OK, blame Lalita - she grammed me this morning with a perfectly intelligent question about "just where do we go from here with Neighborhoods," and I warned her I'd do a screed post.

Since we have SO many new faces here, let me go back a bit. If I get it wrong, amicii, jump in and clarify so we're all on the same scribal page?

Neighborhoods, as a concept, developed last fall. Every city and all city scribes guided discussions on, basically, how we're going to internally expand what we offer to AW citizens, now and for future growth (we hope!)

Before I go further, let's all give a big cheer - the gross number of patrons at AncientWorlds after the opening of the Orient expanded by 15% in two weeks!!!

So, here's the plan, hard-hammered-out by all scribes in each city, and clarified by the Divine Jot.

a) We will soon be going to "Worlds" rather than "cities." It will be Roman World, Hellas World, Germania World, Americas World, etc. This is because we've outgrown a mere 'city' structure for what we offer to our citizens.

b) Each "world" then breaks down into regions. These regions have been chosen and approved by Jot, and new regions will come along later. We started out with a target of five 'regions' for every city. THEN you take the city itself, and drill down into actual street maps and neighborhoods.

c) So in the next few months, AW will morph into a series of communities like this sample:

Roman World/Italia [province]/Rome [city]/Subura [neighborhood].

Each one of these will have its own 'home' page, like now, you go to the main 'Rome' page and that covers information about Rome's community. But these changes are going to expand what we offer by a power of at least five -!!!!!

d) The different 'pages' for the different 'regions' will give us an unprecedented ability to spotlight different areas in our cultures. One focus of Springfest, which almost everyone did, was to do 'presentations' on a region in their 'world.' Sank did the great one on China; Babylon did tours of Phoenicia, one of their new 'neighborhoods'; Athens spotlighted their new areas of the Greek Islands [Crete] and Asia Minor [Ephesus]. And more than I can list just here.

SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

e) We'd hoped to have the technical structure of creating new 'places' ready by today, but life being what it is, it looks like a small delay - and then we must beta-test for bugs - and THEN we start 'creating' the places - and THEN you, as scribes, need history content to help us fill up those new pages for your Worlds!

So think - rough target date, June 1 and thereafter....

I know Egypt has been working on this for ages; welcoming pages with history and information about Thebes/Wadjet (did I spell that right, Hap?) and all the other 'regions' of "EgyptianWorld" to come. That's a target for us all in coming weeks. We can create the 'place' but what do you want newcomers to see in it? Some suggestions off the top of me head:

1) Go through all of (say) Celtia's groups. Which groups are focused on one of your new regions, that you'll want to spotlight there?

2) Do you have information about the history of your new region you can either (a) put up on the new main page or (b) link to? (In Rome, we're doing articles about each of our neighborhoods in some depth, because we plan to link to them from each region's new main page)

3) We can come up with a map, but YOU with your expertise might do it better. Get a map, find one of our incredible graphic talents, bribe them remarkably . . . you may want maps and graphics for your new city and province pages, that alone is a lot of work and planning!

4) Think of the kind of tour Sank did for Orient - that gives an overview of all the regions your 'Celtic WorldL" will offer. How do you let a newbie know where he/she might want to 'live'? Because we'll all be able to 'move in' to these regions and cities just like, now, you have a general pavillion in The Orient.

So - let's think, "in the next month" and probably as evolving thereafter. Imagine your domus as it is now, and how much work you've put into it - and city pages will have some of that quality, certain info will be 'set' but there will be room for a lot of graphic and history information around that template.

Now, I'm going to LEAVE before anyone points out this whole post is as clear as mud.....