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Planning Out the Next Generation of Post Kinds by Chris M.Chris M. (mrkapowski.com)

I think *my* idealised end goal would be to have an "Insert [Post Kind]" button in the Block Editor, which when I give it a URL inserts a Block with all of the correct mark-up for the information available (essentially inserting an equivalent of the current post_kinds template files). Ideally the block would give me options to toggle icons/snippets, edit some of the data, etc.

By having the Post Kinds as a Block, the user would be free to insert the information wherever they like in the post, and even have multiple "Kinds" attached to a single post.

Admittedly, I don’t know what would be needed to enable this, so I might be imagining something which isn’t realistically possible…

I like this idea a lot. On an abstract level, I don’t think there’s any reason why a single post must only contain one “kind”. If I check in at a location and say I had a nice meal and am also enjoying listening to some live music, provided those are all marked up correctly with mf2, they could all go in the same post, right?

I anticipate some difficulty, though, with WordPress, because that would be a significant change for the plugin. Right now, post kinds are their own taxonomy, which allows a quick filtered view by kind (https://mrkapowski.com/kind/reply, for example). If post kinds become blocks in the block editor, we’ll have to rethink the whole architecture.

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An incomplete puzzle

Someone asked me the other day, “What about your other half?”

What a weird phrase. “My other half,” as though I am an incomplete person without my wife. Was I just a partial human for the first 21 years of my life, until we started dating? When she’s at roller derby practice, or on a trip in another city, am I back to being unwhole?

If she’s so important to completing me, how did she end up with this Spencer-material I’m apparently missing? Did she inherit it at birth from her parents? Was it specifically tuned for 21-year-old Spencer, or did it mature and grow as I did?

Did I get auto-Horcruxed?

If people can have other halves, could some people have other thirds? Other quarters? Do you become less yourself the more people you love? Are asexuals and aromantics intrinsically more whole than the rest of us? Can the majority shareholders in Spencer outvote me?

Okay, I didn’t just land on this planet yesterday; obviously, I know it’s just an idiom. But it’s such a weird one. I’m not an incomplete person without my wife. She’s not part of me, and I’m not a part of her. We’re two independent, complete people who have chosen to build a life together, not because it was written in the stars or because we’re two halves of one soul, but simply because we want to.

That’s enough.

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Photo of someone welding, with the NISEI logo superimposed

Over the last three days, I’ve examined the work of Project NISEI, the fan-run program to keep Android: Netrunner alive after its official cancellation. In the first post in this series, I shared a brief history of Netrunner and NISEI and highlighted the strengths NISEI has exhibited in their first seven months. In the second post, I switched to my critic’s glasses and pointed out areas for improvement in NISEI’s handling of their first spoiler season. Yesterday, I went further, criticizing what I believed were NISEI’s substantial weaknesses in their web communications, both on their website and social media. Today, I want to cap off the series with recommendations for ways NISEI could address the challenges I identified.

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X-ray of a ciruit board, with the NISEI logo superimposed on top

As I discussed yesterday in the first post in this series, clearly, Project NISEI, the fan organization dedicated to keeping Android: Netrunner alive, is doing a lot right. From my outsider perspective, it appears they carefully prioritized the achievements necessary to build a solid foundation in their first few months. NISEI seemingly identified where they needed to shine in this early stage of their project, and dedicated their efforts to excelling in exactly those areas.

But now that NISEI is solidly established, I believe their priorities must necessarily shift. Areas that were less critical in their first stage, and thus left with room for improvement, will become more important as NISEI moves to release their second set and beyond. NISEI is no longer trying to earn the trust of the established Netrunner community. They are the face of the game’s future, which means they need to pay increasing attention to a second audience: new players.

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The NISEI logo superimposed on a bright sunrise

In June 2018, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) announced the end of Android: Netrunner, their cyberpunk card game. Though I had only been playing for a year and a half, and was decidedly a casual “kitchen-table” player, I was devastated. Netrunner was, and remains to this day, my favorite board game, a unique asymmetric game of cat-and-mouse that drips with theme. I wasn’t alone. Netrunner had an active and passionate fan community which was left reeling by the sudden end of the game. On October 22nd, 2018, FFG pulled the plug, and Android: Netrunner was officially no longer supported.

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