[ANSTHRLD] Ansteorran online commentary system

[Jennifer Smith]

Greetings!

As was mentioned at the heraldic and scribal symposium this weekend (was a
great event, as usual), we now are testing an in-kingdom commentary system
roughly analogous to OSCAR, the commentary and response system that is used
at the Laurel level. (For various reasons, we're *not* using the same code;
fortunately Reis coded up the system for us, and will be working on
enhancing its capabilities as we go.)

If you are already doing commentary for Ansteorra, you can now either create
an account on our new system and type it in directly there, OR continue
sending your commentary to Retiarius, who has graciously agreed to enter it
for the time being. Since there is currently no mechanism for actually
writing decisions yet, she'll still be producing an ICC for me to edit into
the AICC as usual.

If you are not yet doing commentary, but are curious, or just want to read
comments already made, you can! Anyone can read commentary without an
account at all.

The system is currently at:  http://hcs.randomcasts.com/.  Hopefully a
direct link to it will show up on the heraldry website soon, likely under
the 'submissions' area. (Alasdair?) Eventually it will be moving onto the
ansteorran server, but not at this early beta stage.

I want to emphasize that this is in beta-testing! I haven't run across any
horrid bugs, but some parts of it are a touch primitive. Do try it, though,
tell me what you like, what you hate, suggestions and so forth. And if
anyone can come up with a cooler acronym than "HCS" (for 'heraldic
commentary system') that is publically acceptable, please do let me know. :)

-Emma, Bordure