Ether - FAQ

Advanced A: Ether is an abstract dimension of space populated by Thoughts. The location of a Thought is determined by alphanumeric coordinates, which spell out Thoughtwords. You can think of Thoughtwords as addresses, Thoughts as residents of that address, and letters as turns you take while traveling to them. Inside the Ether, you are navigating around the collective minds of all of its contributors.

Transcendent A: If the social forces that pressure us to tailor our expression to a critical audience are removed, what will happen to our expression? Would we unlearn superficiality and re-learn sincerity? Would we discover things about our true selves after giving up on constantly reinventing false selves? If this were a collaborative experiment, would our mutual sincere experimental expression show us something about the nature of humanity?

Q: How do I navigate around Ether?
A: The navigational system is bound to evolve more than any other part of Ether, and at the moment, you have these options:

Automatic (navigation buttons):

Type in a Thoughtword and go directly to it

Randomly travel through Ether with the directional buttons

Manual (following letters) :

Letters (or numbers) in the manual navigation box are larger and turn green if they point in the direction of Thoughts, are smaller and turn red if they're deadends, and are grayed out if you're approaching the outer boundaries of Ether. Remember that you cango past those dead ends and post new Thoughts at unpopulated Thoughtwords

Q: What do the buttons do?
A:

	Out to the main page
	Back one step
	Take a random step forward towards a thought (Button disabled when you reach a dead end)
	Take the only available step forward towards a thought (Button disabled when you reach a dead end)
	Type in a Thoughtword and hit Enter to navigate directly to it
	Post a Thought

Q: Is there a glossary of Ether terms?
A: Uh... Sure, let's go with these definitions and capitalizations for now:

'Ether', or 'the Ether' - The abstract medium that contains Thoughts through this website

'Thought' - A posting made to the Ether

'Thoughtword' - A 'location' in the Ether described by a word

'populated Thoughtword' - A Thoughtword where Thoughts can be found

'Thinker', or 'color' - A source of Thoughts (be it one person or a group)

Thoughtwords

Q: What restrictions are placed on Thoughtwords?
A: Thoughtwords must consist of only letters from the standard English alphabet and numbers, and must be 20 characters long or less.

Thoughts

Q: What are the rules about posting Thoughts?
A: Naturally, Ether shuns rules. But here's what's encouraged:

Significant thoughts
Introspective musing
Poetry
Personal anecdotes
Philosophy
Heartfelt confessions
Spilling your soul
A direct transcription of your thoughts associated with a word

A: What's discouraged:

Identifying yourself or anyone else by full name
Writing that is unrelated to its Thoughtword
Gratuitous profanity or gratuitous graphic depictions of sex or violence
Quoting from other sources without credit
Quoting from other sources without any personal additions
Making reference to other Thoughts or Thinkers in Ether
Libellous remarks about actual, identified people
Advertising
Antagonizing

Q: What HTML tags are allowed?
A: <i>, <b>, <center>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, <sup>, and <sub>

Thinkers

Q: What's up with the little colored boxes?
A: Each person with an account on Ether is represented by their own color. Think of each color as being someone's name. To help differentiate between similar colors, numbers are also assigned to each user from a direct decimal translation of their color's hex value. In some parts of Ether, you might click on a user's color to go to his or her profile page, and in others, you would click on a user's color to go to their personal thought associated with the Thoughtword that you're currently reading.

Q: I'm a Thinker. Am I not allowed to say who I am?
A: You're free to disclose as much of yourself as you wish. Ether is set up so that Thinkers don't have to go out of their way to be anonymous, but doesn't at all demand that they keep themselves anonymous.

Q: Hey! I think I know who that is!
A: It's proper netiquette to respect online anonymity. Thinkers have an opportunity to reveal their identities if they wish to do so, and if a particular Thinker hasn't, then it's in very poor form to threaten or take away his or her anonymity in any way, either through action online or in person. Doing so disrupts the atmosphere of Ether and is likely to make the person uncomfortable.
And that's not a question.

Other

Q: What do I do if my question isn't answered by the FAQ?
A: Consult the Contact page to get ahold of the webmaster, Phantom Watson.