Search the Community

As you may have read in the "Blog Updates" Announcement, we have consolidated various site blogs down to 2 different blogs. One for Writing and one for everything else. The big tool that allows us to do that, and still find content is the "View a Category" option. Here is an example from the Writing World Blog: When you select it, the categories pop up and you can select which ones you want to read. Unfortunately, we have to manually update all the blogs to categorize them. So there will be less entries in the category until everything is fully sorted. Be sure to follow the blogs!

Hi all. It's been a long week for a lot of us, with various things going on in personal lives. I am, however, working on the Story Software specifications. Let me tell you where we are at. First, features that should be working but aren't working as intended: Chapter comment notifications. (In activity feeds, but not sending out notifications) Advanced Search ( working sporadically depending on what you click and where you click and the combination of what you choose. Frankly, it's being a real pain in the ass as it is currently set up) Allowing duplicate story titles. There was a bug where it allowed duplicate link titles and the fix there broke the duplicate story titles. Feature that are missing completely: Input Filter for editor (to prevent stuff that causes problems from going in at all) The current features we have planned ( Stories 2.1.3 is currently on GA): Stories 2.1.4 Chapter comment notification and duplicate title fix (Fixing the title check to only check link title for uniqueness allowing multiple instances of the same story title) Stories 2.2.0. Advanced Search Enhancement and simplification. The current interface is too spread out and is causing either conflict, confusion or bugs. This update will be directed at making the power of the advanced search features work quickly and easily. Stories 2.3.0. Enhanced Metrics for stories. I think it was @William King that requested more statistics for authors. I've raised the priority on this. The intention will be to provide authors with a better understanding of what people are reading. We're still working on the details. Feel free to weigh in, understanding that there are limitations. 3.0 Reading List feature. This feature had to be removed from the original upgrade due to the timeframe. The features are still in flux, but here are some currently planned: This will make an explicit Favorite Authors list feature. A Favorite Story list feature A Reading History feature that will default to private that will show the last 20? 50? stories read with last chapter number. Members can choose to make this list public as well. Recommended List - defaults to private. Make your own list of authors or stories that can be private or club viewable or public. You'll be able to add any story to your lists. If a person has opened their Recommended list, then people will be able to recommend a story to you. 4.0 Story Queue. This one is entirely author and staff related and won't be visible to the public, per se. The intention here is to automate some of our moderation tasks and make things a hell of a lot easier for authors doing future postings All stories would go into the Story Queue. Authors will only be able to post at the set rate. For example, 1 chapter every 8 hours. This is a rule currently that people don't always follow. The queue will enforce the rule. There are two reasons for this: Flooding the system with new chapters and stories crowds out other authors, which is not fair to them. Posting multiple chapters at once significantly reduces the likelihood you'll get feedback on them as when people do leave comments, they usually do so on the last chapter posted. You'll be able to see all your pending story posts. You'll be able to dump everything into the queue and then use settings like "Post a new chapter every day at this time" or week or whatever. And then instead of tediously setting the time for each chapter as you do now, the system will just do it for you. You could also just post all your chapters in one go and the system would automatically do one chapter every 8 hours without you having to set any dates or times at all. I will review @William King post for things that we can do that make sense to our roadmap. Please also understand that while this list looks pretty straightforward, it represents a couple dozen pages of specifications and clarifications. Feedback and ideas that fit into this roadmap will get priority. With our limited resources, we are working towards our set plans that address current site issues and shortfalls. New, completely out of the box items that aren't on this roadmap are daunting at best. I hope this clarifies some of the misunderstandings from earlier in the week.

I've been working on software specifications for future versions of our Stories system. I'm looking to have a brainstorming here to see if there are new features we need and would be able to implement. This will be an official brainstorming though, so here are the rules: Go for quantity: This rule is a means of enhancing divergent production, aiming to facilitate problem-solving through the maxim quantity breeds quality. The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas generate the bigger the chance of producing a radical and effective solution. Withhold criticism: In brainstorming, criticism of ideas generated should be put 'on hold'. Instead, participants should focus on extending or adding to ideas, reserving criticism for a later 'critical stage' of the process. By suspending judgment, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas. Welcome wild ideas: To get a good long list of suggestions, wild ideas are encouraged. They can be generated by looking from new perspectives and suspending assumptions. These new ways of thinking might give you better solutions. Combine and improve ideas:As suggested by the slogan "1+1=3". It is believed to stimulate the building of ideas by a process of association. (courtesy of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming) The focus on this brainstorm is: How can make our software better for authors? Already planned, but details are not all worked out yet: Reading stats for Stories. So authors will be able to tell how many people are reading their stories during a month. Stats on tag and genre popularity by month for readers Posting Queue improvements for setting future story posts, as well as automatically dealing with our posting limit allowing you to post all your chapters in one go and let the system post them when allowed. Any ideas you have related to those items or anything else that would make things better for authors here, please post the idea. Please follow the rules above. I'll weigh in we compile ideas over several topics. Sound good? Go...

Sony laptop, Windows 10, Firefox, no ad blocker I unpublished chapter 10 of a story (Summer) in order to fix a typo. Once I was finished I republished the story. The system however decided to also unpublish all chapters after the one I wanted to work on. While i'm at it: 1. There are still no notifications when someone leaves a comment on one of my chapters. 2. The system's still kicking me out on a selective basis and across 3 different platforms (iPad & Android phone) Signing back in all the time's a pain in the neck. 3. Advanced story search does not work when selecting multiple variables. (I was looking for completed Sci-Fi stories) I tried several times but I keep getting the same list full of In Process stories. Suggestions? ETA for fixes?

Exactly what the title implies; just a dump for useful writing tools . Looking forward to seeing what's out there Phrase counter - helps check for repetitive phrases (returns a list in order of most used --> least) Word counter - helps check for overused words (returns a list in order of most used --> least) Not exactly for writing, but interesting anyway: Spritz - a new way to read, definitely worth checking out even if you're not interested in using it That's all I've got off the top of my head, but hopefully they help!