NEW Fiction Archive + Thread Removals

[Hawker]

The long and short of this announcement is:

 

We have a new fiction archive and it's based at: http://www.neighboursfans.com/fic/

 

If you're an author or a reader we'd love you to sign up and 1) post up your stories and/or 2) post up your comments / choose which stories are your favourites.

 

There's a further explanation as to why we're doing this below, plus a bit more detail.

 

As most of you probably know, I'm working on pruning a lot of the site to make our upcoming upgrade easier. One of the areas that we've ummed and ahhed about is the fan fiction area. It's a great little archive of 4 years now, and it'd be a shame to lose the stories there. I can think of a few prolific writers on here who lost their stories when we lost the 2002-2005 archive (I was one of them ) and I wouldn't like to see that happen again.

 

However, the fic area is rather large and pruning it down would help our upgrade immensely.

 

I've been going through all of the Standalones and Completed fics, looking for he older Stax fics that I loved. It's taking me ages, and I do have a suggestion, but it may be impossible to set up and people may not agree.

 

I was wonderingif we could somehow have a 'library' of fics, with whole stories with the comments taken out so that you get to read them all in one go? I'm not sure if it could go as a separate thread, or if it wuld take up a lot of space or whatever it is, and indeed if it would be possible to do (seeing as I do like reading the comments that people made about the stories as well - it may be that there are two threads, one with the comments and one with just the stories?)

 

BUT we had a rather marvellous suggestion a while ago, and I've now put this into action. You can see the result and sign up at - http://www.neighboursfans.com/fic/

 

It's fairly barebones at the moment and I'll put some clear instructions up later, but it's fairly easy to navigate once you get used to it.

 

One of the biggest powers of the site is the fact that you can search by character, so for example, here's all of the stories with Susan in - so you should be able to quickly work out which stories suit you. You can also search by author, so this is all of the stories posted by Carly - and you can read all of the reviews that each person has made, or the stories that they've deemed their favourites.

 

You can also see - before you start reading - how long a story is, so you have an idea of how long it'll take you to read.

 

So, we'd very much appreciate it if you're an author if you joined up to the site and submitted your stories because we will be wiping the fan fiction section in a couple of weeks.

 

If you're a reader, it'd be great if you joined up too and posted some comments onto the stories - or rated them (you can like or dislike a story) or added them to your 'favourites'.

 

Cheers for reading - any comments, questions etc are welcome as always...just reply to this thread.

[Liljana Is Still Alive]

I'm not really going to be around much over the next couple of weeks, so any help anyone can give archiving my stories would be appreciated.

[Hawker]

We did look at a method where the Staff members could archive stories by other people but we thought it best to keep it to each individual member joining and archiving their stories themselves so that people weren't offended that their stuff was put up or archived without permission.

 

However, I will ensure that I don't wipe your stories until you've had a chance to put them up into the archive.

[Liljana Is Still Alive]

OK, fair enough.

 

(I wouldn't be offended by anyone's archiving my stories, but I accept your reasoning.)

 

ETA: I seem not to be authorized to add stories yet. Is this intentional?

Edited August 11, 2009 by Liljana Is Still Alive

[Swanny]

Nice job Sal. Love the tagline!

 

Will there be a link added to the nav bar at the top in the forum and summary archive?

Edited August 12, 2009 by Swanny

[Tractor Girl]

OK, fair enough.

 

(I wouldn't be offended by anyone's archiving my stories, but I accept your reasoning.)

 

ETA: I seem not to be authorized to add stories yet. Is this intentional?

 

Same here

 

Just to clarify, is the idea that we upload entire fics in one or chapter by chapter?

[Hawker]

ETA: I seem not to be authorized to add stories yet. Is this intentional?

I have to manually validate accounts before you can post. I didn't realise you'd signed up straight away as I read your post before you edited. But as you might have noticed, I validated your account last night before I went to bed - so you're free to go now.

 

Nice job Sal. Love the tagline!

 

Will there be a link added to the nav bar at the top in the forum and summary archive?

Cheers mate.

 

I will get onto adding that, yes, good idea.

 

Same here

 

Just to clarify, is the idea that we upload entire fics in one or chapter by chapter?

I've validated your account now too.

 

The idea we were working on was to add completed fics to the archive. So you can use the forum for posting fics in stages or standalones and getting feedback, and then post to the archive for archiving once they're done.

 

But I'm open to suggestions. The site does note whether or not a fic is completed or not, so it wouldn't be disastrous to have unfinished stories up. So yeah, whatever we think best as a site, really. I'm happy to go with a majority.

[Underclasshero]

Good idea Sal. I remember when N.com had it's massive change and people lost HEAPS of work. Despite people begging the mods to try and find a medium where the fics could be transferred over.

 

A suggestion was thrown around that a dedicated bunch of members would PM asking authors whether or not they wanted their fic to be re-posted on to the new system, and if they did. The group of members would c&p them to MS Word (Yes, it was hard work. I had to salvage some of my friends fics) then, with the author's permission, and that of the mods, we repost them on the new system.

 

Maybe if you can find a group of people THAT dedicated, that might be a solution to your problem.

[Hawker]

Thanks mate, glad you like the idea. We didn't have an option when we lost our archive in 05 because everything moved so quickly and there were things that were a higher priority than the fics but I really wish we'd managed to do something...which is why I think this is a good thing now.

 

We did consider that sort of method - as Jack's said above, he'd have no problem with people archiving his stories (and sometimes on the headers, people specify what they want doing - for example, my headers nearly always say, "Archive here and on my site; anywhere else, ask")...

 

...but we were debating the usability of the archive. If we want to go with a read-only archive where people don't use the archive as a place to comment / favourite etc, it would be fairly simple for me to allocate the Staff a list of account names and for them to post up various fics under those usernames so the right author was displayed.

 

But this approach, with people taking control of their own accounts, I was thinking that it might give us the opportunity in the future to branch out with the site. Sometimes we start things with one intention and then it works out another way, and this method gives us the opportunity to allow people to give feedback (not applicable for every story, but you might get late readers, or people who weren't joined up when the story was originally posted here etc) and to actually 'use' the site - to favourite and rate and whatever else.

 

I don't like sending mass PMs out because I don't like pestering people, but maybe it would be a good idea to send one out to anyone who's written a fanfic - at least then they'll have had fair opportunity to move their stories over. I'd hate to think that someone doesn't log on for a month or so for various reasons, and then loses out because they weren't aware of the changes.

[Swanny]

Slightly off topic but still relating to the IPB upgrade, I and a few other people on here go onto this forum Media Spy, who recently seem to have gone through hell upgrading to the new software (including fixing up the bugs that they came across, creating a new theme as their old one wasn't compatible, updating the theme for consistency on the non-forum parts of their site) and one thing I noticed was that without any warning that I know of to the users, they still managed to keep a huge majority of their posts (dating back to about four years ago). I wouldn't mind knowing how they did it as I know Sal that you warned users to back up their threads as chances are it could be lost in the upgrade.

[Hawker]

We have a lot of behind the scenes problems here, which won't be solved without throwing a heap of cash at them routinely and until I win the lottery, that won't happen.

 

It's more precaution than anything. The problem with this installation is that if anything junks on the upgrade, I have to work from a backup - and uploading and then importing a 1gb+ file is a killer...we'd be offline for far too long.

 

I don't like to jinx things, but I'd rather warn people that x could happen, and y might happen so that they can save whatever they want, rather than go ahead gung-ho. 9 times out of 10 it'd be fine, but the one time it wasn't and people lost stuff.... Well, I can already imagine the angry e-mails.

 

Apart from one minor issue 2 years ago, we've never had a single upgrade problem in the past - so history should technically be on our side. I'm just being a bit cautious.

[Brina]

Thanks for doing this Sal, it looks like it'll be a great site and make things easier for reading all the great fics on this board. Will get on and upload mine soon.

[Col]

No one would ever send angry emails on here

[LauraFace]

This is a great idea Sal. I love the tagline! I'm not authorized yet but when I am I'll be uploading my fic's straight away! I totally love this idea!

[Hawker]

I validated you a couple of hours ago, I think.

[LauraFace]

You did? Because it keeps coming up with I'm not authorized to use this function. I don't think it likes me...

[Hawker]

Hmm, that's odd - I will look into it. One second.

[SilentEyes]

From what I can tell, it looks really good. I haven't delved into reading many fics before now, but I like the way that you can easily search for characters etc., so I think it will be easier for me to get involved as a reader. Thanks for your hard work!

[Hawker]

Sorry about that, Laura - I hadn't altered a few settings. It should work now.

 

Edit: Cheers mate - glad you like the idea.

[LauraFace]

Thanks Sal! Yay, it's working woohoo!