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It is a pain in the ass. I have been able at times to cancel the original highlight and go back and try from one end or the other or even inside a particular word and get it to accept what I really want, but that is still a long shot and with a lot of unnecessary work which results in my just throwing up my hands most of time and just try to explain my intent in the comments. It is teaching me patience - very slowly - while expanding my four letter vocabulary exponentially, lol. Take care. Vern

The drabble, which is what this contest is, equates to 100 words period. All the other mistakes such as the "members" already corrected and the "200 words" which as already mentioned is for the double drouble, an entirely different animal for contest purposes, are all just that, obvious mistakes. All these errors/incongruences come about because the powers that be simply copy rules from previous contests without going through and making the appropriate changes. And of course it could all be an intentional ploy to increase our editing skills by finding these mistakes, but since it happens on almost every new contest, it really isn't that effective in improving our powers of observation. We know it is the same mistakes over and over, so we simply gloss over it and abide by the rules as we know they should actually be stated for a particular contest of this type. Or conversely we can apply for the proofreaders job. Anyone know how much it pays? Take care. Vern

You'd probably get more and better choices if you Google it. You should be able to find one for the type editing you want and hopefully within the price range. I would suggest having them do a sample of a couple chapters or so to make sure it is what you are looking for as there are many different levels of substance and quality running amok out there. One might lean more toward grammar and punctuation where another might be more inclined to focus on plot, pace, transition, etc. You might want a line by line or more of an overview. Good luck. Take care. Vern

Of course anyone/everyone will always live up to their destiny/fate. I mean, by definition, whatever they do or happens to them, it is inevitably their destiny/fate. So no, you can't escape it because it is simply what you end up doing or experiencing and the only way to escape that is to not exist. It in no way means things are preordained or such, it merely means that no matter what happens then that is/was your destiny/fate. So my destiny was to answer this question, yours will be however you respond to it or not. The same logic is true for your characters; no matter how you write them, it is their destiny/fate emanating from yours.  Take care. Vern

Actually there is/was a pretty ideal solution. The central forums from days of yore had a specific category, Ask the Expert. That's where you posted such questions and generally received valuable and useful input from various members with varying credentials and viewpoints. And therein lies the rub. You post such a question now and many will never see it or when someone asks something similar later you can't find the original thread to refer them to so folks end up repeating the same answer offered previously or else decide the hell with it, I just answered that question last week. And on and on. Take care. Vern

A long stretch of my two cents on a few of things discussed in this thread:

Most active vs most recent posts: For starters, “most active” can be a bit of a misnomer. Assuming you define “most active” as the threads with the most responses, then you could have old threads with many responses in the past which are not really “active” in the present. Yet, they would stay at the top of the list indefinitely if threads were arranged in order of activity. That makes no sense to me.

As is, posts are listed as the most recent (other than the few stickies). This makes sense since most of the time that is what we are looking for, not something that was active last week or last month or whenever. If a thread continues to receive responses even every few days or so, it will still remain near the top of the list of threads.

Link to start of thread or last post: I suppose it would be nice to be able to choose where you wanted to go, beginning or end, but … wait, you can do that fairly simply as it stands for those listed on the front page or not. If you click on the individual threads listed under a group, then that will take you to the start of that thread. But if you would rather go directly to the last post of that thread, then you’ve got one additional click, but lots more options from there. Instead of the individual thread, click on NEW FORUM POST under the Premium group or GROUP FORUM under other groups. From there you get a list of all the threads under that group and you can choose if you want to start at the beginning or end of the thread. If you wish to start at the beginning, then click on the title of the thread. If you wish to start with the last post of the thread then click on “Last Post” to the far right which surprisingly will take you to, ta da, the last post of that thread.

Show Your Posts: One thing to keep in mind regardless of how posts are listed now or may be in the future is that you can click on Show Your Posts to quickly see threads in which you have participated and may want to browse again. I use it quite often, but from comments, it doesn’t seem to be effectively utilized in the search for older threads.

Shelves:  I would agree that shelving the shelves would be an easy fix to free up more space for more forum links on the front page. And since they are ones listed by our connections, they could easily just be attached to our connections pages should we be interested to take a look. But I’m not sure why we actually need to free up more space for forum links and if we do need more space, why not simply have one link to a group forum rather than list that group’s individual most recent posts. More times than not there is not any activity even listed under the forum groups other than Premium. There are four other groups listed on my front page and no new threads have been listed in any of them for at least two days and some lots longer. That is a major waste of space if that is a concern. Still, it is not in itself a big deal imo.

Central Forum Issues: I agree wholeheartedly with Linda Lee that the most meaningful and entertaining forum is something like the old site central meeting place. Although I am well aware of the possibility, yea, probability, that “issues” will/do develop, the pros greatly outnumber the cons in this scenario. Of course differences of opinion are going to arise and words sometimes exchanged in the heat of the moment, but very rarely does it come to the point where the entire thread needs to be shut down. Most folks remain at least tolerable while defending a position. And if the “enter at your own risk” (so to speak) experiment in the latter days of the old site doesn’t always work, then a last resort solution to curb overzealous remarks could be imposed on a case by case basis with whatever moderator option is deemed necessary. A bad apple here or there shouldn’t spoil our appetite for the other delicious fruits of our labor. As far as changes to the number of links to forums on the front page (or other suggestions within this thread), if it is a simple/economical fix for Sol, and it is a priority for a lot of folks, then I would say do it. For me personally though, the greatest and bestest fix would be the Central Forum discussed.

Just my opinion as always. Take care. Vern

Houston, we have a problem, lol. Good luck. Take care. Vern

I can only assume you can get to your Home page from a mobile device since I don't use them. If that assumption is correct, then on your Home page you can click on the READ option at the top between the POST YOUR WRITING and your user name (njc) which are highlighted in dark blue and light blue respectively. Click on the Writing Contests at the bottom of the READ menu and you will get a list of the contests from which you can select all the entries, rules, or whatever (even closed contests). Hope that helps. Take care. Vern

I've been watching this thread for a while and find it interesting that most folks seem to think you actually need some type technical explanation. Pretty much the exact same scenario happened on an episode of the TV series Stargate. An advanced civilization sterilized an entire planet in order to take over the resources when all the inhabitants finally died out. They were going to do the same thing to Earth until the heroes found out their scheme and stopped it just in time of course.

There was no technical explanation given other than the "gift" would eliminate all disease (which it did also - the carrot for the acceptance of the people - while making them unknowingly sterile) but the effect was clearly shown through the results. By the time the curse was realized, it was too late; the whole population died out and the aliens had a new planet to strip without firing a bullet OR explanation. The non technical aspect didn't detract or diminish the storyline and if you don't have a specific technical cause, you don't have to worry about making future convoluted explanations for any discrepancies, etc. which might arrive. Just a thought. Take care. Vern

Sincerest condolences. Family is priority one. Your strength is evident and admired. Take care. Vern

A few things to note: Your saying NOBODY has reviewed you is incorrect; you had at least one in-line review in March (PS: that's when you joined so it hasn't been 4 months as you stated). You might check their comments and your response to see if you could do something different to encourage the continuation of reviews.

Your user name might create some confusion since you haven't posted any poems.  I for one would think you were a poet looking at your name and most likely wouldn't look up your profile and/or portfolio to see if anything interested me. I review very few poems and those are generally from folks I've come to know through other genres. Perhaps I'm not the only one.

You have posted very few reviews (and no in-lines) for other writers considering the amount of time you have been a member; reviews beget reviews - good ones at least.

Your timing just might be a little off. You could have come to the forums and asked politely how you might receive more reviews and most likely you would have gotten significant response just as you did from this post which has already precipitated several reviews. Just maybe an earlier request could have lessened your frustration level considerably.

Just a few thoughts to ponder. Good luck. Take care. Vern

Edited for PS in text above.