The Archivist's Guide to Archiving

From Caelwiki

Revision as of 06:47, 31 October 2007

Greetings, archivists in training!

We're here with a couple (...ok, a lot) of tips to help you get started in creating logs of IRC transcripts, hopefully as painlessly as possible. To be clear, creating a clean log DOES take some effort, so be prepared to set aside a good chunk of time to devote to your archiving. It is difficult at first, but will get faster with practice.

What should be Archived?

We usually archive sessions that involve a DM's participation. This gives a sort of structure that will help the formatting and lends the session authenticity within the story arc. When significant character development occurs outside of a structured RP session, and is accepted within the RP universe, such non-DM run sessions may be logged as well. (see In memoriam: Hadin the Artificer passes on for an example)

Sessions to be archived start off as raw logs captured from your IRC client. There may be several channels involved in the telling of a particular session, as well as possible PM logs to individual characters. Be thorough in collecting all the necessary data!

How do I get these logs?

You first need to have an IRC client that allows for logging (i.e. mIRC, Ircle, Trillian). The Java applets do not log. Your client should have an option somewhere for turning logging on, check the help file if you can't find it. Make sure to log both channels as well as queries, as there may be sessions that involve private messages to your character from the DM.

Also make sure you find out where your client is storing the logs, and what format they're in! Some log as plain text files, some as .xml, and there are other variations. Be sure whatever format you save as is editable in a text editor. You may also want to check with a few test logs to make sure they don't write over each other.

Finally, turn on timestamps! They're not necessary, but they can be helpful in figuring out how to piece together multiple-channel-spanning logs.

If you absolutely cannot get logging to work on your computer but you really want to help out archiving, there are several players on Caelestia who log everything, and if you ask them nicely, they may email you a copy of their raw log. ;)

Ok, I've got the logs, what do I do now?

This is a method I've worked out for clarity of DM direction, as they usually write the story. It is by no means the only way to log a session, and you may argue the players contribute just as much to the session as the DM. However for the purposes of this tutorial I am going to consider the DM's direction as the final say in matters involving plot advancement and consider them the "authors" of the session.

What you're going to want to do with these logs is highlight the DM's lines in bold. It sounds simple enough, right? Well, there are a few ways to do it so it will show up in the wiki:

1. Use the wiki editor. There's a "bold" button in the top left corner that will add the proper tags into your entry. However, this involves actually moving your mouse around to highlight the line, then click the button over and over again. This can be time consuming. There are also other factors to take into consideration (more on this below)
2. Use an outside editor. You'll want one that can utilize the ctrl-B command to automatically bold a line, and can also translate your log into html code when you're finished. Googledocs is a good editor, I've found. Once you're done bolding the lines you need, you can click "Edit HTML" to get the proper code to paste into wiki.

Either way, you'll want to make sure when you paste the raw log into your editor, it includes line breaks. If you're getting a big block of text with a bunch of <BR>s in it, that will be a nightmare to edit.

This is what you don't want to start with as a raw log:

This is what you do:

NOTE - If you are logging within the Wiki editor, you will need to specify each line break with a colon ":". You can do this by hand (again, time-consuming), or you can open up your log in Notepad and use the "Find and replace" function to add it in automatically. Replace all "[" with ":[" and that should do it for ya.

Once you've got your log set up with proper line breaks, you can start highlighting the DM's lines.

How do I know which lines are the DM's?

Alright, now that you've got the technical stuff down, here's where it starts getting into the "art" of archiving. Knowing which actions to highlight requires you knowing your DM well, and understanding the things s/he is trying to do within the session. Here are the basic highlights:

• >Ambiance<
• The DM's main character actions and dialogue
• Any other characters played by the DM
• Actions that the DM takes out on the players (legal bunnying)

It should be pretty straightforward for the most part. There may be times when a DM plays many characters and it may be tricky to spot them all. An archivist must be observant!

Regarding instances of bunnying: These can be hard to find since it can be difficult to know whether a player performed an action or whether the DM used /faction or /fsay. If you are unsure, you can ask the player (as they'll probably remember better than the DM who has to keep track of a bunch of other stuff), or just leave it unhighlighted. Usually you can tell it's the DM if a player "attempts" something and another line occurs as an effect. For example:

The last line was done by the DM in response to TaloToecan's attempt at the beginning of the log.

Hey, I think my DM made a mistake...

DMs are people too, and sometimes with all the crazy stuff that happens in a session their scripts may break, or they may accidentally play a wrong character. Ultimately it is up to you whether you want to try to correct errors. Usually I edit things that will cause confusion to a player trying to understand a session they were not a participant in. Spelling/grammar errors are usually not necessary to correct unless there is some major problem that will cause confusion.

The DM will sometimes give direction within the session as to how the error should be corrected:

There may also be instances where the DM voices the wrong character but does not indicate what it should be corrected to. Most of the time it can be inferred who should be speaking, by dialogue surrounding the aberrant line.

Be wary though, as the DM may choose to run along with what seems like it could be a mistake, and not wish for a correction to be made later. For example:

In this case, Amelie responds to Cerbero when it appears that it should be Cartwright answering. However, the DM modified the character to be under Cartwright's control, so there is a reason why Amelie does the talking. No corrections need to be made.