51 Reply by Norm d'Plume (edited by Norm d'Plume 2015-02-18 15:35:55)

Re: Wishlist Cont.

NJC and Tom, wouldn't creating empty threads generate a lot of useless emails for group members? Especially if it's just one checkbox that generates a thread in every group a writer is posting to. I'm worried people will generate the threads "just in case", when there's really no need because no one will use the threads. Right now, for the most part, there's no thread until either the reviewer or the author has something more to say. Technically, it's possible to suppress automatic emails for newly created empty threads, but then no one will be notified when someone does add to the thread.

Dirk

Quote Post 51

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Hadn't though of that angle, Dirk.  And, you're right. The only way around that email problem would be to suppress the notification that "someone" has posted a new thread in "xxxxx" group, and that wouldn't be a good idea. I guess the most painless method would be to just let authors create a thread if they want to ask for input. And that has been available to us all along.

~Tom

Quote Post 52

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Maybe elimination of posting to "groups" is a good idea. Post in Premium only. Forums (aka groups) should be for discussion. JMO, and I don't want to get off topic.

Quote Post 53

54 Reply by Janet Taylor-Perry (edited by Janet Taylor-Perry 2015-02-25 05:21:54)

Re: Wishlist Cont.

A new wish. Why does there have to be a 60-second wait between comments even in different groups. It's rather annoying.

Quote Post 54

Re: Wishlist Cont.

One of the writers I review created a group specifically for his own book. Since I read a lot of books, I wouldn't be able to join them all. We used to use the Additional Feedback forum, which I guess is now obsolete. I'm still a member of the Additional Feedback group here on the new site, not to mention the Old Forums group, which also has a Writing Feedback thread.

Kenny has it right. A forum attached to each story seems ideal. Not sure what the technical hurdles would be, especially since we now have group forums and, if memory serves, some resurrected version of the old site's style of forums coming in the future. The complexity is growing, especially if you're new to the site.

Dirk

Quote Post 55

56 Reply by njc

Re: Wishlist Cont.

A forum-per-work would, ideally, be connected to the review structure.

Quote Post 56

Re: Wishlist Cont.

While we're adding to the wish list, the Visit Your Groups area on the right side of the home page shows the one most recent forum post for each of my groups, but they often disappear before I even know they were there. I'm not sure what the algorithm is for when they appear/disappear. It would be ideal if the most recent post to each group's forum remained visible in the Visit Your Groups area. The link should then take you to the latest page in that group's forum, not the first page. Ideally, take me right to the bottom of the latest page, where the new post is located.

Thanks.
Dirrk

Quote Post 57

58 Reply by Tom Oldman (edited by Tom Oldman 2015-02-18 19:24:31)

Re: Wishlist Cont.

I would be very happy to have the link take me to the first post I have NOT read. If others have posted beyond that unread post, then still take me to the first unread post - be it on the bottom of the page or not.

~Tom

Quote Post 58

59 Reply by dagnee (edited by dagnee 2015-02-18 21:14:20)

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Attaching a forum to every piece of work on here is still a little impractical. I think forming a Additional Feedback group would allow all of your readers to catch up on the feedback your piece has received and offer additional feedback all in one place.

Asking SolN to give all members automatic membership in Additional Feedback like he did Premium and Basic, would be a lot simpler than giving every piece of work on the site a forum thread.

dags big_smile

I don't know that I'm understanding this, the more I think about it. Do you want a forum thread to appear in the Premium group, too, or just on your author's page. If you don't mean a forum thread in here, just on your author's page, then I don't see any reason not to do that. My main concern is this group's forum being cluttered with feedback threads.

sorry to be so dense. dags big_smile

Quote Post 59

Re: Wishlist Cont.

dagnee, you're not being dense. Either that, or I'm dense too. :-)

Everybody is trying to figure out the best way to handle post-review feedback now that there are so many groups. I currently post chapters to Premium, Basic, and Science Fiction. My reviewers and I have been using the sci-fi group for additional feedback on my work. Just in case, though, I'm also a member of the existing Additional Feedback group and the Old Forums group. Both of those groups get virtually no traffic.

Dirk

Quote Post 60

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Another wishlist goodie would be to put a little more information into the emails we get notifying us that someone has reviewed one of our chapters. It would be great if it could identify which chapter was reviewed (number & title).

Thanks.
Dirk

Quote Post 61

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Maybe, Dirk, who reviewed and/or who has posted. Not just a new review or a connection. I'm not reading every person I'm connected with. Nor are all my connections reading my stuff. I'm now being inundated with emails.

Quote Post 62

63 Reply by Tom Oldman (edited by Tom Oldman 2015-02-25 14:41:50)

Re: Wishlist Cont.

I've had the thought several times that perhaps the blanket email notifications should be cut off.  What could replace them would be a checkbox on each of your connections that was labeled: "Allow email notifications from this connection".  If you read a posting from someone who isn't on your connections and didn't particularly like the posting, but wanted to see more, then connect but don't check the box.  However, if you did like it, then make the connection and add the tick in the box.

~Tom

Quote Post 63

Re: Wishlist Cont.

dagnee wrote:

How about only connecting with those you review?

I thought about that also, but you cannot send a PM to someone you aren't connected to. All of my connections were made so I could get notifications, but I can see that anyone might want to send a PM without having to do a review first.

~Tom

Quote Post 64

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Much bigger wish item: for each author, and for each work, an authomatically created forum thread that appears in its own place AND ALSO can, at the author's discretion, appear in each or any of the groups in which the author is a member.  For the 'root' groups (premium and ?base?) the author/work threads should probably be shunted to a nested set of forums.

I don't understand the purpose of this. Right now, you can leave as many comments as you want on a piece of writing. You can have conversations and within in-line reviews you can even have multiple threads where you can discuss items right in the document. We'll be expanding this functionality soon.  Why would you want to take these discussions back to a forum which is just loosely attached to the work in question? This seems like a massive step backward. The most logical way forward to me is that comments on the work should be on the work, not on an associated forum.

Quote Post 65

Re: Wishlist Cont.

I've had the thought several times that perhaps the blanket email notifications should be cut off.  What could replace them would be a checkbox on each of your connections that was labeled: "Allow email notifications from this connection".  If you read a posting from someone who isn't on your connections and didn't particularly like the posting, but wanted to see more, then connect but don't check the box.  However, if you did like it, then make the connection and add the tick in the box.

This already exists. You can turn off email notifications per connection. It says this at the bottom of the email alerts. You can do this via your Connections page.

http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/connections

Sol

Quote Post 66

Re: Wishlist Cont.

I agree with Sol. Any comment on the work should be ON the work. In the old site, you could only write comments once, and reply once, thus the need of a forum to keep on in case extra information was shared. Currently, you can review a chapter more than once (even though you only get points once in case anyone has doubts). No need for an extra forum.

Kiss,

Gacela

Quote Post 67

Re: Wishlist Cont.

SolN wrote:

I don't understand the purpose of this. Right now, you can leave as many comments as you want on a piece of writing. You can have conversations and within in-line reviews you can even have multiple threads where you can discuss items right in the document. We'll be expanding this functionality soon.  Why would you want to take these discussions back to a forum which is just loosely attached to the work in question? This seems like a massive step backward. The most logical way forward to me is that comments on the work should be on the work, not on an associated forum.

Sol, I think most of us agree that the best place for a discussion about a work is with the work itself, although some people used to gain exposure to other people's work by first encountering it in the Additional Feedback forum on the old site.

That said, are you suggesting we use a series of regular or inline feedback reviews to have a discussion? I suppose reviews could be used for that (the complete set of reviews appears right after the chapter), although that workflow right now would involve an awful lot of clicking and scrolling. And how would we be notified if someone has added another review to someone else's work? Are the coming enhancements going to address all of that?

Or am I not understanding you correctly?

Thanks.
Dirk

Quote Post 68

Re: Wishlist Cont.

That said, are you suggesting we use a series of regular or inline feedback reviews to have a discussion? I suppose reviews could be used for that (the complete set of reviews appears right after the chapter), although that workflow right now would involve an awful lot of clicking and scrolling. And how would we be notified if someone has added another review to someone else's work? Are the coming enhancements going to address all of that?

Why does it involve more clicking and scrolling then going to another forum, finding the thread, going to the end of it and leaving a comment? I don't really  understand the logic of this workflow.

In terms of being notified, this is something we can add in the future and seems like a much better solution than creating a new forum for every piece of posted content. Assuming the author wants others to be notified.

Quote Post 69

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:

Maybe elimination of posting to "groups" is a good idea. Post in Premium only. Forums (aka groups) should be for discussion. JMO, and I don't want to get off topic.

I agree, I find it confusing, the old way where it was a list of various types of writing as they were uploaded meant that when you had time to review you looked through a number of pieces of work/genres and chose the ones you liked and then reviewed, it meant a bigger spread of genres per reviewer probably which meant a wider feedback pattern and the wider the feedback the better as far as I am concerned. I don't want to only be reviewed by writers in my genre, thats preaching to the converted to an extent.

Quote Post 70

71 Reply by Linda Lee (edited by Linda Lee 2015-02-25 23:14:24)

Re: Wishlist Cont.

After a little time on the site, here are some of the things that I feel could still use adjustment:

1. 'Connections" automatically populating your home page. I want the choice of what populates my page.

2. Keeping up with people (as compared to the old site) is a laborious click fest. Between searching through review replies, or replies of replies, forum after forum after forum, private messages, quickies....it's a fractured mess and I don't feel one bit connected to folks anymore.

3. Hand in hand with #1, I resent that the same covers for the same essays and articles sit on my homepage (and presumably all homepages) for weeks because those genres are nowhere near as prolific as the books/novels category. Yet, novelists are lucky if their cover shows up on everyone's homepage for an hour.

4. Whole 1st page upload listings being populated by a single writer/project because they're posting multiple chapters at once. It would be nice to be able to do that without skewing everyone's homepage view. Perhaps if each cover showed chapters 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 42 uploaded as new content--instead of parsing it out to be 6 separate covers with only a single chapter listed in each, would solve this issue entirely.

5. A way to flag something as edited and up for new review--within the same project. We shouldn't have to be creating entirely new projects for edits of existing projects. And I really don't want to be forced to scan through these multiple versions of the same project to ensure I'm seeing/saving/using all the valuable feedback. Talk about a fractured click-fest. On the flip side, because there is often a lapse of time between reads/reviews, I rely very heavily on my past reviews to catch me back up with where I left off on someone's project. Not having that easily accessible, or worse, being forced to click into infinity before I find my last review on that person's project just so I can leave new comments--it's a serious mess that can't be overstated. The last review I did took me a full 20 minutes to begin because I had to go searching for my last review. Then, by the time I found and read it, I'd forgotten all the stuff I wanted to say on the new one so I had engage in the click-fest again to navigate back to the new content and refresh myself....all before I could write a single word of critique. This has seriously cut into my available review time and as a result, I've cut my reviews back by about 60%.

6. Remove the forced homepage listings and create a GLOBAL upload listing of new work that we can either access through a drop down, or if it has to be connected to our homepage, give us the option to turn it off and on from view. That way we can access listings of new works with ease, yet not have our homepage cluttered with stuff we don't necessarily want to see on a daily basis (see #3). Ideally, I would like the option of deciding what populates my homepage (see #1).

There's more, but these are the biggest things I'm noticing with the most frequency.

Quote Post 71

Re: Wishlist Cont.

SolN wrote:

Why does it involve more clicking and scrolling then going to another forum, finding the thread, going to the end of it and leaving a comment? I don't really  understand the logic of this workflow.

In terms of being notified, this is something we can add in the future and seems like a much better solution than creating a new forum for every piece of posted content. Assuming the author wants others to be notified.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around your proposed workflow, Sol.

I assume you're suggesting we use regular reviews for discussions, since I can't picture how inline reviews would work for back-and-forth discussions, especially among numerous individuals. If you really prefer that regular reviews serve as discussion threads, I think the following would be needed:
- A button at the top of the chapter to jump to the bottom of the page. It saves having to scroll repeatedly through the entire chapter and lots of old reviews/discussion, to get to the latest ones. Some people have countless reviews, making for *very* long pages. Reduces carpel tunnel syndrome.
- The ability for anyone to subscribe to the discussion, just as we can to forums/topics, so that we're notified when someone adds to a discussion that we're interested in.
- Eventually, you'll probably have to break the reviews into pages, like you do the forums, since a single page will probably become too unwieldy.

All of that sounds an awful lot like the group forums you already provide. The group forums are simple. If someone wants to discuss a work, they can throw a thread into the group forum. A major advantage of using the group forums for work-specific discussions is that anyone can pop into a group, quickly scan through the forum topics to see if there's anything interesting being discussed about any work in the group, add their two cents, and maybe even decide to sample the works in question. If an author really wants to keep third parties out of the discussion, let them create their own group.

I currently can go to a single thread in Sci-fi to read what's being discussed about KHippolite's Mrs. Blue book. It's organized into pages, so I can browse through the pages to see past discussions if I want to, and I go to the end to see the latest discussions. In my book's case, I sometimes have chapter-specific discussions in the group forums, since I want as many eyes as possible to see certain specific discussions.

If active discussions move away from the group forum, using regular reviews per chapter to try and do the same thing, no one else will see what's actively being discussed without manually searching the reviews at the end of each chapter. I doubt anyone would do that.

Recommending two very different ways (forums vs. regular reviews) to do the same thing means that some will use one way and others will use another, creating confusion. (It gets even more complicated when you consider that we also have the Additional Feedback group, Linda's Old Forums group, and your plan to potentially resurrect the old site's forums, which also had an Additional Feedback forum. Some of these will hopefully fall out of use and be discontinued as the new site matures.)

The only way to fix all this would be to allow discussions at the chapter level, work level, group level, and global level, and a way to search/wade through them. That would be a huge undertaking.

Hope I'm making sense.
Dirk

Quote Post 72

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Linda Lee wrote:

After a little time on the site, here are some of the things that I feel could still use adjustment:
5. A way to flag something as edited and up for new review--within the same project. We shouldn't have to be creating entirely new projects for edits of existing projects. And I really don't want to be forced to scan through these multiple versions of the same project to ensure I'm seeing/saving/using all the valuable feedback.

Linda, I don't understand the above about item 5. Why not simply increment the version number on the chapter in question, within the same project? You can then either hide the old version(s) of the same chapter, or leave several of them up for others to compare them, assuming they want to read the old and the new content. I assume the versioning capability applies to short stories, poems, etc. although I haven't tried that.

I must be missing something.

Thanks.
Dirk

Quote Post 73

74 Reply by Wilma Bailey (edited by Wilma Bailey 2015-02-26 01:35:19)

Re: Wishlist Cont.

Linda Lee -- Every one of your 6 "adjustments" to the Home page are right on! #6, removing the forced listing and providing a way to selective see new works, seems to be the solution to the Home Page glut of the same works by prolific writers day after day. My vote is cast, for what it's worth.

Quote Post 74

Re: Wishlist Cont.

I'm new here but I find this conversation interesting. While everyone is making a wish list, here is mine.
I'd like a rocket  that can travel at light speed and transport me to the Andromeda galaxy. Some type of portable oxygen system would be nice. Throw in a recombinatator for food production and a holodeck for entertainment. And while you're at it, can you create a new version of the site that automatically writes my book for me and then distributes alerts and emails whenever someone access my prose? But I want to make sure I only receive alerts from left-handed people and those with three nipples. And I definitely don't want to see any writing from people who have brown eyes.
Please also create a new forum every time I utter the phrase that begins with the letter S so that discussion can be had on these types of words.
Oh, and while you're at it, do you think the site can dispense kale smoothies?
One more thing. Do you think you can rig up some type of cold fusion project so that I don't have to purchase electricity for all of this.

Thank you for your efforts.
Rosie

Quote Post 75