10th Anniversary of World Building SE!

Question

In September World Building SE turns 10 years old. Congratulations on asking, answering, voting, and building this community for a whole decade!

Whenever a Stack Exchange site turns 10 we like to celebrate by encouraging users to reflect on their experiences here.

How did you first discover the site? Do you have a favorite question or answer that helped you solve a problem? Any funny anecdotes or other insights on your time here, that you would like to share? We want to hear it all!

Answer 1

Our Favorite Answers

This is the list of the answer YOU wrote that's your favorite. It's a community wiki, so please edit the answer with your entry!

• JBH's answer to the question How long may aliens ethically dump waste on earth?

• Monty Wild's answer to the question How does Santa keep the elves from revolting?

• L.Dutch's answer to the question How do I explain a unicorn discharging powerful electricity at a distance?

• In Hoc Signo's answer to the question What would lead an entire country to systematically ignore home invasion, theft and vandalism from 1 particular person?

• Palarran's answer to the question How do I figure out my planet's biomes and weather?

• Sphennings' answer to the question Would the principles of Stack Exchange work in a real-world utopia?

• TheDemonLord' answer to the question Weapon damage assessment, or What hell have I unleashed?

Answer 2

It was a dark and stormy night...

At work I was given the task to improve a template which required iterative calculations, and so my thought was to use VBA macros. Talking with a friend about the problems I was having with writing what I wanted, they suggested me to check on Stack Overflow. When I needed to ask questions which were not already answered, I created an account there.

In parallel with this, I used to spend some time on a blog of F1 aficionados, who filled the idle time between a race and the other talking about various topics, ranging from physics and thermodynamics to the feasibility of F1 racing on the Moon.

It didn't take long for my eyes to notice, in the HNQ section, the intriguing titles of some questions posted on Worldbuilding, which somehow resonated with the idle discussions I participated in that blog.

From there to creating an account also here, the step was short. And while my activity on that blog dwindled, it was compensated by an increase in activity here.

Then when I posted this answer and received so many good reactions, that's the moment I got hooked to Worldbuilding.

Honorable mention to this other answer which started the usage of the word potatoid.

Answer 3

It's been a long time, so I'm not that sure, but knowing myself I stumbled upon the site during procrastination at work, while trying to look up a solution to some problem and getting sidetracked into HNQ browsing instead.

This part I can understand, but it will forever remain a mystery just why has my second question gained so many views and spin-off questions - might be just that it was early enough in the site's history to become the first, therefore most popular, and thus central question of the theme.

But my favourite thing about the site is the sheer variation of all the different and wonderful things we can learn, like the chemical impossibility of Lembas bread, possible power sources for a 400-pound chainsaw, or the survivability onion.

Answer 4

I saw a question about a Gunsafe surviving a Nuclear explosion and thought:

That sounds like a rather interesting hypothetical.

And I decided to answer it.

Then I discovered other questions - I have a passion for Weaponary and the bizarre - and curiously enough, this SE has hypotheticals about those in spades.

So I started answering.

Some of you crazy folks seemed to enjoy my answers and so I stuck around.

Some of my favourites:

Initially, I was going to say this was a silly question, but reading the comments made me decide to go all-in and see how far I could take it - it is one of my most up-voted answers and I like it for the sillyness

I like this answer because of my staunch support of BTRG in Space Lingerie.

But this is probably my favourite... Because I misread the question and so answered it thinking that the destructive power was 1,000 times more than what had been written, so I wrote a nightmarish apocalyptic scenario... But it was still accepted as the answer - and the fact you can misread the question - but come up with a great answer always makes me smile.

Answer 5

I'd been a regular user of Stack Overflow for some time, looking up answers and asking and answering questions about programming problems, when I noticed Area 51. I'd been inventing worlds since I was a kid back in the 70's, so the idea of a Q&A site for worldbuilding seemed like just the thing. However, I had been beaten to it by kexx, so I supported the campaign... and here we are.

As to how I became a moderator here, there was this election, and I put my name forward for it, not that I really expected to win... but as they say here in the Land of Oz, I won the last available position on preferences.

My most popular question was Where on Earth is it easiest to survive in the wilderness?, though my favourite questions were the series that I asked about Jormungandr, the Snakebot of Doom, which includes Would we notice ridiculously healthy birds?. I've finished writing The Juggernaut which was based on answers to those questions, though I only posted half of it in Universe Factory so that I would be able to say to a future publisher that the work was not previously published. I'm still looking for a good beta reader for it...

My favourite answer is my answer to How does Santa keep the elves from revolting?, though my most popular answer is my answer to How could dragons be explained without magic?