As many of you know, I am running in this year's senator race. I have many ideas, having been on here for long and I hope that you are interested in the same future for whyvillians as I am. I feel that a lot of forgotten things on here are gems waiting to be rediscovered and by fixing up the old parts we can create a new whyville to enjoy without changing too much from what it already is.
The list is long of things that have been done since my last shot at senator. However, I still have a great many good ideas. The first thing I would like to address is the face factory.
The face factory is a feature I, and many other Whyvillians, use on a regular basis. I believe there could be improvements made. I would love to see more functions added to the layout. Things like a way to restock a set number of items for every part listed under one store. So when you click the "manage store" link, you can not only choose who can sell in the store, set your bid, or delete the store, but also veiw all the items listed under that store and stock them individually or even have a button at the top to restock N of each part for sale in that store. For people who have many stores, and many parts, this would streamline the restocking process and allow for more restocks of stores instead of them waiting perhaps for saturday to mount the daunting task.
Another idea for this streamlined restocking process would be if there were a way that the user could sort the parts based on the type of part they were wanting to restock. Say they wanted to only restock their hairs, they could click on a tab that showed only hairs they had designed. It would make it easier to find any parts that get lost in the jumble of having 500+ designs.
I would also recommend new tools such as an ellipse tool for easier circle and oval making, and a dual palette for the current brush you are using. That way for close up detail fixing, it would be quite easy to be doing two colours at once rather than trying to refind that colour on the palette to the left. I would also like to see all the tools function at every magnified setting.
Along with these two simple recommendations for the face factory, I would suggest a template store of sorts where designers could submit a template to Akbar for approval so that it could be used in the future for each shirt or face opening of a hair that they are making in order to minimize the amount of parts rejected based on scale and proportions. These templates should also be listed in a store of sorts and rented out to other designers for a fee to help everyone in the designing community out.
The overload of designs I know takes a toll on city workers, but having a certain time period each week open for non whypass holder or people with vouchers to use would be very nice. There could even be some form of contest or question required to determine the date and time that the factory would be open to the public; much like the alien hunt questions. Also during this open to the public time, I believe that everyone else should be barred from using the factory to limit the flow of designs perhaps to alleviate the stress on the city workers who need to approve these designs.
The other big thing I would recommend be done is to fix up the Whyville Times. To add more articles on a weekly basis, whether it be by recruiting new writers or even just by publishing more of the current or regular writers. I think that anyone who is a Time Writer or part of the Times Staff should be compensated for their time and effort in a small way by being paid clams much like regular real life journalists and that Whyville Columns should be once again encouraged. I would like to see more writing contests, for both on and off the site, and maybe even Author in the Spotlight once a month where users can just vote on the most profound author of the month. Those people could then at the end of the year be automatically entered into the Writer of the Year award category for the Whyville Times Awards. The archives of the Times need a brush up and update, the cataloguing f many articles seems that it has just not been done. I understand this is a lengthy and time taking task however it makes the Times easier to use.
I think that things like Whyvillian of the Month should be reinstated and that other contests should be incorporated into the daily lives of the site, as it encourages better community skills among the people on the site, both on and off the site and it is a great esteem boost to people who perhaps are not the most confident in life.
I would also like to suggest organized chats for people to attend based on common interests or ages, to help new people to the site make and find friends. Another interesting idea would to be have user hosted chats with a theme such as how to make a craft. Images could be submitted and then played back on either the Soma Theatre screen or the Greek theatre screen and everyone could learn new recipes or a craft.
These are the main ideas that I have for whyville, thank you for taking the time to read through them.
Hopefully when you go to vote, you will remember whyville's roots and vote BP for Senator 09.
-BP
