Forums Use and Moderation
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.
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Created2015-10-22
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Last modified2017-06-19
Comments
Sincerely
MichelleA
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.
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....
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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).
I've just finished reading thru the wiki timelines myself and am struggling to work out which to read next.
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.
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. :)
Or, if you're feeling really frugal, just send a single "!" to indicate that something has updated!
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.
'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...
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).
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]
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?
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.
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.
Thank you for your time.
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
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:Ya... but it IS correct. It IS the previous article in the sorted list that it is drawing from.
Quote:That one I can do without too much hassle.
All the canon Ayla stories are here. None of them are missing. :)
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
Just follow the links at the end of tbe first paragraph for each page?
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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