certain length to prevent the page from getting unnecessarily long upon toggling the showing of a longer entry.

I think they should be editable too, of course, in case the person spots a typo or thinks of a better way to word something.

Absolutely. We could display an "Edit" button next to the title of each entry, visible only to the character's author when viewing the list of journal entries.

Also, what sounds better: "Travel log" or "Journal"?

[lavenderkhajiit]

I think this would be an absolutely wonderful idea! The only problem is, what about spoilers?

[Alarra]

I do like "Journal" better than "Travel Log".

As far as date input, I like the idea of just having the system mark the date it was added. If the user wants their in-game date, they could put that in their entry's title, or in the entry itself.

[Tom]

That's a good point, Alarra, so I think letting the system do the work with regard to dates should suffice.

I think this would be an absolutely wonderful idea! The only problem is, what about spoilers?

I suppose the best thing to do is to depend on readers to be vigilant of any context clues in the text of journal entries that might lead them to suspect that more details about a given event or quest line that they haven't yet experienced are coming up next. I know that this is not really the best or most novel solution to the problem, but I can't imagine any other way to effectively solve it, other than implementing a "spoiler" tag and requiring journal entry authors to place spoiler tags around every bit of text that may even remotely constitute a spoiler for someone else who may lack their experience.

[lavenderkhajiit]

Or we could just do that X3

[Tom]

Well, we could, but then it goes back to the problem of what actually constitutes a spoiler, and how will authors of journal entries figure that out? In theory, you could be justified in placing an entire entry in spoiler tags if you could imagine someone who just started playing the game coming by and reading the entry, only to find every single detail in the entry to be a spoiler for them as a new player. While a spoiler tag may be worth placing in the posting area for writers of entries to use if they so choose, I don't feel as though it will solve the problem as well as we'd like.

[Tom]

This feature has now been added to the site! Check out the announcement for more info: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=464