….again, unsure of correct title for cleanup…
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Not sure what this one was originally called - mod revert please?
I noticed that this page, like some others that have shown up recently, is a full-page copy-paste from wikipedia. This is not really what we do here at arcanawiki. It's okay to use wikipedia as a source, but not okay to just dump a wikipedia page here.
Instead, please make an effort to include new content. This is a site intended for helping RPG GMs and fiction authors come up with ideas for their games and stories. Toward that end, pages should be written with an eye towards what facts or ideas about a subject would be useful in a game or plotline. So instead of copying wikipedia word-for-word, it would be better to provide a short summary. Detailed and academic treatments of the subject are often less useful here. Were often better served with a brief overview, a neat idea of how it could fit into a plotline, and a few good links to outside sources where an interested reader could learn more.
See also What To Add To The Arcana Wiki, What The Arcana Wiki Is Not, and Arcana Wiki Style Guide.
Thank you,
the admins
Thanks for getting back to me - I didn't want to get too aggressive with the article without knowing what the original author meant.
As for bib code - I've never been able to get it to work.
It's been years since I wrote the paragraph in question, but I suspect the confusion is because of a typo. The first instance of "foul" was meant to be "fowl".
I've long since moved and am no longer sure where my copy of Curious Punishments (the book I cited in the bibliography entry) is, so I can't reference it to be sure… but I think the original book talked about the ducking stool sometimes being used more as a threat: Tie the victim to seat, and hoist them out over the water to let fear of heights and the prospect of being dunked scare the crap out of them. I was not suggesting anyone be dunked in a sewer. I'll go in and fix the typo.
As I type that, it occurs to me that might be where some of the problem comes as well. You may be picturing just a chair, that gets dropped in the water, I guess, based on your statement that you can't bob them and they'd stay down as long as the chair did. Most of the illustrations in the book I referenced showed it as a chair on a long wooden arm and a pivot. So the operators, standing on dry land, could repeatedly dunk the person tied to the chair. If you click on the wikipedia link, you'll see plenty of illustrations of a ducking stool on a boom arm which certainly could seesaw or bob somebody in and out of the water.
Speaking of wikipedia: that wiki now asserts that there's no connection between a ducking stool and the whole "if she's a witch she floats" thing. I don't have the book handy, so I can't really refute that. So I may just cut that whole witch paragraph, or move parts of it to Trial by Ordeal as you suggest.
And one more wikipedia thing: that place says the cucking stool terminology is NOT derived from cuckold. So that footnote you added might not be accurate.
And a little rant tangential to that: I really hate the footnotes code on wikidot. I'll often skim longer articles, and then get to the bottom and see something interesting in the footnotes. Trying to look back up the page to see where that footnote is buried and what it pertains to is a pain in the butt. Editing a page with footnotes in it is also really unnecessarily tricky. You want to edit a sentence, but it's broken up with nested brackets and sometimes multiple inserted sentences in between the words you're trying to edit. My reluctance to use the footnotes code is at least as great as your reluctance to use the bibliography code to cite your sources, Colonel. Now I'm just rambling. I should go make that typo fix and move the paragraph.
Been having a meddle with this page and have a couple of queries that I'd like to check about before I go ahead and start butchering text.
First, IIRC the "witch bobbing" technique was a form of trial by ordeal that was older than the ducking stool rather than an evolution from it. Should this be moved to a page on trial by ordeal? You couldn't really bob someone with a ducking stool as they would stay down as long as the chair did - you could, however, torture them into confessing by repeated partial drownings or, in the spirit of the original punishment, use it as corporal punishment for a social misdemeanour (minor maleficium and/or the threat thereof or some degree of heresy).
Secondly the ducking stool/cucking stool paragraph gets more confusing each time I read it:
The ducking stool should not be confused with the cucking stool, as the later involves merely humiliation, and not water. If the authorities are feeling lenient, however, most ducking stools could be used sans water. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps the term ducking was intended as a play on words - it sounds like cucking, but invokes an image of water foul, and considering that cucking means defecation in Middle English, foul it is indeed.
By using the ducking stool sans water, do we mean leaving someone tied to it like a set of stocks, without dunking them? What is the play on words? We've established that a cucking stool is basically a commode to which someone is tied to exhibit them, are we suggesting that the ducking stool could be used to dunk someone in a sewer?
Meddled with this a bit, to reflect the fact that Tetra Vaal is the name of the company that manufactures the robots.
Parented to "terrain" pro-tem … we probably need to drill down a bit.
…sounds like a stage name to me…
Just followed back here from the cannibalism page … would it be right to assume these things were charged with anthropophagy rather than cannibalism? (Although being half human it still might count … and there's nothing preventing them from doing both…)
in discussion General / General Discussion » There might be some downtime ahead...
I know I have been away for some time - my ongoing job hunt, moving to a new city, and starting work in a new job have preoccupied me as of late.
But I wanted to give some advance warning that there will be some downtime for this site. You see, my current (paid) Wikidot.com account expires on Monday. Unfortunately, I cannot pay for renewing it until this month's wages arrive on my bank account… which will be on Monday. Hopefully.
I will try to pay for the account extension as soon as possible, but I can't say yet exactly when that will be - so if you can't edit this site, just wait for a while.
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That looks fine to me…
Just as a sample how does this look? It's rough but to give you an idea of what I'm doing.
- Boll Weevil Monument
Vignette (not used)
Basic information:
Alabama has a long history of cotton production. However, the town of Enterprise has a monument to a well-known threat to the plant. Erected in 1919 it is located in the city’s downtown.
The monument depicts a female figure in a flowing gown with arms stretched above her head. Above her she raises a trophy topped by a Boll Weevil.
The inscription for the monument reads: “In profound appreciation of the Boll Weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity this monument was erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama.”
It is the first monument built to honor an agricultural pest. Why a town would build a statute to a pest? It goes back to 1915 when the Boll Weevil first appeared in Alabama. When it appeared, it devastated the local cotton crops and for Enterprise force them to switch to other crops. The town’s farmers discovered that crop rotation actually proved to be more profitable. In appreciation they built the statue and eventually a member of the town found it odd the Boll Weevil monument had no Boll Weevil. So he crafted brass bug to sit at the height of the construction.
Those that came after did not treat the moment well. It was vandalized and even stolen a few times. Each time it was found and repaired until 1998 when someone stole the Boll Weevil. This caused the town to replace it with a resin copy and to secure the actual stature in the town’s museum.
Sources
Wikipedia
Game and Story Use:
-In a game set after the end finding such a statue might lead to some interesting misconceptions about era.
*Or maybe a cult has popped up around it.
- Two words: Unknown Armies.
-It might also be a placeholder representing some other entity. The benign Boll Weevil is actually a front for some eldritch abomination. A cult is worshiping in broad daylight with no one the wiser.
-The brass Boll Weevil that crowned the statute was stolen in 1998. That seems to be an interesting plot hook right there.
*Players need it for something.
*They are tasked with recovering it.
*It’s found among the loot of another adventure. Which prompts the players to dig and find out what it is. Which still doesn’t answer why the bad guys had it.
Okay. I can work with that until I hear otherwise.
I'm not part of the management here, but in the spirit of the site, I would suggest somewhere in between, keeping to generalities unless the detail is likely to be useful for RPGs, fiction writing etc.
Ideally we want stuff that you can't just get from looking at Wikipedia - and a resident's perspective on things could be useful … we can put up with far less encyclopaedic content than Wikipedia.
That said we'll take a stub with a couple of links stapled to it over a red-link … assuming that the links aren't spam or suchlike.
I've seen a couple of states which have long descriptions of them and their history and many more which are just the bare bones. Which one would you guys prefer I emulate?
Could we bung a "culture" tab under people to include languages etc.? Or should it be more of a metagaming/setting building thing?
Any thoughts as how to link this into the Breadcrumb navigation? The best idea I've come up with so far is to link it to Fictional Places but that's not exactly accurate.
"All the World's a Stage and Everyone's a Critic" — Mervyn Alquist
…and the redirect page is now in place.
The draft page only had a basic template, so I deleted it.
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