Our World of Text

*See the OWOT Wiki here.

The OWOT Spawn Box

Our World of Text is a sister website to Your World of Text. Though its concept is largely identical, OWOT contains more features such as instant teleportation, mass pasting, colors and an in-site chat. It also has a higher rate limit, allowing for a greater range of scripted creations.

All of these features make for a far more chaotic sandbox, but it also necessitates stricter moderation compared to Your World of Text. Currently this is being done by FP, the creator and lead developer of OWOT(there also exists a small, mostly inactive admin team).

Today, the OWOT userbase is significantly more active than YWOT's, giving rise to an ever-evolving ecosystem of scripting, discourse and drama.

History

Our World of Text was originally created by Andrew Badr on June 8th, 2010. Around the time Andrew had imposed rate limits on Your World of Text, so in order to appease scripters he made a copy of YWOT where they had complete freedom.

The first version of OWOT was shut down on August 20th, 2015 due to funding issues. But soon after, an effort sprung up to revive the site, with YWOT user InfraRaven being handed ownership of the ourworldoftext.com domain. The OWOT revival introduced key features, such as colors and the global chat.

The beta for this second version of OWOT began in Summer of 2016, with the client being finalized in November of that year. The revival would be ill-fated, however, and was shut down in Winter of 2016.

But around the same time, a 13 year old YWOT user known as FP had begun working on his own version of OWOT. Upon discovering this, InfraRaven agreed to host the new OWOT on a spare server.

The third and current iteration of the site was opened on October 8th, 2017. An official discord was created by FP two days later, and it has since become a core pillar of the OWOT community.

An OWOT wiki was created on January 17th, 2023. Currently it is rather sparse in content, with many pages being stubs and users engaging in frequent edit wars over community drama.

OWOT was made open source on February 25th, 2023, allowing anyone to run their own instance of the site.

In October of 2023, on the sixth anniversary of the current OWOT, FP agreed to an interview with user AndreiXYZ, providing valuable information on the creation of the site.

A rough history of OWOT from ourworldoftext.com/InfraRaven.

Differences From YWOT

Comparison between YWOT and OWOT menus.

Pasting

Unlike in YWOT, OWOT users can paste multiple characters at once without the use of scripts.

Pasting is also a lot faster in OWOT due to the site having a higher rate limit than YWOT.

Teleportation

Users can instantly teleport to any location on the page.

This allows for activity and artwork at obscenely remote locations, but the trade-off is that the areas between these hotspots tend to be completely empty.

Chat

OWOT Global Chat

Each OWOT subworld has its own chat.

There is also a Global Chat that can be accessed on any world except for the Mainpage. The Global Chat was removed from the Mainpage in 2024 due to its extreme toxicity(Ex. spam, harassment, cp links, ip grabbers, etc.), which drew attention away from the canvas all while being off-putting to newcomers.

Global Chat can also be accessed through a Discord server called Goatway.

Links

Users can create links to URLs and Coordinates(which in this case would instantly teleport anyone who clicked on them).

As IP grabbers and other harmful links are prolific in OWOT, it is recommended to hover over a link and see its name before clicking on it.

Some users, on the other hand, prefer to disable links altogether. This can be done using the menu.

Colors

Colored art at OWOT's Spam Central.

Can also be disabled in the menu.

Users can change the color of their text, as well as their cursor outlines, by inputting hex codes.

There is also the option to change the background colors for individual cells, but this is currently disabled on the Mainpage.

Many regular visitors to OWOT will identify themselves using a specific color, though this does open up room for impersonation.

According to /OWOTD(not exactly the most reliable source I know), some users are vehemently against the use of color in OWOT and will write in white text to mess with people who have color enabled.

Support for Additional Symbols

OWOT supports emojis along with a wider range of unicodes. (Ex. Symbols for Legacy Computing, which allow users to make complex shapes using unicodes.)

This can be used for spam as well as art.

Colored art using symbols not available in YWOT(Created by Meimei in ourworldoftext.com/computer.yes)

Zoom Slider

The OWOT zoom slider, when toggled all the way to the left, provides a slightly bigger view of the canvas than YWOT at 25% zoom. This can be combined with "Ctrl -" to zoom out even farther.

The YWOT Fastclient had its own zoom slider which provided a much wider view than OWOT's, though clicking "Ctrl -" will reset it.

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  YWOT at 25% zoom
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  OWOT with zoom slider toggled to far left
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  Zoom slider + 33% zoom

Grid

Also featured in the YWOT fastclient by FP.

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  Grid
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  Subgrid

FP talks about rollbacks.

Moderation

There is a feature that allows OWOT admins to reverse edits made at Spawn. This is often used to repair the damage done by spammers and griefers.

Users can request an admin rollback of specific subworlds or parts of the mainpage.

It is also common for FP to impose strict rate-limits on users running unwanted scripts within 10 coordinates of the center.

An admin calling out a griefer by placing an uneditable block after restoring art at Spawn.

Userpages/Private Subworlds

In YWOT, users create userpages with a "~" in front of their names. This is different in OWOT, where users do so by claiming regular subworlds.

Ex. https://ourworldoftext.com/fp

They can also create additional subworlds by adding to the url, same as the way it is done in YWOT.

Ex.https://ourworldoftext.com/fp/carthage

The claiming of subworlds functions on a first come first serve policy, leading to occasional drama where users fight over the rights to a specific world name.

Before an 2013 update which introduced the "/~username/worldname" system, YWOT users would claim userpages just like in OWOT.

Active Development

One of the biggest differences between the two sites is that OWOT is actively receiving updates from FP, whereas Andrew seldom makes changes to YWOT in the current day.

FP recently started to announce changes on the OWOT wiki.

Relation With Your World of Text

Though most OWOT users discovered the site through Your World of Text, the two WOT communities rarely interact. However they might be more connected than meets the eye, as YWOT is(used to be?) frequently mentioned on the OWOT Discord server as well as /OWOTD, the OWOT drama subworld. The two sites also share many users, with FP and InfraRaven being prominent figures in both communities. And likewise there have been many YWOT users who migrated to OWOT altogether, such as Kiki, a popular YWOT artist who is now known as meimei on Our World of Text. Similarly, the notorious ManHatingZone faction is known to have transferred their shenanigans to OWOT after the 2020 lockdown of YWOT.

Generally, OWOT is rarely discussed within the Your World of Text community. However there exists a sizable portion of the YWOT userbase, predominantly explorers, who look down upon their sister site for its teleportation feature, which makes manual scrolling obsolete and precludes any possibility of communities forming along roads and trails. Many YWOTers are also driven off by the toxicity that is frequently found within OWOT, preferring to live a (***comparably) more quiet existence in their largely inactive site.

Similarly, many OWOT users see YWOT as an inferior site due to its lack of features.

Warpserver

From the OWOT Discord

It is possible to access YWOT on the OWOT client. Doing so would presumably allow someone to teleport, paste and run OWOT scripts on the YWOT Mainpage, though colors remain unsupported.

This crossover of sites used to be accomplished using a chat command known as /warpserver. FP has since removed this feature for a variety of reasons, such as it being used to spam YWOT and the fact that it posed a security issue.

From the OWOT Discord

In 2024, Moth Cult reportedly found another way to access YWOT from the OWOT client.

OWOT-YWOT Bridge on August 31st, 2024(Sped Up 20x)

OWOT-YWOT Bridge

An experiment by Moth Cult which connected the two text canvases.

The OWOT-YWOT Bridge was a small portal that synced edits between the two websites.

A second bridge created a working chatroom in YWOT, from which YWOT users can interact with the OWOT Global Chat.

!!!Cool Shit from Our World of Text!!!

Animation

As OWOT has a higher rate limit than YWOT, it is possible to create relatively smooth(compared to YWOT) animation(2 fps) within the site.

Bad Apple by Mr. Black

Working Audio Mixer by FP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6H2wMkYnNQ

"It runs via Node.js and plays back the audio through Node itself. In the future, it would be possible to relay the audio to a browser tab to allow the mixer to be fully usable by multiple people." - FP

How to Deal With Spammers

As the name suggests.

Lime Radio

A lime green radio with scrolling text, flashing displays and a moving progress bar.

It played songs from Lime's supermix, and allowed users to request their own songs. A script can be used to play Youtube audio in sync with the radio's progress bar.

The radio was a near-constant presence at Spawn during 2024. On December 1, 2024, Lime shut down the radio permanently, due to a lack of listeners and "being a burden" on his computer.

OWOT Newspaper

Our World of News by Lemuria documents various developments within the community. It also covers YWOT and OWOP on a regular basis.

Lemuria's paper was preceded by AndreiXYZ's (now inactive) OWOT Today. The two news outlets were initially friendly and Andrei even supportive of OWON, though by June 2024, Lemuria started to be a more controversial figure for numerous reasons, leading to Andrei and Lemuria starting to dislike each other. Eventually, AndreiXYZ called a boycott of OWON in late August 2024.

Lemuria responded to this by making frequent mentions of Andrei's "monopolistic censorship" in subsequent issues of OWON.

This feud is but a small part of the drama that regularly breaks out in the OWOT community.

• Our World of News - 2024-09-14 (issue 00059)
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These things

From ourworldoftext.com/main and ourworldoftext.com/bcolor.

These pieces are made using SLC characters and make heavy use of the ability to change cell background color.

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References

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