New Fanfic Up!

[WarpGirl]

OK the Dang Commenting thingie isn't working for me!!!!!!!! Kotik I might be able to help you break things up a bit to make the story easier to read here. On a word porcessor it's easy, on site WOW I'm almost cross-eyed. But congrads!

[Aquarius]

(That's not the only reason. As an admin I had some control over when my stuff would show up. Now that I'm a civilian again, I really hate waiting and wondering when that will happen.)

As a former admin, I'm sure you know we don't always have time to check the inbox every day. We try not to keep anyone waiting for too long, but yeah, sometimes it can take a little bit of time. For myself, I have two jobs and all kinds of crap going on with personal issues at the moment, but I still check in a minimum of once a week when it's my shift--usually more than that, but sometimes real life takes over and more can't be managed. That's the trade-off when archival isn't DIY--the gratification just is not "instant."

[Kotik]

Aquarius,

There is something to be said for both sides of the argument.

We all know, that you guys are doing a great job and the things that humans refer to as 'real life' takes preference. It's only logical, that if a 30+ pages story drops in on your mail account, you can't have it show up on the site within minutes. The final check up before something's showing up on the site only adds to the overall quality of the sites content, so I'm sure most people appreciate that.

Alelou's views on the other side are understandable as well. Many writers put in a lot of effort into their stories and it can be hard to be patient. Just went through that process myself. A week is hardly killing anyone, the main problem is the uncertainty about the status. One does not know wether the document has reached you, if it is already being checked or whatever. Maybe there is a possibility to add a little functionality to the forum software to provide a status list of current submissions. Knowing phpBB and being a professional programmer with almost 2 decades of experience myself, I know it is technically possible without major difficulties.

I hope nobody felt offended by recent comments, after all we do this for fun - on both sides

Cheers, Kotik

[Alelou]

I'm not suggesting it can be different ... with a moderated site where there's some quality control, there's bound to be a delay. So that wasn't criticism -- it's just honestly relating my own decision making about this.

I do think Kotik has a point, though, that it would be nice to bounce back an email to let authors know they're at least in the queue or something. (Of course, the problem with that is that the fanfic box is always full of spam and you probably don't want to automatically reply to that.)

[justTripn]

Another Sincerest Form of Flattery story from Distracted, reposted:

The Birthday Party

Also, a couple of days ago, I got permission to post all of Peter Simons stories here (not just links to HoT), including many, many chapters of the still unfinished "Chivarly is Dead." So you'll see some of that soon.

[Alelou]

So is there any chance he's going to finish any of his unfinished pieces, she asks hopefully....

[justTripn]

I don't think he will ever finish, but I suspect it's because he's got a happy life, lol . . . That works for me.

[panyasan]

I'm sure this was explained to you, but the extra spaces happen when you manually add line spaces to break your paragraphs. If all you do is end your paragraph and begin the next one without adding a space (hitting Enter), you should be able to avoid them.

Thank you for clearing that up! There is a lot of extra space in the chapters of my story I posted after the new system went up and I thought I just have to live with it. Now if I just can break my habit of hitting enter after every paragraph....
UPDATE: I tried to erease all the enters after every paragraph, but it becomes a mess. Ah, well, I just going have to live with extra spaces.

[Alelou]

Well, let me clarify. You still need to press enter once to get to the next paragraph. You just need to avoid pressing that extra enter that gives you even more space BETWEEN paragraphs. Because whatever they are using to convert the text here will read that as yet another paragraph and give it lots of space.

The default settings in Word 2007 give you 10 pts of space automatically between paragraphs; this is a real switch from the old version. If I'm VERY VERY GOOD and remember not to add a space myself, the thing looks fine on screen for me and I also don't get extra spaces on TS. But it's hard to kill the habits of a lifetime, and unfortunately Word automatically adjusts those extra spaces so that it doesn't look very noticeable. Once converted into HTML here, however, they become EXTREMELY noticeable. It's probably easiest to notice if you go in and select all and change the paragraph settings to remove the extra spaces before and after each paragraph. That way if you accidentally add extra space you'll definitely notice it. You can also adjust your default settings. I just don't bother because for my non-Trek writing I find those settings helpful.

A similar thing happened with my copy at the ad agency. I was taught to add two spaces after a period. (I still think it improves legibility.) The agency designers hated that. So once I got to my final draft I always had to do a search and replace to get rid of every two spaces and replace them with one space. (Or I'd forget and they'd have to do it.)

[justTripn]

Well, the fanfic main page doesn't reflect this, but there is both a 5th and now a 6th chapter of D's Sincerest Form of Flattery: Guess the Author Game Up. I just posted

Fish Camp Tale

[justTripn]

OK, some reposted "Chivarly is Dead" by Peter Simons. (Continues from where TheCursor left off in his chapter 4.) It's in the NC-17 section, since it began NC-17, but it's not too NC-17 from here on out, if my memory serves me. Just some asides.

For you new people, this is MUST SEE fanfic. T'Pol's more emotional sister Seri comes to visit right and the sisters compete for Trip's affections. Laugh-out-loud (and fall off the chair) funny.

Chivalry is Dead, Chapter 5, by Peter Simons

To find TheCursor's story, you can click on Peter's chapter above, and then click where it says Number 2 in the series "Chivarly is Dead."

This story is unfinished, but it is 12 chapters long. It could have been resolved at several points along the way, so proceed and have fun!

[justTripn]

I just reposted 5 stories by Peter Simons in his "Minds" series:

Healing the Mind, "Touching the Mind," "Loving Minds," "Revealed Minds," and "Chosen Minds."

Warning: These stories may be addictive.

[Aquarius]

I'm not suggesting it can be different ... with a moderated site where there's some quality control, there's bound to be a delay. So that wasn't criticism -- it's just honestly relating my own decision making about this.

I do think Kotik has a point, though, that it would be nice to bounce back an email to let authors know they're at least in the queue or something. (Of course, the problem with that is that the fanfic box is always full of spam and you probably don't want to automatically reply to that.)

Sorry, Alelou. I was responding to "deal breaker," which sounded like a criticism.

At any rate, once a story is sent, an author can just watch the "New Fanfic Up" thread for the updates. If their fic wasn't included in the update, they're more than welcome to inquire. At that point, it's entirely possible we missed something (which we'd need to know so it's a good thing to bring to our attention), or maybe we just didn't have time to do all the updates that were in the inbox that day.

Either way, we still get back to you faster than the government does.

[WarpGirl]

Honestly the only thing I miss at kotorfanmedia.com is that they had a queque where you could check out your fic if it was waiting, and pages where authors could set up a page with their favorite authors and a way to track their reviews. Yeah I got so spoiled there. Buth then again there was almost 1000 people sending donations. So we got cool stuff. There aren't even 1000 members here.

[panyasan]

I just reposted 5 stories by Peter Simons in his "Minds" series:

Healing the Mind, "Touching the Mind," "Loving Minds," "Revealed Minds," and "Chosen Minds."

Warning: These stories may be addictive.

I just read them and WOW! Addictive is the right word.