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[ATMLVE]

I've been reading Orion's Arm for a few months now. I hope to gain enough familiarity with everything to be able to make contributions.

Currently in my head, over the last few years I have developed a science fiction universe in my head. In my universe there is a planet where humanity developed that is not Earth, there are no aliens, and there is fictional matter that can reactionlessly propel a ship through space-time at the speed of light. I have developed many stories in my head, which have been honed down literally for years to have an extremely logical progression of events, forgoing dramatic and interesting plot concepts for the sake of physics, previously established rules and stories, and logic. I almost constantly pretend I am somewhere in the universe, doing my best to imagine that my surroundings are very different than what they are.

Although my current stories do not fit into Orion's Arm, I hope I can come up with ideas to contribute to this project. I have two questions though.
First, how active are the forums? Do people post often? After a small amount of browsing it seems the majority of posters are admins.
Second, how popular is the Orion's Arm site? How many visitors does it get per day?

I thank you if you read my whole post, and I hope you can answer my questions.

[PortalHunter]

Hey. Nice to meet you!

I'd say that on busy days, you have to read through a dozen or more threads if you want to keep up with everything. It's been a bit quiet for the past week, though.
There's also a few people that don't visit or post regularly, those who read the posts but don't say much.

From what I've seen, most people who end up finding Orion's Arm find it through worldbuilding or science fiction forums.
I have no idea about the amount of people that visit regularly.

I see you like your science plausible. I find it hard to find worldbuilding and fiction sites that subscribe to the harder sciences.

I hope you get used to the forums!
...Welcome to OA.

[stevebowers]

Quite a lot of the posts are from admins, but many of these are responding to other contributors idea. Many or most of the recent contributions have been written by relatively new contributors, but we do try to pass each contribution through a fairly long process of discussion to help it fit within the scenario.

There is a very large degree of freedom within this large and diverse scenario- but there are almost always a few, or several tweaks needed to fit new material into the greater picture, as you can imagine. Hence the large number of admin posts.

[ATMLVE]

Thanks for your replies! I'm not sure if you ever revisit a newcomer thread but if you do, what sorts of things to various random people on the internet contribute to the site? Generally just a single-page history of a place or thing?

[stevebowers]

That is a good start. I can help with the worldbuilding side if you need it, suggesting locations and time periods, that sort of thing; several other contributors can help with planetary parameters, and discuss canon and scientific plausibility. For instance only mass-less particles can travel at the speed of light in OA, so if you want to do that in this scenario you will need to convert your travelers into light-beams (or other mass-less particles) in one way or another.

[Worldtree]

Thanks for your replies! I'm not sure if you ever revisit a newcomer thread but if you do, what sorts of things to various random people on the internet contribute to the site? Generally just a single-page history of a place or thing?

a lot of newcomers (and all the members here) seem to like making new planets or habitats, but I recommend starting out doing something smaller, like a city or a single character.
http://orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45bcf77a97568

you can see this thread on "what you would do if dropped into OA society" has produced some interesting results.

http://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1218

[ATMLVE]

Thank you very much!

Are some of the pages from the first link a result of the posts from the second?

[Worldtree]

Thank you very much!

Are some of the pages from the first link a result of the posts from the second?

No. The famous personalities have been written over the course of several years.
but the initial results of that discussion are in the latest voices/ future tense.

What if you, a 21st century person, found yourself in OA society?

http://www.orionsarm.com/page/540

that discussion branched off into the reverse-

What if someone from an OA society found themselves on 21st century earth?

http://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthrea...2#pid12182
http://www.orionsarm.com/page/541

[Rynn]

Welcome to the forums! The group here isn't that small I don't think, just that a lot of people post for a while then get busy then come back and post more later. Glad to hear you enjoy OA

[Drashner1]

Coming to this a little late, but: Welcome to OA!

To answer your questions below and also touch on a question that I saw in a recent thread you had posted to:

First, how active are the forums? Do people post often? After a small amount of browsing it seems the majority of posters are admins.
Second, how popular is the Orion's Arm site? How many visitors does it get per day?

The forums are generally fairly active, given the somewhat specialized subject matter. Sometimes only one or two new posts may appear in a day, other days it can be a dozen or so. We probably aren't going to give a forum dedicated to a major commercial franchise (such as Star Wars) much competition in terms of posting volume, but that's also not something we care a lot about. We're having fun and that's what mainly matters to us.

Virtually all of our admins (who often wear other hats in the project that don't involve the forum) started out as members who, due to the quality of their contributions and thoughts on how to operate/improve the project and their longevity with it (meaning they stuck around and kept contributing over years) demonstrated a high degree of dedication to the project. The flip side of that is that they are often some of our most prolific posters.

One thing to always remember with OA is that it is basically a volunteer driven organization. We don't have paid staff and nearly all the content on the site is the result of efforts by our members, past and present. So, if we don't have something or do thing s certain way, it's often because it kind of shook out that way over the history of the project rather than due to a formal policy or 'business decision' (although there are exceptions to that and some items are due to a combo of evolution and formal policy).

As far as how popular the site is - we do occasionally pull Google Analytics data, but not that often. I'd have to dig up where the last batch is stored and get back to you on this one.

Re what people may post to the project - almost anything. We are as likely to be impressed by a one paragraph description of the Y11K version of a left handed teacup as some multi-page description of some race or super weapon or the like. Extra brownie points if it covers something we haven't thought of before or some aspect of life in the setting that should have been obvious to us, but that we somehow overlooked. So there really aren't any (or at least very few) rules about what people can talk about if they wish in terms of additions or updates to the setting.

On a somewhat different note: I noticed in another thread that you expressed concern about spamming the forum with too many posts. Realistically, you'd have to work really hard to post enough for that to become a concern among the admins. What is more likely to be a concern is starting multiple threads on multiple topics and then either not developing the topic through to completion/an EG entry or starting a bunch of new threads before an earlier one has really had any chance to develop. Having multiple threads on multiple topics going at the same time is fine, as long as you're able to keep all those metaphorical balls in the air. Where we (the admins) may start to have a problem is if you were to start generating a whole lot of threads and then never bothered to follow up on them or the like.

Hope this helps and once again, Welcome to OA

Todd