Shifti - User contributions [en]

MediaWiki:LoginPrompt

2026-02-02T19:52:06Z

Viqsi: it does not :(

MediaWiki:LoginPrompt

2026-02-02T19:51:01Z

Viqsi: let's see if this works like they say it should

Public new login creation is currently disabled due to spam issues; if you're interested in joining, contact one of the [[Shifti:Administrators|Administrators]].

User:Viqsi

2026-02-02T19:47:01Z

Viqsi: /* Viqsi */ I mean well gosh it's only been almost twelve years, maybe a tiny update?

=Viqsi=
[[Image:viqsictu.png|right]]
''Beware Of Fox''

My actual name is Jo. My actual surname is a bit too easily Googled, although if you're clever (or even simply non-lazy), you can find it pretty easily. In the past I've used the surname "Hunter" for anonymizing purposes (and that's how you'll find [http://tsa.transform.to/worlds/tbp/strikingback.html my sole TSA story]).

I used to hang out on IRC all the time, but IRC has withered into nothingness, so nowadays I serve primarily as The Power Behind/In Front Of The Throne on the [https://discord.gg/JaqKf8Yuyf TSA Discord Server] and bite people who earn my wrath. (I also end up moderating a couple other completely unrelated communities; if you're a hockey fan, for example, yep, I'm that same Viqsi. I warned y'all I was weird.)

I'm one of the [[Shifti:Administrators|Administrators]] here, although I'm admittedly not all that active; if y'all need help and I'm the only one you can find online, I'll do what I can, but in general I'm mostly just the one who occasionally Speaks To Wolves (okay maybe just [[User:ShadowWolf|the one]]) and happens to be online kvetching more often than most; I've tried finding ways to do more constructive things but found myself stymied (mostly my fault). I'm also the one who decided on an impulse that we should be "shifti.org" instead of "shifti.keil-draco.com" and acted accordingly, so there's that.

I've been accused of being an author at times. Perhaps someday I will do something to continue to be deserving of that accusation - I haven't written any fiction in years, partly 'cause I don't really "get into" this sort of thing, but mostly 'cause I vastly prefer nonfiction writing. (And back when I ''was'' writing fiction, most of it was arguably actually furry rather than TF anyways...) I have '''friends''' who are authors; that's my excuse. ;)

==Stuff That's Been Written==

In the interest of filling out the Wiki and potentially embarrassing myself (and taking up more space with garbage on [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]]'s server), here's most of the stories I have created - with one exception, each is kind of a "my first impression" of a single story universe.

I should reiterate - these are hideously embarrassing things written when I was still essentially a teenager. I am now a fortysomething spinster geek. I am so very not the same person who wrote these anymore. But I include them because, damnit, I care about community development. ;)

* [[Testing The Waters]] - This was the first story I ever wrote that was posted to [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk], back in the Elder Days almost a decade ago. I wanted to see how well newcomers would be received, thus the highly original title. I'm not so sure about some of the sentiments expressed therein anymore (ZOMG EVIL OUTSIDE WORLD) but, well, it's my history.
* [[TBP: Striking Back]] - Every TSA writer, by unwritten law, must write a [[:Category:Tales_from_the_Blind_Pig|Blind Pig]] story. This one is mine. Yes, I was rather feeling the strain when I wrote it. This one's responsible for my fifteen minutes of [http://tsa.transform.to/ TSA] fame, though, so it has a special place in my history. :D
* [[WoC: Gonna Rain Tomorra]] - Written in the [[:Category:Winds of Change|Winds of Change]] universe. This one's a bit silly, but it's also responsible for my fifteen minutes of TSA-Talk fame; it was the second story I ever did, and somehow managed to get attention. I kind of ripped off the punchline from a GURPS sourcebook, but, hey, it works. :)
* [[Text Of A Two-Page Note Found Next To The Body Of A Gray Vixen Morph]] - A New World Awaiting universe story (a universe that seems to have otherwise vanished). Runner-up for Most Pretentious Story Title EVAR. Essentially, I was cleaning up the TSA-FAQ (in an attempt to hijack it) when I came across the capsule description for said universe (which is basically a furry wish-fulfillment scenario - all the humans vanish, all the furries TF), and my first reaction was worry about my family. I'm very family-oriented. So, to get that emotion out of my system, I wrote my universe avatar's suicide note. It worked.

I've also got a few Metamor Keep stories, but I'm not sure if I really want to post them here. And there's maybe one or two more stories out there, but they will for now remain skeletons in my closet.

{{author page}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Viqsi}}

Realtime Chat

2026-02-02T19:27:42Z

Viqsi: the IRC channels have died :(

Multiple options to reach other members of the community in realtime were once available, but the slow death of IRC has gradually decayed away options. What predominantly remains is the [https://discord.gg/JaqKf8Yuyf TSA Discord Server], which is freely open to any who are interested and is currently being run by Shifti administrator [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]].

Shifti:Administrators

2026-02-02T19:23:46Z

Viqsi: realtime chat spaces have been reprioritized for a while now...

The administrators of Shifti (also sometimes called "sysops") are users with access to special tools useful for maintaining the site. If you have any problems or requests please ask one of these users for assistance on their respective user talk pages.

*[[User:Bryan]] ([[User talk:Bryan|talk page]]) - Primary maintenance of Shifti's pages and layout, extensive experience with MediaWiki from years of service on Wikipedia
*[[User:ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk page]]) - Owner and maintainer of the server Shifti is located on, a wiz with the backend
*[[User:Viqsi]] ([[User talk:Viqsi|talk page]]) - Owner of the shifti.org domain name, not heavily active on the wiki itself
*[[User:JonBuck]] ([[User talk:JonBuck|talk page]])
*[[User:Devin]] ([[User talk:Devin|talk page]])

====Notes====

On [http://en.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia] it's said that being an "Admin" is "No Big Deal". Shifti is different — here we try to keep the number of administrators low so that there aren't massive edit&revert wars. Perhaps the Wikipedia way is better for the community—there is always an administrator that can be contacted—but here it's rather easy to contact any of us. At any given time there is usually one of us available on the [https://discord.gg/JaqKf8Yuyf TSA Discord Server].

Failing that, the Talk pages do work and [[Special:Recentchanges|Recent Changes]] is normally watched.

Finally, please don't ever ask for Admin status. Here on Shifti there isn't a set policy for the promotion of people to administrator status, but because we house the original, copyrighted work of a number of people we have to be very careful with who has access to the "toolbox" and other privileges that come with administrator status. In practice, however, everything affecting Shifti—including the promotion of users to administrators—is decided by a vote and after much discussion.

Talk:Main Page

2022-06-24T18:18:38Z

Viqsi: Reverted edits by Rusty Patriot (talk) to last revision by TheAkashicTraveller

{{Talk header}}

== Discussion Originally Misplaced in Page Header ==

Hello friends, I wish I had come here earlier as the forums are well organized and I look forward
to gaining further knowledge and sharing my experiences. Ive been reading the posts and learning
quite a bit from the members.

:Forums? You might have the wrong site :P
:Shifti is a wiki, and we do strive to have it structured in a very coherent and easy to understand manner.
:Anyway… Shifti exists for authors and fans alike. If you really enjoy the site, you could help [[Shifti:Site support|support it]]. And you can also register and contribute your own works. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

::Yes, this is more than a little odd. The poster might have at least left a name. I'm inclined to think of ''unsigned'' comments outside of user and story pages as spam and thus deletable. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 02:59, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

:::Nah, unsigned usually either means the user forgot to add the tildes or isn't bothering because he isn't logged in anyway. I see nothing inherently wrong with unsigned comments in general (though I do add signatures for them simply to make it easier to keep track of conversations). In this particular case, though, the commenter does seem to be a little confused about the nature of Shifti. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 03:22, 7 April 2008 (EDT)

==Inverse mermaids and idea banks==

Not sure where this belongs; it seems as though this René Magritte painting, [http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte57.html ''Collective Invention'' (1934)], is crying out for a story to go with it. --[[User:Trismegistus Shandy|Trismegistus Shandy]] 22:12, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

:Heh! If there's no good place to put something like this, how about we create one? I'm thinking an [[ideas and inspirations]] page (or some similar page title) where random tidbits like this could be listed. With the understanding that ideas posted there could be used freely by other authors, and that the contents of the page may be pruned or archived over time if it gets cluttered, it'd serve as a general forum-like sort of place. Joysweeper's recently been working on a personal "idea bank", as an example - see [[Joysweepers Incoherent Idea Bank]]. Though that's explicitly intended as for-Joysweeper-only. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:45, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

:: *grins* Hooray recognition! At any rate, a public idea bank doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'd still want to keep my own, if only because I've planted so much Capslove and weird excited ranting that it would kind of start taking over. My Idea Bank is just a garden of story-seeds and things that get me motivated when I'm stuck; a public one could consist of more pictures like above. Oh, and story prompts. That reminds me, I really should stick those in. --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 23:57, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

:::I don't know where else to put this, but the Toolbox?

== Previously Unlabeled Discussion About Broken Image Uploading ==

"The upload directory (/home/shifti/public_html/images) is not writable by the webserver."

Can we fix that? --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 15:02, 12 December 2008 (EST)

:Gah! More fallout from moving the web side of the system to the new server. Should be fixed now... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:31, 12 December 2008 (EST)

:: Hmm. "Could not rename file "/home/shifti/public_html/images/7/75/Gawk.JPG" to "/home/shifti/public_html/images/archive/7/75/20081213020952!Gawk.JPG"." --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 21:11, 12 December 2008 (EST)

::: Okay, lets see if changing that entire directory trees permissions has an effect... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 07:33, 13 December 2008 (EST)

:::: All right, thanks. --[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] 11:07, 13 December 2008 (EST)

== Old Notice About a New Story Originally Misplaced in the Middle of Another Section ==

I have added a new story to the site set in the Xanadu Setting call Three Minds. The first two chapters are now up. Comments are welcome! [[User:JoharaGuardian|JoharaGuardian]] 08:30, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

== Old, Previously Unlabeled Notice About an IRC Network Relevant to This Site ==

I don't think users can edit the front page so I'll put this here: Please add a link to Anthrochat IRC:

[[http://anthrochat.net Anthrochat]] - An IRC network (also available through a Web client) for anthropomorphics fans. Channel #thezoo in particular hosts writers and readers of transformation tales. --[[User:Kris|Kris]] ([[User talk:Kris|talk]]) 07:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

== Status Report? ==

Hey, everyone. I keep forgetting to mention this, but it seemed like Shifti was down last Wednesday. Does anybody have any idea as to how this could have happened? <br />
— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 17:13, 9 February 2015 (EST)
:I don't see anything in [[Special:Logs|the public logs]] for February 4<sup>th</sup>. I wonder what could have gone wrong that day? — [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 16:19, 24 February 2015 (EST)
::Did anything funny show up in the private logs that day? — [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 16:17, 27 February 2015 (EST)
:::Oh, wait: this was probably discussed on TSA-Talk the day it happened. Guess I'd better go and subscribe to that so I can look through the archives…
:::— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 19:35, 20 March 2015 (EDT)
::::I didn't see anything in the mailing list's archives, so does the IRC channel have an archive? —&thisnp;[[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 15:39, 23 March 2015 (EDT)
:::::First I've heard about this, actually. I don't recall it, but...
:::::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 14:44, 23 March 2015 (CDT)
::::::Maybe the outage was intermittent and I just had the bad luck to keep coming back to check to see if it was up again while it was in effect?
::::::— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 12:10, 25 March 2015 (EDT)
:::::::Never mind! Apparently, the connectivity issues were all on my end (our cable modem's coaxial data input cable must have been loose again.) Anyway, everything should work fine now.
:::::::— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 18:49, 17 May 2015 (EDT)

== Labeled Section Transclusion? ==

Could [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Labeled_Section_Transclusion the 'Labeled Section Transclusion' extension] be installed here on Shifti? I'd like to include parts of some sub-pages in their parent articles, and being able to use that extension would make my work a lot easier. <br />
— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 16:38, 27 February 2015 (EST)

== {{remove|Can Echo Be Installed?}} ==

{{remove|I'm kind of starting to get somewhat tired of posting replies to discussion threads in which I'm participating and not receiving replies back. Maybe the lack of replies is due to the fact that Shifti users have no way of knowing whether or not they have a discussion thread to which they have to reply without checking their [[Special:Watchlist|watchlist]] but don't visit the site very often sometimes? In that case, maybe installing [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications) Echo], a notifications extension for MediaWiki, here would probably help by prompting users to reply to updated discussion threads? Do you guys think that installing Echo would be a good idea? <br />}}{{note|Never mind; I was thinking of this more in the context of e-mail, and I believe that this use case might actually be covered by one of MediaWiki's e-mail–notification extensions, one of which we ''may'' have installed, if I remember correctly, though I don't see it on [[Special:Versions]]…}}
— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 15:24, 4 March 2015 (EST)

== Every story 403 03/03/16 ==

Every story seems to be giving 403 forbidden errors. [[User:TheAkashicTraveller|TheAkashicTraveller]] ([[User talk:TheAkashicTraveller|talk]]) 11:44, 3 March 2016 (CST)
: And all the skins except the wiki default have gone from my settings. [[User:TheAkashicTraveller|TheAkashicTraveller]] ([[User talk:TheAkashicTraveller|talk]]) 18:06, 3 March 2016 (CST)
:: Stories seem to be working now but still only the default skin in preferences. [[User:TheAkashicTraveller|TheAkashicTraveller]] ([[User talk:TheAkashicTraveller|talk]]) 11:50, 4 March 2016 (CST)

Main Page

2021-10-25T04:19:09Z

Viqsi: change IRC Chat link to the new page

<div id="content-headmatter">
<div id="ch-header">About</div>
<div id="ch-content">

'''Shifti''' is a wiki devoted to fiction involving shapeshifting of every variety - animal, anthropomorphic, transgender, age regression, inanimate, you name it. Here people can post stories, reviews, link collections, references, and all manner of other resources.

'''If you wish to post a story please visit [[Help:Posting stories]] for more information.''' The "Upload File" link is not intended for text.

Site news can be accessed via the '''[[Current_events|Current Events]]''' page.

If you're interested in helping to keep Shifti operating, then check out the [[Shifti:Site support|Donations]] page. We are currently accepting all forms of monetary support available. In that vein we are planning to publish an anthology of stories that can be found on Shifti. Details can be found on the [[Best of Shifti]] page. If the book works out well we may publish a new version each year.
</div>
</div>
{| style="width:99%;margin: 0 auto;"
|-
| class="content-block-wrapper" |
<div class="content-block">
<div class="cb-header">For Our Readers</div>
*[[:Category:Story|Main Index]] - This is where it all starts. All the stories on the site are indexed here.
*[[Editors Picks]] - Lists of select stories hand-picked by editors based on various criteria of quality. If you're concerned about just wading into the Main Index, this is a great place to get started.
*[[Other Indexes]] - Other ways to look for stories, including by Author, By Transformation and By Genre
----
<randompages count="5"><div style="text-align: center;">Five Random Stories</div></randompages>
</div>
| class="content-block-wrapper" |
<div class="content-block">
<div class="cb-header">For Our Writers</div>
*[[Getting Started]] - Want to know how to contribute to Shifti? Here's a quick guide to getting in and getting your stories on.
*[[Writer's School]] - Interested in picking up the keyboard yourself? Maybe you find yourself staring at the blank page, totally blocked? Here is a collection of essays by various authors. Useful for beginners and seasoned writers alike.
*[[Shared Settings]] - The setting is often the hardest part of the story to come up with. Here you can find information on settings others have created and opened to the world.
*[[The Muse Files]] - Having problems with inspiration? Look for ideas and inspiration here. Have ideas of your own that aren't working out? Put them here - someone else might be inspired by it.
</div>
|}
<div class="content-block-body">
<div class="cb-header">For Everyone</div>
* [[Getting Involved]] - Want to contribute, but don't trust your writing skills? Here's ways you can help become part of the Shifti project and keep it running smoothly.
* [[Shifti:History|Why We're Here]] - Who we are, how we got here, and where we're going.
* [[Current events|Current Events]] - Want to know what's new and going on with the Shifti project? Keep yourself informed and up-to-date courtesy of the Administrators on this page.
----
*[http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk] - The premiere TF community mailing list which spawned this project. Some stories will make it to the mailing list and yet never reach Shifti.
*[[Realtime Chat]] - Live Chat with other members of the community. Now with a Discord option!
*[[TSA-Bash]] - A yearly get together for TSA-Talk and other transformation enthusiasts. Since 1998.
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
<div class="cb-header">Outside/Other Resources</div>
*[[Book Reviews]] - Community-provided reviews of books you can find in stores.
*[[Story archives]] - There's a few other TF story archives out there which we are not at all pledged to overthrow and destroy. You can find them here.
*[[Art archives]] - We don't do TF art archival here at Shifti, but these folks do!
*[[Web comics]] - Our index of webcomics with either a TF focus, or occasional plotlines thereof.
*[[Movies]] - Our index of movies that may have relevance to the TF community.
*[[Miscellaneous links]] - some blogs and maybe another wiki or two.
</div>
__NOTOC__ __NOEDITSECTION__

IRC Chat

2021-10-25T04:18:15Z

Viqsi: Viqsi moved page IRC Chat to Realtime Chat: not just IRC anymore

#REDIRECT [[Realtime Chat]]

Realtime Chat

2021-10-25T04:18:15Z

Viqsi: Viqsi moved page IRC Chat to Realtime Chat: not just IRC anymore

Multiple options to reach other members of the community in realtime are available. The three most popular means are as follows:
*[https://discord.gg/JaqKf8Yuyf TSA Discord] - A [https://discord.com Discord] server for the TSA/Shifti community; two of its moderators are also admins here.
*[http://anthrochat.net/ AnthroChat IRC] - The furry IRC network. Several community members hang out in the channel #TheZoo on this network.
*[http://lapinia.org/tfnet TFNet IRC] - A private IRC network for TF fans. #tsa_list and #transformations in particular are frequented by community members, among others.

Realtime Chat

2021-10-25T04:17:25Z

Viqsi: add Discord

TSA-Bash

2018-05-08T00:01:16Z

Viqsi: adding two more attendees

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

The TSA-Bash[[TSA-Bash/FAQ#WhyTSA|*]], or just The Bash for short, is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general, or friends with other folks who are interested in these things) for the expressed purpose of "having fun and goofing off". We've been doing this for [[TSA-Bash/Past Bashes|over twenty years now]] and aren't about to quit anytime soon!

Generally there's two per year - a New Year's Bash that has to date been regularly in the middle Tennessee area, and a Summer Bash that changes cities every year.

Unlike furry cons, the Bash doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list!

== Current Bash News ==

The 2018 Summer Bash, being sardonically referred to by your Bash Overvixen ([[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]) as "'''BrokeBash'''", will be held from June 29 to July 3, 2018, at the [http://www.qualitysuitescolumbus.com/ Quality Inn & Suites South/Obetz] in Obetz, OH (a suburb of Columbus). Some helpful info from the announcement email:

<blockquote>
==== Rooms ====
The unusual nature of this particular Bash's hotel circumstances is such that we did not go with a block of room reservations. Instead, contact the hotel directly to make reservations. [https://www.choicehotels.com/ohio/obetz/quality-inn-hotels/oh249?checkInDate=2018-06-29&checkOutDate=2018-07-03 Here's a handy link that will autofill the proper dates].
They offer discounts for paying in advance and/or for non-refundable options. I recommend you make reservations promptly, as things can fill up!

==== Additional Costs ====
This stuff can get a mite expensive, y'know. I'm humbly requesting $25 per person to help with covering costs of reserving the meeting room. Any number of payment methods are possible:
* PayPal to jvc@nwcs.com
* Zelle payment transfer to jvc@nwcs.com
* Personal check, made out to me (Jo Valentine-Cooper)
Giving extra would be highly appreciated. (The actual cost is, um, considerably higher than that. By, like, a lot.)

==== Getting To The Bash ====

===== In General =====
In the past, we've handled getting folks from the airport to the Bash on a case-by-case volunteer basis - which is to say, me and anyone else foolish enough to stop by by car do airport pickups. This has served us effectively in the past and may continue to do so.

COTA (the city bus system) also stops reasonably near the hotel, along route 22 ([https://www.cota.com/wp-content/themes/gotravel-child/PDF/lines/22.pdf OSU/Rickenbacker], Alum Creek Drive & Groveport Road stop). Making use of that route will be a little interesting, tho, as unlike most COTA routes it does not stop downtown. (See details below).

===== Via Car =====
Historically, this has been a popular option. We're on the National Road *and* its semiofficial replacement, so if you can find I-70 you can find us; we're at the intersection of that highway and I-71. I-75 is somewhat nearby; it intersects with I-71 near Cincinnati and with I-70 near Dayton.

Chicago-area folks and points further northwest will likely be best served by hooking up with I-70 in Indianapolis. Folks from Kentucky, Tennessee, and points further south will probably want I-65 to I-71 (which is how I normally get home from New Year's Bashes ;) ), or I-75 to I-71, or in some rare cases I-77 to I-70. Anyone in Pennsylvania or points further east will probably want to take the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which constitutes part of I-70. New York and other northeastern types should look into hooking up with I-71 in Cleveland, most likely via I-90. Canadians within car range will be condemned to the QEW, as despite much talk there *still* isn't a more or less direct route from Detroit/Windsor to Columbus. (It's possible, but it'll have you driving on rural highways.)

The hotel is located at the intersection of Alum Creek Drive and I-270 on the southwest side, in Obetz, just outside of the I-270 loop. Take the exit and follow Alum Creek Drive south, then turn right at the Wendy's. Getting in is easy, but for navigating anywhere else in the area pay VERY close attention to the signs on the roundabouts, as the Alum Creek Drive/Groveport Road intersection only lets Alum Creek Drive traffic go straight through (Groveport Road through traffic has to go along a bridge) and this WILL throw you off if you're not prepared for it.

===== Via Air =====
The vast, vast majority of passenger air traffic in the Greater Columbus Area goes through the recently renamed John Glenn Columbus International Airport (airport code CMH). Quite a few airlines come through here, but the biggest one is still Southwest Airlines; American Airlines recently wrenched second place away from Delta. Two discount airlines (Frontier and Spirit) also have stops here.

Another discount airline - Allegiant Air - makes use of the other airport in the area, Rickenbacker International Airport (which is otherwise primarily a cargo airport). This one's actually much closer to the Bash (and has direct bus service), so it's recommended.

If you plan on using Bash pickup, when you call in please let us know the following:
* the airline you're coming in on,
* your flight number,
* date of arrival, and
* your cell phone number (or some other means by which you can be RELIABLY reached at the time of pickup)
Given that information, we can get the arrival time, and we'll be there for you at the baggage claim and passenger pickup area.

You can make your way to the hotel from John Glenn via COTA. There's two options to get to Route 22:
* COTA's AirConnect service (the dedicated airport bus line) will take you downtown to the Universal COTA Bus Stop (downtown High Street), but route 22 doesn't actually go there. From there, you can take route 2 (High Street) north to the southern edge of the OSU campus area (around Chittenden Avneue), and then from there take route 22 southward.
* Alternatively, COTA Route 7 ([https://www.cota.com/wp-content/themes/gotravel-child/PDF/lines/7.pdf Mount Vernon]) crosses route 22 at Mount Vernon Avenue and North Champion Avenue and also leaves from John Glenn's baggage pickup; one could take it from the airport to that intersection, get off on Mount Vernon Avenue, then walk to one of the southbound bus stops on North Champion Avenue and take route 22 south.

Taking the bus from Rickenbacker is easy, as route 22 stops at Rickenbacker.

===== Via Bus =====
I'm not sure if this is still a thing anymore, but who knows? Greyhound still has their major bus stop in downtown Columbus, so it's probably an option. I haven't travelled via same in well over a decade, though, and have no idea how they do things nowadays.

If you plan on using Bash pickup, when you call in please let us know the following:
* your bus schedule number,
* date of arrival and approximate arrival time, and
* your cell phone number (or some other means by which you can be RELIABLY reached at the time of pickup)
The schedule number in some cases SHOULD be enough to get your actual arrival time, but not always.

From there, if you're content with a little more bus time, you can take COTA route #2 north to the southern edge of campus (High Street and Chittenden), then take route 22 from there south to the hotel area.

===== Via Train =====
We don't really do passenger rail service here in Ohio. Sorry. Your options are limited to the following:
* Find a coal car being run by CSX and hide in it 'till you end up in Columbus, or
* Find a time machine, go back in time a few years, and petition the Ohio legislature to make the Ohio Hub project a reality (funding was cancelled in 2015).

Otherwise, I recommend one of the other available transit options.

===== Via Boat =====
We have no commercial boating services here, as the Scioto River is not considered to be navigable by most watercraft for any number of reasons. It *does* hook up with the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio river system at Portsmouth, so it'd be convenient if one could travel that way regularly, but alas.

If you want to try it yourself, the hotel is located roughly between the Scioto and Big Walnut Creek. Bear in mind you'd be travelling upstream, which is going to get tiring fast if you're rowing. The hotel's closer to Big Walnut Creek, but the area near Groveport Road is private property so you'd have to make arrangements with the owners (it used to be a paintball field back during Bash 2009; I'm not sure what it is nowadays). Either way, it'll be a bit of a walk once you're moored.

===== Via Bunny Hops =====
This is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN by Overvixen decree. No bunny hops will be permitted.

==== After-Bash Activity ====
The city of Upper Arlington (where I live) puts on a pretty decent Fourth of July celebration (morning parade and evening fireworks), and is celebrating its centennial at the same time. We (my parents and I) actually live on the parade route, and so we typically have friends and family come over, have breakfast, enjoy the parade, have lunch and some backyard talk and games, and so on. Consider this a general invite; if you're interested, I'll send more info out once it's available.

Comments? Questions? Anything else? Feel free to [[Special:EmailUser/Viqsi|email me]], or pester me [[IRC_Chat|on IRC]] or Discord if you see me there.
</blockquote>

=== Planned Attendees ===

Planning on coming to the Bash? Add your name and info below! (Or contact [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] and get her to do it for you.)

{| class="wikitable"
!Name
!Coming From
!Arriving
!Departing
!Bringing
!Probability
!Other Notes
|-

|[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]
|central Ohio
|already here
|will never leave
|cocktail umbrellas
|100%
|organizing this thing; can't back out now ;)
|-

|Wanderer
|Texas
|June 28th
|sometime
|
|??%
|
|-

|Kanren
|Maryland
|sometime
|sometime
|Huge bag of board games and RPG stuffs
|95%
|
|-

|}

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash

2018-04-30T19:12:12Z

Viqsi: oops, months got swapped :D

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

The TSA-Bash[[TSA-Bash/FAQ#WhyTSA|*]], or just The Bash for short, is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general, or friends with other folks who are interested in these things) for the expressed purpose of "having fun and goofing off". We've been doing this for [[TSA-Bash/Past Bashes|over twenty years now]] and aren't about to quit anytime soon!

Generally there's two per year - a New Year's Bash that has to date been regularly in the middle Tennessee area, and a Summer Bash that changes cities every year.

Unlike furry cons, the Bash doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list!

== Current Bash News ==

The 2018 Summer Bash, being sardonically referred to by your Bash Overvixen ([[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]) as "'''BrokeBash'''", will be held from June 29 to July 3, 2018, at the [http://www.qualitysuitescolumbus.com/ Quality Inn & Suites South/Obetz] in Obetz, OH (a suburb of Columbus). Some helpful info from the announcement email:

<blockquote>
==== Rooms ====
The unusual nature of this particular Bash's hotel circumstances is such that we did not go with a block of room reservations. Instead, contact the hotel directly to make reservations. [https://www.choicehotels.com/ohio/obetz/quality-inn-hotels/oh249?checkInDate=2018-06-29&checkOutDate=2018-07-03 Here's a handy link that will autofill the proper dates].
They offer discounts for paying in advance and/or for non-refundable options. I recommend you make reservations promptly, as things can fill up!

==== Additional Costs ====
This stuff can get a mite expensive, y'know. I'm humbly requesting $25 per person to help with covering costs of reserving the meeting room. Any number of payment methods are possible:
* PayPal to jvc@nwcs.com
* Zelle payment transfer to jvc@nwcs.com
* Personal check, made out to me (Jo Valentine-Cooper)
Giving extra would be highly appreciated. (The actual cost is, um, considerably higher than that. By, like, a lot.)

==== Getting To The Bash ====

===== In General =====
In the past, we've handled getting folks from the airport to the Bash on a case-by-case volunteer basis - which is to say, me and anyone else foolish enough to stop by by car do airport pickups. This has served us effectively in the past and may continue to do so.

COTA (the city bus system) also stops reasonably near the hotel, along route 22 ([https://www.cota.com/wp-content/themes/gotravel-child/PDF/lines/22.pdf OSU/Rickenbacker], Alum Creek Drive & Groveport Road stop). Making use of that route will be a little interesting, tho, as unlike most COTA routes it does not stop downtown. (See details below).

===== Via Car =====
Historically, this has been a popular option. We're on the National Road *and* its semiofficial replacement, so if you can find I-70 you can find us; we're at the intersection of that highway and I-71. I-75 is somewhat nearby; it intersects with I-71 near Cincinnati and with I-70 near Dayton.

Chicago-area folks and points further northwest will likely be best served by hooking up with I-70 in Indianapolis. Folks from Kentucky, Tennessee, and points further south will probably want I-65 to I-71 (which is how I normally get home from New Year's Bashes ;) ), or I-75 to I-71, or in some rare cases I-77 to I-70. Anyone in Pennsylvania or points further east will probably want to take the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which constitutes part of I-70. New York and other northeastern types should look into hooking up with I-71 in Cleveland, most likely via I-90. Canadians within car range will be condemned to the QEW, as despite much talk there *still* isn't a more or less direct route from Detroit/Windsor to Columbus. (It's possible, but it'll have you driving on rural highways.)

The hotel is located at the intersection of Alum Creek Drive and I-270 on the southwest side, in Obetz, just outside of the I-270 loop. Take the exit and follow Alum Creek Drive south, then turn right at the Wendy's. Getting in is easy, but for navigating anywhere else in the area pay VERY close attention to the signs on the roundabouts, as the Alum Creek Drive/Groveport Road intersection only lets Alum Creek Drive traffic go straight through (Groveport Road through traffic has to go along a bridge) and this WILL throw you off if you're not prepared for it.

===== Via Air =====
The vast, vast majority of passenger air traffic in the Greater Columbus Area goes through the recently renamed John Glenn Columbus International Airport (airport code CMH). Quite a few airlines come through here, but the biggest one is still Southwest Airlines; American Airlines recently wrenched second place away from Delta. Two discount airlines (Frontier and Spirit) also have stops here.

Another discount airline - Allegiant Air - makes use of the other airport in the area, Rickenbacker International Airport (which is otherwise primarily a cargo airport). This one's actually much closer to the Bash (and has direct bus service), so it's recommended.

If you plan on using Bash pickup, when you call in please let us know the following:
* the airline you're coming in on,
* your flight number,
* date of arrival, and
* your cell phone number (or some other means by which you can be RELIABLY reached at the time of pickup)
Given that information, we can get the arrival time, and we'll be there for you at the baggage claim and passenger pickup area.

You can make your way to the hotel from John Glenn via COTA. There's two options to get to Route 22:
* COTA's AirConnect service (the dedicated airport bus line) will take you downtown to the Universal COTA Bus Stop (downtown High Street), but route 22 doesn't actually go there. From there, you can take route 2 (High Street) north to the southern edge of the OSU campus area (around Chittenden Avneue), and then from there take route 22 southward.
* Alternatively, COTA Route 7 ([https://www.cota.com/wp-content/themes/gotravel-child/PDF/lines/7.pdf Mount Vernon]) crosses route 22 at Mount Vernon Avenue and North Champion Avenue and also leaves from John Glenn's baggage pickup; one could take it from the airport to that intersection, get off on Mount Vernon Avenue, then walk to one of the southbound bus stops on North Champion Avenue and take route 22 south.

Taking the bus from Rickenbacker is easy, as route 22 stops at Rickenbacker.

===== Via Bus =====
I'm not sure if this is still a thing anymore, but who knows? Greyhound still has their major bus stop in downtown Columbus, so it's probably an option. I haven't travelled via same in well over a decade, though, and have no idea how they do things nowadays.

If you plan on using Bash pickup, when you call in please let us know the following:
* your bus schedule number,
* date of arrival and approximate arrival time, and
* your cell phone number (or some other means by which you can be RELIABLY reached at the time of pickup)
The schedule number in some cases SHOULD be enough to get your actual arrival time, but not always.

From there, if you're content with a little more bus time, you can take COTA route #2 north to the southern edge of campus (High Street and Chittenden), then take route 22 from there south to the hotel area.

===== Via Train =====
We don't really do passenger rail service here in Ohio. Sorry. Your options are limited to the following:
* Find a coal car being run by CSX and hide in it 'till you end up in Columbus, or
* Find a time machine, go back in time a few years, and petition the Ohio legislature to make the Ohio Hub project a reality (funding was cancelled in 2015).

Otherwise, I recommend one of the other available transit options.

===== Via Boat =====
We have no commercial boating services here, as the Scioto River is not considered to be navigable by most watercraft for any number of reasons. It *does* hook up with the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio river system at Portsmouth, so it'd be convenient if one could travel that way regularly, but alas.

If you want to try it yourself, the hotel is located roughly between the Scioto and Big Walnut Creek. Bear in mind you'd be travelling upstream, which is going to get tiring fast if you're rowing. The hotel's closer to Big Walnut Creek, but the area near Groveport Road is private property so you'd have to make arrangements with the owners (it used to be a paintball field back during Bash 2009; I'm not sure what it is nowadays). Either way, it'll be a bit of a walk once you're moored.

===== Via Bunny Hops =====
This is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN by Overvixen decree. No bunny hops will be permitted.

==== After-Bash Activity ====
The city of Upper Arlington (where I live) puts on a pretty decent Fourth of July celebration (morning parade and evening fireworks), and is celebrating its centennial at the same time. We (my parents and I) actually live on the parade route, and so we typically have friends and family come over, have breakfast, enjoy the parade, have lunch and some backyard talk and games, and so on. Consider this a general invite; if you're interested, I'll send more info out once it's available.

Comments? Questions? Anything else? Feel free to [[Special:EmailUser/Viqsi|email me]], or pester me [[IRC_Chat|on IRC]] or Discord if you see me there.
</blockquote>

=== Planned Attendees ===

Planning on coming to the Bash? Add your name and info below! (Or contact [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] and get her to do it for you.)

{| class="wikitable"
!Name
!Coming From
!Arriving
!Departing
!Bringing
!Probability
!Other Notes
|-
|[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]
|central Ohio
|already here
|will never leave
|cocktail umbrellas
|100%
|organizing this thing; can't back out now ;)
|-
|}

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash

2018-04-30T18:59:58Z

Viqsi: adding Bash 2018 info (wow, I really should have done this before)

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

The TSA-Bash[[TSA-Bash/FAQ#WhyTSA|*]], or just The Bash for short, is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general, or friends with other folks who are interested in these things) for the expressed purpose of "having fun and goofing off". We've been doing this for [[TSA-Bash/Past Bashes|over twenty years now]] and aren't about to quit anytime soon!

Generally there's two per year - a New Year's Bash that has to date been regularly in the middle Tennessee area, and a Summer Bash that changes cities every year.

Unlike furry cons, the Bash doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list!

== Current Bash News ==

The 2018 Summer Bash, being sardonically referred to by your Bash Overvixen ([[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]) as "'''BrokeBash'''", will be held from July 29 to June 3, 2018, at the [http://www.qualitysuitescolumbus.com/ Quality Inn & Suites South/Obetz] in Obetz, OH (a suburb of Columbus). Some helpful info from the announcement email:

<blockquote>
==== Rooms ====
The unusual nature of this particular Bash's hotel circumstances is such that we did not go with a block of room reservations. Instead, contact the hotel directly to make reservations. [https://www.choicehotels.com/ohio/obetz/quality-inn-hotels/oh249?checkInDate=2018-06-29&checkOutDate=2018-07-03 Here's a handy link that will autofill the proper dates].
They offer discounts for paying in advance and/or for non-refundable options. I recommend you make reservations promptly, as things can fill up!

==== Additional Costs ====
This stuff can get a mite expensive, y'know. I'm humbly requesting $25 per person to help with covering costs of reserving the meeting room. Any number of payment methods are possible:
* PayPal to jvc@nwcs.com
* Zelle payment transfer to jvc@nwcs.com
* Personal check, made out to me (Jo Valentine-Cooper)
Giving extra would be highly appreciated. (The actual cost is, um, considerably higher than that. By, like, a lot.)

==== Getting To The Bash ====

===== In General =====
In the past, we've handled getting folks from the airport to the Bash on a case-by-case volunteer basis - which is to say, me and anyone else foolish enough to stop by by car do airport pickups. This has served us effectively in the past and may continue to do so.

COTA (the city bus system) also stops reasonably near the hotel, along route 22 ([https://www.cota.com/wp-content/themes/gotravel-child/PDF/lines/22.pdf OSU/Rickenbacker], Alum Creek Drive & Groveport Road stop). Making use of that route will be a little interesting, tho, as unlike most COTA routes it does not stop downtown. (See details below).

===== Via Car =====
Historically, this has been a popular option. We're on the National Road *and* its semiofficial replacement, so if you can find I-70 you can find us; we're at the intersection of that highway and I-71. I-75 is somewhat nearby; it intersects with I-71 near Cincinnati and with I-70 near Dayton.

Chicago-area folks and points further northwest will likely be best served by hooking up with I-70 in Indianapolis. Folks from Kentucky, Tennessee, and points further south will probably want I-65 to I-71 (which is how I normally get home from New Year's Bashes ;) ), or I-75 to I-71, or in some rare cases I-77 to I-70. Anyone in Pennsylvania or points further east will probably want to take the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which constitutes part of I-70. New York and other northeastern types should look into hooking up with I-71 in Cleveland, most likely via I-90. Canadians within car range will be condemned to the QEW, as despite much talk there *still* isn't a more or less direct route from Detroit/Windsor to Columbus. (It's possible, but it'll have you driving on rural highways.)

The hotel is located at the intersection of Alum Creek Drive and I-270 on the southwest side, in Obetz, just outside of the I-270 loop. Take the exit and follow Alum Creek Drive south, then turn right at the Wendy's. Getting in is easy, but for navigating anywhere else in the area pay VERY close attention to the signs on the roundabouts, as the Alum Creek Drive/Groveport Road intersection only lets Alum Creek Drive traffic go straight through (Groveport Road through traffic has to go along a bridge) and this WILL throw you off if you're not prepared for it.

===== Via Air =====
The vast, vast majority of passenger air traffic in the Greater Columbus Area goes through the recently renamed John Glenn Columbus International Airport (airport code CMH). Quite a few airlines come through here, but the biggest one is still Southwest Airlines; American Airlines recently wrenched second place away from Delta. Two discount airlines (Frontier and Spirit) also have stops here.

Another discount airline - Allegiant Air - makes use of the other airport in the area, Rickenbacker International Airport (which is otherwise primarily a cargo airport). This one's actually much closer to the Bash (and has direct bus service), so it's recommended.

If you plan on using Bash pickup, when you call in please let us know the following:
* the airline you're coming in on,
* your flight number,
* date of arrival, and
* your cell phone number (or some other means by which you can be RELIABLY reached at the time of pickup)
Given that information, we can get the arrival time, and we'll be there for you at the baggage claim and passenger pickup area.

You can make your way to the hotel from John Glenn via COTA. There's two options to get to Route 22:
* COTA's AirConnect service (the dedicated airport bus line) will take you downtown to the Universal COTA Bus Stop (downtown High Street), but route 22 doesn't actually go there. From there, you can take route 2 (High Street) north to the southern edge of the OSU campus area (around Chittenden Avneue), and then from there take route 22 southward.
* Alternatively, COTA Route 7 ([https://www.cota.com/wp-content/themes/gotravel-child/PDF/lines/7.pdf Mount Vernon]) crosses route 22 at Mount Vernon Avenue and North Champion Avenue and also leaves from John Glenn's baggage pickup; one could take it from the airport to that intersection, get off on Mount Vernon Avenue, then walk to one of the southbound bus stops on North Champion Avenue and take route 22 south.

Taking the bus from Rickenbacker is easy, as route 22 stops at Rickenbacker.

===== Via Bus =====
I'm not sure if this is still a thing anymore, but who knows? Greyhound still has their major bus stop in downtown Columbus, so it's probably an option. I haven't travelled via same in well over a decade, though, and have no idea how they do things nowadays.

If you plan on using Bash pickup, when you call in please let us know the following:
* your bus schedule number,
* date of arrival and approximate arrival time, and
* your cell phone number (or some other means by which you can be RELIABLY reached at the time of pickup)
The schedule number in some cases SHOULD be enough to get your actual arrival time, but not always.

From there, if you're content with a little more bus time, you can take COTA route #2 north to the southern edge of campus (High Street and Chittenden), then take route 22 from there south to the hotel area.

===== Via Train =====
We don't really do passenger rail service here in Ohio. Sorry. Your options are limited to the following:
* Find a coal car being run by CSX and hide in it 'till you end up in Columbus, or
* Find a time machine, go back in time a few years, and petition the Ohio legislature to make the Ohio Hub project a reality (funding was cancelled in 2015).

Otherwise, I recommend one of the other available transit options.

===== Via Boat =====
We have no commercial boating services here, as the Scioto River is not considered to be navigable by most watercraft for any number of reasons. It *does* hook up with the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio river system at Portsmouth, so it'd be convenient if one could travel that way regularly, but alas.

If you want to try it yourself, the hotel is located roughly between the Scioto and Big Walnut Creek. Bear in mind you'd be travelling upstream, which is going to get tiring fast if you're rowing. The hotel's closer to Big Walnut Creek, but the area near Groveport Road is private property so you'd have to make arrangements with the owners (it used to be a paintball field back during Bash 2009; I'm not sure what it is nowadays). Either way, it'll be a bit of a walk once you're moored.

===== Via Bunny Hops =====
This is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN by Overvixen decree. No bunny hops will be permitted.

==== After-Bash Activity ====
The city of Upper Arlington (where I live) puts on a pretty decent Fourth of July celebration (morning parade and evening fireworks), and is celebrating its centennial at the same time. We (my parents and I) actually live on the parade route, and so we typically have friends and family come over, have breakfast, enjoy the parade, have lunch and some backyard talk and games, and so on. Consider this a general invite; if you're interested, I'll send more info out once it's available.

Comments? Questions? Anything else? Feel free to [[Special:EmailUser/Viqsi|email me]], or pester me [[IRC_Chat|on IRC]] or Discord if you see me there.
</blockquote>

=== Planned Attendees ===

Planning on coming to the Bash? Add your name and info below! (Or contact [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] and get her to do it for you.)

{| class="wikitable"
!Name
!Coming From
!Arriving
!Departing
!Bringing
!Probability
!Other Notes
|-
|[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]
|central Ohio
|already here
|will never leave
|cocktail umbrellas
|100%
|organizing this thing; can't back out now ;)
|-
|}

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash

2017-10-09T15:14:12Z

Viqsi:

TSA-Bash

2017-10-09T15:09:26Z

Viqsi: update for 2018

TSA-Bash/Hosting A Bash

2017-02-28T02:48:28Z

Viqsi: link fix

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

There are three basic components to getting a Bash in the city of your choice: making sure the city and people involved are [[#Qualification|qualified]], making [[#Proposing|the proposal]], and actually going out and [[#Making_it_Happen|making it happen]]!

== Qualification ==

Bash proposals pretty much revolve entirely around people we call Potential Bash Organizers (or "PBO"s). These are the folks who make Bashes happen. The workload is as follows:

* There has to be an "information" PBO who is able to do the preliminary research, keep folks up-to-date on progress via the Bash mailing list and through the website, and so forth.
* There has to be a "hoofwork" PBO living at the location city, or near enough to reasonably travel there. The "hoofwork" PBO needs to be able to physically check out candidate hotels (for reasons anyone at the '01 Bash will understand), scout out sites for potential sightseeing trips (zoos, etc), and so forth.
* There has to be a "sugar daddy" PBO willing to support the Bash at this location who has the financial resources to come up with money needed to reserve conference rooms, con-blocks, etc., until they are paid back (not always in full) by the Bash attendees.
* The location city must have appropriate transport available (airport size will be a consideration, for example), a place to hold the Bash (see hotel considerations below), and so forth.

Multiple people aren't really necessary (all those various PBOs can be the same person, or roles can be split among multiple people), but they may make things easier - say, if you have someone willing to do the hoofwork but without the available cash, or similar. 2009, for example, was mostly managed by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]], but [[User:Sheep|Sheep]] did much of the research and [[User:MintzBuck|Mintz]] helped with some of the hoofwork.

== Proposing ==

Bash proposals, by and large, are made at meetings during Bashes - we decided on the '07 Bash during a meeting at the '06 Bash; the '08 Bash was then decided during a meeting at the '07 Bash, and so forth. We've tried online voting and mailing list discussions in the past and they frankly haven't worked, alas. In some cases discussions will come up on the Bash mailing list if there's post-meeting decisions to be made - for example, 2005 was going to be our original Bash in Canada but the PBOs had to back out, so a new location was quickly determined - but for the most part, if it's not at the meeting, it's not going to happen.

If you can't make it to the Bash the year prior, you are strongly advised to seek out a proxy who will present your case for you. There are several "regulars" who can and will do this - some suggested folks to talk to are [[User:Phil_Geusz|Phil]], [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]], [[User:MatthiasRat|Matthias]], [[User:Weremoose|Weremoose]], [[User:Sheep|Sheep]] and the Dragon de Monsyne, as they are frequent Bash attendees who have all been involved in these things for a while.

There is a "cycle" to cities which we try to adhere to that carries significant weight - from East Coast to West Coast alternating years, with locations in the "middle" (Austin, 2004) or in special spots like Canada (Toronto, 2007) interspersing here and there. Case in point: Columbus (2009) was first proposed in 2007, but missed out that year because nearby Florence was the prior year's location (and we had a viable Canada option), and then missed 2008 because that was designated ideal for a West Coast trip. Keep this in mind!

== Making it Happen ==

So, you've got your Bash proposal accepted. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part. :)

Finding a hotel becomes Priority #1 at this point, and that's normally handled by whomever's handling the "information" role. The hotel is one of the most important parts of this whole affair and has some special above-and-beyond requirements of its own (outside of the usual clean/well-run/reasonable neighborhood type issues). Generally, they're prioritized in this order:

# an available conference room with 24-hour access (this is where most of the madness takes place)
# reasonable room cost available or negotiable ($70-90 a night is a common range)
# available free transport to the hotel (generally this means airport shuttles)
# free Internet access (since we are an online community and like to include people who can't make it)

Of the above, the one that really isn't shakable is the first (conference room availability). Price can sometimes be fudged slightly (although attendance may be affected), transport can be handled by volunteers as necessary sometimes if you have enough people with cars, and Internet access is really just a good bonus to have, but the conference room is absolutely vital. Large amounts of online research are usually involved here. Expect this step to take a few months. If you can keep the Bash mailing list up-to-date on how this is progressing, that's good.

It is a good idea to have a date - or several dates - in mind at this point. The Bash is normally held over an extended weekend in July (or late June). Opinions differ as to when to definitively set the date; some have announced it right off the bat so people can make their plans; others have held off on announcing one until all the paperwork has been signed to allow for flexibility as needed. You are strongly advised to learn of the dates of major conventions (such as [http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Conventions furry cons], [http://www.sfsite.com/depts/cons01.htm science fiction cons], etc.) as well and try to plan around them, if necessary - [http://www.anthrocon.org Anthrocon], in particular, is frequently a major conflict for folks.

Once you've got a hotel or three researched that might work out, your hoofwork organizer(s) need to go and take a look-see. This usually involves going in, looking around, checking out the rooms and the conference facilities, and spending a night there as part of a test run. This step absolutely can't be skipped; we've gotten poor hotels as a result of improper reconnaissance before (St. Louis, 2001). If you're the verbose type, this is another good thing to communicate to the Bash mailing list.

Negotiations will also need to be made with the manager of the hotel you're considering. This is to reserve the conference room (expect something in the neighborhood of $150-200/day; more expensive than that will mean more expense for "sugar daddy"), get a block of rooms reserved (10 nonsmoking double-queen-beds is the usual standard; you can normally assume 20-25 people will show up, although the true range is about 15-30 ;) ), and generally get everything nailed down and ready to go. You may be asked what the event is for - we usually call it a "writer's conference", which is pretty close to the truth. You
<i><u>will</u></i> need to furnish a group name; "TSA Group" is pretty standard.

If negotiations don't work out (say, your planned dates are unavailable), you will probably have to try another hotel. This will mean another hoofwork test visit, if you haven't done this already!

Most folks expect a hotel and date to have been decided upon by November or December, approximately - this is because some of your attendees frequently need about six months advance warning to be able to get vacation time off. If you haven't by then, don't panic, but do make sure the Bash mailing list is aware. (2008 came "down to the wire" when it was decided in mid-January.)

Once all this is done and everything's signed and reserved, things become much easier. Make sure the Bash list and the main TSA-Talk list know that this is all set and ready to go, and give them all the relevant information they'll need (hotel location, dates, what number to call to make reservations, the deadline to make reservations, and the group name and rate). At about this time you may also want to set the "registration fee". This is intended to help the "sugar daddy" recoup costs from reserving the conference room. $20 or $30 is the usual; if you have twenty guests, that'll get you approximately $400 or $600 back. If you break even, consider yourself fortunate. :)

For the next few months, you'll want to send reminders to the mailing lists now and again. Keep in touch with the hotel, too; make sure there are rooms still open (frequently there are up 'till the last minute ;) ) and so forth. And don't forget your own reservation!

As the Bash approaches - and during the Bash itself - at least one of the folks involved in Organizing will be expected to be a "contact person" in case anything goes wrong with the hotel or if someone gets stranded or the like. You'll also want to be present at the very first meeting of the Bash (the "introduction meeting") to get things started. Don't forget to set a time for folks to get back together to plan the next Bash.

At this point, all that's left are congratulations - for now, you have a Bash. :)

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash/FAQ

2017-02-28T02:28:10Z

Viqsi: forgot a few items :D

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

:'''What is the Bash, anyways?'''
:: The Bash is a gathering of like-minded individuals to chat play games and just have fun.

:'''Who all is invited to the Bash?'''
:: Really, anyone is invited, so long as you're interested in physical transformations or furries or have friends interested in these things or whatever. We're not an elite club. As long as you can get there, you're invited.

:'''<span id="WhyTSA">Where does the "TSA" in "TSA-Bash" come from?</span>'''
:: That would be the [http://tsa.transform.to Transformation Story Archive]; the community that formed around that particular story archive site has significantly outlived it, and is responsible for the creation of the Bash, and later Shifti itself.
:: And no, we have nothing to do with the [http://www.tsa.gov Transportation Security Administration]. We predate them by several years.

:'''The Bash is in [Insert City Here]. I can't get there! Why don't you have it in [Insert Other City Here]?'''
:: Well for everyone the "other city" is going to be a place they can't get to. If we placed it in Baltimore, Seattlites couldn't get there. If we placed it in Los Angeles, Bostonians couldn't get there. If we placed it in Houston, Canadians couldn't get there etc. There's no way we could possibly please everyone with the location of the Bash in a given year.
:: By and large, most Bash cities are towards the Eastern United States because that's where most people are. If you want it closer to home, look into [[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|offering to host it there]]!

:'''The Bash is on [Insert Dates Here]. I can't make it at that time! Why don't you move it to [Insert Other Dates Here]?'''
:: Again, we can't accommodate all people all the time, as much as we'd like to. We must pick a date, and the date we pick is going to be a problem for someone. Unfortunately there's no way to avoid it.

:'''Can we have next year's Bash in [Insert City Here]?'''
:: Maybe. The Bash works by having interested folks volunteer to host it, and if you really want it where you are, You can be the one hosting the Bash! Be forewarned, though; this tends to be a not insignificant amount of work and will likely cost more money than just attending yourself. Still, if the idea of making a fun space available for friends appeals, [[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|we have some guidelines on what is needed and what to expect available]].

:'''What is this "Bash fee" and why am I having to pay even more money on top of my hotel room?'''
:: When someone hosts a Bash ([[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|interested? Learn more here]]), they have to pay for the conference room we gather in out of their own pocket. The "Bash fee" is basically a partial reimbursement of that. Emphasis on "partial". We won't kick you out for non-payment or anything like that, but it's good manners to make your contribution.

:'''What sorts of activities or programs can I expect at a Bash?'''
:: The Bash is very unstructured, and so there's nothing really like a "programming schedule". That said, we do have a few quasi-traditional activities, and one mandatory one:
::* Planning The Next Bash. This is the mandatory one; we determine where we're going to have next year's Bash while we're there. ([[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|More info on this process here]])
::* The Group Photo. We pretty much always try to get a picture of all attendees together every year.
::* A Zoo Trip. If there's a zoo nearby, we'll sometimes make a point of visiting.
::* Some Other Sightseeing Trip. We pick a local (or quasi-local) place of interest (if any) and stop by.
::* Games! Lots and lots of games - board games, card games, the occasional tabletop pen-and-paper RPG. If there's no other planned activity (the frequent state of being), there's probably games going on in the conference room.
::* Idle Chatter. The Bash always starts and ends this way, and it's a popular activity throughout as well. We're all friends here, so it's fun to catch up and share new stories, after all.

:'''What should I bring to the Bash if I'm attending?'''
:: Anything you like (so long as it's not illegal; that would be bad :) ). Popular choices in the past have included board games (to play with others), fursuits, movies, card decks, toilet tank supplies, exotic liqeurs, WiFi routers, and cocktail umbrellas.

:'''Cocktail umbrellas? Why cocktail umbrellas?'''
:: That's an excellent question.

:'''Where do I go if I want to discuss the Bash or have other questions not covered by this FAQ?'''
:: Your best bet would be to subscribe to the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash/ TSA-Bash Mailing List] and post your question (or discussion topic) there. It's somewhat low-traffic, so don't worry about getting tons of extra email just by joining.
:: Failing that, folks in the know about the Bash can be found on [[IRC Chat]] in the same sorts of places you'll find other Shifti community members.

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash

2017-02-28T02:23:40Z

Viqsi:

TSA-Bash/FAQ

2017-02-28T02:19:26Z

Viqsi: fix links

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

:'''What is the Bash, anyways?'''
:: The Bash is a gathering of like-minded individuals to chat play games and just have fun.

:'''Who all is invited to the Bash?'''
:: Really, anyone is invited, so long as you're interested in physical transformations or furries or have friends interested in these things or whatever. We're not an elite club. As long as you can get there, you're invited.

:'''<span id="WhyTSA">Where does the "TSA" in "TSA-Bash" come from?</span>'''
:: That would be the [http://tsa.transform.to Transformation Story Archive]; the community that formed around that particular story archive site has significantly outlived it, and is responsible for the creation of the Bash, and later Shifti itself.
:: And no, we have nothing to do with the [http://www.tsa.gov Transportation Security Administration]. We predate them by several years.

:'''The Bash is in [Insert City Here]. I can't get there! Why don't you have it in [Insert Other City Here]?'''
:: Well for everyone the "other city" is going to be a place they can't get to. If we placed it in Baltimore, Seattlites couldn't get there. If we placed it in Los Angeles, Bostonians couldn't get there. If we placed it in Houston, Canadians couldn't get there etc. There's no way we could possibly please everyone with the location of the Bash in a given year.
:: By and large, most Bash cities are towards the Eastern United States because that's where most people are. If you want it closer to home, look into [[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|offering to host it there]]!

:'''The Bash is on [Insert Dates Here]. I can't make it at that time! Why don't you move it to [Insert Other Dates Here]?'''
:: Again, we can't accommodate all people all the time, as much as we'd like to. We must pick a date, and the date we pick is going to be a problem for someone. Unfortunately there's no way to avoid it.

:'''Can we have next year's Bash in [Insert City Here]?'''
:: Maybe. The Bash works by having interested folks volunteer to host it, and if you really want it where you are, You can be the one hosting the Bash! Be forewarned, though; this tends to be a not insignificant amount of work and will likely cost more money than just attending yourself. Still, if the idea of making a fun space available for friends appeals, [[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|we have some guidelines on what is needed and what to expect available]].

:'''What is this "Bash fee" and why am I having to pay even more money on top of my hotel room?'''
:: When someone hosts a Bash ([[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|interested? Learn more here]]), they have to pay for the conference room we gather in out of their own pocket. The "Bash fee" is basically a partial reimbursement of that. Emphasis on "partial". We won't kick you out for non-payment or anything like that, but it's good manners to make your contribution.

:'''What sorts of activities or programs can I expect at a Bash?'''
:: The Bash is very unstructured, and so there's nothing really like a "programming schedule". That said, we do have a few quasi-traditional activities, and one mandatory one:
::* Planning The Next Bash. This is the mandatory one; we determine where we're going to have next year's Bash while we're there. ([[TSA-Bash/Hosting_A_Bash|More info on this process here]])
::* The Group Photo. We pretty much always try to get a picture of all attendees together every year.
::* A Zoo Trip. If there's a zoo nearby, we'll sometimes make a point of visiting.
::* Some Other Sightseeing Trip. We pick a local (or quasi-local) place of interest (if any) and stop by.
::* Games! Lots and lots of games - board games, card games, the occasional tabletop pen-and-paper RPG. If there's no other planned activity (the frequent state of being), there's probably games going on in the conference room.
::* Idle Chatter. The Bash always starts and ends this way, and it's a popular activity throughout as well. We're all friends here, so it's fun to catch up and share new stories, after all.

:'''What should I bring to the Bash if I'm attending?'''
:: Anything you like (so long as it's not illegal; that would be bad :) ). Popular choices in the past have included board games (to play with others), fursuits, movies, card decks, exotic liqeurs, and cocktail umbrellas.

:'''Cocktail umbrellas? Why cocktail umbrellas?'''
:: That's an excellent question.

:'''Where do I go if I want to discuss the Bash or have other questions not covered by this FAQ?'''
:: Your best bet would be to subscribe to the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash/ TSA-Bash Mailing List] and post your question (or discussion topic) there. It's somewhat low-traffic, so don't worry about getting tons of extra email just by joining.
:: Failing that, folks in the know about the Bash can be found on [[IRC Chat]] in the same sorts of places you'll find other Shifti community members.

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash/Hosting A Bash

2017-02-28T02:18:43Z

Viqsi: fix links

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

There are three basic components to getting a Bash in the city of your choice: making sure the city and people involved are [[#Qualification|qualified]], making [[#Proposing|the proposal]], and actually going out and [[#Making_it_Happen|making it happen]]!

== Qualification ==

Bash proposals pretty much revolve entirely around people we call Potential Bash Organizers (or "PBO"s). These are the folks who make Bashes happen. The workload is as follows:

* There has to be an "information" PBO who is able to do the preliminary research, keep folks up-to-date on progress via the Bash mailing list and through the website, and so forth.
* There has to be a "hoofwork" PBO living at the location city, or near enough to reasonably travel there. The "hoofwork" PBO needs to be able to physically check out candidate hotels (for reasons anyone at the '01 Bash will understand), scout out sites for potential sightseeing trips (zoos, etc), and so forth.
* There has to be a "sugar daddy" PBO willing to support the Bash at this location who has the financial resources to come up with money needed to reserve conference rooms, con-blocks, etc., until they are paid back (not always in full) by the Bash attendees.
* The location city must have appropriate transport available (airport size will be a consideration, for example), a place to hold the Bash (see hotel considerations below), and so forth.

Multiple people aren't really necessary (all those various PBOs can be the same person, or roles can be split among multiple people), but they may make things easier - say, if you have someone willing to do the hoofwork but without the available cash, or similar. 2009, for example, was mostly managed by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]], but [[User:Sheep|Sheep]] did much of the research and [[User:MintzBuck|Mintz]] helped with some of the hoofwork.

== Proposing ==

Bash proposals, by and large, are made at meetings during Bashes - we decided on the '07 Bash during a meeting at the '06 Bash; the '08 Bash was then decided during a meeting at the '07 Bash, and so forth. We've tried online voting and mailing list discussions in the past and they frankly haven't worked, alas. In some cases discussions will come up on the Bash mailing list if there's post-meeting decisions to be made - for example, 2005 was going to be our original Bash in Canada but the PBOs had to back out, so a new location was quickly determined - but for the most part, if it's not at the meeting, it's not going to happen.

If you can't make it to the Bash the year prior, you are strongly advised to seek out a proxy who will present your case for you. There are several "regulars" who can and will do this - some suggested folks to talk to are [[User:Phil_Geusz|Phil]], [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]], [[User:MatthiasRat|Matthias]], [[User:Weremoose|Weremoose]], [[User:Sheep|Sheep]] and the Dragon de Monsyne, as they are frequent Bash attendees who have all been involved in these things for a while.

There is a "cycle" to cities which we try to adhere to that carries significant weight - from East Coast to West Coast alternating years, with locations in the "middle" (Austin, 2004) or in special spots like Canada (Toronto, 2007) interspersing here and there. Case in point: Columbus (2009) was first proposed in 2007, but missed out that year because nearby Florence was the prior year's location (and we had a viable Canada option), and then missed 2008 because that was designated ideal for a West Coast trip. Keep this in mind!

== Making it Happen ==

So, you've got your Bash proposal accepted. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part. :)

Finding a hotel becomes Priority #1 at this point, and that's normally handled by whomever's handling the "information" role. The hotel is one of the most important parts of this whole affair and has some special above-and-beyond requirements of its own (outside of the usual clean/well-run/reasonable neighborhood type issues). Generally, they're prioritized in this order:

# an available conference room with 24-hour access (this is where most of the madness takes place)
# reasonable room cost available or negotiable ($70-90 a night is a common range)
# available free transport to the hotel (generally this means airport shuttles)
# free Internet access (since we are an online community and like to include people who can't make it)

Of the above, the one that really isn't shakable is the first (conference room availability). Price can sometimes be fudged slightly (although attendance may be affected), transport can be handled by volunteers as necessary sometimes if you have enough people with cars, and Internet access is really just a good bonus to have, but the conference room is absolutely vital. Large amounts of online research are usually involved here. Expect this step to take a few months. If you can keep the Bash mailing list up-to-date on how this is progressing, that's good.

It is a good idea to have a date - or several dates - in mind at this point. The Bash is normally held over an extended weekend in July (or late June). Opinions differ as to when to definitively set the date; some have announced it right off the bat so people can make their plans; others have held off on announcing one until all the paperwork has been signed to allow for flexibility as needed. You are strongly advised to learn of the dates of major conventions (such as [http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Conventions|furry cons], [http://www.sfsite.com/depts/cons01.htm|science fiction cons], etc.) as well and try to plan around them, if necessary - [http://www.anthrocon.org|Anthrocon], in particular, is frequently a major conflict for folks.

Once you've got a hotel or three researched that might work out, your hoofwork organizer(s) need to go and take a look-see. This usually involves going in, looking around, checking out the rooms and the conference facilities, and spending a night there as part of a test run. This step absolutely can't be skipped; we've gotten poor hotels as a result of improper reconnaissance before (St. Louis, 2001). If you're the verbose type, this is another good thing to communicate to the Bash mailing list.

Negotiations will also need to be made with the manager of the hotel you're considering. This is to reserve the conference room (expect something in the neighborhood of $150-200/day; more expensive than that will mean more expense for "sugar daddy"), get a block of rooms reserved (10 nonsmoking double-queen-beds is the usual standard; you can normally assume 20-25 people will show up, although the true range is about 15-30 ;) ), and generally get everything nailed down and ready to go. You may be asked what the event is for - we usually call it a "writer's conference", which is pretty close to the truth. You
<i><u>will</u></i> need to furnish a group name; "TSA Group" is pretty standard.

If negotiations don't work out (say, your planned dates are unavailable), you will probably have to try another hotel. This will mean another hoofwork test visit, if you haven't done this already!

Most folks expect a hotel and date to have been decided upon by November or December, approximately - this is because some of your attendees frequently need about six months advance warning to be able to get vacation time off. If you haven't by then, don't panic, but do make sure the Bash mailing list is aware. (2008 came "down to the wire" when it was decided in mid-January.)

Once all this is done and everything's signed and reserved, things become much easier. Make sure the Bash list and the main TSA-Talk list know that this is all set and ready to go, and give them all the relevant information they'll need (hotel location, dates, what number to call to make reservations, the deadline to make reservations, and the group name and rate). At about this time you may also want to set the "registration fee". This is intended to help the "sugar daddy" recoup costs from reserving the conference room. $20 or $30 is the usual; if you have twenty guests, that'll get you approximately $400 or $600 back. If you break even, consider yourself fortunate. :)

For the next few months, you'll want to send reminders to the mailing lists now and again. Keep in touch with the hotel, too; make sure there are rooms still open (frequently there are up 'till the last minute ;) ) and so forth. And don't forget your own reservation!

As the Bash approaches - and during the Bash itself - at least one of the folks involved in Organizing will be expected to be a "contact person" in case anything goes wrong with the hotel or if someone gets stranded or the like. You'll also want to be present at the very first meeting of the Bash (the "introduction meeting") to get things started. Don't forget to set a time for folks to get back together to plan the next Bash.

At this point, all that's left are congratulations - for now, you have a Bash. :)

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash/Hosting A Bash

2017-02-28T02:17:34Z

Viqsi: bringing in Bash content from the site

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

There are three basic components to getting a Bash in the city of your choice: making sure the city and people involved are [[TSA-Bash/Hosting a Bash#Qualification|qualified]], making [[TSA-Bash/Hosting a Bash#Proposing|the proposal]], and actually going out and [[TSA-Bash/Hosting a Bash#Making_it_Happen|making it happen]]!

== Qualification ==

Bash proposals pretty much revolve entirely around people we call Potential Bash Organizers (or "PBO"s). These are the folks who make Bashes happen. The workload is as follows:

* There has to be an "information" PBO who is able to do the preliminary research, keep folks up-to-date on progress via the Bash mailing list and through the website, and so forth.
* There has to be a "hoofwork" PBO living at the location city, or near enough to reasonably travel there. The "hoofwork" PBO needs to be able to physically check out candidate hotels (for reasons anyone at the '01 Bash will understand), scout out sites for potential sightseeing trips (zoos, etc), and so forth.
* There has to be a "sugar daddy" PBO willing to support the Bash at this location who has the financial resources to come up with money needed to reserve conference rooms, con-blocks, etc., until they are paid back (not always in full) by the Bash attendees.
* The location city must have appropriate transport available (airport size will be a consideration, for example), a place to hold the Bash (see hotel considerations below), and so forth.

Multiple people aren't really necessary (all those various PBOs can be the same person, or roles can be split among multiple people), but they may make things easier - say, if you have someone willing to do the hoofwork but without the available cash, or similar. 2009, for example, was mostly managed by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]], but [[User:Sheep|Sheep]] did much of the research and [[User:MintzBuck|Mintz]] helped with some of the hoofwork.

== Proposing ==

Bash proposals, by and large, are made at meetings during Bashes - we decided on the '07 Bash during a meeting at the '06 Bash; the '08 Bash was then decided during a meeting at the '07 Bash, and so forth. We've tried online voting and mailing list discussions in the past and they frankly haven't worked, alas. In some cases discussions will come up on the Bash mailing list if there's post-meeting decisions to be made - for example, 2005 was going to be our original Bash in Canada but the PBOs had to back out, so a new location was quickly determined - but for the most part, if it's not at the meeting, it's not going to happen.

If you can't make it to the Bash the year prior, you are strongly advised to seek out a proxy who will present your case for you. There are several "regulars" who can and will do this - some suggested folks to talk to are [[User:Phil_Geusz|Phil]], [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]], [[User:MatthiasRat|Matthias]], [[User:Weremoose|Weremoose]], [[User:Sheep|Sheep]] and the Dragon de Monsyne, as they are frequent Bash attendees who have all been involved in these things for a while.

There is a "cycle" to cities which we try to adhere to that carries significant weight - from East Coast to West Coast alternating years, with locations in the "middle" (Austin, 2004) or in special spots like Canada (Toronto, 2007) interspersing here and there. Case in point: Columbus (2009) was first proposed in 2007, but missed out that year because nearby Florence was the prior year's location (and we had a viable Canada option), and then missed 2008 because that was designated ideal for a West Coast trip. Keep this in mind!

== Making it Happen ==

So, you've got your Bash proposal accepted. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part. :)

Finding a hotel becomes Priority #1 at this point, and that's normally handled by whomever's handling the "information" role. The hotel is one of the most important parts of this whole affair and has some special above-and-beyond requirements of its own (outside of the usual clean/well-run/reasonable neighborhood type issues). Generally, they're prioritized in this order:

# an available conference room with 24-hour access (this is where most of the madness takes place)
# reasonable room cost available or negotiable ($70-90 a night is a common range)
# available free transport to the hotel (generally this means airport shuttles)
# free Internet access (since we are an online community and like to include people who can't make it)

Of the above, the one that really isn't shakable is the first (conference room availability). Price can sometimes be fudged slightly (although attendance may be affected), transport can be handled by volunteers as necessary sometimes if you have enough people with cars, and Internet access is really just a good bonus to have, but the conference room is absolutely vital. Large amounts of online research are usually involved here. Expect this step to take a few months. If you can keep the Bash mailing list up-to-date on how this is progressing, that's good.

It is a good idea to have a date - or several dates - in mind at this point. The Bash is normally held over an extended weekend in July (or late June). Opinions differ as to when to definitively set the date; some have announced it right off the bat so people can make their plans; others have held off on announcing one until all the paperwork has been signed to allow for flexibility as needed. You are strongly advised to learn of the dates of major conventions (such as [http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Conventions|furry cons], [http://www.sfsite.com/depts/cons01.htm|science fiction cons], etc.) as well and try to plan around them, if necessary - [http://www.anthrocon.org|Anthrocon], in particular, is frequently a major conflict for folks.

Once you've got a hotel or three researched that might work out, your hoofwork organizer(s) need to go and take a look-see. This usually involves going in, looking around, checking out the rooms and the conference facilities, and spending a night there as part of a test run. This step absolutely can't be skipped; we've gotten poor hotels as a result of improper reconnaissance before (St. Louis, 2001). If you're the verbose type, this is another good thing to communicate to the Bash mailing list.

Negotiations will also need to be made with the manager of the hotel you're considering. This is to reserve the conference room (expect something in the neighborhood of $150-200/day; more expensive than that will mean more expense for "sugar daddy"), get a block of rooms reserved (10 nonsmoking double-queen-beds is the usual standard; you can normally assume 20-25 people will show up, although the true range is about 15-30 ;) ), and generally get everything nailed down and ready to go. You may be asked what the event is for - we usually call it a "writer's conference", which is pretty close to the truth. You
<i><u>will</u></i> need to furnish a group name; "TSA Group" is pretty standard.

If negotiations don't work out (say, your planned dates are unavailable), you will probably have to try another hotel. This will mean another hoofwork test visit, if you haven't done this already!

Most folks expect a hotel and date to have been decided upon by November or December, approximately - this is because some of your attendees frequently need about six months advance warning to be able to get vacation time off. If you haven't by then, don't panic, but do make sure the Bash mailing list is aware. (2008 came "down to the wire" when it was decided in mid-January.)

Once all this is done and everything's signed and reserved, things become much easier. Make sure the Bash list and the main TSA-Talk list know that this is all set and ready to go, and give them all the relevant information they'll need (hotel location, dates, what number to call to make reservations, the deadline to make reservations, and the group name and rate). At about this time you may also want to set the "registration fee". This is intended to help the "sugar daddy" recoup costs from reserving the conference room. $20 or $30 is the usual; if you have twenty guests, that'll get you approximately $400 or $600 back. If you break even, consider yourself fortunate. :)

For the next few months, you'll want to send reminders to the mailing lists now and again. Keep in touch with the hotel, too; make sure there are rooms still open (frequently there are up 'till the last minute ;) ) and so forth. And don't forget your own reservation!

As the Bash approaches - and during the Bash itself - at least one of the folks involved in Organizing will be expected to be a "contact person" in case anything goes wrong with the hotel or if someone gets stranded or the like. You'll also want to be present at the very first meeting of the Bash (the "introduction meeting") to get things started. Don't forget to set a time for folks to get back together to plan the next Bash.

At this point, all that's left are congratulations - for now, you have a Bash. :)

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash/FAQ

2017-02-28T02:16:42Z

Viqsi: bringing in Bash content from the site and putting in info for this year's Bash

{{TSABashMenu}}
----

:'''What is the Bash, anyways?'''
:: The Bash is a gathering of like-minded individuals to chat play games and just have fun.

:'''Who all is invited to the Bash?'''
:: Really, anyone is invited, so long as you're interested in physical transformations or furries or have friends interested in these things or whatever. We're not an elite club. As long as you can get there, you're invited.

:'''<span id="WhyTSA">Where does the "TSA" in "TSA-Bash" come from?</span>'''
:: That would be the [http://tsa.transform.to Transformation Story Archive]; the community that formed around that particular story archive site has significantly outlived it, and is responsible for the creation of the Bash, and later Shifti itself.
:: And no, we have nothing to do with the [http://www.tsa.gov Transportation Security Administration]. We predate them by several years.

:'''The Bash is in [Insert City Here]. I can't get there! Why don't you have it in [Insert Other City Here]?'''
:: Well for everyone the "other city" is going to be a place they can't get to. If we placed it in Baltimore, Seattlites couldn't get there. If we placed it in Los Angeles, Bostonians couldn't get there. If we placed it in Houston, Canadians couldn't get there etc. There's no way we could possibly please everyone with the location of the Bash in a given year.
:: By and large, most Bash cities are towards the Eastern United States because that's where most people are. If you want it closer to home, look into [[TSA-Bash/Hosting a Bash|offering to host it there]]!

:'''The Bash is on [Insert Dates Here]. I can't make it at that time! Why don't you move it to [Insert Other Dates Here]?'''
:: Again, we can't accommodate all people all the time, as much as we'd like to. We must pick a date, and the date we pick is going to be a problem for someone. Unfortunately there's no way to avoid it.

:'''Can we have next year's Bash in [Insert City Here]?'''
:: Maybe. The Bash works by having interested folks volunteer to host it, and if you really want it where you are, You can be the one hosting the Bash! Be forewarned, though; this tends to be a not insignificant amount of work and will likely cost more money than just attending yourself. Still, if the idea of making a fun space available for friends appeals, [[TSA-Bash/Hosting a Bash|we have some guidelines on what is needed and what to expect available]].

:'''What is this "Bash fee" and why am I having to pay even more money on top of my hotel room?'''
:: When someone hosts a Bash ([[TSA-Bash/Hosting a Bash|interested? Learn more here]]), they have to pay for the conference room we gather in out of their own pocket. The "Bash fee" is basically a partial reimbursement of that. Emphasis on "partial". We won't kick you out for non-payment or anything like that, but it's good manners to make your contribution.

:'''What sorts of activities or programs can I expect at a Bash?'''
:: The Bash is very unstructured, and so there's nothing really like a "programming schedule". That said, we do have a few quasi-traditional activities, and one mandatory one:
::* Planning The Next Bash. This is the mandatory one; we determine where we're going to have next year's Bash while we're there. ([[TSA-Bash/Hosting a Bash|More info on this process here]])
::* The Group Photo. We pretty much always try to get a picture of all attendees together every year.
::* A Zoo Trip. If there's a zoo nearby, we'll sometimes make a point of visiting.
::* Some Other Sightseeing Trip. We pick a local (or quasi-local) place of interest (if any) and stop by.
::* Games! Lots and lots of games - board games, card games, the occasional tabletop pen-and-paper RPG. If there's no other planned activity (the frequent state of being), there's probably games going on in the conference room.
::* Idle Chatter. The Bash always starts and ends this way, and it's a popular activity throughout as well. We're all friends here, so it's fun to catch up and share new stories, after all.

:'''What should I bring to the Bash if I'm attending?'''
:: Anything you like (so long as it's not illegal; that would be bad :) ). Popular choices in the past have included board games (to play with others), fursuits, movies, card decks, exotic liqeurs, and cocktail umbrellas.

:'''Cocktail umbrellas? Why cocktail umbrellas?'''
:: That's an excellent question.

:'''Where do I go if I want to discuss the Bash or have other questions not covered by this FAQ?'''
:: Your best bet would be to subscribe to the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash/ TSA-Bash Mailing List] and post your question (or discussion topic) there. It's somewhat low-traffic, so don't worry about getting tons of extra email just by joining.
:: Failing that, folks in the know about the Bash can be found on [[IRC Chat]] in the same sorts of places you'll find other Shifti community members.

----
{{TSABashMenu}}

TSA-Bash

2017-02-28T02:13:50Z

Viqsi: bringing in Bash content from the site and putting in info for this year's Bash

File:487px-Solar eclipse 1999 4 NR.jpg

2017-02-28T02:10:59Z

Viqsi: Solar Eclipse photo taken from Wikimedia. Attribution and copyright information available there: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_eclipse_1999_4_NR.jpg

Solar Eclipse photo taken from Wikimedia. Attribution and copyright information available there: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_eclipse_1999_4_NR.jpg

Template:TSABashMenu

2017-02-28T02:07:51Z

Viqsi: bringing in Bash content from the site

Current events

2017-01-15T18:04:44Z

Viqsi: so we're doing something crazy now and we should probably warn people :)

<div class="content-block-body">
Y'know how that upgrade of MediaWiki (as mentioned below) ate our skin and some of our customizations, yet again? That was kind of the final straw for our more tech-minded admins. We're presently looking at and working on a replacement backend for Shifti. The hope is that this way we can add a few more Useful Collaborative Tools and also stop having to recreate things we use every time a security hole is discovered. The hope is to make this as unobtrusive and undisruptive as possible for our users whereever feasible (y'all are why we're here, after all!).

If you have an idea for something that would be useful for Shifti to be able to do, please feel free to [[Special:EmailUser/Viqsi|email me]], or leave a note on my [[User talk:Viqsi|talk page]]. Things we're already considering:
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown| Markdown formatting] support (in addition to or as a replacement for WikiML)
* "Editor copies" for collaboration purposes (creating edits to a page that are proposed rather than final and reviewable by the page owner, for things like story editing collaboration and similar stuff)
* Group-sourced tags and story categorization that doesn't require the author to make their entire story editable
Can we pull this off without disrupting things? Dunno, but we hope to give it a try.
Hope this helps!
::--[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] ([[User talk:Viqsi|talk]]) 12:00, 15 January 2017 (CST)
</div>
=== {{Separator|k|Old News}} ===
<div class="content-block-body">
In trying to fix the issue with the 403 errors I upgraded to MediaWiki 1.26 - during this the 'skins' directory apparently disappeared.

A bit later I came across a quick patch style fix that papers over the issue causing the 403's without addressing the root cause. There is some hope that we can work with the hosting company to get a proper fix in place.

On a different topic... My backups are on a couple of hard drives that are not currently attached to my laptop. If anyone has a copy of the backups that were made available from before the move to the hosted system, please contact me. This will save quite a bit of work in rebuilding our custom skin.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 22:30, 3 March 2016 (CST)
</div>

<div class="content-block-body">
I have just received notification from Google that the new version of ReCaptcha - based on detecting browser information that can generally differentiate a human from a bot - is now available for general purpose use. I am going to see if the Captcha framework module we rely on has an updated version capable of using it.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 17:41, 1 July 2015 (CDT)

:Okay, ReCaptcha 2 is not yet merged with the ConfirmEdit framework - however, their "testing/unstable" branch does seem to have a module that will work for us based on a service called "Are You A Human" that seems to work in a similar manner to Asirra. I'll be working to bring that into Shifti today.
:::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 17:44, 1 July 2015 (CDT)

:Alright, the AYAH bit is not possible - the service providers reserve the right to insert advertisements along with the Captcha. However, it appears that the ConfirmEdit extension is currently without a maintainer and the Wikimedia Foundation is maintaining it steady-state for now. This does mean, however, that several patches have been suggested, one of which does enable the ReCaptcha v2 API and the use of ReCaptcha v2 entirely.
:::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 17:57, 1 July 2015 (CDT)

ReCaptcha v.2 integrated and basic test completes without complaint. Site is unlocked to new registration and after I hit the "post" button here I'm going to change the banner.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 18:31, 1 July 2015 (CDT)
</div>

<div class="content-block-body">
The Asirra (cat&dog picture) Captcha system that we have been using for the last few years has shut down.

I have temporarily activated a different Captcha system, but if it is a permanent change or if we'll be switching to a different system has yet to be decided. If anyone has tried to sign-up since the start of the month and couldn't because the Captcha didn't work, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I did not pay attention to how Asirra was going even though I knew the system was still in Beta and might go away at any time.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 23:19, 11 October 2014 (CDT)

:After the rash of account creations after switching to ReCaptcha thanks to the Asirra shutdown we've temporarily disabled account creation. We have had 15 new accounts created, and only one of them is verified as not being a bot - the rest have names that meet the standards of an auto-generated bot name.
:::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 20:33, 12 October 2014 (CDT)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
It seems that something went wonky with a security feature of the server that the hosts insists on yesterday and stopped all significant edits from occurring. The fine folks working the technical support department of our hosting provider managed to locate the cause really fast and after examining things on their end found that it was easy to fix.

After fixing it there was still a 403 error happening when I tried to edit [[Shifti:Sandbox]]. That, it turns out, was not any kind of bug, it was the security feature doing its job. A very long time ago I had tried to include a Google Talk widget on that page as a test to see if I could possibly make it easier to contact an admin. That code included an <iframe> element. While used correctly (in this case) to host an applet served up by a different site, they are also very commonly used to perform malware injection and some attempts at server hacking. And how do they get into pages? Through form-fields submitted with an HTTP POST command - exactly how saving an edit on Shifti is done.

In other words, our hosts have done something to provide extra security and it has been a complete success so far, although it has it's moments. The problem is now gone and Shifti is back to its usual, quirky self.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 12:55, 19 September 2014 (CDT)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
It seems that the Asirra captcha mechanism is broken again. It might be related to an error that has started popping up on pages where a bit of javascript is broken. Said bit of javascript refers to a variable that should exist (and in the past did exist) but is, apparently, no longer being created before it is being used. I don't know if this is because Firefox and Chrome (the two browsers I've tested with) are running in "strict" mode (a feature recently added as part of the ECMAScript 5 standard) by default or not. I will keep testing and looking for a solution.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 14:02, 27 September 2013 (CDT)

:I've narrowed down the error, somewhat, to a problem with the javascript being served from the actual Asirra providers site. I'll keep looking to see whats happening, though. (I disabled the script that was causing the error I thought might be at fault and that has done nothing).
:::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 18:34, 27 September 2013 (CDT)

:Issue was localized to something that was actually in the ConfirmEdit git repository but not in their released code. Problem solved.
:::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 19:30, 27 September 2013 (CDT)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
As part of checking into an error people were having editing Shifti I updated the code base. Part of that update required deleting the existing code and pulling an all-new copy from the developers. I had to do this because I had not done similar at the original install time. I am now in the process of restoring things from a backup. That's all - sorry about the dust folks. Should be over with soon and the problem has been fixed (for some values of the term).
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 18:17, 5 May 2013 (CDT)
:We appear to have lost 4 images that were uploaded after the last backup. I'm sorry for this, folks. I'm working on getting in touch with the uploaders to have them restored.
:::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 19:06, 5 May 2013 (CDT)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
As I reported back in August of last year some of our users seem to be affected by a piece of crapware called "Yontoo". In the time since that report it has gone from being "potentially unwanted" to being "a threat to Mac users". According to [http://news.drweb.com/show/?i=3389&lng=en&c=5 Dr. Web Anti-Virus] it has now begun popping up as a full trojan on Mac's - affecting Safari, Firefox and Chrome on that platform. This tells me that it has likely always been a trojan.

According to the article it is presented to the user as one of several things - a "Video Quality Enhancer", a Codec Plugin or something equally odd. When they go to install that item they are asked if they also want to install "Free Twit Tube" and when they say yes, Yontoo is installed as a plugin for all three mentioned browsers.

Yontoo '''''is not''''' (yet) proven to be dangerous, but it does inject ads into pages that do not originate with the site that has served up those pages and is, apparently, driving a massive click-fraud scheme. People please check your systems and do what you can to get rid of Yontoo - Shifti is free of ads for a reason and, if I have anything to say about it, will remain ad-free until it dies.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 17:01, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
Three years ago the Transformation and Furry communities lost one of their best authors to a tragic aneurysm. [[User:Michael Bard|Michael W. "Morgan" Bard]] was among the most talented unpublished authors I have ever known. More than that he was a good friend and to this day I find myself running into things that make me think of him and want to talk to him. We miss you, Morgan!

::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 19:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
The captcha system appears to be giving some users problems with posting new content. If you are an author and looking to post your stuff to Shifti, please contact [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] for a free upgrade of your account to author status in preparation for your posts that would normally move you to Author status. At this time it appears to be the only fix. We will be looking into this problem.

::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 02:17, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
'''Note for new Shifti users.'''

When you sign up for an account, ''please'' put something on your user page so we know you're not a spammer. If you decide to use a NameNumber (ie: JonBuck42, Darla25) username pattern ''without'' doing this your account may be preemptively blocked due to the amount of spam we get that fits this pattern.

Thank you.

:--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] ([[User talk:JonBuck|talk]]) 19:06, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

In checking the logs as processed by AWSTATS (reading the raw logs is rather boring) I noticed an odd referrer line. After researching it, I found that it comes from a piece of adware. According to [http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2012-052923-1931-99 Symantec], the makers of Norton 360 and related suites of security software and tools for deep work on PC's, it is "potentially unwanted" and installs an IE Toolbar that will pop-up ads that "look like they are from FaceBook". To me the fact that they are trying to hide the source of the ads and, it seems, pull sites through their own software to add advertisements, makes this not "potentially unwanted" but "completely unwanted". I'm suggesting that all users of Shifti check their PC's for that and other nastiness and, if possible, either remove the stuff themselves or find someone with the skills to remove the crapware for them.

This suggestion comes because our users are the lifeblood of our site and therefore very important to us. If their computers are infected with one piece of crap like that, then there are likely other pieces of crapware installed. The name of the crapware in question is "Yontoo" -- people, please note the name and check your systems. Crapware like that never comes alone and usually opens up holes that other crap can use to screw your computer completely.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 01:56, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
Shifti has now moved to a new hosting provider whose machines have more grunt than could ever be provided by [[User:ShadowWolf|me]]. The only problem is that I will not be able to provide the comprehensive, weekly database dumps that have been being provided. Not to worry, though, because the new host provides a cPanel interface that should let us backup the databases easily.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 03:40, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
Finally figured out what was causing the problems with the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.19 and have completed it. Due to file-caching issues (I believe!) there may be some issues with images not displaying properly. This is not something I can easily solve, but I will attempt to purge the cache manually and see if this does, in fact, fix the issue.

Other than that, enjoy! The site is now running the latest public version of the MediaWiki software and will likely soon be moved to its new home on a hosted service that [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]] is paying for out of his own pocket. We're hopeful that the move (when it is completed) will solve the lag issues and the problems some people have reported with editing pages.
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
And yet again spammers win - any new accounts require a validated email before editing is allowed. I have, as well, installed an extension that checks several blacklists of known bot addresses and similar for purposes of blocking known spammers.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:04, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
The spammers win again - I've updated the captcha system to use [http://www.google.com/recaptcha ReCaptcha] so we should be facing less spam. The problem is that this now means more technological hurdles for the users and that isn't always a good thing. On the plus side all people flagged as "author" in the database will be able to skip the captcha system.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:36, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
::I'm still seeing what look like 'bot registrations. They fit the pattern but apparently can't post anything. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
:::I see 'em too, but can't do anything unless they start spamming. And if they've broken ReCaptcha, then there is no real way to stop them. Unless there is another system we can use in addition to the two or three spam-blocking methods already in place. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:20, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
After a report from [[User:Robotech_Master|Robotech Master]] I fixed an error in the font embedding that seems to have effected users of Chrome and possibly other WebKit based browsers. Simply put they expected a 'font-style' and 'font-weight' specification in the font-embeddings, which I didn't do because I didn't know of the requirement. I've also cleaned up that part of the CSS and made the embedding a bit more streamlined. Hopefully this works to solve the problem of italics and boldface not showing for some people.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 17:24, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
<div class="cb-header">Older News</div>
*[[Current events/2007|Events from 2007]]
*[[Current events/2008|Events from 2008]]
*[[Current events/2009|Events from 2009]]
*[[Current events/2011|Events from 2011]]
</div>

User talk:ShadowWolf

2015-04-25T00:16:10Z

Viqsi: /* Possible Replacements for Asirra? */ ironclad

== Discussion Section Previously in Page Header ==
how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)

==Sitenotice text==

Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)

Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)

What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:Wolfy, how do I become an author? I already have a story written.
[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]]--[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 20:27, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
::Easy, you wait for an admin to notice the story insert and hit the button :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

:Thanks! I'll be sure to write more soon! How'd you like my first one? [[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 01:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==

Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.

Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).

Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it).

I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Story submission captcha? ==

I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.

I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Question ==
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi there! This is the noob writer, Drake, again, here for a fresh wave of bother-the-administrator. Sorry to bother you, but here I am. Bothering you. Anyway, I was hoping you could help critique my new story, [[User:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself|Finding Himself]], which I uploaded a couple of days ago. I got comments from Guvnor of Space and Concerned Reader, but I thought I'd ask for your opinion since you were the only one who seemed actually care about my first, and admittedly not-so-good, story. I do hope you can drop a critique and a comment to help me improve.

The above was an email that I sent to you but received no reply for. And also, about the fanfic that this section was initially about: can I upload screenshots? Halo features a Theatre mode in which one can take screenshots of players or NPCs, so I think I could use screenshots to illustrate characters, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading so far! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 23:43, 27 June 2009

:Hey there, ShadowWolf, it's Drake again. Hope you could look through my [[User:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|new story]], in case you haven't noticed. Yea, it's not very good, and it took a strange direction halfway through writing (becoming all wierd and sappy), but I hope it would merit, at least, a critic. Of course, if you're too busy, it's okay, I'm fine with that. I'm pretty sure critiqueing new writers isn't exactly the only thing you do ;).

:And by the way, if creating new info tags were possible, a "Critique Requested" one might be more effective in garnering critiques than the "Comment" tag that's provided. And in regards to my Halo-fanfic, is it okay if I put screenshots from in-game to illustrate? It'd be useful for people to understand what I'm saying, since Halo isn't as well known as Star Wars. —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

::Sadly I'm going to have to decline a critique on that story. I have tried reading it and found that it did not interest me, sorry.

::As to the images... I am unsure about this, as there is content in the texture-maps and such that will wind up as part of the image that are copyright MS/Bungie. However... This would appear to be a case covered by the "Fair Use" exceptions, so unless a lawyer that uses Shifti can answer otherwise, go ahead and upload.

::The 'critique requested' template itself should be easy. I'll have to see about that at some point today. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

:::All right, I understand if you don't want to critique. I do know that this isn't exactly my best story...I suppose every writer has times when he writes bad. Just that I get these times more often. I sorta knew it was already bad, but I guess I needed someone to tell me that it was lousy, right to my face. Ah well.

:::As for the pictures, thanks! And for the template, another thanks. You're one hell of an admin! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 04:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

::::It's not that it isn't a good story, Drake. The problem is that when I tried reading it I was not able to get more than a few paragraphs in before I said "this is depressing"—I do not read anything that I can say that about because I suffer from bipolar disorder. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

::::Um...then I guess I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. And yeah, I guess I shouldn't write so many depressing stories; it certainly gets a little boring after a while, and I suppose you're right in that when people read stories, they probably won't like those that make them all depressed. I should put a warning on that story one of these days! Anyway, I think I should start on my more normal stories soon.
::::I don't know what to say about that last bit of what you said because I'm just a kid, and I'm not very smart and I'm terrified that I'll say something insensitive or insulting or whatever. I do that a lot of times, and the people on the receiving end tend to take offense. Sorry.
::::On the upside, I'm thinking of writing a PaW story soon. It's a cool story setting, the Pig and Whistle. Looks like a good setting for assassinations!
::::Still, thanks for taking the time to clarify the issue. I suddenly feel happy. :) —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

:::::I don't offend easily—and if you ever do, you'll know it. Depressing stories can be good, too, but I stay away from them for medical reasons—bipolar disorder means I have massive mood swings and reading depressing stuff just feeds into that. There have been several times when I've read something really depressing and it had a very bad impact on me.
:::::On another note… You are a lot more intelligent and mature than most of the "kids" these days (IMNSHO). Most "kids" these days have almost no idea how to put a sentence together and you are one of the few that I have run into that can take criticism.
:::::As to a PaW story… The setting was created, as it says in the description and rules, as a "reboot" of the "Tales from the Blind Pig" setting. Within the last couple of years the "Blind Pig" setting has had numerous arguments over what is and is not "canon" between authors who have seen the setting grow and contributed and people just finding the setting. Because the creator has left it behind it has become something of a "lawless waste" with no real controls and people changing it from what the creator said is actually the reality of the setting. To solve this and make the setting much more internally consistent I asked around and a small group formed to generate the new setting. There is a lot more to the setting than has been revealed or is likely to be openly revealed to anyone anytime soon.
:::::And we tried to define only what was needed to give the setting its own identity so that the people actually interested in writing a story set there could create the setting itself. We only ask that you not set the story outside of the NAR/RoT/Quebec area unless you are actually from that other area. The reason for that is simply that we wish to allow people from those other regions to have control over what, exactly, happened to their regions after the collapse. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

{{Green|Well Wolfy is from Singapore, so he could open up that side of the world. On a side note, all 14-19 year olds I know on the internet have trouble with basic grammar and spelling when talking normally, so I wouldn't quite call your writing juvenile.}} --[[User:Concerned Reader|Concerned Reader]] 14:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

:Well, actually Singapore is pretty boring. Nothing's really cool or fun here (maybe I'm just used to it?), and society feels very...suppressed. There's no space for individuality. If you try to be yourself, you get mocked and stuff (like when my friends discovered that I was on Shifti). Bad story material. And as for deciding what happens to my region...I dunno. Best I don't, I have terrible imagination and my mind only circles around video games that I play.
:If I might refer you to the [[User_talk:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|talk page]] of Letting Go, you'll find the rough plan of this PaW story.
:As for my writing, I won't deny that I'm very, very proud of it (my downfall), which is why I hurt a lot sometimes when criticized without knowing why (thus why I seemed so upset when I replied to ShadowWolf's declination). I also have a somewhat existant superiority complex (I got really jealous when ShadowWolf commented that Rabbit was impressed by CR's Rebuilding. Puberty? I dunno.)
:Even though I know I'm not that good a writer, I like to think that I write depressing stories because of my "painful experiences in life". Actually, it's because I read a lot of Michael Bard's work (both the sad ones and the happy ones). Both of which are awesome, by the way. I'll admit that I'm a fan of his. <3
:Oh, and thanks for the compliments, you two. I can feel my ego swelling already. :) —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 14:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I hope I'm doing this right and putting it in the right place. If not, please accept my apology. If you have the time, I would like for you to take a look at the stories I've posted and offer some criticism. I've read enough of your material to trust your judgement. Also could you suggest others who might be able to help me to improve my work?
Thank you
Alveric

Just a quick question. I'm thinking about posting my stories on TSAT. Do you know where I can find some detailed instuctions on how to do that? I'm afraid my tech-savvy is on the low side.
Thanks
Alveric

With TSAT being a defunct e-zine, I'm assuming you're referring to the TSA-Talk mailing list. For that, well... First sign up for the mailing list, then the following advice will help:
# Make sure that your post is plain-text - copy to Notepad first and check for any characters that have disappeared. A number of us do not use Windows and the UTF-16 that windows uses for things like "smart quotes" becomes mojibake for us.
# If it contains adult material or things not safe for work, make sure to include the NSFW tag
# Don't expect comments and don't be so attached to your work that negative comments or criticism of any kind causes an adverse reaction
# Check spelling and grammar - the list is populated by quite a number of authors - some of which have been published. We do like to see people actually making an effort towards making their writings legible and understandable to others.
--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm been on the mailing list for a couple of months. I'll procede cautiously.

Alveric

Just made my first attempts to send a story to TSATalk. I sent it as an attachment, then thought attachments might not work, so I sent it the second time in the body of the message. I hope I didn't screw it up too bad.

Alveric

I noticed that on the 'All Authors' page, I'm listed as User:Alveric rather than just Alveric. Is there some way I could correct that? Thanks --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 17:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

:Fixed. Seems you just had the category set and the actual template we use for setting the stuff wasn't. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 17:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 18:02, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

== RSS Feed? ==

Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.

:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable <guid/> tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those <guid/> tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked <strong style="color: red;">CLOSED/RESOLVED</strong>. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

: Not sure what's going on, but the problem seems to be cropping up again. I've gotten RSS feeds telling me of changes that I've already gotten before (and before and before)... --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

::Has to do with how the URL's are generated. Since I'm using the URL as the GUID, it looks like there is a periodic shift in them. I have zero clue how to fix it, because I'd have to come up with something that is genuinely unique as an identifier, and I can't think of anything that would work there. (at least, nothing that is actually available to the feed generator) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==

I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a <em>really</em> exclusive club. ;)<br>
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

:I thought I'd gotten that bug (GAH! Must be related to me changing the user-options bits to a drop-down from the long list it was)
:Since Shiftimin does not work on versions of IE prior to 8 without a massive javascript hack it is not meant to be used as the primary skin for Shifti. This means that the 'missing login/create link' is a very low priority bug.
:I am currently poking at ideas for another design that is as (or more) minimalistic but is also designed to take full advantage of modern browsers CSS3 support and HTML5. That redesign is not public yet, since it is currently little more than an image in the GIMP.
:Oh, and I already am 'TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE' - I just hide it well. So driving me there is a very short trip... And... If you have any ideas at all for changes, just dump them here. I'll get on top of the ones that are fast/easy to implement immediately.
:And if you have Fx3.5 available, look at Shifti using the Shiftimin skin. All kinds of nifty little hacks I've added that target it. (Okay, so they could probably target Safari/WebKit and Konqueror/KHTML as well... but I'm not going to try and support all the alternative browsers until they agree on the format for the CSS. And Opera '''STILL''' does not support even the 'border-radius' property or the 'box-shadow' or 'text-shadow' properties)
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey there, ShadowWolf. Just poking in here to point out what seems to be a bug. The SiteSearch function isn't working; I believe it has something to do with the server crash and tech replacement the other day. If I click the Search button it shows

:A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
::SELECT page_id, page_namespace, page_title FROM `shifti_page`,`shifti_searchindex` WHERE page_id=si_page AND MATCH(si_title) AGAINST('' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND page_is_redirect=0 AND page_namespace IN ('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','12','13','14','15') LIMIT 20
:from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './shifti/shifti_searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (malfoy)".
I guess this isn't normal, but I'm also guessing that you might have already noticed. Anyway, sorry that I can't donate. I don't have PayPal or MasterCard or anything. —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

::Thought I'd run the "check and repair" before bringing the new server live. Guess it didn't actually do the repair... It's fixed now - sorry for not spotting it myself :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

== Redirects ==

Just a heads-up, I noticed that [[PAW General TimeLine]] was linked to from [[Talk:Rebuilding]]. I didn't check all the redirects so there might be others. In general I think it's best not to delete redirects left behind by page moves, especially not when the redirect's name still accurately reflects the content it's redirecting to - even if you fix all the internal links there's still the possibility that other pages out on the web point there. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

== Links on archived pages ==

Hi ShadowWolf! Thanks for the welcome. :-)

I made the edits to the archived page because, well . . . posterity is nice, but if you don't actually get to the site intended, that's not very useful to readers! At WikiFur we either update outdated links, replace them with a link to archive.org, or remove them altogether; leaving them broken tends to results in linking to spam sites sooner or later. And WikiFur's old site is going down imminently. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 01:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

:Ah, well... I've added a new section to the front-page. For that set of archived pages we really should keep the links up-to-date. We have a larger problem right now that is in the process of being worked out - I'm sure you've seen the site-notice banner... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

== Spam Flood ==

What can we do about this? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 04:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

:So far there's only about a half dozen spam postings showing up per day, which is IMO quite manageable in terms of manual deletion. I'd recommend avoiding anything that might slow down legitimate posting. Maybe tweak the account creation captcha, if that's easy to do (I'd bet that spending more than a few hours working on it will probably be more time than is taken doing manual cleanup for the next month :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

:Right now I have a lot to do - including fixing the donation button. But a better captcha system than what we have is a good idea and I've been wondering if maybe using ReCaptcha would be a good idea. Very few spam-bots have cracked that one so far. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be coming in just brief surges. After that page of spam last night I went to bed expecting to have dozens more to delete in the morning, but no more came in. This one, too, may pass. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm moderating another Wiki, and it's been hit as hard, if not harder. It's annoying to say the least, and we're trying to figure out better options ourselves, but there isn't much that can be done. Damn spammers. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 12:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

:I'm not going to try and fight the losing battle of who can outwit who. The only winner in that game is the spammers and everyone else loses big. The trick here is going to be finding a better way to secure the account creation and, at this point, file uploads. I have thought about an oversight system for monitoring uploads/page creation by new accounts, but it seems too draconian to me. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

This is getting worse than it was before. Looking at the Recent Changes page is very discouraging. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 08:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

:Looks like we'll have to change Captcha systems (there might be a way to use ReCaptcha, which is a "proven hard to break" system) and I am going to change the upload permissions so that you need to have "author" status. Give me a bit to look at things - the problem is that any system we go with has to be both easy on humans and tough on bots... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

::Sounds like a reasonable step to me, Shifti is not very image-oriented anyway and only a few stories have them. Shouldn't be any need for non-authors to upload them. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:20, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

:::Uploads locked to Authors and above and it turns out the Captcha system was disabled entirely for some reason. I've re-enabled it and told it to use a question/response type of Captcha instead of the images. I'd have gone with ReCaptcha, but that is not part of the modern code, apparently. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:38, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

==2012 Flood==

Would disabling account creation for a while make any difference? I suppose they'd just come back the second it was re-enabled.--[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 18:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

:I've thought about this, but would have to discuss disabling account creation with BD first. Sometime today I am going to be instituting email validation for accounts. I just need to look into that :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

To deal with the spam try changing the reCaptcha to a questyCaptcha. The bots have learned to be able to read the reCaptcha words. --[[User:ZProteus|ZProteus]] ([[User talk:ZProteus|talk]]) 07:45, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

:We're using an HTML-spam blacklist system that has massively cut down on the amount of spam we get. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 01:19, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Argh! Here they go again! Can you tweak the account creation security? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] ([[User talk:JonBuck|talk]]) 03:20, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

:Apparently I'm getting "could not connect to fSpamlist server" at the top of the screen. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] ([[User talk:JonBuck|talk]]) 03:25, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

:Okay, we need to shut down new account registration, like, '''now'''. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] ([[User talk:JonBuck|talk]]) 22:48, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

:Turned off the createaccount permission - this should lock the site against new registrations. I'll look into different captcha methods, since ReCaptcha has been broken quite badly now. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 23:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

==Just a Note==

Heartfelt thanks from a follower and long-term fan of the site. Glad to be here (and glad to finally be able to edit pages). Thanks for all you're doing! [[User:ChronoStrike|ChronoStrike]] ([[User talk:ChronoStrike|talk]])

==Big Note==
I had nothing to do with the creation of the [[TSA-Talk]] Mailing List. I did, however, learn of it and first join in 1997 - ie: I 'Found' it on the net. The text there is correct and needs no changes. <br />
--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 17:43, 4 November 2014 (CST)
:Sorry; your wording of that particular word was hard for me to parse in that context; I wasn't sure whether it was a typo or if using a different word would be a better idea. In the future, I'll consult you or whoever else is involved in a page on which I am working if I'm confused about some of its contents and whether they need to be edited or not. Maybe the word 'discovered' would be more appropriate and less perplexing? You said in the description of the edit that reverted the one that I did and about which you got somewhat irritated that other typographical errors might exist in that article, and I think you're right; the one I misidentified just seemed like the biggest one there to me and therefore became the most important item on my list of problems to fix with that page. If you like, I can help you go through it with a finely-toothed comb, all right?
:Apologies, 
:— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 20:51, 6 November 2014 (EST)
::No problem. The simple fact is that I rarely do editing of pages - even ones I've created.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 09:54, 7 November 2014 (CST)
:::Thanks! Glad we've got that straightened out. — [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 16:30, 8 November 2014 (EST)

== Formatting and XCom ==
Hello, we met at the bash at Phil's and you said this was the best way to get ahold of you. First a formatting/code question: I've seen several stories with a box at the top that says something along the lines of "The Llama Series! Next story: Llama's don't eat cake. Previous story: WTF why am I a Llama?" I've been trying to figure out how to do that on and off as it'd be a huge help for orginizing my stories, but have been having no luck.

Secondly, you may have heard I need more names for the XCom project, and I was wondering if I could add you. The idea is to use well known names in the comunity and as the Shifti Admin I think you qualify! [[User:Doomreaver|Doomreaver]] ([[User talk:Doomreaver|talk]]) 10:32, 17 January 2015 (CST)

:We really, really need to make the help-files easier to locate... try [[Help:Templates]] - specifically the [[Help:Templates#Linking stories in a series|Linking Stories in a Series]] section. There are other useful templates there as well.
:There are a number of other templates that have been created, but thanks to the server crash that took out most of the edits for a specific year a few years back I'm not actually sure what still exists.
::--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] ([[User talk:ShadowWolf|talk]]) 14:51, 17 January 2015 (CST)

::Thanks for the information. May I use you for XCom, and if so what should I name the soldier? [[User:Doomreaver|Doomreaver]] ([[User talk:Doomreaver|talk]]) 17:13, 22 January 2015 (CST)

== Help with Questions Asked in Another Thread? ==

Hey, ShadowWolf, did you see [[Help talk:Editing#First-Line Indentation|this thread]] when you replied to [[Help talk:Editing#Anti-Spam Acting Up Again…|this other thread]]? I was wondering if you could reply to it for me… <br />
— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 15:39, 29 January 2015 (EST)
:And you've 'been there, done that,' as they say. Thank you! — [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 15:42, 5 February 2015 (EST)

== Possible Replacements for Asirra? ==

I don't know if this will help us any in finding a replacement for [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Asirra Asirra], but the extension's project page has some links to some other anti-spam projects. The most prominent link is one to the project page for [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit ConfirmEdit], but we already have that installed. The other link that I noticed there was one to a [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Spam_management_extensions list of what the page calls 'spam management extensions.'] That's all I've found so far, but I'll let you know if I see anything else. <br />

— [[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 14:00, 5 March 2015 (EST)

Happened across this not too long ago: [http://www.securitystronghold.com/products/ironclad-captcha/ Ironclad CAPTCHA]. Haven't found it in mediawiki plugin form, but it does work with PHP apps, so it might be worthwhile. --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] ([[User talk:Viqsi|talk]]) 19:16, 24 April 2015 (CDT)

User:Viqsi

2014-10-13T01:51:07Z

Viqsi: more details, because, y'know, details. and details.

=Viqsi=
[[Image:viqsictu.png|right]]
Ich bin ein viqsin. Fear me.

My actual name is Jo. My actual surname is a bit too easily Googled, although if you're clever (or even simply non-lazy), you can find it pretty easily. In the past I've used the surname "Hunter" for anonymizing purposes (and that's how you'll find [http://tsa.transform.to/worlds/tbp/strikingback.html my sole TSA story]).

You may know me from the [http://lapinia.org/tfnet/ TFNet] IRC network - I used to be of the ops for #tsa_list and #tsa_tech (back when they bothered to have such things), and also regularly hang out in #transformations. I'm also the one who regularly sets [[User:Sheep|the Sheep]] on fire. Additionally, I'm sometimes found in #thezoo on [http://www.anthrochat.net Anthrochat], although whether or not I'm actually paying attention there at any given moment is highly variable. ;)

I'm one of the [[Shifti:Administrators|Administrators]] here, although I don't really get enough spare time to be all that active; if y'all need help and I'm the only one you can find on IRC, I'll do what I can, but in general I just help out [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]] with occasional backend issues, feature requests, and "beta" tests, and I listen to him ramble. ;) (I have this [[Shifti UI Revamp|grandiose plan for revamping the entire site UI]] so it's more author-and-reader friendly, but that would require about two uninterrupted weeks of free time that I don't presently have and so I haven't touched that plan in like FIVE YEARS.) I'm also the one who decided on an impulse that we should be "shifti.org" instead of "shifti.keil-draco.com" and acted accordingly. Viqs helpn!

I've been accused of being an author at times. Perhaps someday I will do something to continue to be deserving of that accusation - I haven't written any fiction in years, partly 'cause I don't really "get into" this sort of thing, but mostly 'cause I vastly prefer nonfiction writing. (And back when I ''was'' writing fiction, most of it was arguably actually furry rather than TF anyways...)

==Stuff That's Been Written==

In the interest of filling out the Wiki and potentially embarrassing myself (and taking up more space with garbage on [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]]'s server), here's most of the stories I have created - with one exception, each is kind of a "my first impression" of a single story universe.

I should reiterate - these are hideously embarrassing, and all written well over a decade ago. I am so very not the same person who wrote these anymore. But I include them because, damnit, I care about community development. ;)

* [[Testing The Waters]] - This was the first story I ever wrote that was posted to [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk], back in the Elder Days almost a decade ago. I wanted to see how well newcomers would be received, thus the highly original title. I'm not so sure about some of the sentiments expressed therein anymore (ZOMG EVIL OUTSIDE WORLD) but, well, it's my history.
* [[TBP: Striking Back]] - Every TSA writer, by unwritten law, must write a [[:Category:Tales_from_the_Blind_Pig|Blind Pig]] story. This one is mine. Yes, I was rather feeling the strain when I wrote it. This one's responsible for my fifteen minutes of [http://tsa.transform.to/ TSA] fame, though, so it has a special place in my history. :D
* [[WoC: Gonna Rain Tomorra]] - Written in the [[:Category:Winds of Change|Winds of Change]] universe. This one's a bit silly, but it's also responsible for my fifteen minutes of TSA-Talk fame; it was the second story I ever did, and somehow managed to get attention. I kind of ripped off the punchline from a GURPS sourcebook, but, hey, it works. :)
* [[Text Of A Two-Page Note Found Next To The Body Of A Gray Vixen Morph]] - A New World Awaiting universe story (a universe that seems to have otherwise vanished). Runner-up for Most Pretentious Story Title EVAR. Essentially, I was cleaning up the TSA-FAQ (in an attempt to hijack it) when I came across the capsule description for said universe (which is basically a furry wish-fulfillment scenario - all the humans vanish, all the furries TF), and my first reaction was worry about my family. I'm very family-oriented. So, to get that emotion out of my system, I wrote my universe avatar's suicide note. It worked.

I've also got a few Metamor Keep stories, but I'm not sure if I really want to post them here. And there's maybe one or two more stories out there, but they will for now remain skeletons in my closet.

{{author page}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Viqsi}}

User:Viqsi

2014-10-13T01:48:37Z

Viqsi: /* Stuff That's Been Written */ adjust timeframe, because, y'know, it's been quite a while :D

=Viqsi=
[[Image:viqsictu.png|right]]
Ich bin ein viqsin. Fear me.

My actual name is Jo. My actual surname is a bit too easily Googled, although if you're clever (or even simply non-lazy), you can find it pretty easily. In the past I've used the surname "Hunter" for anonymizing purposes (and that's how you'll find [http://tsa.transform.to/worlds/tbp/strikingback.html my sole TSA story]).

You may know me from the [http://lapinia.org/tfnet/ TFNet] IRC network - I'm one of the ops for #tsa_list and #tsa_tech, and also regularly hang out in #transformations. I'm also the one who regularly sets [[User:Sheep|the Sheep]] on fire. Additionally, I'm frequently found in #thezoo on [http://www.anthrochat.net Anthrochat], although whether or not I'm actually paying attention there at any given moment is highly variable. ;)

I'm one of the [[Shifti:Administrators|Administrators]] here, although I don't really get enough spare time to be all that active; if y'all need help and I'm the only one you can find on IRC, I'll do what I can, but in general I just help out [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]] with occasional backend issues, feature requests, and "beta" tests, and I listen to him ramble. ;) (I have this [[Shifti UI Revamp|grandiose plan for revamping the entire site UI]] so it's more author-and-reader friendly, but that would require about two uninterrupted weeks of free time that I don't presently have.) I'm also the one who decided on an impulse that we should be "shifti.org" instead of "shifti.keil-draco.com" and acted accordingly. Viqs helpn!

I've been accused of being an author at times. Perhaps someday I will do something to continue to be deserving of that accusation - I haven't written any fiction in years, partly 'cause I don't really "get into" this sort of thing, but mostly 'cause I vastly prefer nonfiction writing. (And back when I ''was'' writing fiction, most of it was arguably actually furry rather than TF anyways...)

==Stuff That's Been Written==

In the interest of filling out the Wiki and potentially embarrassing myself (and taking up more space with garbage on [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]]'s server), here's most of the stories I have created - with one exception, each is kind of a "my first impression" of a single story universe.

I should reiterate - these are hideously embarrassing, and all written well over a decade ago. I am so very not the same person who wrote these anymore. But I include them because, damnit, I care about community development. ;)

* [[Testing The Waters]] - This was the first story I ever wrote that was posted to [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk], back in the Elder Days almost a decade ago. I wanted to see how well newcomers would be received, thus the highly original title. I'm not so sure about some of the sentiments expressed therein anymore (ZOMG EVIL OUTSIDE WORLD) but, well, it's my history.
* [[TBP: Striking Back]] - Every TSA writer, by unwritten law, must write a [[:Category:Tales_from_the_Blind_Pig|Blind Pig]] story. This one is mine. Yes, I was rather feeling the strain when I wrote it. This one's responsible for my fifteen minutes of [http://tsa.transform.to/ TSA] fame, though, so it has a special place in my history. :D
* [[WoC: Gonna Rain Tomorra]] - Written in the [[:Category:Winds of Change|Winds of Change]] universe. This one's a bit silly, but it's also responsible for my fifteen minutes of TSA-Talk fame; it was the second story I ever did, and somehow managed to get attention. I kind of ripped off the punchline from a GURPS sourcebook, but, hey, it works. :)
* [[Text Of A Two-Page Note Found Next To The Body Of A Gray Vixen Morph]] - A New World Awaiting universe story (a universe that seems to have otherwise vanished). Runner-up for Most Pretentious Story Title EVAR. Essentially, I was cleaning up the TSA-FAQ (in an attempt to hijack it) when I came across the capsule description for said universe (which is basically a furry wish-fulfillment scenario - all the humans vanish, all the furries TF), and my first reaction was worry about my family. I'm very family-oriented. So, to get that emotion out of my system, I wrote my universe avatar's suicide note. It worked.

I've also got a few Metamor Keep stories, but I'm not sure if I really want to post them here. And there's maybe one or two more stories out there, but they will for now remain skeletons in my closet.

{{author page}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Viqsi}}

TSA-Bash

2014-10-13T01:47:17Z

Viqsi: trimming history as it's hopelessly out of date and not getting any better (unlike the Bash website itself), and nobody's taking maintenance ownership

Realtime Chat

2014-10-13T01:40:26Z

Viqsi: basic page with current options known to me; others should add ones they know!

Multiple options to reach other members of the community are available. The two most popular networks are as follows:
*[http://lapinia.org/tfnet TFNet IRC] - A private IRC network for TF fans. #tsa_list and #transformations in particular are frequented by community members, among others.
*[http://anthrochat.net/ AnthroChat IRC] - The furry IRC network. Several community members hang out in the channel #TheZoo on this network.

Main Page

2014-10-13T01:37:37Z

Viqsi: as a more long-term fix, make IRC into its own page, as it's changed a few times

<div id="content-headmatter">
<div id="ch-header">About</div>
<div id="ch-content">

'''Shifti''' is a wiki devoted to fiction involving shapeshifting of every variety - animal, anthropomorphic, transgender, age regression, inanimate, you name it. Here people can post stories, reviews, link collections, references, and all manner of other resources.

'''If you wish to post a story please visit [[Help:Posting stories]] for more information.''' The "Upload File" link is not intended for text.

Site news can be accessed via the '''[[Current_events|Current Events]]''' page.

If you're interested in helping to keep Shifti operating, then check out the [[Shifti:Site support|Donations]] page. We are currently accepting all forms of monetary support available. In that vein we are planning to publish an anthology of stories that can be found on Shifti. Details can be found on the [[Best of Shifti]] page. If the book works out well we may publish a new version each year.
</div>
</div>
{| style="width:99%;margin: 0 auto;"
|-
| class="content-block-wrapper" |
<div class="content-block">
<div class="cb-header">For Our Readers</div>
*[[:Category:Story|Main Index]] - This is where it all starts. All the stories on the site are indexed here.
*[[Editors Picks]] - Lists of select stories hand-picked by editors based on various criteria of quality. If you're concerned about just wading into the Main Index, this is a great place to get started.
*[[Other Indexes]] - Other ways to look for stories, including by Author, By Transformation and By Genre
----
<randompages count="5"><div style="text-align: center;">Five Random Stories</div></randompages>
</div>
| class="content-block-wrapper" |
<div class="content-block">
<div class="cb-header">For Our Writers</div>
*[[Getting Started]] - Want to know how to contribute to Shifti? Here's a quick guide to getting in and getting your stories on.
*[[Writer's School]] - Interested in picking up the keyboard yourself? Maybe you find yourself staring at the blank page, totally blocked? Here is a collection of essays by various authors. Useful for beginners and seasoned writers alike.
*[[Shared Settings]] - The setting is often the hardest part of the story to come up with. Here you can find information on settings others have created and opened to the world.
*[[The Muse Files]] - Having problems with inspiration? Look for ideas and inspiration here. Have ideas of your own that aren't working out? Put them here - someone else might be inspired by it.
</div>
|}
<div class="content-block-body">
<div class="cb-header">For Everyone</div>
* [[Getting Involved]] - Want to contribute, but don't trust your writing skills? Here's ways you can help become part of the Shifti project and keep it running smoothly.
* [[Shifti:History|Why We're Here]] - Who we are, how we got here, and where we're going.
* [[Current events|Current Events]] - Want to know what's new and going on with the Shifti project? Keep yourself informed and up-to-date courtesy of the Administrators on this page.
----
*[http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk] - The premiere TF community mailing list which spawned this project. Some stories will make it to the mailing list and yet never reach Shifti.
*[[IRC Chat]] - Live Chat with other members of the community.
*[[TSA-Bash]] - A yearly get together for TSA-Talk and other transformation enthusiasts. Since 1998.
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
<div class="cb-header">Outside/Other Resources</div>
*[[Book Reviews]] - Community-provided reviews of books you can find in stores.
*[[Story archives]] - There's a few other TF story archives out there which we are not at all pledged to overthrow and destroy. You can find them here.
*[[Art archives]] - We don't do TF art archival here at Shifti, but these folks do!
*[[Web comics]] - Our index of webcomics with either a TF focus, or occasional plotlines thereof.
*[[Movies]] - Our index of movies that may have relevance to the TF community.
*[[Miscellaneous links]] - some blogs and maybe another wiki or two.
</div>
__NOTOC__ __NOEDITSECTION__

Main Page

2011-08-05T00:14:02Z

Viqsi: change the "why we're here" link

<div id="content-headmatter">
<div id="ch-header">About</div>
<div id="ch-content">
'''Shifti''' is a wiki devoted to fiction involving shapeshifting of every variety - animal, anthropomorphic, transgender, age regression, inanimate, you name it. Here people can post stories, reviews, link collections, references, and all manner of other resources.

'''If you wish to post a story please visit [[Help:Posting stories]] for more information.''' The "Upload File" link is not intended for text.

Site news can be accessed via the '''[[Current_events|Current Events]]''' page.

If you're interested in helping to keep Shifti operating, then check out the [[Shifti:Site support|Donations]] page. We are currently accepting all forms of monetary support available. In that vein we are planning to publish an anthology of stories that can be found on Shifti. Details can be found on the [[Best of Shifti]] page. If the book works out well we may publish a new version each year.
</div>
</div>
{| style="width:99%;margin: 0 auto;"
|-
| class="content-block-wrapper" |
<div class="content-block">
<div class="cb-header">For Our Readers</div>
*[[:Category:Story|Main Index]] - This is where it all starts. All the stories on the site are indexed here.
*[[Editors Picks]] - Lists of select stories hand-picked by editors based on various criteria of quality. If you're concerned about just wading into the Main Index, this is a great place to get started.
----
<randompages count="5"><div style="text-align: center;">Five Random Stories</div></randompages>
</div>
| class="content-block-wrapper" |
<div class="content-block">
<div class="cb-header">For Our Writers</div>
*[[Getting Started]] - Want to know how to contribute to Shifti? Here's a quick guide to getting in and getting your stories on.
*[[Writer's School]] - Interested in picking up the keyboard yourself? Maybe you find yourself staring at the blank page, totally blocked? Here is a collection of essays by various authors. Useful for beginners and seasoned writers alike.
*[[Shared Settings]] - The setting is often the hardest part of the story to come up with. Here you can find information on settings others have created and opened to the world.
*[[The Muse Files]] - Having problems with inspiration? Look for ideas and inspiration here. Have ideas of your own that aren't working out? Put them here - someone else might be inspired by it.
|}
<div class="content-block-body">
<div class="cb-header">For Everyone</div>
* [[Getting Involved]] - Want to contribute, but don't trust your writing skills? Here's ways you can help become part of the Shifti project and keep it running smoothly.
* [[Shifti:History|Why We're Here]] - Who we are, how we got here, and where we're going.
* [[Current events|Current Events]] - Want to know what's new and going on with the Shifti project? Keep yourself informed and up-to-date courtesy of the Administrators on this page.
----
*[http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk] - The premiere TF community mailing list which spawned this project. Some stories will make it to the mailing list and yet never reach Shifti.
*[http://lapinia.org/tfnet TFNet IRC] - Live Chat with other members of the community.
*[[TSA-Bash]] - A yearly get together for TSA-Talk and other transformation enthusiasts. Since 1998.
</div>
<div class="content-block-body">
<div class="cb-header">Outside/Other Resources</div>
*[[Book Reviews]] - Community-provided reviews of books you can find in stores.
*[[Story archives]] - There's a few other TF story archives out there which we are not at all pledged to overthrow and destroy. You can find them here.
*[[Art archives]] - We don't do TF art archival here at Shifti, but these folks do!
*[[Web comics]] - Our index of webcomics with either a TF focus, or occasional plotlines thereof.
*[[Movies]] - Our index of movies that may have relevance to the TF community.
*[[Miscellaneous links]] - some blogs and maybe another wiki or two.
</div>
__NOTOC__ __NOEDITSECTION__

Getting Started

2011-08-05T00:11:12Z

Viqsi: er, maybe I should make the redirect actually work first :D

#REDIRECT [[Help:Contents]]

Getting Started

2011-08-05T00:10:21Z

Viqsi: put in a redirect so this link goes SOMEwhere for now

#REDIRECT Help:Contents

Editors Picks

2011-08-05T00:08:09Z

Viqsi: get a basic page going

A few of our editors and users have put together editorially-reviewed lists of stories that they think are of especially high quality. Those lists are showcased here.

If you're interested in creating your own list, feel free to add it to this page one you're done!

*[[Bryan's picks]] - A personal favorites collection
*[[ShadowWolfs Pack|ShadowWolf's Pack]] - following [[User:Bryan|Bryan's]] example and posting a personal favorites list
*[[Devins Faves]] - Some personal favourites from the TSA and Shifti
*[[Catprog's Favorites]] - Some favorites of [[User:Catprog|Catprog]]
*[[Lloyd's Favorites]] - A set of favorites picked by [[User:Lloyd Brunnel|Lloyd Brunnel]]
*[[Chaos' Story List]] - a set of favorites picked by [[User:Chaos Jaguar|Chaos Jaguar]]

Talk:Shifti UI Revamp

2009-08-17T22:05:21Z

Viqsi: response!

Enhancements, part 1:
:Most of these features are available in other Wiki's but not MediaWiki. Might be possible to get these working with extensions.
::Page ownership might be possible to track via an extra database table cross-linking page-name and page-creator, though we could co-opt a parser-extension to flag the owner based on page-contents.
::Classification and categorization is possible through the existing semantic tags and category tags but this system is not fine-grained enough to keep most people happy.
::Other meta-data is possible via new database tables and parser-tags
::We've tried various feed-back extensions in the past and seen them used to bypass the spam-protections we have in place. The suggestion is a good one, though...
::Categorization for all pages will be tough, since there are some authors that raised concerns over forced-categorization that could reveal a twist in the story or the punchline of a humorous story... This led to the "leave the categorization up to the authors" decision early on.
::Metadata formatting is a hard one, since the fully-parsed metadata is not available to the user at page creation time and metadata links are generated by the parser separately.

Enhancements, part 2:
:Shiftimin needs fixing bad - there are bits that I passed-up on implementing because the sites default is Monobook.
::It needs a lot of re-organization work for various bits
::It relies on some JS to make certain features function in versions of IE prior to IE8 (which has full CSS 2.1 support - which was needed)
:Current menu format is relied upon by other skins. If we manage to get a customized skin that works well on all major browser versions used by Shifti's visitors then it could be changed.
::Shiftimin contains hacks where it reads the current format and builds its own structure from it

Enhancements, part 3:
:Semantic system can be extended to fill this role
:Custom category pages should be possible

Enhancements, part 4:
:There are a number of alternative editors available for MediaWiki.
:The revisions system would be good...
:Current editor selectively uses Javascript. WYSIWYG replacements would rely heavily on JavaScript. Any 'revisions' system would rely on AJAX for communicating revisions back to the server for storage.

Enhancements, part 5:
:Massive amounts of documentation are required anyway. We currently point people to primary MediaWiki documentation for basic markup help and to places like the Semantic MediaWiki home for help with the Semantic system.

----

Basically the idea is good, but will require many, many changes to the core code and some ideas go against principles in others. I'll conditionally condone this one.

:-- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

::On part 1: As I see it, the vast majority of those features would be implemented via the Semantic MediaWiki extension. All it really entails is having a single common template that acts as a front end for a Semantic MediaWiki metadata scheme that we more or less standardize across the wiki. This would theoretically allow us to implement such things without forking the MediaWiki codebase. Going with a template that hooks in metadata just makes sense to me. Not only does it make creating a front-end a hell of a lot more easy (see: part 4), it also makes things much much easier for the quasi-Luddites who are perfectly happy with WikiText. ;)
::In particular re: "ownership" - I'm trying to codify ownership of the <em>content</em>, not necessarily the page it's on. I think existing protection mechanisms can be used for preventing editing issues just fine - but that does nothing for copyright. Copyright is important metadata that should be included and tracked.

::On part 2: I have a few books I plan on buying and reading such that I can try and roll my own, honestly - I recognize this is kind of an ugly job that I'm going to be very twitchy on, and since I have the opportunity to make it My Problem I intend to do so. ;) I just like the branding work done with ShiftiMin, and so in anything I do I'd probably steal it. The menu structure, tho, obviously needs work - I thought drop-downs would actually work out for once and... well... they don't. :)

::On part 3: It sure can. That's the idea. :D That's also why I want a Common Template - because that way we can be assured folks are hooked into the semantic metadata system, and thus their stories will get included. Some hacks to existing templates might be necessary until such time as we can make things work ourselves, but you've already started on that so it's all good.

::On part 4: Frankly, I don't know how to implement such a thing. It came to me as an idea only because I know you've experimented with AJAX WYSIWYG editors before, and so that means we have somebody on the team who at least has a vague idea of what this would entail. The meat of this issue, tho, is basically integrating a front-end to our Basic Page Template into the editor. (Obviously that means the template has to be done first!)

::On part 5: I'd write more, except I want to make this happen! ;D

::Hope this helps! --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 22:05, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Viqsi

2009-08-17T18:54:40Z

Viqsi: /* Viqsi */ link to the site revamp

=Viqsi=
[[Image:viqsictu.png|right]]
Ich bin ein viqsin. Fear me.

My actual name is Jo. My actual surname is a bit too easily Googled, although if you're clever (or even simply non-lazy), you can find it pretty easily. In the past I've used the surname "Hunter" for anonymizing purposes (and that's how you'll find [http://tsa.transform.to/worlds/tbp/strikingback.html my sole TSA story]).

You may know me from the [http://lapinia.org/tfnet/ TFNet] IRC network - I'm one of the ops for #tsa_list and #tsa_tech, and also regularly hang out in #transformations. I'm also the one who regularly sets [[User:Sheep|the Sheep]] on fire. Additionally, I'm frequently found in #thezoo on [http://www.anthrochat.net Anthrochat], although whether or not I'm actually paying attention there at any given moment is highly variable. ;)

I'm one of the [[Shifti:Administrators|Administrators]] here, although I don't really get enough spare time to be all that active; if y'all need help and I'm the only one you can find on IRC, I'll do what I can, but in general I just help out [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]] with occasional backend issues, feature requests, and "beta" tests, and I listen to him ramble. ;) (I have this [[Shifti UI Revamp|grandiose plan for revamping the entire site UI]] so it's more author-and-reader friendly, but that would require about two uninterrupted weeks of free time that I don't presently have.) I'm also the one who decided on an impulse that we should be "shifti.org" instead of "shifti.keil-draco.com" and acted accordingly. Viqs helpn!

I've been accused of being an author at times. Perhaps someday I will do something to continue to be deserving of that accusation - I haven't written any fiction in years, partly 'cause I don't really "get into" this sort of thing, but mostly 'cause I vastly prefer nonfiction writing. (And back when I ''was'' writing fiction, most of it was arguably actually furry rather than TF anyways...)

==Stuff That's Been Written==

In the interest of filling out the Wiki and potentially embarrassing myself (and taking up more space with garbage on [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]]'s server), here's most of the stories I have created - with one exception, each is kind of a "my first impression" of a single story universe.

I should reiterate - these are hideously embarrassing, and all written over half a decade ago. I am so very not the same person who wrote these anymore. But I include them because, damnit, I care about community development. ;)

* [[Testing The Waters]] - This was the first story I ever wrote that was posted to [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk], back in the Elder Days almost a decade ago. I wanted to see how well newcomers would be received, thus the highly original title. I'm not so sure about some of the sentiments expressed therein anymore (ZOMG EVIL OUTSIDE WORLD) but, well, it's my history.
* [[TBP: Striking Back]] - Every TSA writer, by unwritten law, must write a [[:Category:Tales_from_the_Blind_Pig|Blind Pig]] story. This one is mine. Yes, I was rather feeling the strain when I wrote it. This one's responsible for my fifteen minutes of [http://tsa.transform.to/ TSA] fame, though, so it has a special place in my history. :D
* [[WoC: Gonna Rain Tomorra]] - Written in the [[:Category:Winds of Change|Winds of Change]] universe. This one's a bit silly, but it's also responsible for my fifteen minutes of TSA-Talk fame; it was the second story I ever did, and somehow managed to get attention. I kind of ripped off the punchline from a GURPS sourcebook, but, hey, it works. :)
* [[Text Of A Two-Page Note Found Next To The Body Of A Gray Vixen Morph]] - A New World Awaiting universe story (a universe that seems to have otherwise vanished). Runner-up for Most Pretentious Story Title EVAR. Essentially, I was cleaning up the TSA-FAQ (in an attempt to hijack it) when I came across the capsule description for said universe (which is basically a furry wish-fulfillment scenario - all the humans vanish, all the furries TF), and my first reaction was worry about my family. I'm very family-oriented. So, to get that emotion out of my system, I wrote my universe avatar's suicide note. It worked.

I've also got a few Metamor Keep stories, but I'm not sure if I really want to post them here. And there's maybe one or two more stories out there, but they will for now remain skeletons in my closet.

{{author page}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Viqsi}}

Shifti UI Revamp

2009-08-17T18:53:55Z

Viqsi: uploading and partially wikifying my various UI revamp ideas

This is a long, drawn-out sketch of ideas [[User:Viqsi|I (Viqsi)]] keep brainstorming on vis-a-vis making Shifti more UI-friendly. Previously I've been only showing these to [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]] because, well, they're long, rambling, and probably not fully comprehensible - and I don't want to create the appearance of committing the wiki in any given future direction.

I finally decided to put it here, though, because, well, damnit, we've got this wiki thing, so why not put the information here rather than in umpteen billion textfiles on my laptop? :D

Comments are welcomed and encouraged in the [[Talk:Shifti UI Revamp|talk page]]. The voices can't tell me how I'm crazy, so I need y'all to help. :D

This is strictly a "in free time available" thing, so anyone expecting any of the below before, say, the end of the year should be prepared for disappointment. Viqsins have grandiose ideas, but little time in which to implement them. :(

<b>NOTE: None of this is endorsed by any of the other admins as presently written. This is just one UI geek's thoughts on the matter. Do not interpret this as an official Shifti policy document; rather, take it for what it is - the wild daydreams of an absentee admin. :)</b>

= The Goal =
To make Shifti an even more attractive platform for story publication and collaboration.

= Sub-goals =
* Make creator-neutrality optional and easy to manage. People are protective of their works of art (as well they ought!) and so editability should be at their discretion and their discretion only.
* Dramatically reduce the technical barrier to entry. While many of us are both geeks <em>and</em> writers, this is not the case for most (indeed, some of our best writers are certainly <em>not</em> geeks!), and so they need to be handheld for every function we hope to encourage.
* The functions we want prioritized are as follows:
** Story Publication
** Story Development
** Feedback to/from publishers
* Secondary functions are as follows:
** Collaborative story development
** Community information sharing (ideally this is an emergent property)
** Mailing list integration (I'll explain later)
* Don't piss people off in the process. ;)

== Working from the existing wiki model... ==
* There are <del>three</del> four classes of page: "Glue", "Story", "Development", and "Author"
** "Glue": majority of non-writing pages. Holds everything together. The front page would qualify, for example.
** "Story": set published work. Editable only by creator, and by admins.
** "Development": similar to "Story", but editable by others because the creator has willed it so.
** "Author": autobiographical information about contributors to the Wiki.

"Glue" pages could be like any other MediaWiki (or other wiki, for that matter) page. They are and must be creator-neutral.<br>
"Story" and "Development" pages are not creator-neutral, although with the latter the creator is inviting outside edits and support.<br>
"Author" has traditionally not been creator-neutral in MediaWiki either.

We also have to figure out what sort of metadata should be "protected" in terms of creator-neutrality. For example, Favorites Page metadata would ideally NOT be controlled by the author; otherwise folks could unduly toot their own horns. Content rating and tags and the like also should be subject to community review. On the other hand, display preferences on the page itself is kind of thorny, and story ownership is <em>definitely</em> an untouchable. This is probably going to be a development challenge for the Editing Widget, if we can handle it there at all.

What metadata formats will we be evil dictators about? <nowiki>{{XXX}}</nowiki> as presently constituted has something of a required visual standard as enforced by the template's formatting. Is this the only thing we have to be pushy about, or are there other such issues we'll have to make dictatorial calls on?

= The Ultimate UI Revamp Concept as it presently stands =

== Part 1: The Basic Page Template ==
An all-encompassing Basic Page Template for metadata (and some formatting) that handles the following:
* Basic Page Type ("Story","Development","Author Page","Glue Page", and so forth - the idea being to set the expected metadata set and whether or not the page is supposed to be creator-neutral.)
* For stories, complete and in development...
** Story ownership (who is the author or authors?)
** Story subgenre classification
** Content rating
** Attributions and/or display preferences
** Display metadata such as capsule descriptions
** Enhanced options for feedback, including easy commenting on Talk pages and emailing the author.
** Story language (we already have folks contributing in Russian, which is awesome)
** Other preferences that may come to mind (such as whether or not this story should be indexed for readers; whether or not translations are OK, et cetera)
** Other metadata that may come to mind (any internationalization issues I'm not presently aware of, for example)
* For author pages...
** Feedback email address.
** Attribution Name
** Any other necessary author metadata.
* Tags/Categorization for all pages.
* Formatting preferences for display of metadata on the story page itself.

== Part 2: A New Skin ==
A new MediaWiki skin that:
* Provides effective branding (ShiftiMin is off to a very good start here)
* Reorganizes menu options as per the desired spec (detailed elsewhere)
* Does not necessarily require AJAX (i.e. if Javascript is off, all menu options show).

== Part 3: Semantic Categories ==
A new Category Page system that:
* Eschews MediaWiki's category page generation entirely
* Uses metadata via the Basic Page Template to provide a useful, prettyprinted list
* Provides sorting and search options for useful metadata attributes like tags and categorization
* Hooks into existing Category links so as to provide a consistent interface for users.

== Part 4: New Editing Widget ==
A new Editing widget that:
* Provides a nice point-and-click interface to Basic Page Template features and metadata, which is switchable per the Page Type (i.e. if you tell the system this is a Author Page, it shouldn't ask you for a Story Description)
* Saves "drafts" of page edits along the way (much like [http://www.dokuwiki.org DokuWiki] does) automatically in the system (but not to the main wiki - just separately tracked), so that people can use it as a regular writing tool without fear of losing work.
* Ideally puts more emphasis on semantics rather than formatting (although this goal may have to be discarded if we run into the Too Many Semantic Categories problem)
* Allows for editing of raw wikitext per user preference, since some of us (*cough*cough*bryan*cough*) might well be Luddites about such a Brave Step Forward. ;)
* If possible, restricts edits to areas as per creator preference (so that, say, you could change a page's categorization without changing the story itself). (This would be F***ING AWESOME if we could pull it off.)

== Part 5: Documentation ==
This would be lots of Glue Content Edits:
* Comprehensive documentation on the new editing widget (for users) and template information (for geeks) in the Help namespace.
* A little more expanded information on the administrators and who can help you with what.
* A reformatted Main Page that organizes information more neatly for new and repeat visitors, and gives equal time to contributing and creating as well as just plain old reading.

= Some Page Redesign Ideas =

(Note that some of these have already been incorporated into ShiftiMin. And yes, it is meant to be mostly in preformatted text.)

=== Front Page ===
Welcome to Shifti!

Shifti is a wiki devoted to fiction involving shapeshifting of every variety - animal, anthropomorphic, transgender, age regression, inanimate, you name it. Our Story Collections are our bread-and-butter, but you can also find reviews, link collections, references, helpful guides, and all manner of other resources. And if you don't think there's enough of any of those, you can jump right in and add some of your own!

FOR OUR READERS FOR OUR WRITERS
(Hosted story collections) (Posting Stories Help)
(Comprehensive lists) (Writer's School)
(story lists - Stories By x)

FOR EVERYBODY
(Community Resources) - the bash, tsa-talk, etc.
(Getting Involved With Shifti) - how you can contribute (Editor's Corner included), donations, Best Of Shifti
(Why We're Here) - mission statement, guidelines, History Of Shifti
(HELP!) - help pages
(Shifti News) - current events. get better title. ;)

=== Skin Template Stuff ===

Across the top of each page:

Home [Page Tools #] [Search Shifti #] Logged in as: [Viqsi #] X

("#" is a menu icon. hover over text and/or that icon to get one of the menus below.
click on icon to expand and hold open menu w/Javascript)

(Alternative if not logged in: [Join The Project / Log in!]

(Home) Just a link to the main page. ;)

(Page Tools) (Skin will highlight where you currently are)
Current Page
Printable Version Of Page
Discuss This Page
Edit This Page
History Of Edits
Advanced->
Delete This Page
Move/Rename This Page
(Unp|P)rotect This Page
(Watch|Stop Watching) This Page For Changes
Reload Page From Server
What Links Here from "toolbox"
Related Changes from "toolbox"
Page Semantic Properties from "toolbox"
All Recent Changes from main menu

Other submenus for other page types that add new toolbox options. For example:
This User-> (for userpages only, and only shows up for admins)
Contributions
Action Logs
Block From Editing

(Alternatively: Have a "Special->" submenu for those types of options.)

(Search Shifti) - See if we can fit the search box in a CSS hover menu without breaking browsers.

Logged in as: [Viqsi #] X (hovering over username produces the menu) (X is logout)
My Homepage
My Talk
Preferences
Watchlist
Contributions

=== Other Entirely Random Thoughts ===

* Eliminate "Permanent Link", "Special Pages", and "Upload File" entirely from the toolbox. Refer to them in help - Special Pages in tech help, Upload File for image illustrations only, Permanent Link doesn't matter.)
* Have menus as essentially a collapsible sidebar. It uncollapses by default if Javascript is turned off.

Talk:Current events

2009-08-17T17:00:09Z

Viqsi: /* Shifti Hardware Stuff */ chattery!

{{Talk header}}

Suggestion for the style sheet: Ability to change text size. The default is a little small for comfort if you're sitting a healthy distance from your monitor. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 00:29, 18 August 2007 (EDT)

: I think this is easier to do with Opera, FireFox, etc... than with IE. In FireFox I have a custom stylesheet for specific sites that changes the default text size. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:34, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

==Captchas==

A captcha for every edit? I missed that discussion. :) Seems like an overreaction to me, a captcha is intended to prevent automated bots from operating but this most recent episode of spam didn't look automated so it wouldn't have made a difference. And it was quite small and easily dealt with by conventional means, in any event. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:52, 12 October 2007 (EDT)

:Only the main namespace has that. The rest of Shifti is only captcha'd on account creation, login failure and when a URL is added to the page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:42, 12 October 2007 (EDT)

:I haven't had any problem with the captchas ( just to make sure though those are the image verifiers that pop up after you hit submit?) it doesn't take more than a second to deal with and if it stops bots it cant hurt as another layer of protection.

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 00:22, 1 January 2008 (EST)

::After the problems [[User:FelixSagittarius|Felix]] ran into with the Captcha system, I've changed the system so that 'authors' group people are not going to be facing it. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:47, 3 January 2008 (EST)

== Get Well Soon ==

Don't push yourself too hard, Shadow. The last thing we want is an acute case. I'm sure we'll get the new router/modem this week. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 15:34, 4 February 2008 (EST)

I'm willing to front some money in order to get that router/modem hardware here sooner. You said it was the cheapest place you found it. What's the price difference between this place and, say, NewEgg or Best Buy? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 16:06, 5 February 2008 (EST)

== Huzzah!==

What the title of this section says. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 16:11, 22 February 2008 (EST)

==Small addition==

You might want to mention explicitly that the funds we collected during the recent fundraiser will still go toward maintaining Shifti, just in case people think putting off moving to a new host means we're going to pocket the loot and live the high life off of it. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:56, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

== Shifti Hardware Stuff ==
What sort of power draw do we expect for the upcoming server setup? I have to go UPS shopping anyways for Temple purposes and I could probably sneak some Shifti purposes in there too. [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 16:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
:"Hal" (the webserver) has, IIRC, a 500W power-supply in it and I was planning on the PS for Draco's permanent replacement being at least that. So Maximum power draw for them will be about a kilowatt. Factor in the router (which, IIRC, draws under 50W), the WYSE-50 attached to "Hal" and the screen that will be attached to the database server...

: Since things go sideways if the WYSE-50 is turned off I can't cut that out, but the screen for the replacement will likely be turned off if a power-fail happens... As long as the UPS can drive "Hal", the router and Draco's replacement (I'm thinking of naming it 'Wolf') for an hour we should be fine. (for longer outages than an hour I don't think anything short of a full generator on a power-fail auto-start would help...)
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:56, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

:: Sounds like we'd want to do multiple UPSes (one for Hal and WYSE-50, one for Draco/replacement and router), then. I'll have to look at prices and durations a bit.
::--[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 17:00, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Viqsi

2009-08-17T16:29:15Z

Viqsi: minor bits about admin status and role

=Viqsi=
[[Image:viqsictu.png|right]]
Ich bin ein viqsin. Fear me.

My actual name is Jo. My actual surname is a bit too easily Googled, although if you're clever (or even simply non-lazy), you can find it pretty easily. In the past I've used the surname "Hunter" for anonymizing purposes (and that's how you'll find [http://tsa.transform.to/worlds/tbp/strikingback.html my sole TSA story]).

You may know me from the [http://lapinia.org/tfnet/ TFNet] IRC network - I'm one of the ops for #tsa_list and #tsa_tech, and also regularly hang out in #transformations. I'm also the one who regularly sets [[User:Sheep|the Sheep]] on fire. Additionally, I'm frequently found in #thezoo on [http://www.anthrochat.net Anthrochat], although whether or not I'm actually paying attention there at any given moment is highly variable. ;)

I'm one of the [[Shifti:Administrators|Administrators]] here, although I don't really get enough spare time to be all that active; if y'all need help and I'm the only one you can find on IRC, I'll do what I can, but in general I just help out [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]] with occasional backend issues, feature requests, and "beta" tests, and I listen to him ramble. ;) (I have this grandiose plan for revamping the entire site UI so it's more author-and-reader friendly, but that would require about two uninterrupted weeks of free time that I don't presently have.) I'm also the one who decided on an impulse that we should be "shifti.org" instead of "shifti.keil-draco.com" and acted accordingly. Viqs helpn!

I've been accused of being an author at times. Perhaps someday I will do something to continue to be deserving of that accusation - I haven't written any fiction in years, partly 'cause I don't really "get into" this sort of thing, but mostly 'cause I vastly prefer nonfiction writing. (And back when I ''was'' writing fiction, most of it was arguably actually furry rather than TF anyways...)

==Stuff That's Been Written==

In the interest of filling out the Wiki and potentially embarrassing myself (and taking up more space with garbage on [[User:ShadowWolf|SW]]'s server), here's most of the stories I have created - with one exception, each is kind of a "my first impression" of a single story universe.

I should reiterate - these are hideously embarrassing, and all written over half a decade ago. I am so very not the same person who wrote these anymore. But I include them because, damnit, I care about community development. ;)

* [[Testing The Waters]] - This was the first story I ever wrote that was posted to [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk], back in the Elder Days almost a decade ago. I wanted to see how well newcomers would be received, thus the highly original title. I'm not so sure about some of the sentiments expressed therein anymore (ZOMG EVIL OUTSIDE WORLD) but, well, it's my history.
* [[TBP: Striking Back]] - Every TSA writer, by unwritten law, must write a [[:Category:Tales_from_the_Blind_Pig|Blind Pig]] story. This one is mine. Yes, I was rather feeling the strain when I wrote it. This one's responsible for my fifteen minutes of [http://tsa.transform.to/ TSA] fame, though, so it has a special place in my history. :D
* [[WoC: Gonna Rain Tomorra]] - Written in the [[:Category:Winds of Change|Winds of Change]] universe. This one's a bit silly, but it's also responsible for my fifteen minutes of TSA-Talk fame; it was the second story I ever did, and somehow managed to get attention. I kind of ripped off the punchline from a GURPS sourcebook, but, hey, it works. :)
* [[Text Of A Two-Page Note Found Next To The Body Of A Gray Vixen Morph]] - A New World Awaiting universe story (a universe that seems to have otherwise vanished). Runner-up for Most Pretentious Story Title EVAR. Essentially, I was cleaning up the TSA-FAQ (in an attempt to hijack it) when I came across the capsule description for said universe (which is basically a furry wish-fulfillment scenario - all the humans vanish, all the furries TF), and my first reaction was worry about my family. I'm very family-oriented. So, to get that emotion out of my system, I wrote my universe avatar's suicide note. It worked.

I've also got a few Metamor Keep stories, but I'm not sure if I really want to post them here. And there's maybe one or two more stories out there, but they will for now remain skeletons in my closet.

{{author page}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Viqsi}}

Talk:Current events

2009-08-17T16:17:56Z

Viqsi: ups question

TSA-Bash

2009-06-09T15:35:05Z

Viqsi: phil's house has recovered ;)

The '''TSA-Bash''' is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general) for the expressed purpose of "goofing off".

Unlike furry cons, the "Bash" (as it's known for short) doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the TSA-Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list! There is also a [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/ Bash website] showcasing pictures, stories, and detailed info pages, maintained by [[User:Sheep|Sheep]].

== Next Bash ==

The next TSA-Bash (June 19-June 22, 2009) will be held in Obetz, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and is being organized by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] with help from Mintz and [[User:Sheep|Sheep]]. You can find more information (and make plans to attend!) [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/09.shtml on the TSA-Bash website].

Interested in hosting a Bash? Join the mailing list, and [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/hosting.shtml check out the guidelines on the Bash Website for organizing a bash].

== History ==

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/98.shtml 1998:]''' Phil Geusz thought it might be "neat" to have a couple of people from the [http://tsa.transform.to/ Transformation Story Archive] mailing list to get-together at his house for some fun and goofing off. Instead of a couple, he got 19 people. It was promised that the get-together would happen again next year.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/99.shtml 1999:]''' Since the 1998 get-together was such a success, more people showed up at Phil's house, this time attracting over 50 people. It became apparent, especially after his yard was full of tents and there was people sleeping on the floor everywhere in his house, that the get-together would have to be moved to a hotel. This began the tradition of the nomadic nature of the Bash. There were several reasons for the move to a hotel:
*The number of people in the house caused a monumental trash pile and broke the air conditioning unit, requiring the use of many fans.
*It took Phil over an hour and a half to get from one end of the house to the other for an urgent matter.
*Phil's house did not fully recover until late 2008.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/00.shtml 2000:]''' The get-together became known as the "Bash" at this point, organized by a small "Bash Committee" headed by Linnaeus and was held in Elgin, Illinois, where 37 people showed up.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/01.shtml 2001:]''' The Bash was held in Hazelwood, Missouri. Attendee count: 28. After this Bash, the "committee" was abandoned in favor of the current "organizer" format.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/02.shtml 2002:]''' The Bash was held in Sea-Tac, Washington, and organized by Fish, Dragon de Monsyne, and SR Foxley. Attendee count: 32.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/03.shtml 2003:]''' The Bash was held in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was organized by Kristy and Jessie Tracer. Attendee count: 25.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/04.shtml 2004:]''' The Bash was held in Austin, Texas, organized by Dragon de Monsyne and Wanderer. Attendee count: 17.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/05.shtml 2005:]''' The Bash was held in Sunnyvale, California, organized by Mut and Aatheus. Attendee count: 15.<br>
The Sunnyvale Bash is noteworthy in that it was where Phil Geusz and Quentin Long first met each other in the flesh; as a result of one of their conversations, Long decided to start up a new netzine -- [http://anthrozine.com ''Anthro'']''.''

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/06.shtml 2006:]''' The Bash was held in Florence, Kentucky, organized by Phil and Andi. Attendee count: 22.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/07.shtml 2007:]''' The Bash was held in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, organized by Morgan, Fulminar, and Pakesh_De. Attendee count: 27.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/08.shtml 2008:]''' The Bash was held in Oakland, California, close to where Bash 2005 was set, and organized by Doom. Attendee count: 23.

User talk:ShadowWolf

2009-06-09T15:30:28Z

Viqsi: /* ShiftiMin-related stuff */ new section

how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)

==Sitenotice text==

Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)

Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)

What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)

== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==

Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.

Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).

Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it).

I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Story submission captcha? ==

I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.

I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Question ==
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== RSS Feed? ==

Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.

:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable <guid/> tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those <guid/> tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked <strong style="color: red;">CLOSED/RESOLVED</strong>. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==

I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a <em>really</em> exclusive club. ;)<br>
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

TSA-Bash

2009-06-09T15:20:38Z

Viqsi: new link

The '''TSA-Bash''' is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general) for the expressed purpose of "goofing off".

Unlike furry cons, the "Bash" (as it's known for short) doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the TSA-Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list! There is also a [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/ Bash website] showcasing pictures, stories, and detailed info pages, maintained by [[User:Sheep|Sheep]].

== Next Bash ==

The next TSA-Bash (June 19-June 22, 2009) will be held in Obetz, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and is being organized by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] with help from Mintz and [[User:Sheep|Sheep]]. You can find more information (and make plans to attend!) [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/09.shtml on the TSA-Bash website].

Interested in hosting a Bash? Join the mailing list, and [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/hosting.shtml check out the guidelines on the Bash Website for organizing a bash].

== History ==

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/98.shtml 1998:]''' Phil Geusz thought it might be "neat" to have a couple of people from the [http://tsa.transform.to/ Transformation Story Archive] mailing list to get-together at his house for some fun and goofing off. Instead of a couple, he got 19 people. It was promised that the get-together would happen again next year.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/99.shtml 1999:]''' Since the 1998 get-together was such a success, more people showed up at Phil's house, this time attracting over 50 people. It became apparent, especially after his yard was full of tents and there was people sleeping on the floor everywhere in his house, that the get-together would have to be moved to a hotel. This began the tradition of the nomadic nature of the Bash. There were several reasons for the move to a hotel:
*The number of people in the house caused a monumental trash pile and broke the air conditioning unit, requiring the use of many fans.
*It took Phil over an hour and a half to get from one end of the house to the other for an urgent matter.
*Phil's house is only starting to recover, even in 2007.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/00.shtml 2000:]''' The get-together became known as the "Bash" at this point, organized by a small "Bash Committee" headed by Linnaeus and was held in Elgin, Illinois, where 37 people showed up.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/01.shtml 2001:]''' The Bash was held in Hazelwood, Missouri. Attendee count: 28. After this Bash, the "committee" was abandoned in favor of the current "organizer" format.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/02.shtml 2002:]''' The Bash was held in Sea-Tac, Washington, and organized by Fish, Dragon de Monsyne, and SR Foxley. Attendee count: 32.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/03.shtml 2003:]''' The Bash was held in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was organized by Kristy and Jessie Tracer. Attendee count: 25.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/04.shtml 2004:]''' The Bash was held in Austin, Texas, organized by Dragon de Monsyne and Wanderer. Attendee count: 17.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/05.shtml 2005:]''' The Bash was held in Sunnyvale, California, organized by Mut and Aatheus. Attendee count: 15.<br>
The Sunnyvale Bash is noteworthy in that it was where Phil Geusz and Quentin Long first met each other in the flesh; as a result of one of their conversations, Long decided to start up a new netzine -- [http://anthrozine.com ''Anthro'']''.''

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/06.shtml 2006:]''' The Bash was held in Florence, Kentucky, organized by Phil and Andi. Attendee count: 22.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/07.shtml 2007:]''' The Bash was held in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, organized by Morgan, Fulminar, and Pakesh_De. Attendee count: 27.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/08.shtml 2008:]''' The Bash was held in Oakland, California, close to where Bash 2005 was set, and organized by Doom. Attendee count: 23.

User:JonBuck

2009-02-06T17:47:55Z

Viqsi: /* About Myself */ link repair ;)

{{my stories
|name=Jon Buck
|category=Jon Buck
}}
=About Myself=

I've been involved in this particular genre since 1996. And I didn't start small. My first ''magnum opus'' was the Winds of Change setting, which turned out to be surprisingly popular to write in. In the years since, I've grown a lot as a writer, and I don't plan on stopping. The stories that go up here will be those that will not be submitted for publication.

New stories will generally be posted to [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsa-talk TSA-Talk] first, then here. Though I am posting an in-progress series here first to give Shifti a boost. I am also a ''Shifti'' [[Shifti:Administrators|Administrator]].

<div class="floatright">
{| class="toc"
|-
!Legend
|-
|
*[[Image:Star.png|20px]] - Favorite of mine
*[[Image:Triple_X.png|20px]] - Adult content
*[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]] - Long story (>150kB)
*[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px]] - Short story
*[[Image:Clock warning.png|20px]] - On Hiatus
|}
</div>
__TOC__

={{separator|f|Works in Progress}}=

*'''[[User:JonBuck/Eve's Apple|Eve's Apple]]''' (2008)[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]]
:I've gotten enough of a start on this one that I'm going to start posting it here. This is a TG story. It's in a stock magic-technology setting that I use when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to create a whole new world out of whole cloth. :) Title is provisional.

*'''[[User:JonBuck/Forgotten Hotel|Forgotten Hotel, Chapters 1-5]]'''
*'''[[User:JonBuck/Forgotten Hotel, Part 2|Forgotten Hotel, Chapters 6-current]]'''[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]] (2007) '''{{add|Updated 3/1}}'''
:I've decided to post this still-incomplete story here as a reference. I've had some difficulty lately keeping it going, though I think it'll be coming to an end soon. The setting was inspired by James Lileks's [http://www.lileks.com/motels The American Motel] web site. Specifically, [http://www.lileks.com/motels/WY/index.html this postcard.] I started writing it last July, so it's been a while. Both TF, furry, and TG are included. Say a prayer for the commercial man...
:''Story split up to avoid problems with the Shifti database.''

*'''[[Tradition]]''' (2007) [[Image:Clock warning.png|20px]] [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]][[Image:Triple_X.png|20px]]
:This story was inspired by a vivid dream. The first section is essentially the dream itself. This is a transgender story. There will be no furry or animal transformations. And the normal caveats apply--I hope a plot turns up soon. I'll put up the first section here once it's posted to TSA-Talk.
:I'm also doing something here that I've never really done before. I'm trying to write this story from the POV of both characters, one of which is a female-to-male TG. This is proving to be a challenge, because I have to put myself in her place. I think it's working out so far.
:It's also going to be a long one, pushing almost 20k words already. Nearly halfway to novel length, and the story has barely gotten started. I'm going to try and plan out an end-state for the two main characters, otherwise I think this one will just ramble on for the whole academic year...
:{{add|This story is going on hiatus until I figure out the plot arc.}}

={{separator|f|Recent Works - 2004 to Present}}=

*'''[[Against Type]]''' [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]](2007)
:A Xanadu story, co-op with [[User:Bryan|Bryan]]. Unlike most Xanadu stories it actually begins a few weeks after the event, and concerns the problem of secondary transformations, like [[Slinx]]. It's also, amazingly, a story that features no deer transformation whatsoever.

*'''[[Colony]]''' [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]][[Image:Star.png|20px]] (2005)
:A standalone novella, about 250 kilobytes of text.
:Inspiration for this story came from two pictures posted to Yerf. Two deer in 18th century Colonial outfits. I do not have external links, unfortunately.
:This is a world with geography roughly similar to our own. But different enough that the equivalent of North America was never colonized by humans, even in the Ice Age. I'm rather happy with this setting and may revisit it. The uncompleted story [[Exile's Road]] was the basis for this one.

*'''[[Doe's Hoof]]'''[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px]][[Image:Triple X.png|20px]] (2006)
:A quickie. What happens when you're down on your luck and you really have nowhere to go?

*'''[[Fight the Wind]]''' (2004, {{add|another chunk added 2008}})
:I wrote this when I was unemployed, following graduate school. It lasted months, and during that time I got a lot of self doubt about the career I had chosen. So I wrote a few transgender stories like this kind of theme. It doesn't have a plot, per se. It's mainly about being carried along by events... and being changed beyond one's own recognition.
:This story features some graphic content, but so far no actual sex or violence. I've probably exaggerated it somewhat, not having firsthand experience, but the graphic depictions in the story are as close to reality as I can make them. I like being thorough.

*'''[[The Limelight]]''' [[Image:Star.png|20px]] (2004)
:A story in [[User:Bryan|Bryan's]] Wisp-touched setting. I rather like the main character.

*'''[[Marquee]]''' [[Image:Star.png|20px]] [[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px]] (2007)
:This is a gift story for a friend for TSA-Talk's Christmas Xchange. It takes place in the same over-the-top comic book setting as [[Steel City]]. It's a silly, over the top comic book setting where transformations of almost any sort are simply a matter of fact. I rather like writing in it.

*'''[[Steel City]]''' [[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px]] (2007)
:This is yet another dream-inspired story. It's both transgender and transformational. It's also a non-deer story, and a non-horse story. I wrote this in the space of two days. It takes place in a very tongue-in-cheek Comic Book-style world where all the innocent bystanders are very jaded about the whole Hero-Villain thing. They just try and stay out of their way and get on with their lives. [http://www.geocities.com/evilsnack/innocent.htm The Innocent Bystander's Survival Guide] should always be taken to heart.

==[[Paradise (Setting)|Paradise]]==

This setting has taken off faster than I thought. Partly due to the original story getting on the [http://www.ursamajorawards.org/RL2007.htm 2007 Ursa Major Recommended Anthropomorphics Short Fiction] list. Thanks to whoever nominated me. The setting page can be accessed via the above link.

For a full story and related-page listing, please see the '''[[:Category:Paradise|Paradise Category]]'''.

*'''[[User:JonBuck/A Kind of Paradise|A Kind of Paradise]]''' (2007)
:This is just fluff. It's been at least two months since I wrote anything, and I just need to loosen up a bit. Plot is optional, and probably nonexistent. However, it still turned out well. I'm going to have to continue it sometime soon. I've created a page with setting notes at '''[[Paradise (Setting)]]'''. The story generated enough interest to open it up. The basic rules are in place.

*'''[[User:JonBuck/Tall Tales|Tall Tales]]''' (2008)
:I actually started this story before [[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] and [[User:MatthiasRat|Matthias]] started their series. But it's more or less required reading for Paradise authors, since there are a lot of Important Events.

*'''[[User:JonBuck/Open Secrets|Open Secrets]]''' (2008)
:The next Paradise story. I thought I'd take a different tack with this one. This story went on hiatus for quite some time, since Real Life events were sadly outpacing(!) the oil prices originally depicted when I started this story in February. They hit $148 a barrel in July, then crashed as the economy did, reaching a low of about $34 in mid-December. I may change the story to reflect this some, but ''this story is essentially complete.''

==Unnamed Series==

I am entertaining ideas of what to call this setting. It's turning into more of a chapter-by-chapter novella/novel at this rate. I'm trying to keep each part short and focused on a single goal.

*'''[[Escape]]'''(2007)
:My ideas start with quickies, but always snowball into something bigger. This storylet was inspired by a dream I had. All the main imagery is there.

*'''[[Window of Opportunity]]''' (2007)

:Second in the series, Jason has to adapt to a very changed life, and realizes that without acting, things will go from bad to worse.

*'''[[Consolidation]]''' (2007)
:Next story in the series.

={{separator|f|Middle Works - 2000 to 2003}}=

*'''[[Actaeon Reborn]]'''[[Image:Star.png|20px]] [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]] (2000)
:This is the first story (novella) I wrote that really felt professional to me. ended up submitting it to a couple of online magazines, but nothing ever came of it. So up it goes here.

*'''[[Arms and Armor]]''' (2001)
:A graduate student finds that there is still old magic lurking about in interesting places.

*'''[[Braggart]]''' (2001 or so)
:A lot of my stories are evoked by an image. The idea of a Greek god, roving around in a pimped up car, struck me as really funny. So I wondered just what kind of mischief he could get into.
:This is not one of my best stories. It just sort of ends. It's also shorter than usual for me.

*'''[[Hunter's Moon]]''' [[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px]](2003)
:Another quickie. Basically, I was thinking about how a weredeer might communicate his or her condition, since deer are not known for biting people. This is what I came up with. And it's no fun for the weredeer.

*'''[[Sentinel]]''' (2002 or 2003)
:I have quite a few stand-alone stories. Putting them up on Shifti has made me look through my folders for the first time in years. There's a lot of stuff that I've forgotten about. This one was inspired by a friend's interest in Napoleonic Europe. It also sort-of takes place in the same setting as Actaeon Reborn above.

*'''[[The Sigh of Wind]]'''[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px]] (2000)
:Sometimes I get in a mystical mood, and this story is the direct result. I think I managed to capture the feeling just right. I still think the results are a little pretentious. But I did [http://us-p.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/Sara-Palmer/DeerX2C.jpg get some neat art out of it.]

={{separator|f|Early Works - 1996 to 1999}}=

In this section will go stories that I wrote prior to 2000. This has a number of caveats. Mainly that as I've matured as a writer, my writing style has also grown and improved. Improved ''a lot.'' In most cases I haven't read ''any'' of these in at least five years and more. All errors in grammar, spelling, and general story structure are therefore unchanged. Caveat emptor.

*'''[[Dragonsbane]]''' [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]](1998)
:A lot of stories of mine are inspired by dreams. This dream grabbed me so hard, with such clear imagery, I rolled out of bed at 3am and started writing. It also spawned an unfinished sequel, which I intended as a novel from the start. But it never quite came to be. This is also one of my earlier works. So I had a great deal of enthusiasm when writing it, but not a whole lot of skill to bring it to fruition.

*'''[[The Long Shadow]]''' [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]](1999)
:This turned into my first real attempt at novel-level worldbuilding. The next story in this setting, Fallen Gods, I first started writing when I started at the university that fall. I toted a notepad to all my classes and jotted down ideas and notations. I still have that notepad around somewhere (I'll have to find it). I also used Photoshop to create maps of the European-analogue. I won't be posting ''Fallen Gods'' here, as I hope to sell it. But this is a prototype novella, about 250k.

==Echoes==
*'''[[Titanic]]''' [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]](1996)
:This story is one of my earliest works. It also comes from a time when I was ''Titanic'' geek. I devoured just about everything about the ship, its passengers, and everything else. The genesis of this setting was my job at the time (working for a small retail store), my boss had come back from an Alaska cruise. I was also less settled on the species I "am" now, and whales and dolphins were much more in my imagination. So, here it is, in all its bombast and pretension.

:It's also the first story I wrote that started a trend for what amounts to historical fantasy-fiction. I've pretty much stayed there ever since.

:'''Warning: Story takes place in First Person perspective, yet has three main characters.''' This was an early experiment of mine. I really didn't know what I was doing. Can you tell?

:But the important thing is that I was having a ''lot'' of fun.

*'''[[Echoes]]''' [[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px]][[Image:Star.png|20px]](1998)
:I suppose I could call this a seminal work. It's a sort-of sequel to Titanic. Actually, not so much. A lot of the story takes place ''concurrently to'' "Titanic". It's also an early piece of worldbuilding. I've always liked the idea of reincarnation for some reason, since I was a child. This story had multiple sources of inspiration. One of which is, actually, the movie that came out in late 1997. Which I saw twice.
:I really made an effort at historical accuracy here. The story is about two brothers, one of whom dies at the Battle of Shiloh...

==[[:Category:Winds of Change|Winds of Change]]==
:There is already an [http://xepher.net/~woc-archive/ external archive to these stories] and this setting, so I'm not going to post too many of these here due to time constraints.

*'''[http://xepher.net/~woc-archive/wocall.htm#woc Winds of Change]''' (My first story, 1996)
:What can I say about WoC?
:Somehow it's ended up far more popular than I really know how to deal with. It's been a huge benefit to my life. I gained all sorts of friends through this one story.
:It really started in the summer of 1996, when I joined the TSA-Talk mailing list about a month after its creation. At the time it was a fast-growing community, certainly the first of its kind in the transformation genre on the internet. The stories and quickies were flying fast and furious, so in May I posted a short-short titled "A Picture is Worth 1000 Changes", after I saw ''Twister'' in the theatre. I combined it with my new photography hobby, at least to give the main character something to do.
:I intended it as a shared setting to begin with, and I had stopped at Part 3. Then I got something I never, ever expected. ''People liked reading it!'' Holy crap! Parts 4 and 5 (about ten pages each) were written in two days. The floodgates opened, and they've never closed since.
:But still, I can't look back at WoC and not see all the flaws in my writing. I haven't really looked at it since 1999 or so. There's even an unfinished sequel that will remain a dead end. Oh well.

*'''[http://xepher.net/~woc-archive/stories/teenthng.htm A Teen Thing]''' (My second, 1996)
:Oh boy, what to say about this one? I remember the idea came from one the endless email exchanges between me and my friend [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]. We did a lot of that in those days. I'd write some little bit of dialogue at the end of the message, he'd respond with something else. Sort of a micro-Round Robin.

:I was also still BIG into velociraptors. It wasn't until I decided to literally roll-for-species while creating a self-based character for the Great Round Robin that I got into deer, then things snowballed from there. But that's another story.

:This one is mostly a kind of authorial catharsis. I was a year out of high school in 1996, so it was still fresh in my mind.

*'''[[Be Prepared]]''' (1997 or 1998)
:A collaborative work with [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]. The main characters are a Boy Scout troop out in the wilderness when the Change hits.

*'''[[Rush Hour]]''' [[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px]] (1997)
:A quickie. I wondered: What would happen to people stuck in rush hour traffic during the Change?

={{separator|f|The Unfinished}}=

[[Image:Clock stopped.png|center|40px]]

These are stories that, for one reason or another, ground to a halt. No further updates are expected here, but since I had originally posted these to TSA-Talk but never completed them, I still wanted some kind of record. It's also a sort of offsite backup.

One of my flaws as a writer is that, more often than not, I don't have a plot planned out from beginning to end. I come up with scenes and characters and only a general direction, if that much. This means my stuff tends to ramble a bit. And I have written myself into a corner on numerous occasions.

Posting these stories here has generated some interest. These stories do have a ''slim'' chance at being finished. Stories I'm presently working on take precedence, but I've always hated that I've left these particular stories unfinished.

*'''[[Exile's Road]]''' (2002)
:This story is a variation on the type of transformation used in [[Colony]]. That the land itself is a conscious, sentient thing that twists and changes the humans in it.

*'''[[User:JonBuck/Life Could be a Dream|Life Could be a Dream]]''' (2006)
:Another dream-inspired transgender story, though the dream itself is many years older. The impetus to actually write a story that used this particular plot device came after seeing Pixar's ''Cars'' in the theater, which used the classic rock song in the movie. This is going in the Unfinished category because I had more ideas after it hit the "end". See Author's Notes.

*'''[[Thesis]]''' (2003)
:A '''Wisp-touched''' story. Doppelganger from [[The Limelight]] was actually created here.

*'''[[Voyages]]''' (2005)
:An abortive attempt at a Science Fiction story but I hadn't really done one since WoC. Some of the technology depicted, especially the FTL, was shamelessly stolen from the anime series [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_Star Outlaw Star].

*'''[[Consolidation]]''' [[Image:Clock warning.png|20px]] (2007)
:The next in the series after Escape and Window of Opportunity. Story is on hiatus while I finish up some other work. Moved to Unfinished, though I may continue it later.

[[Category:Author]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:JonBuck}}

TSA-Bash

2009-02-06T16:29:29Z

Viqsi: forgot another name, arr

The '''TSA-Bash''' is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general) for the expressed purpose of "goofing off".

Unlike furry cons, the "Bash" (as it's known for short) doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the TSA-Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list! There is also a [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/ Bash website] showcasing pictures, stories, and detailed info pages, maintained by [[User:Sheep|Sheep]].

== Next Bash ==

The next TSA-Bash (June 19-June 22, 2009) will be held in Obetz, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and is being organized by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] with help from Mintz and [[User:Sheep|Sheep]]. You can find more information (and make plans to attend!) [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/09.shtml on the TSA-Bash website].

Interested in hosting a Bash? Join the mailing list, and [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/organizing.shtml check out the guidelines on the Bash Website for organizing a bash].

== History ==

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/98.shtml 1998:]''' Phil Geusz thought it might be "neat" to have a couple of people from the [http://tsa.transform.to/ Transformation Story Archive] mailing list to get-together at his house for some fun and goofing off. Instead of a couple, he got 19 people. It was promised that the get-together would happen again next year.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/99.shtml 1999:]''' Since the 1998 get-together was such a success, more people showed up at Phil's house, this time attracting over 50 people. It became apparent, especially after his yard was full of tents and there was people sleeping on the floor everywhere in his house, that the get-together would have to be moved to a hotel. This began the tradition of the nomadic nature of the Bash. There were several reasons for the move to a hotel:
*The number of people in the house caused a monumental trash pile and broke the air conditioning unit, requiring the use of many fans.
*It took Phil over an hour and a half to get from one end of the house to the other for an urgent matter.
*Phil's house is only starting to recover, even in 2007.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/00.shtml 2000:]''' The get-together became known as the "Bash" at this point, organized by a small "Bash Committee" headed by Linnaeus and was held in Elgin, Illinois, where 37 people showed up.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/01.shtml 2001:]''' The Bash was held in Hazelwood, Missouri. Attendee count: 28. After this Bash, the "committee" was abandoned in favor of the current "organizer" format.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/02.shtml 2002:]''' The Bash was held in Sea-Tac, Washington, and organized by Fish, Dragon de Monsyne, and SR Foxley. Attendee count: 32.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/03.shtml 2003:]''' The Bash was held in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was organized by Kristy and Jessie Tracer. Attendee count: 25.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/04.shtml 2004:]''' The Bash was held in Austin, Texas, organized by Dragon de Monsyne and Wanderer. Attendee count: 17.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/05.shtml 2005:]''' The Bash was held in Sunnyvale, California, organized by Mut and Aatheus. Attendee count: 15.<br>
The Sunnyvale Bash is noteworthy in that it was where Phil Geusz and Quentin Long first met each other in the flesh; as a result of one of their conversations, Long decided to start up a new netzine -- [http://anthrozine.com ''Anthro'']''.''

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/06.shtml 2006:]''' The Bash was held in Florence, Kentucky, organized by Phil and Andi. Attendee count: 22.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/07.shtml 2007:]''' The Bash was held in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, organized by Morgan, Fulminar, and Pakesh_De. Attendee count: 27.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/08.shtml 2008:]''' The Bash was held in Oakland, California, close to where Bash 2005 was set, and organized by Doom. Attendee count: 23.

TSA-Bash

2009-02-06T16:26:58Z

Viqsi: d'oh, missed something ;)

The '''TSA-Bash''' is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general) for the expressed purpose of "goofing off".

Unlike furry cons, the "Bash" (as it's known for short) doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the TSA-Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list! There is also a [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/ Bash website] showcasing pictures, stories, and detailed info pages, maintained by [[User:Sheep|Sheep]].

== Next Bash ==

The next TSA-Bash (June 19-June 22, 2009) will be held in Obetz, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and is being organized by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] with help from Mintz and [[User:Sheep|Sheep]]. You can find more information (and make plans to attend!) [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/09.shtml on the TSA-Bash website].

Interested in hosting a Bash? Join the mailing list, and [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/organizing.shtml check out the guidelines on the Bash Website for organizing a bash].

== History ==

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/98.shtml 1998:]''' Phil Geusz thought it might be "neat" to have a couple of people from the [http://tsa.transform.to/ Transformation Story Archive] mailing list to get-together at his house for some fun and goofing off. Instead of a couple, he got 19 people. It was promised that the get-together would happen again next year.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/99.shtml 1999:]''' Since the 1998 get-together was such a success, more people showed up at Phil's house, this time attracting over 50 people. It became apparent, especially after his yard was full of tents and there was people sleeping on the floor everywhere in his house, that the get-together would have to be moved to a hotel. This began the tradition of the nomadic nature of the Bash. There were several reasons for the move to a hotel:
*The number of people in the house caused a monumental trash pile and broke the air conditioning unit, requiring the use of many fans.
*It took Phil over an hour and a half to get from one end of the house to the other for an urgent matter.
*Phil's house is only starting to recover, even in 2007.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/00.shtml 2000:]''' The get-together became known as the "Bash" at this point, organized by a small "Bash Committee" headed by Linnaeus and was held in Elgin, Illinois, where 37 people showed up.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/01.shtml 2001:]''' The Bash was held in Hazelwood, Missouri. Attendee count: 28. After this Bash, the "committee" was abandoned in favor of the current "organizer" format.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/02.shtml 2002:]''' The Bash was held in Sea-Tac, Washington, and organized by Fish, Dragon de Monsyne, and SR Foxley. Attendee count: 32.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/03.shtml 2003:]''' The Bash was held in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was organized by Kristy and Jessie Tracer. Attendee count: 25.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/04.shtml 2004:]''' The Bash was held in Austin, Texas, organized by Dragon de Monsyne and Wanderer. Attendee count: 17.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/05.shtml 2005:]''' The Bash was held in Sunnyvale, California, organized by Mut. Attendee count: 15.<br>
The Sunnyvale Bash is noteworthy in that it was where Phil Geusz and Quentin Long first met each other in the flesh; as a result of one of their conversations, Long decided to start up a new netzine -- [http://anthrozine.com ''Anthro'']''.''

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/06.shtml 2006:]''' The Bash was held in Florence, Kentucky, organized by Phil and Andi. Attendee count: 22.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/07.shtml 2007:]''' The Bash was held in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, organized by Morgan, Fulminar, and Pakesh_De. Attendee count: 27.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/08.shtml 2008:]''' The Bash was held in Oakland, California, close to where Bash 2005 was set, and organized by Doom. Attendee count: 23.

TSA-Bash

2009-02-06T16:21:06Z

Viqsi: updating and restructuring the page

The '''TSA-Bash''' is an annual get-together for those interested in physical transformations (or furry in general) for the expressed purpose of "goofing off".

Unlike furry cons, the "Bash" (as it's known for short) doesn't have a "conference" type quality to it. Instead, the attendees just sit around and chat, play games, go out to eat, and sometimes model fursuits. While there is a chaotic quality, the Bash does have a couple of structured events, such as a group photo or outings to the city that they're close to.

Discussions and planning for the TSA-Bash takes place via the [http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/tsabash TSA-Bash mailing list] - if you're interested, join the list! There is also a [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/ Bash website] showcasing pictures, stories, and detailed info pages, maintained by [[User:Sheep|Sheep]].

== Next Bash ==

The next TSA-Bash (June 19-June 22, 2009) will be held in Obetz, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and is being organized by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]. You can find more information (and make plans to attend!) [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/09.shtml on the TSA-Bash website].

Interested in hosting a Bash? Join the mailing list, and [http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/organizing.shtml check out the guidelines on the Bash Website for organizing a bash].

== History ==

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/98.shtml 1998:]''' Phil Geusz thought it might be "neat" to have a couple of people from the [http://tsa.transform.to/ Transformation Story Archive] mailing list to get-together at his house for some fun and goofing off. Instead of a couple, he got 19 people. It was promised that the get-together would happen again next year.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/99.shtml 1999:]''' Since the 1998 get-together was such a success, more people showed up at Phil's house, this time attracting over 50 people. It became apparent, especially after his yard was full of tents and there was people sleeping on the floor everywhere in his house, that the get-together would have to be moved to a hotel. This began the tradition of the nomadic nature of the Bash. There were several reasons for the move to a hotel:
*The number of people in the house caused a monumental trash pile and broke the air conditioning unit, requiring the use of many fans.
*It took Phil over an hour and a half to get from one end of the house to the other for an urgent matter.
*Phil's house is only starting to recover, even in 2007.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/00.shtml 2000:]''' The get-together became known as the "Bash" at this point, organized by a small "Bash Committee" headed by Linnaeus and was held in Elgin, Illinois, where 37 people showed up.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/01.shtml 2001:]''' The Bash was held in Hazelwood, Missouri. Attendee count: 28. After this Bash, the "committee" was abandoned in favor of the current "organizer" format.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/02.shtml 2002:]''' The Bash was held in Sea-Tac, Washington, and organized by Fish, Dragon de Monsyne, and SR Foxley. Attendee count: 32.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/03.shtml 2003:]''' The Bash was held in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was organized by Kristy and Jessie Tracer. Attendee count: 25.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/04.shtml 2004:]''' The Bash was held in Austin, Texas, organized by Dragon de Monsyne and Wanderer. Attendee count: 17.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/05.shtml 2005:]''' The Bash was held in Sunnyvale, California, organized by Mut. Attendee count: 15.<br>
The Sunnyvale Bash is noteworthy in that it was where Phil Geusz and Quentin Long first met each other in the flesh; as a result of one of their conversations, Long decided to start up a new netzine -- [http://anthrozine.com ''Anthro'']''.''

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/06.shtml 2006:]''' The Bash was held in Florence, Kentucky, organized by Phil and Andi. Attendee count: 22.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/07.shtml 2007:]''' The Bash was held in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, organized by Morgan, Fulminar, and Pakesh_De. Attendee count: 27.

'''[http://lapinia.org/~tsabash/08.shtml 2008:]''' The Bash was held in Oakland, California, close to where Bash 2005 was set, and organized by Doom. Attendee count: 23.

Writer's School

2008-12-16T05:34:00Z

Viqsi: /* Article Series */

Writing is one of the oldest artforms, but writing fiction is one of the newest. Like any other artform it looks deceptively easy to get into, but once you start the hidden troubles show up. The best authors will tell you that you can't just learn how to write, but this is only partially true. There is a facet to writing that is a learned skill and a facet that you have to be born with.

To the layperson writing is simply stringing words together into a coherent whole. And, to an extent, that is the truth—it's also the part of the art that can be taught. Anyone can learn how to string words together into a coherent sentence and string hundreds of those sentences into a coherent story, but unless you are born with the gift of knowing how to tell a story the end product is, more often than not, bland and built of tiresome cliches and rehashed plots. But if you have been born a storyteller the end product shines, what cliches and rehashed plots it may contain used and retold in such a manner that they seem new again.

This “Writers School” is an attempt to break that mold. Not only is it going to try and teach those people who are born storytellers ways to improve their skills, but it is going to try and teach people how to tell the stories. In here you can find articles on creating believable characters and worlds, tips about how to escape many common pitfalls that snare many writers.

__TOC__

==Before Writing==
{{ws/table header}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Making Miracles]]|Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[The Message at the Center of the Novel]]|Preachiness versus Having A Theme|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Pigging Out]]|Some thoughts on one of the more enduring shared settings, "The Blind Pig"|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[The Pornography Trap]]|One of the most common TF story pitfalls|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Putting first things first|Putting First Things First]]|"It's the story, stupid!"|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Title stolen|Title Stolen by Evil, Inc.]]|Creating and writing villains|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[The Tail Tale]]|Avoiding cliches and common pitfalls of TF fiction|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Writing Fantasy]]|Tips about writing good fantasy|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Learning from the Masters]]|Some recommended Science Fiction TF novels to read and take notes from|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Points of View]]|What POV should you write your story in?|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Research:It's not just for School anymore]]|Getting your facts straight!|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Transformation Writing Types]]|Categorizing TF Fiction|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Character]]|Some basics about where characters come from, how and when to describe them, and what kind of characters you really need|[[User:Fish|Fish]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Dialog]]|Punctuating dialog properly and making it sound real, but not too real|[[User:Fish|Fish]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Syntax]]| Everything you needed to know about grammar and punctuation and then some|[[User:Fish|Fish]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Word Choice]]|Choosing the right words for your story|[[User:Fish|Fish]]}}
|} 

==Writing the Story==
{{ws/table header}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[How's this for openers|How's This For Openers]]|Good advice on creating a memorable first paragraph|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Lights, camera, action|Lights, Camera, Action!]]|Tips about writing good action sequences|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Thinking Things Through]]|If you want to toss in a neat technology or ability into a story, think about what else could be done with it before actually inserting it|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Use Your Senses Dammit!]]|Don't just describe things visually in your writing|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
|}

==After Writing==
{{ws/table header}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[The E-Publishing Dilemma]]|What, exactly, ''is'' an author to do?|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Getting published|Getting Published]]|Tips and Tricks for those people wishing to get published|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[The letter|The Letter]]|How can a would-be writer know he's passed the Point of No Return?|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
|}

==General Advice==
{{ws/table header}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Beating block|Beating Block]]|Different Methods of Beating Writers Block|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Getting small|Getting Small]]|Age Regression and the world through a childs eyes|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Going soft|Going Soft]]|Through the eyes of a member of the opposite sex|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[The Horror, the Horror]]|Writing Horror Stories|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[The proper tool|The Proper Tool]]|What you need if you want to be a writer.|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Experience]]|Personal adventures and experience breeds better stories|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Why we write|Why We Write]]|A look inside the auctorial mind.|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Writers Groups And Other Support Mechanisms]]|What's good ''and'' bad about them.|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[The Writing Life]]|Why do they do it?|[[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[From Thesis to Synthesis]]|Some notes on a fundamental necessity for improving one's craft.|[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[As you and I both know]]|What is "infodump" in fiction and how to avoid it|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Creating Worlds to Share]]|An examination of why some shared universes are successful, and why others aren't|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Critiquing]]|Advice and thoughts as to how to usefully critique things, and how to use critique|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Editors aren't the Enemy]]|Why editing and critiquing by others is useful and vital|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Keeping the Editor Happy]]|Three common errors I see in fiction submitted to TSAT: Repetitive Sentence Structure, Narrator Changes, Unnatural Sounding Speech|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Posting to Lists]]|Using mailing lists to get stories read and critiqued|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Technological Transformation Methodology]]|Some technological methods of inducing transformations|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Write what you Know]]|Applying that rule to TF Fiction|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Writing in Groups]]|Success and failure about writing groups formed to write co-authored novels|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row even|[[Writing in the TBP universe]]|Important things you should be aware of before writing a story set in :"Tales From The Blind Pig"|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
{{ws/table row odd|[[Writing Organization]]|Different methods of writing work for different folks. Outlines, sequential/non-sequential writing, etc.|[[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]}}
|}

==Article Series==
<div style="width: 90%; margin:0px auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, Times, Roman, serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;">The Five C's by [[User:Rabbit|Rabbit]]</span>
# [[Five C's: Creation|Creation]]
# [[Five C's: Composition|Composition]]
# [[Five C's: Critiquing|Critiquing]]
# [[Five C's: Completion|Completion]]
# [[Five C's: Commercialization|Commercialization]]
</div>

<div style="width: 90%; margin:0px auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, Times, Roman, serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;">Writing Science Fiction by [[User:Michael_Bard|Michael Bard]]</span>
#[[SF101: Writing Technological SF]]
#[[SF102: Learning the Basics]]
#[[SF103: Aliens]]
#[[SF104: Space Ships]]
#[[SF105: Living in a Science Fiction World]]
</div>

==Advanced Topics==
* [[On Heroes (essay)|On Heroes]] by [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]]
* [[Voice and Dialect]] by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]