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Forums Use and Moderation

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Sunday, 25 October 2015 05:30
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FAQ
 

The Forums and Moderation

The first rule of fight club is... no... wait...

The first rule of our Forums and Moderation policy is simple. It is even common sense. Unfortunately, the internet is not known for its copious numbers of people basing their lives on common sense. So let's break it down even more simply than it needs to be:

 

Respect

Show some respect when you discuss things with other readers and the authors of the stories. Even when you don't agree with them... or like them... maybe even especially then. No one is making money for doing what they do here. Readers, writers, artists... we're doing this because we enjoy it. Remember that when you have a different opinion that someone else and you want to correct them, or challenge their way of thinking. They're not here to learn. They're not here to become a better reader. Or a better writer. They're here because they enjoy doing what they do... and if you take away their enjoyment of it, they're not going to want to be here anymore.

 

Sensitivity

There are people who believe professional authors and artists should be thick skinned. Able to take criticism. Not insulted personally when someone tears into their work. To some degree, those people are right. But they are also usually wrong, because they believe that ANYONE is able to 'professionally' review and critique the work of an author. And I can assure you that there are far fewer professional critics than there are professional authors among web publications. If you don't know what you're doing, don't try to 'review' or 'critique' stories. Join a discussion about the story. Or make a simple comment about what you liked or what you didn't understand. Kicking the authors in the 'nads is not cool. Even if you think they should know to be wearing a cup.

 

Don't Argue when Rules are Enforced

Our rules and policies are mostly pretty abstract. We want the community to enjoy their time here. We want to keep our authors protected so they go on writing the stories everyone loves. You may feel that something you are doing is completely ok and justified... and suddenly a moderator is telling you to stop. Just stop. Drop the conversation. If you don't understand what you did that resulted in being called out, PM the moderator... or better yet, PM a DIFFERENT moderator. Mostly, our moderators are also authors. That means they have inside details on the shitstorm hitting one of the other authors in real life that you know nothing about... and while you aren't aware of it, what you are doing it hurting someone, or at the very least, making them want to say "f--- it" and leave. We might not be able to explain... not our story/details to share. But we don't drop the hammer often or lightly. So just save everyone a lot of hassle and don't argue about it. More than likely, any punishment that we apply after you argue is going to be far more painful than one where you respond with a simple "Sorry, my bad. I'll PM you in a bit to figure out where I went off the rails" and take a little break.

 

The Actual 'Rules'

Don't break things: If you try to hack the site, database, or disrupt the operation of the site in anyway; you need to find a different community to be a part of.

Don't snoop: It's not going to hurt anyone if you get access to stuff you shouldn't... unpublished stories, canon backstory, and so on. But it very well could ruin a lot of people's enjoyment of stories that have not yet been published... or even written... yet. So... don't.

Don't abuse the mail system or our bandwidth: Yes, you could theoretically subscribe to every thread and get hundreds of emails from the site every day... but please don't. We don't have to pay anything as long as we stay below 25000 per month... but it won't be long before we have 500+ registered members. And it won't take long for that many people to get a lot of notifications. Same with harassing our poor Google hosted VM... things should be relatively inexpensive to run, here... but if someone is uploading dozens of video clips and everyone's watching them, it could run up the bill quickly.

No flaming or trolling: For obvious reasons. The site is for our community, flaming and trolling are not a valid part of an intelligent community.

 
  • Created
    2015-10-22
  • Last modified
    2017-06-19

Comments   

# MichelleA 2015-11-06 03:32
Although not a registered member yet I do have a complaint that limits my desire to register. When I look at any page I need to zoom in to read it. Unfortunately when I do that your FIOS ad obscures the left side of the page.

Sincerely
MichelleA
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# Naldru 2016-03-16 02:13
What browser and platform are you using. For example if using Safari on Mac OS X, check Disable Styles on the Developer menu. There is probably something similar on many combinations of browsers and platforms. However, this may cut out ad revenue for that view.

Is the problem visual impairment or use of a different screen format?

I hadn't though of using the print option on the tool pull-down, but that seems to work well. That apparently uses a media setting of print instead of screen. Let me compliment the web designer on this. I can't count the number of web sites I've seen where there are no css codes for media print and the listings become very bizarre.
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# Kristin Darken 2015-11-08 11:22
Unfortunately the ads are necessary for the upkeep of the site. And the large banners like that tend to bring in the highest revenue... actually there is a wider version that's even better revenue because of the companies that buy the ads on those blocks... but people with 300 pixel wide screens would kill me if I started using the 300 wide x 600 high ads.

When I have time to develop an alternate layout for mobile devices, I will... in the meantime, I'm afraid you'll just have to bear with it. It will likely be a couple months before I get past anything other than core set up, security, and transfer of the old site contents. It's a lousy way to run a business... but then, we're not a business, sooooo....
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# Gianna Michelle 2016-02-17 05:57
:-) I have had no problems zooming in to read the stories on my mobile phone as of yet. That is how I read them any more I save the page for offline reading and then read it at work or where ever. Kind of fun being able to do that and no one know and be hateful because of my reading choices. Thank you to all the authors of these wonderful stories PLEASE PLEASE keep up the great work and keep them coming as soon as possible.
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# Phoenix Spiritus 2016-02-27 00:00
Most of the pages have a little gear icon top right, if you click on that you can select a "Print" version of the story that uses the full width of the page for stories (no side adds), that should allow you to zoom with fewer issues.
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# ArcherC 2015-11-12 06:03
I've been having issue logging in to the Whately Academy website. I got an e-mail for account validation and used it, and then one regarding my account being activated by an admin, but when I try to log in I am told my account is blocked.

Have I been misidentified as a spammer? I realize my registered real name is fake; I do not share my real name online as a matter of course, so you'll have to excuse me on having a little fun with it. Incidentally, I am the same Archer as was on the original forums, and my e-mail is different because I wanted to take this opportunity to update my e-mail to alienwarez1201@gmail.com. I would have sent an e-mail to the moderator, but I can't seem to find any contact e-mail addresses.
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# Kristin Darken 2015-11-12 10:38
Using a mail name with warez is a good way to get blocked by any site that has eyeball on names registration. Because of the connection with the hacking/cracking scene if you are somehow not aware of what warez is.

As to sending mail to a moderator, mail sent back to the mail address that responds to your registration and approval gets to us. But that doesn't mean we'll choose to respond to it. And no... we don't put our contact email out there where non-registered people (or at least those unfamiliar with our community) can access it... that'd be like you using a real name to register for our forums.
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# A fan. 2016-01-06 13:52
Hello Whateley Staff,

I would like to request that the older Canon Stories get their publishing dates changed to the ORIGINAL publishing dates from CrystalHall. From time to time I like to go back and re-read all the stories from the beginning or refer to earlier stories when I need a refresher on previous events or characters that get referenced in the new stories.

Having all the stories marked with the dates they were simply uploaded to this new site makes it extremely difficult to get the timeline straight and tell what stories go where. I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing this confusion. Please help!
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# Kristin Darken 2016-01-12 06:11
Hey there Fan. You bring up a great point about getting the old stories put back in their 'normal' publication order sequence. Unfortunately, as with all things, the process you refer to takes time. At the moment, many of the stories have been migrated to the new site through the efforts of Fan Fiction authors in an effort to support the staff who were handling this at first... much more slowly.

It's not a particularly HARD task, but it IS time consuming because some of the editing and saving steps take much longer than the normal front end operations of the site. Unfortunately, only Warren or I have the authority to modify anything at the publishing level, which is where that Date and a few other final steps have to be handled. As a result, those things have to go in the "to do" list that shares space with much more urgent items - like update the site software, release the new content, provide feedback for in progress content, maintain security, and pay the bills. And every now and then, I like to do a little writing myself.

So... we agree completely. The state of things right now is purely temporary. But like everything else that has been rushed or in 'catch up mode' since we moved to the new site; it'll have to wait until we get to it. After all, half the old stories haven't even been moved yet... let alone given the right publication dates.
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# Another fan 2016-12-13 22:33
In the old page, there was a list of stories ordered by internal timeline (consistent with the storyline, not upload or publication date). Does such an order still exist?

I enjoy following the universe as a whole, not by particular authors or characters. Being able to have monotone time (holes are excused) makes this much, much easier for me, especially since I joined very late. If this feature is missing, I would really like to see it both in Gen1 and Gen2.
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# Kristin Darken 2016-12-18 07:20
The 'by universe time' track of stories is something that has always been maintained by the WIKI team, as opposed to the authors. When I took over site admin, I copied what they had done into a table for the site... but keeping it up to date involved a fair amount of administrative upkeep. There's no 'simple' way to create such a thing and automate it (unlike the sorting by publication date, which is handled by the site software).

IF someone were to generate a list and offer to maintain it, I would be happy to post it where people can access it... but I can't commit to creating and maintaining such a thing myself. Not if there's any hope of me ever completing my own story commitments.Until such time as someone steps up to create this sort of list for the site... you can still find it at the WIKI (The WIKI link is on the WA Universe submenu).
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# Kerafym# 2017-05-13 16:31
Is there a field in the metadata that could be used for a start and end date of the story? I'm not sure which system you use, but perhaps exporting a list of all files to excel, find an empty field or add columns for date start/finish and reimporting.

I've just finished reading thru the wiki timelines myself and am struggling to work out which to read next.
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# Malady 2017-05-15 14:44
Well, if you've caught up to the crash / hack, then just start reading in order of posting?
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# Kristin Darken 2017-05-15 14:51
To be honest, the BEST order to read the stories is in the order they were released/published. In migrating here to the new site, we maintained the original release dates as accurately as possible to support this. In the site's story collection, they default to newest at the top... but you can reverse the sort order if you want, or just select the last page in the category list and work forward from there. The main reason we recommend that order is because even when we try to avoid breaking the order of events in critical plotlines, there are many points in our history where we have chosen to write stories out of chronological order.

For an in-universe chronological order - the fan based WIKI team has a recommended order that is mostly a factor of in-universe start time with some things shifted around or given 'but don't read before reading' limitations to avoid too many spoilers of things before they're meant to be read.... but the complexity of maintaining such a list is simply more time than the authors want to take, personally. We'd rather be writing new stories than building spreadsheets and tables based on dates from things we released more than a decade ago.

Also, there's an unfortunate level of difficulty in making 'spreadsheet' style tables of data usable on a web site. WIKIA makes it possible to build such a table and even resort using the site's scripting. We don't have that by default. Some recent changes to Joomla MAY make it possible for me to add some fields to the default story data and I intend to include PoV character name, in universe dates, and a few other elements. But there's no guarantee that those fields will be usable for anything except displaying their data... they may not show in collection listings, or anywhere that let's you pick what to read next.
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# Horrid 2016-02-15 00:10
I recently read pretty much the entire Whateley story in the chronological order that the stories were dated as in 2006-2007. It was the second time I have done this, the first being like 3 years ago. What a pleasure! However, it has been explained to me that there are actual reasons why the new website is doing it the way it is doing it, some of those reasons involving making less work for the website crew.

Hey, there does not seem to be a reasonable argument against making everything as easy for the web site crew as possible. You guys are doing stuff that I get a great deal of enjoyment from and receiving nothing in return except for the satisfaction of doing something good.

So you guys get the old stories uploaded to the new web site in whatever order you want to and more power to you! Thank you thank you thank you for all that you do. :)
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# Malady 2016-02-13 00:24
Well, if you want to cut down on the email load, you could reduce how much info is presented, like just saying that a thread has updated instead of adding the specific update data.

Or, if you're feeling really frugal, just send a single "!" to indicate that something has updated! :lol:
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+1 # Kristin Darken 2016-02-13 04:00
An email counts as an email no matter how much data is in it for the purposes of our mail provider. Bandwidth is a separate issue entirely.... and not one that really is all that expensive unless people start posting stuff in large files that can only be accessed here and yet ends up getting a million hits. That would crush our bandwidth allowance quickly. My server bill that month would not be pretty ...

But as far as things go... I just prefer we don't have five hundred people registered via RSS who track everything that comes into the site - forums, stories, etc... all by getting emails. That would burn more than 25k a month and force us into a situation where we have to pay for email service. The funds aren't really there for it... so what WILL happen, if people abuse it... is that I will just turn it off and no one will have access to the option.
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# Malady 2016-02-13 12:18
When you say "Uploading Video Clips", you mean as Attachments, or as Embedded Links?

'Cause if the latter sends the video stream using your bandwidth, that sounds really off to me, instead of having the user grab the video from the linked location...
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+1 # Kristin Darken 2016-02-14 05:22
Attachments. Or video uploaded to the site and embedded.

Yes, embedded with a link to somewhere else probably won't be a problem, but it IS possible to upload something and embed it in a story (like the big explosion video clip at the end of Petra).
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# Horrid 2016-02-15 00:01
I am one hundred percent enthusiastically behind the website banning people who don't want to be nice. This is especially true of people who want to hack the site or burden it with abuse of the mail system/bandwidth. What happened to the old crystal hall dot org site was an atrocity. And it is continuing, even though the site is being replaced. Also, it is really difficult not to actually hate the people who have chased away some of our fine Canon authors with their insulting, flaming. bullying comments. Thank you, Kristen and E.E. and others who have picked up the fallen torch and are working so hard to move Whateley forward.
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# Wordsmith 2016-03-22 15:49
Kristen,

I don't have regular access to the internet at home so when I come to the site I am looking to download the stories so that I may read them in my own time. Unfortunately starting last week, every story that you put up from the second part of Glow's story and Islands in the Sun to this weeks multiple releases get stuck in downloading at 28B out of 32+B. I have no clue what has changed in regards to the stories. You are all doing a wonderful job fixing problems that DO rear their ugly heads.
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# Malady 2016-03-22 15:56
Quoting Wordsmith:
Kristen,

I don't have regular access to the internet at home so when I come to the site I am looking to download the stories so that I may read them in my own time. Unfortunately starting last week, every story that you put up from the second part of Glow's story and Islands in the Sun to this weeks multiple releases get stuck in downloading at 28B out of 32+B. I have no clue what has changed in regards to the stories. You are all doing a wonderful job fixing problems that DO rear their ugly heads.


I don;t have that problem. What's your browser? I'm Firefox 45.0.1 on Windows 7.

Refresh in a minute (Okay. Now I know I should say 10 minutes...) for links to story pages for downloads on Google Docs.

[Nevermind]
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+1 # Kristin Darken 2016-03-22 21:55
While I appreciate your willingness to help, Malady... providing links to copies of the story on Google drive encourages two bad habits (publicly providing a non-approved source of stories -and- encouraging people to follow links to something offsite that is not verified safe).

It also doesn't fix the actual problem, which may or may not be site related.

Wordsmith... nothing has changed re: the stories and how we're releasing them. But the site DID get updated over the weekend (new vers of Joomla and a couple other plugins that we use), so there's a potential for issues there. Also Firefox did just update to vers 45 or something, didn't it? So if you would please, let us know what you're using and lets see if we can reproduce the issue?
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# Wordsmith 2016-03-23 00:35
On a Toshiba laptop. I get online with Google Chrome w/Windows 7. I hope that helps.
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# Kristin Darken 2016-03-24 03:04
Quoting Wordsmith:
get stuck in downloading at 28B out of 32+B.


Well, when you say 'downloading' ... what are you referring to? Are you clicking on the link to the story and the whole story doesn't load? Or are you doing something to try to save it locally... ie you are right clicking and selecting "save link as" or something similar? Because the links aren't isolated text documents or html files. They're being loaded from the database... and there are menus and advertisements, etc... that might prevent a 'save' from happening completely. Once ON the story page, you can select the Printer friendly version and save that if you 'must' have a local copy... but we're not going to link directly to those. Not the least of which is that we NEED the advertisement revenue to pay for server costs.
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# Wordsmith 2016-03-25 01:08
Yes. I was right clicking and then "save link as" to my downloads. In the past at Crystal Hall and more recently here it always worked quickly by bringing up a large gray box showing where it would be stored and then in the lower left corner a small box would come up announcing "Download in progress" and then count the bytes of the story versus the total bytes in the story. It is getting hung up at the 28B mark of the stories that have appeared since A Glow In the Darkness (Part 2) first was posted. All other stories that showed up on this site before that Would download for later reading. Once the download process is hung up a seperate box appears on the right side of the screen showing the process of the download and then asking if I want to wait or cancel the download. I'll try the printer friendly idea you proposed and let you know how it goes. Thanks for looking into this for me.
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# Wordsmith 2016-03-25 01:11
I just tried the printer friendly idea and it worked! Thank you!
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# Paradox 2016-06-14 17:30
Hi. I'm new to this community though I've been reading various Whately stories for a while now. I was interested in adding my own story that I've been working on to the 2nd Cannon and I was wondering if there was anyone who would be able to do some editing for me or if there was anyone someone could recommend once I've finished.
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# Phoenix Spiritus 2016-07-31 23:18
Hi Paradox,

Feel free to signup for the forums and drop a PM to Kristin to gain access to the FanFiction forums. There is a community of Whateley FanFiction authors there who help each other with their stories.
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# Naomi_Alt 2016-12-25 22:45
Hello; I can't sign on, and it says that I should "contact us" if I'm a legitimate user (which I at least think I am...) but nothing else. Who should I contact, where should I contact them, and what information should I include in the message?

Thank you for your time.
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# Robin_WH 2016-12-31 00:44
Just two complaints or maybe three. I´d like to see 2nd gen sortable by characters present in story. Second one is also about 2nd Gen - since I started to read it from beginning (that means oldest post, I have to always click "previous" button to read next story in timeline :P
My last complaint is to orinal canon, where I see (after clicking on original canon button) Bek D. Corbin´s Silver Ghost, Golden Angel (part 2) but not the part 1. To see part 1 I have to search only by "Corbin" since "Bek D. Corbin" will find only two entries, While the "Bek D Corbin" will find other.
Please sort this messes out.
Thank you
Robin
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# Kristin Darken 2017-01-04 06:32
Quoting Robin_WH:
I´d like to see 2nd gen sortable by characters present in story.

The only way this is possible would be for stories to be tagged/flagged in some way for any character that appears in them. While that's not a huge task to do for new stories, it would be one heck of a process to go back through the 400+ stories released over the last 12 years to tag everything in every story.

Not saying it couldn't happen... just that it would be a huge time commitment that someone would have to make. During which time that someone wouldn't be writing stories or doing other stuff.

Quote:
since I started to read it from beginning (that means oldest post, I have to always click "previous" button to read next story in timeline
Ya... but it IS correct. It IS the previous article in the sorted list that it is drawing from.

Quote:
Bek D. Corbin´s Silver Ghost, Golden Angel (part 2) but not the part 1. To see part 1 I have to search only by "Corbin" since "Bek D. Corbin" will find only two entries, While the "Bek D Corbin" will find other.
That one I can do without too much hassle.
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# Gianna Michelle 2017-02-08 07:30
I have been rereading all the original stories and I have been unable to find some of them. Specifically the ones on Ayla Goodkind. Such as the one where she developed her powers got experimented on by doctor Hammond and so on. I am just wondering what happened to them because I love all the stories on here and quite enjoy rereading them from time to time.
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# Kristin Darken 2017-02-09 05:12
Quoting Gianna Michelle:
I have been rereading all the original stories and I have been unable to find some of them. Specifically the ones on Ayla Goodkind. Such as the one where she developed her powers got experimented on by doctor Hammond and so on. I am just wondering what happened to them because I love all the stories on here and quite enjoy rereading them from time to time.

All the canon Ayla stories are here. None of them are missing. :)
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# Phoenix Spiritus 2017-02-09 05:16
Nearly all the Ayla stories are written by Diane Castle, the particular story where he got powers and was experimented on is http://whateleyacademy.net/index.php/original-timeline/163-ayla-and-the-late-trevor-james-goodkind

If you want to re-read the stories from he beginning, go to the stories tab, click on the "Original Timeline", then click on the date released and sort it so that the earliest released stories are on top and start reading :lol:
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# Malady 2017-02-09 05:18
Well, I think I linked the chain properly from here: http://crystalhall.wikia.com/wiki/Ayla_and_the_Late_Trevor_James_Goodkind

Just follow the links at the end of tbe first paragraph for each page?
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+1 # taggrrl 2017-05-09 16:26
Hello, am wondering, what is being done, for orphans, like Paige and Petra? Is the current creative team going to use them, in their new original canon stories? Or, we, as readers have to make do, with what their creators have blessed us, before leaving the Whateley Academy universe.
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+1 # Phoenix Spiritus 2017-05-09 17:22
It's different for the different characters, and mostly dependant on what characters can be 'adopted' by other authors.

Mostly we are concentrating on the character we have authors for, there is more information about the status of the individual authors on the forums.
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+1 # taggrrl 2017-05-09 17:35
Thank you, Phoenix, for your response.
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