Meeting the Worldbuilders — Tim B
This article is from a series here on Universe Factory, where we look at the people behind the Worldbuilding. We present a number of short interviews with people who have been using our site to try and get some insight into who they are and how it is being used. This interview is with Tim B — one of our Moderators and usual interviewer for the blog.
Today, we will change side, and interview the interviewer. Hi Tim and thanks for joining us.
Hi bilbo_pingouin and thanks for suggesting this, it should be interesting to feel what it’s like at this end of the imaginary microphone!
Our readers have read a few of your posts, and already some interviews, but now it’s time to tell us more about you. So where are you and what do you do for a living?
Well I live in Watford, which is just outside London in England. I’m mostly a contract computer programmer (on contract to a bank in London at the moment) but I also do freelance writing. The writing is both fiction (although I’ve not made any money on that yet) and RPG adventure modules.
Which is reflected in your overall network profile, where your participation in StackOverflow and Worldbuilding is pretty high. I have seen that your worldbuilding reputation recently surpassed your stackoverflow one, is that the result of a higher focus on the fiction writing part?
That’s actually a surprisingly complex question to answer. When I started on Stack Exchange I was very active and hit 20k rep in a few months.
By that time though it had begun to feel stale, it’s rare that I see a question and don’t immediately feel like I’ve already seen it three times. I’ve already unlocked every privilege there is to unlock so more reputation doesn’t really give me anything except for a bigger high score which isn’t really a big motivator for me. I rarely ask questions there as usually my own knowledge and searching existing questions finds the answers I need rather than needing to ask new ones.
On Worldbuilding though there are always so many ideas and possibilities and some really creative discussions. There’s a much bigger and more interesting problem space to explore. What’s more with the site being so much newer fewer of those questions have already been asked.
Even here though I took a step back after a few months to let some other users come to the fore. When the site was first being established every question and answer was really important to get things flowing. Now I can sit back and appreciate what everyone else is doing instead of driving things myself and pick and choose when I want to ask or answer.
You were one of the earliest members of Worldbuilding as, if I’m not mistaken, you joined the private beta. What led you to us?
A guy I both worked with and was playing in his online Pathfinder RPG with was one of the backers during the commitment phase and told me about it. I was one of the hundred who committed before the Private Beta started and then helped define the site during the Private Beta.
You even joined as the first moderation team? How has it been?
We’ve got a good mix of people with different skills and experience including prior moderation experience on other sites so it’s been remarkably painless. We make a good team and for the most part the site runs itself, our community does a good job of handling most issues without us needing to intervene at all.
I see that you have quite some interest in biology-related subjects? Or is it one effect of how the reputation work?
I think it’s a side effect of how reputation works and certain questions being very good at gathering reputation. I’ve got a strong science background and a keen interest in both sci-fi and fantasy so I can cover most areas on the site to some degree or other.
Are you writing fiction for which you are actively developing a world at the moment?
Not exactly. I’ve written some short stories based on Worldbuilding questions and have another planned but I’m very short on time at the moment. I’m not sure if you would class it as fiction but I’m in the middle of writing the third in a series of Pathfinder adventure modules, the overall world for that is already built but there are a lot of details (including entire countries in some cases) to fill in.
What is your favourite question and/or answer that you have written?
That’s a hard one to answer, I really enjoyed the responses to how would Facebook Sysadmins prevent the summoning of Cthulhu? and Santa is Satan, but why? but some of the lower voted questions are actually more interesting in many ways. In particular, I got some really good answers on Planetary Scale Artworks and Natural Projectile Weapons.
The biggest impact I’ve probably had was the “Realistic Worlds” series which sparked so many follow-on questions: Creating a realistic world Series.
For answers, I’ve written so many that it’s hard to choose but I did enjoy the fact that my off-hand suggestion of Ragnarok to the question: Could a disaster kill all (human) life on Earth but leave astronauts in low orbit alive long enough to return? sparked much discussion and several follow-on questions.
And I think this answer was quite creative: How could Golems best be used to defend a modern day city of Prague?
And that realistic world series was very great. I also joined in. And I have noticed that your two last questions, which you mention here, are also the most popular to date. Effect of experience?
Partially, I was pretty confident they would both be popular although the scale of the response still caught me by surprise a bit. Writing a compelling title that also follows the site guidelines, describes the question, etc. is definitely a skill that can be learned and improved upon.
This is, in my opinion, one of your hardest question, so there are no reasons you would escape it. Is there any particular member of our community you look up to?
I can’t name a specific individual as there are so many. People who do really detailed science-based answers with all of the mathematics needed to solve it. People who contribute to the site by spending time in the review queues, or to the community by doing things like running blogs or the tag challenges. People creating adverts or just taking what time they can to write amazing answers to questions. And there’s more than one person fitting every one of those descriptions!
We are getting to the end of that interview. Do you have any final remarks for our readers and our community?
Just to echo what everyone else says when I ask this question. Worldbuilding is great, keep it up everyone :)
Ah ah ah. Thank you for agreeing to the interview and for your time, it has been a pleasure. And looking forward to read your next interviews.
Thanks for taking the time to interview me, and now you’re a seasoned interviewer yourself feel free to do some more!
bilbo_pingouin.
