Drabble Section?

[Alelou]

I've never worried about a drabble "knocking" out someone else's story -- it's quite true that all stories in a section are up for a month, regardless. Someone pointed out that the story at the top gets more attention, but that's usually pure luck of the draw, especially if there are a lot of submissions going in. I know in the past we would often try to give an author at least a day in the sun before putting another one up, but with busy admins and lots of submissions that's hardly practical.

But a reader's expectations of genre do affect how they evaluate a piece of work. Or at least that's my theory as to why my reaction to drabbles is almost always a sense of irritated puzzlement.

Bent out of shape? If you are the author of one, I suppose you could see that as an attack. Personally, I was just expressing an opinon and checking to see if I was the only one who had it.

[Brandyjane]

Okay, this is what happens when I post without knowing what I'm talking about! I didn't realize posts were automatically up on the front page for a full month. That changes my opinion a little bit. I would still vote for a separate drabble section if given the option, but now it doesn't matter as much to me as it did before.

[panyasan]

My opinon on a drabble is not based on the genre itself, but more on whether I like the drabble-fic or not - if it conveys something for me in a few words. For example there is a very short story which you call a drabble about female Pon Farr (which I even not in favor of) which I truly liked and I thought the drabble of Bluetiger about the blood stones was very well done and heart warming.

Good point that you can learn from your comments (and amount of) you get from a fic. As for amount of time spent on a fic and the amounts of comments: I got more reviews of one fic that I wrote whistling in 30 minutes then on some chapters of my story The Captives that are very dear to me and cost a lot more time (and sweat and tears). Yeah, life sucks sometimes.

[Aquarius]

As a drabble writer, I don't feel "attacked"--it's more a sense of "why is this even an issue?" I understand what you're saying you were expressing, Alelou, but it sort of turned into a "Thing", a rally for more organization--over something that hardly ever occurs. Suddenly it's a big deal like we carpet bombed the place with drabbles or something.

As panyasan so astutely pointed out, we can learn from our feedback--or lack of it. We can also learn from drabbles themselves, because oftentimes less is more. And just because they're short, it doesn't mean that the author didn't work hard on them and I think it's awfully dismissive to assume that's the case. And if I had a dollar for every fic I've read that would've been great except it was over-expository, repetitive, or some other kind of spoon-feedy, I'd be a wealthy woman. Less would've been more. But I digress...

As for not reading someone's stories because they've cheesed me off--well, it may be hard to understand, but I work for a living, I'm pulling 15 credit hours at school and have all the associated homework that goes with it, I'm part of the team that takes time out of their personal lives to upload the fiction in question ten days out of the month, and I'm involved with fannish activities outside of Triaxian Silk. What does all of this mean? It means that I have to prioritize...which means that when I have the rare occasion to do some pleasure-reading, yeah, if someone's been a jerk to me, reading their fic (let alone commenting on it) kind of falls off my list of priorities pretty quickly. Now, it's a rare thing that I don't read something for that reason--you have to be a pretty big pain in my ass for it to come to that--but yeah, when I decide what to read, my friends and people who haven't irritated me do get preferential treatment, because I simply don't have time to read everything, and even if I did, I'm not obligated to read anything just because it's there.

Regardless, the presence or absence of someone else's drabble isn't going to affect the comments another story gets.

[Brandyjane]

I'd like to apologize, Aquarius, if anything I posted came across as too critical of the moderators or anyone who posted drabble or of the site in general. That was certainly not my intention. Personally I liked all of the shorter pieces that have been posted recently. A few of them were just perfect in every word and in the mood and setting they established. And you're absolutely right: it can be far more difficult to write a short piece well than a long piece. Alelou posed a question, so I answered it. I probably should have just shut up after that. I know this isn't a democracy; it's a private website and we don't get a vote on things like this. I can't read minds, so I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone else intended to make it into a big "Thing" for you to deal with, either. Again, I apologize if it sounded that way. I'm going to stop posting in this thread now so that hopefully it will die a quick death. I just didn't want to leave it hanging if I did offend you guys.

[justTripn]

I went to another site recently to read, Warp 5 Complex. And the stories I pulled up first were about a paragraph long and I went, "What the heck!" and clicked out.

Responding to Brandyjane, a goal for this site has been to be what the members want it to be. Elessar recently said he thinks of it as a community and the community need to find what works. That is rules are made with input from the community. It was created by a community and there have been polls of the community about various questions. When we first got here, "Would you like to see slash?" Later, "Should we have a forum section for discussing religion and politics and anything?" The opinions of the members are valued, so please express your opinion.

[Linda]

I too did not know that stories stayed up for a month. That mollifies me a bit. And I really am glad Elessar is of the opinion that people at a site are a community, especially when a site has been around for quite some time like this one has. And I do appreciate the amount of work the moderators have to do! But...if a site starts getting dictitorial and demanding and hard-lined, and people start being real nasty to each other, I will leave. Heated discussions are okay until they cross the line to nasty. I listen to all opinions up to the point of nasty. So far, I am listening here. And LOL, I really can't define "nasty". It probably is a personal borderline that I just know has been reached or not. I appreciate people giving their opinions!

[Aquarius]

Brandyjane--you didn't offend me or anything. Don't even worry about that, we're cool. These situations never happen because everybody decides to make it a "Thing"--it always just sorta happens. The cumulative effect of people with good intentions.

I do agree that there is a design flaw inherent in our front page, but I don't think that further segregation will solve the problem--rather, I believe it'll compound it. We've already pointed out that people don't read as much material in the other sections, even when they'd otherwise be open to reading something that isn't strictly TnT. I probably miss all kinds of wonderful things in "The Bridge" or "Main Engineering". And Honeybee and I use Decon a lot, and it's been pointed out to us by people who otherwise wouldn't object to reading NC-17 material that they often forget to look there and miss things because of all the scrolling that has to occur to get there.

But we never complained. Especially because we knew that Decon suffers the least out of the sections below the main TnT one, because there is that faction that deliberately seeks out adult material.

Honestly? I like Warp 5's design better. EVERYTHING new gets equal treatment, and it's easy to see what you're getting yourself into without all those segregations because they provide the information like rating, genre, etc. But everything new gets equal treatment there: it's all up for a month, oldest at the bottom, newest at the top, regardless of what kind of fic it is, which is fair. And I think THAT the way to solve whatever problems are perceived on the front page. I know that this is a TnT site, but one or both of those characters are usually involved in stories in those other sections any way, and those other sections don't get used nearly as often, so, like the drabbles, they're really not going to be stealing anybody's thunder by mixing them in on the front page.

Because, face it, if anyone should be upset about other fics stealing attention from theirs, it'd be the people who post in the Bridge, Main Engineering, Library at P'Jem, etc...

[justTripn]

And the upside of posting in The Bridge, Main Engineering, or Library of P'Jem, is the story sits there forever (I have been a beneficiary of that.)

On a slightly different topic, which maybe deserves a new thread, I'd love to see a button where, as Aquarius says, all the stories are listed from most recent to oldest, regardless of genre. I would use it to read all those great stories I intend to read but they disappear from the front page before I get free to read. HoT has one, and I used to use it alot.

[Silverbullet]

Havn't said anythig til now. Matttters not to me. If one is read that persons stories will be found where ever.

What I would like to see is what is on FF Net a numbeer of visitors and the number of hits a story has. It may be a writers stories does not garner many coments but has been read nore than the writer is aware of. for me, by know what kind of stories get the most visitors and hits I can use that to tailor my writing. such as it is

SB

[Aquarius]

Havn't said anythig til now. Matttters not to me. If one is read that persons stories will be found where ever.

What I would like to see is what is on FF Net a numbeer of visitors and the number of hits a story has. It may be a writers stories does not garner many coments but has been read nore than the writer is aware of. for me, by know what kind of stories get the most visitors and hits I can use that to tailor my writing. such as it is

SB

That would be a cool idea, even just to satisfy curiosity. Hit to comment ratio can be telling, too.

[honeybee]

I'm not sure our system is robust enough to set up a counts system a'la ff.net - though I confess I do love the function that tells me what country a visitor is from. Slovenia? I've got a reader in Slovenia?

But W5 does have a simple counter, and perhaps we could get one of those. The flaw in their system is that you must click through the first page of a fic to get to subsequent pages, which skews the numbers.

I've peaked at the counter systems on the site admin page, and it's pretty difficult - okay - nearly impossible to comprehend.

[Aquarius]

And the upside of posting in The Bridge, Main Engineering, or Library of P'Jem, is the story sits there forever (I have been a beneficiary of that.)

I can see that point--but on the other hand, I think that's also why visitors don't tend to scroll down and check out the other sections as much, because they're not as dynamic. If things hardly ever change in those areas, there's less incentive to go see what's there if you're assuming the same stuff is there as the time before, and the time before that, and... See what I mean? When I worked in retail management, we'd always be changing our displays and floorplans every two weeks to a month; even if our selection didn't change much, it still looked different enough to draw people in. If things get stale, they won't come in and check you out and sales figures reflect that.

On a slightly different topic, which maybe deserves a new thread, I'd love to see a button where, as Aquarius says, all the stories are listed from most recent to oldest, regardless of genre. I would use it to read all those great stories I intend to read but they disappear from the front page before I get free to read. HoT has one, and I used to use it alot.

Personally, I was pretty much only advocating that for the front page, so that everything new gets a fair shot at attention no matter who wrote it or what section it's going to be archived in when it comes off the front page. I think we still need the sections in the archive, but if we're talking about offering this chronological view as an alternative way to view the archive, that would probably be fabulous. There is a Han/Leia archive run by a friend of mine, and I think at hers, you can view the library by title, author, or date posted, depending on how you're wanting to search. Helpful if you know you're looking for a fic that got posted about three months ago but you don't remember what it was called or who wrote it...or you know who the author is but you can't remember the name or how long ago it came out.

[pdsldl]

You're never going to make the front page fit everyone's wants or needs. I like it the way it is because I usually only read the TnT stories so the top spot and Decon are all I tend to check out. It is a TnT site so I like being able to locate the new TnT stories easily. And that is the only place one can see which stories are TnT centric that I'm aware of. Once they hit the archive it's all by author or the search options and there's no other way to sort them by character(s) is there?

Short, long, or poems it's all fanfic and deserves a place on the front page but I do like the separation of different types of work and main characters so I can decide what sections are of interest to me. Otherwise it leaves me having to open each story to see if it's a full on story or a short or if it's a TnT centric story. That or one has to read the New fanfic up topic and see what's been said when a particular piece gets put up. But that only works if it gets posted to the forum and with details like it's a poem or a drabble.

[Silverbullet]

Counters: actuallly there are counters. On each thread there is a counter for Views and one for replies. so at a glance you can see how many views (I take this to mean viewers which might include guests and hidden) and the number of replies to the thread. Not sure why these counters cannot be applied to stories, perhpas in the archive? On the main page it would be a little mor difficult but oviously not impossible. As with the threads. they are all liseted under an area such as Trip and T'Pol, Non ship Fan Fic, General Chat, etc. The number of views and replies given.

Am I making sense?