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Hi Dunecan. I don't understand item 1. Are you saying that longer chapters aren't broken up into as many paragraphs as short ones? I must be interpreting that wrong, since the way you break up a story into paragraphs shouldn't really be related to chapter length.

Long chapters do make for a more difficult read. It requires setting aside larger chunks of time to do a single review, whereas short chapters can usually be reviewed in perhaps fifteen minutes. I like short breaks from other parts of my life, so I'm glad the site encourages short chapters. I would think that's true for eventual readers of the complete book as well.

For item 2, are you talking about putting the whole book up on the site for beta readers? I've seen other published authors here take down their content once the book is published, leaving only a few chapters behind to whet someone's appetite. If you don't want to review all of the chapters of someone's book starting with chapter 1, you could simply read 1-10 without leaving reviews, then start reviewing chapter 11.

For 2a, why would you want to deactivate chapters from receiving reviews. It gives you more feedback and encourages readers to review your stuff so they can get points to publish their own work.

My biggest problem with the second draft of my book is that I consider the first half of that draft to be of very poor quality, and I'm getting repetitive feedback about those chapters while I work on finishing the second draft. However, I keep it up, because I occasionally pick up a new long-term reviewer, which I couldn't get if I made them read ten chapters before they could start earning points.

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your questions.

Dirk

Stephen, I really like your story. You have an almost poetic writing style.

As others have suggested, earn some points and post it and you'll probably get a lot of useful feedback. There are some terrific reviewers on the site. If you don't get enough feedback after you post, feel free to join some of the genre-specific groups and drop a thread there introducing yourself and asking for reviewers. However, you'll probably pick up most of your reviewers by reading their stuff first, and they then reciprocate. In addition to the feedback they give, you can also learn a lot about writing from reading their stuff. Since writing time is precious, I whittled my list down to about eight great reviewers, and I learn as much by reading their work as I do from them reading mine.

Also, read the reviews left by others for stories that you yourself also review. It will make you a better reviewer and give you great writing tips about any weaknesses that may apply to your own stories. Reading the reviews left by others may also help you identify which authors on the site make a real effort and leave the best reviews. You can then read their stuff and, hopefully, pick up excellent reviewers that way too.

Welcome to the site.
Dirk

I'm wondering if the best way to handle this would be to have a "global" page of all topics/threads, grouped by group name. In other words, one place to go to see all threads in the system, grouped by Sci-fi, Fantasy, Premium, Writing Tips, etc. The content for the global page would be the topics/threads from those actual groups, simply presented as a global page. Posting a new topic on the global page under a certain group would automatically place the new topic in the appropriate group's forum, as well as show it on the global page. This would be a nice way to show all threads for the whole site in a single place where we could quickly scan/scroll through the lists of topics. in one place. Obviously, it would need search and filter capabilities to narrow the result set.

The global page would have to have a function that allows a user to join "open" groups immediately, without leaving the global page. Groups with restricted membership would probably need limits on what can done from the global view (read-only, read-write, or completely unavailable to others outside the group).

This approach could also eliminate the need for resurrecting the old forums, since all posts would remain attached to a group, but shown in a way that the old site's users are used to. It's just a different view of the same database.

Dirk

Any time you "publish" to Premium it will cost points. That can be if you publish a chapter for the first time, or if you decide to publish a different version of the same chapter for people to review again.

You can also "edit" existing chapters, without it costing points.

Click on the menu at the top right of the home page and select Portfolio. It will provide a list of your works on the site. On the right hand side, click the Action menu for the work you want to update. You can choose Add Chapter or Edit, depending on what you want to do. Either choice takes you to a 5-step workflow to add or change your work.

Editing work allows you to incorporate changes for future reviewers to see, and they'll get points for the reviews. Those who have already reviewed the work will not get points for reviewing it again, unless you publish it as a new chapter, using the Add Chapter workflow. Add Chapter will cost you points.

If you want to publish a chapter to replace an existing one, follow the Add Chapter workflow, but give the new chapter a different version number (e.g., chapter 2, v2 instead of chapter 2, v1). You can then decide whether you want to leave the old version of the chapter visible for readers to compare before/after, or simply hide the old one. Be careful about deleting old chapters, since I believe the reviews on the old chapter disappear with it.

Hope that helps.
Dirk

We're allowed ten groups now. We have an existing group called Writing Tips & Advice that may be appropriate.

Dirk

I would recommend using the Writing Tips & Advice group for such a discussion. If we keep putting all threads in Premium, we'll soon have all kinds of unrelated conversations here that were intended to belong in other groups. Otherwise, why have them?

Either way, let's take this out of the Wish list thread.

Dirk

That is too cool. I didn't even know that was possible. I can see!

Thanks, Tom.
Dirk

Sol, I was wondering what the ETA is for being able to jump to the next unread chapter of someone's book. Ideally, any time we click on someone's book, it should default the chapter in the posting view to the one we should read next. If you also make it possible to jump directly from the Regular Reviews Posted and Inline Reviews Posted tabs, that would cut down significantly on clicks/scrolls.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I rely on those two tabs to tell me where I left off reviewing someone else's work. Currently I go to the two tabs, find where I left off, click on the author's name, find the book, click on it, then use the chapter selector to go to the next chapter, and then I'm ready to review. All that could be reduced to one click.

If there's currently a better way to do this, please let me know.

Thanks.
Dirk

That's what the chapter notes are for. If people aren't even reading those, another text field isn't likely to help much.

In general, I hope we don't keep adding review-related buttons to the top. There are already five buttons up there. Sol has to support tablets and handhelds too, so space is at a premium. He expanded chapter notes specifically so people wouldn't skip it. If they do, you can ask the reviewers in your replies to start reading them. That's what I did and the problem went away.

If we do need more review-related buttons, I suggested changing the existing Leave Inline Review button to a Go to Reviews button at the top, and have that jump to the start of the reviews further down the page. From there, it's just one more click on the existing buttons to leave either an inline or regular review. It's more consistent and we can then group any new review-related buttons directly above the reviews.

Full disclosure: I'm hoping for a Bottom button at the top of that page to jump to the tail end of the reviews. Then I don't have to keep scrolling all the way down to see the latest reviews. I can scroll up. Any long page, like forum threads, should also have that. My joints are too old to constantly scroll from the top of long pages when I really want to be at the bottom.

Thanks
Dirk

I'm getting a little lost in this thread. Sol suggested enhancing the review format to allow for a more meaningful exchange.
njc, you said you see no reason why a forum thread cannot appear in several thread listings. What is meant by a thread listing? Are you advocating for a link from a work or chapter to a forum thread for all subsequent discussions about the work/chapter?

Sol, I agree that the discussion should be tied to the work. I also agree that the review interface could use improving for usability.

I just want to reiterate the usefulness of forums in the process. Hopefully, a new process won't lose the benefits of the existing one. When one of my connections posts a chapter, it can take me days or weeks to get to it because reading entire works or chapters is very time consuming. On the other hand, I'm far more likely to look at people's forum posts, since they're usually short and I do want the option to keep up with discussions about their books and resulting nuggets about writing craft. Currently, I get notified about all posts to my group forums, and about activity in individual posts to which I've chosen to subscribe. Usually, those posts are work-specific, as opposed to chapter-specific. It's also easy to quickly scan a forum for potentially interesting posts based on the subject lines in the forum view, the number of replies to a thread, and the number of views of that thread. I've picked up reviewers when they came into a group forum, saw a discussion they were interested in, and then decided to start reading my book.

In a new process, will I be able to subscribe to the book, so that any discussions about the book are readily available to me? Will I be able to subscribe to chapter-level discussions? Will I be able to navigate easily among and within active discussions (e.g., discussions organized into pages, ability to see the most active discussions, etc.)? I'm not sure if "subject lines" for discussions would still be needed if everything is tied to chapters; perhaps it would be considered one big discussion.

I'm fine with whatever is decided, although I suggest doing it incrementally. Start by improving the review capability's major limitations (e.g., clean up the posting view for consistency and to reduce scrolling, allow us to jump directly to the next unread chapter, the ability to see/print all inline comments at once, the ability to move the inline comment box out of the way of the text below it, moving the cursor for inline comments directly into the comment box without the extra click, the ability to quickly identify where there are follow-ups within individual inline comments, etc.). Big wins first. Organizing additional feedback with the work can probably wait, since most people don't even use the concept today. And there are workarounds (e.g., using additional reviews for an ongoing dialogue with the author, private messages, or an additional feedback post in the forum).

Thanks.
Dirk