So. I had said I was going to have the hard launch of the Wongery, when I finally made a serious effort to get the word out and get viewers, this December 21, exactly ten years from the "soft launch" when it first went public.
But I also said I was going to make a "news" post a week until then, and that sure as heck didn't happen.
Part of the reason I hadn't made any news posts lately is because I wanted to wait until we had some more articles posted, but we haven't posted any new articles lately, which is... bad.
It's not that we've been idle the last few months. We've been busy laying groundwork, putting things in place that will make it easier to put in serious work on the Wongery later. But that means we haven't been putting in serious work on the Wongery now. And it means we don't have much to show for the last few months. Or, frankly, the last year.
So what does that mean for the hard launch on the 21st? Well, it means that if we do launch then, we... won't have much to show for it. A wiki with a few hundred articles about some imaginary worlds, and... that's about it. We have a lot more plans for the site; they just aren't implemented yet. We'd hoped that by the time of the hard launch we'd have at least a thousand articles, have the extra tabs in the wiki for game statistics, 3d models and graphics for use in computer games, etc.—and have material on some of those tabs as well. None of that is currently there, and okay, if we really rushed we could maybe have some of that up in the next few weeks, but... looking over the site's current status, I couldn't help but think it might be better to wait and have the hard launch when there's more to see at the site, rather than try to promote it now in its current less than impressive state.
The biggest factor in favor of sticking to the original launch date, though, was... well, the fact that it would be exactly ten years from the soft launch. There's nothing really significant about that; there was nothing really significant about the soft launch date in the first place, and even if there were there's no reason why it would be important to do anything exactly ten years later. (Plus, come to think of it, December 21 isn't really a great day to try to publicize something anyway, coming just a few days before a major holiday.) Still, there's something psychologically appealing about that round-number anniversary that made me reluctant to reschedule.
But the benefits of the deferment—or perhaps more aptly the downsides of sticking the original date—seemed that they would far outweigh the empty allure of the decennial. But then it occurred to me: if I decided to launch the site on January 1, 2024, well, not only would this be a nice round date (and after the holidays!), but it would be (if I chose a specific time in the afternoon) exactly eleven years, eleven days, and eleven hours after the soft launch. What the heck. I'll take it.
I suppose I don't have to feel guilty about deferring the hard launch date; it's not like there are people waiting for it who will be disappointed in the delay, since the whole reason we're doing the hard launch is because nobody knows about this site, which means nobody's currently reading these posts. Still, however unnecessarily, I do feel a little bad about it... but I really think it's for the best.
So. January 1, 2024 will be the hard launch of the Wongery.
And hopefully over 2023 we'll actually get all the things done we'd hoped to get done this year.