The Origin of Object Classes / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page The Origin of Object Classes.

cooldude971 20 Mar 2020 18:15

I have been a member of the SCP Foundation subreddit since 2017, and have done a lot of writing on the history of the SCP Foundation. The essay you just read is a cleaned up version of Where Object Classes Came From: A History, which was posted to reddit last summer.

There are a lot of people that I need to thank for making this essay possible:

• Everyone who helped sort through archived /x/ posts here. It would have been impossible to write this essay without the efforts of everyone who sorted through countless /x/ posts looking for pieces of SCP Foundation history.
• Bluesoul, for parsing through the /x/ posts further, and hosting them publicly in an easy to access format. (All of the posts can be downloaded from here, but it is virtually impossible to find anything interesting without special software.)
• Wonder-bread, for answering my question about the development of object classes. I would not have known where to look or what to even look for without this response.
• u/SangerZonvolt for greping and searching through the /x/ archive, and uncovering a ton of useful information on Lofwyr (the original creator of many SCP guides including the object class guide).

If you have any additional information, or even better anything that directly contradicts what I wrote, then I would greatly appreciate hearing it.

Last edited on 20 Mar 2020 18:23 by cooldude971 Show more

Yossipossi 20 Mar 2020 19:09

+1. Only gripe with the article is that it's posed to be a complete history of object classes, but kinda glosses over everything after S/E/K was established and Thaumiel became a thing, when it could be explored a lot more.

cooldude971 20 Mar 2020 19:25

Fair enough. I meant for the essay to focus primarily on the origin of object classes, but used the above title so it would fit with other essays in the History of the Universe Hub. Do you think it would be better to rename the article to something like “The Origin of Object Classes”?

(I am actually interested in doing a more in-depth continuation at some point in the future, but this would be a part two rather than an expansion of this essay).

Edit: Based on feedback, I've gone ahead and changed the title so it more accurately describes the contents of the essay.

Last edited on 20 Mar 2020 21:03 by cooldude971 Show more

Yossipossi 20 Mar 2020 20:15

Sounds good to me.

Calibold 20 Mar 2020 19:49

I do agree that I would enjoy a continuation of after the main object classes were established, but this is still a great article as-is. I think a renaming like you suggested might be useful though, as to not be misleading.

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Smells like success.

Nagiros 20 Mar 2020 19:24

This is super cool to see this condensed and ported over from Reddit. Your guides are instrumental in the creation and maintenance of the Esoteric Classes Complete List, and serve as a much-needed guide into the oft-neglected nuance of the Object Class system.

Last edited on 20 Mar 2020 19:25 by Nagiros Show more

cooldude971 20 Mar 2020 21:07

Thanks a lot; I'm very glad to hear my guides have been so helpful.

I've always been impressed by how ambitious and thorough Esoteric Classes Complete List is. I've actually used it myself to study the history of object classes that emerge in foreign language branches and to double check that I haven't accidentally excluded SCPs.

RJB_R 20 Mar 2020 20:02

This is a strong framework but feels a little insubstantial at the moment, like an outline of a good history essay instead of the whole thing. No-voting for now. Would you like to link this from the HOTUS hub?

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

cooldude971 20 Mar 2020 21:36

I've already linked the essay from the History of the Universe Hub with Modern_Erasmus's permission, but it doesn't appear to have transcluded to the main guide hub. I'd greatly appreciate a link from there.

Do you have any advice on making the essay more substantial? I'm aware the essay is somewhat barebone, but I'm not quite sure how to add the informational meat. While writing the essay, I was hampered by the incomplete nature of the 4chan Archive I used (it contained every /x/ post, but the /b/ backup was corrupted) and holes in the EditThis archive (no scans were conducted before April). Additionally, some of the most important developments occurred solely within the minds of the earliest members of the SCP Foundation and would not have produced any record to begin with. (For example, I can tell that an Anon added the "Class 4 hazardous object containment procedures" language into SCP-173 as an edit of the original post and that this spawned imitators, but I have no clue where the Anon got the idea for this description, why the Anon considered it to be an improvement over the original text, and what the intended effects of the addition were- all of which would be incredibly useful to know).

RJB_R 20 Mar 2020 22:36

The latter sets of information appear to have been lost to history, unless someone comes forward. Given its short nature, I would say perhaps making this supplementary material to the larger essays would solve the shortness here, as it's not actually lacking good substance or new information there's just a limited scope here, which is fine. In that context, I've actually convinced myself to upvote.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

XCninety 20 Mar 2020 23:07

I've heard that the first SCP with a thread level ever was SCP-2845 (Feb. 2014). The French branch has referred to 2845 and applied them to all of their reports on Jun. 2015.

cooldude971 12 May 2020 05:26

Thank you for both pointing out this error and for providing the links. Sorry it took so long to make these changes; I only just recognized that 2845 is an English SCP.

I'm actually finishing up the rough draft of part II of this essay; the information you provided was a big help.

Bottleofwater 21 Mar 2020 12:33

Corrected some minor spelling mistakes. Just thought I'd let you know.

(this surge led directly to the creation of the EdiThis wiki)

to

(this surge led directly to the creation of the EditThis wiki)

And this:

an object that can be safely and reliable contained.

to

an object that can be safely and reliably contained.

I'll probably look over this article in a small while and fix any mistakes I find, if you don't mind.

And I forgot to mention, this is great! I'm always keen on reading history of The Foundation, especially in such an interesting manner. Keep up the great work!

EDIT: The above were the only mistakes I was able to find after looking through the page.

Last edited on 21 Mar 2020 12:47 by Bottleofwater Show more