New Fanfiction System Feedback

[Distracted]

So... why does the latest chapter of Reunion you re-posted have a comment from my story "Words of Comfort"? I don't think apostrophes are involved there. 'Tis a mystery of the universe.

[Elessar]

So... why does the latest chapter of Reunion you re-posted have a comment from my story "Words of Comfort"? I don't think apostrophes are involved there. 'Tis a mystery of the universe.

Well... interesting. I think I've figured this out. This is weird because, well what basically happened was, as Mike was building the system at the beginning, he would have to have copied down all the existing comment page numbers as he reposted the stories. Well, because I'm the one who added ALL the stories from "The Bridge" (when we launched it), "Words of Comfort" was among them. Strangely, EVERY story in "The Bridge", ones by Buurman, Distracted, JadziaKathryn, all of em, go in order from about 445 to 450, somewhere in the area. Then suddenly, Distracted's "Words of Comfort" is numbered 611. That's a little out there, and in fact, there's no way that was the original comment number because prior to the new system we weren't up that high, we were somewhere around 470 or 480 or 500. Definitely not 611, though, I'm positive.

So what must have happened, (which is totally understandable), is that as the system was being built, Distracted's "Words of Comfort" story was erroneously given the comment ID# "611". So, in all likelihood, she has a comment page out there somewhere in the 440-450 range that has her original comments on it. I'm sure of that because I added all the Bridge stories in order, and created all the comment pages in order. The comment ON her story, the one about gaelic, IS about her story, but it's on that page because it was left bys omeone who read it after we transitioned to the new system. So, since we originally had all the HoT fics on our comment system as well, the NEW comment system numbers went way higher than before... and right now we're at about 600. So, Reunion Chapter 4 grabbed comment #611, not knowing it had already been accidentally entered in as the comment box # for Distracted's "Words of Comfort".

Haha. I just sort of intuited that Distracted's "Words of Comfort" had to be either 444 or 451. I was going to test both (because we can now 'hot swap' MCPS IDs of already posted stories... when I suddenly realized how stupid this was from the beginning because we STILL HAVE a backup of everyone's stories prior to the new system, so I just went into the FTP and looked at the Words of Comfort story source code and what do I find?

451.



I'm gonna copy your comment in order to save it, D, then give you your ACTUAL correct comment # (which means you may see a big bunch of comments re-appear from before) and then I'll manually add this newest one.

JT will still have your comment on her page, but I'll let her decide what she wants to do about that. The problem with her giving herself a new comment ID# is that if it's higher, eventually we're going to run into this again because the system is going to try and automatically re-assign whatever we give her.

Basically there are 3 options, either leave the comment on her page, delete her story and repost it (so it assigns itself a new comment #, which I know she doesn't want to do because she's linked it at Trek Writers' Guild ), or have Mike go in and manually remove it from her existing comment page. Either way, ID #611 belongs to JT, it's D that was given the wrong one earlier.

[justTripn]

Thank you Elessar! I'll keep the comment!



Ann

[Distracted]

Cool. Thanks for figuring it all out, Elessar.

[Elessar]

Cool. Thanks for figuring it all out, Elessar.

That's what this big crown is for!

[JadziaKathryn]

Ah, the great tradition of self-crowned rulers: Charlemagne, Napoleon... and Elessar.

*whines* But mine is still wrong! Not a huge deal, which is why it's in small font, see...

[Elessar]

Ah, the great tradition of self-crowned rulers: Charlemagne, Napoleon... and Elessar.

*whines* But mine is still wrong! Not a huge deal, which is why it's in small font, see...

What's still wrong?

[JadziaKathryn]

There are eight parts in all, and the first five have comments which are from (I think) jedikatie's body swap story.

[Elessar]

There are eight parts in all, and the first five have comments which are from (I think) jedikatie's body swap story.

Are you talking about a story called Body Swap, or just one about that? I don't know that story, and there isn't a JK story called that. I don't think either of the two fics we still have up of hers are about that, but I can't be sure.

I thought your comment #'s were copied over all messed up because your prologue-through-chapter 4 all have the same comment number, 53, then 5 has 51, then 6 has something and 7 has something else, but ... first of all it doesn't make sense for 51 to come AFTER 53, and second of all, the later comment #'s are in the 200's.

Well, but here's what makes no sense. I went back to the original files and those comment #'s appear there, too. I'm looking into it.

[Alelou]

Hey John/Mike -- is there some reason why comments start breaking into weird characters after a certain length? See the comments after Chapter 12 of The Locum for all sorts of weirdness that begins in the middle of particularly long comments. A couple of people also have complained of having comments chopped off.

Also, is there any way to add paragraphing as an option? Every time I try to skip a line and start a new paragraph when I leave someone a comment, it just gets glommed right onto the end of the line above, without even a space between the sentences.

I see this in both IE and Firefox.

[JadziaKathryn]

There are eight parts in all, and the first five have comments which are from (I think) jedikatie's body swap story.

Are you talking about a story called Body Swap, or just one about that? I don't know that story, and there isn't a JK story called that. I don't think either of the two fics we still have up of hers are about that, but I can't be sure.

I thought your comment #'s were copied over all messed up because your prologue-through-chapter 4 all have the same comment number, 53, then 5 has 51, then 6 has something and 7 has something else, but ... first of all it doesn't make sense for 51 to come AFTER 53, and second of all, the later comment #'s are in the 200's.

Well, but here's what makes no sense. I went back to the original files and those comment #'s appear there, too. I'm looking into it.

It's her "To Walk A Mile..." which, incidentally, seems to have mostly comments about one of Linda's stories.

[mjimeyg]

Hey John/Mike -- is there some reason why comments start breaking into weird characters after a certain length? See the comments after Chapter 12 of The Locum for all sorts of weirdness that begins in the middle of particularly long comments. A couple of people also have complained of having comments chopped off.

Also, is there any way to add paragraphing as an option? Every time I try to skip a line and start a new paragraph when I leave someone a comment, it just gets glommed right onto the end of the line above, without even a space between the sentences.

I see this in both IE and Firefox.

Not entirely sure what the issue is there... I can fix a few bits retroactively but the rest will only affect future comments.

I was tempted to say its a language issue as it was primarily Asso's comment but I did a search and it occured else where too.

I will put a fix in but it will require checking to see if it happens again.

[Elessar]

Hey John/Mike -- is there some reason why comments start breaking into weird characters after a certain length? See the comments after Chapter 12 of The Locum for all sorts of weirdness that begins in the middle of particularly long comments. A couple of people also have complained of having comments chopped off.

Also, is there any way to add paragraphing as an option? Every time I try to skip a line and start a new paragraph when I leave someone a comment, it just gets glommed right onto the end of the line above, without even a space between the sentences.

I see this in both IE and Firefox.

Not entirely sure what the issue is there... I can fix a few bits retroactively but the rest will only affect future comments.

I was tempted to say its a language issue as it was primarily Asso's comment but I did a search and it occured else where too.

I will put a fix in but it will require checking to see if it happens again.

Is there a way to get the paragraphing capability in comments? This is a common question I have had from several users.

[Aquarius]

Okay, it appears that the comment boxes have been fixed in that we can now separate things out into individual paragraphs. Yay!!

However, upon leaving a comment ("The Locum", Chapter 15), the spaces between the paragraphs are huge, and as I typed I didn't do any more than the normal double-spacing to get the separations.

ETA: when adding comments to Elessar's latest installment of YMAM, I tried hitting the enter key only once between each paragraph, and the spacing is still huge.

[Aquarius]

Okay, not to pick nits, but...

I checked in on my story The Nature of Things today, and all the spacing between the paragraphs is gone. Everything's all mushed together now.

ETA: while in the process of replying to comments in the same story, I noticed that the spacing between paragraphs in the comment box is now normal, so I'm assuming that whatever normalized the comments is what took out the spacing in my story?

ETA again: I notice it isn't just my story with crunked spacing; Chapter 17 of Alelou's "The Locum" is now also sans spaces between paragraphs.