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
Like everything else in the world today, there's a google search for that: "words that differ from british and american english".
That is too cool. I didn't even know that was possible. I can see!
Thanks, Tom.
Dirk
I particularly like to read the reviews left by other reviewers I know, or the reviews of my reviewers' own works. It's to get their perspective and to avoid repeating nits. Sometimes I'll reinforce an opinion given by someone else. I vary as to whether I read other reviews before or after I've left my own.
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
Karin, use the "add chapter" workflow to add the new chapter to your book with the desired chapter number and version number. When you get to Publish step, there will be a green Publish button next to the new chapter in the list. Use that button to publish and make it visible; reviewers will receive points for reviewing the new chapter. FYI, you can make the old chapter inactive if you want to so that it won't appear to your reviewers. Making it inactive (rather than deleting) will still allow you to access the reviews associated with the old chapter. Or, you can leave them both up if you want people to compare both versions.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to publish the same chapter with identical chapter and version numbers as an existing chapter. Assuming you want to use the same chapter number as an old chapter, simply increment the version number for the new chapter. That works.
I don't know if there is a way to publish a new chapter with identical chapter/version numbers as an existing chapter unless you delete the old. Sol would have to weigh in one that.
Hope that makes sense.
Dirk
Now there's another possibility: a field for the author's requests to reviewers, which will appear over the review buttons and at the top of the review page.
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
Personally, I would prefer such an opt in/opt out button to default to opt in. I always prefer as much feedback as possible. Perhaps you have to be a group member to post? I never saw mass invasions in the old site when people posted an Additional Feedback thread for their work. What I saw were constructive discussions. We're becoming increasingly siloed on this site.
As always, I'm sure I can make it work, whatever Sol decides.
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
Dunecan, look up Janet Taylor-Perry on this site. She's an English teacher turned author/editor and edited the first draft of my book. She just self-published several books and can probably guide you through the process. You can also drop a note in Premium, asking for recommendations for other editors. Also, there was a discussion thread (I think in the Writing Tips & Advice group or in the Premium group) providing good information on self-publishing.
Dirk
I agree with Janet. Unless you recip, you probably won't get sustained reviews. Aside from writing, most of us are probably reading ten other people's work. It requires a lot of time. Although I don't love everything I read (who does?), reading other people's work makes me a better writer, as do their critiques. I work hard to sustain the most helpful reviewers (I usually read more than I'm read), but have to let the rest drop off.
The sustained feedback I've received has greatly improved my writing as I go along. I don't see myself going back to writing an entire draft with little or no feedback. Simple suggestions from good reviewers have resulted in major new character arcs or plot changes mid-stream that I wouldn't otherwise have thought of.
When I click on Find More Books from the home page, it takes me to the My Groups Content page where I see all available books. There are Summary and Chapters buttons for each book that expand to show the book content summary and chapter listing, respectively.
I noticed that the Summary button only shows the first four lines of my summary, then trails off with .... The chapter listing works as expected, showing as many chapters as exist in the book. People who keep their summaries short won't be affected but, as I'm sure you know, I'm rather long-winded and can't squeeze everything into four lines.
Thanks.
Dirk
Fair enough, Sol. May the Force be with you.
The original series was my favorite TV show when I was growing up. There was no cable then, so I had to take my little RCA TV into my mother's bedroom, point the antenna out the window at Vermont and hope for the best. Some days all I got was the staticky audio and shadows on the screen. Still watched it.
I'm sorry he passed. Another major milestone for me.
Dirk
really don't understand the clamor for having a forum for every work posted. Doesn't make sense; the majority appear, get little attention and then are never heard of again, so what would be the purpose in creating all these thousands of feedback forums above what is already available.
Yes... I see from this that my statement has been misunderstood so I'll rephrase it slightly.
What's needed is a way to attach a forum link to a particular work. For example:
[Body of Work]
[Inline Reviews]
[Reviews]
[Additional Feedback]The additional feedback link would drop you into the forum thread associated with the work. You would be able to read & post in this forum thread without needing to join the group. You would not need to go hunt down the group / forum that was discussing this body of work. You would not need to randomly guess that there was a thread on it in the first place.
In general, I like this idea. Much better than people having to guess about an additional feedback thread, especially given the number of places where that thread could now exist (Additional Feedback group, Old Forums, Sci-fi group, etc.). If you post your work to multiple groups, as I believe most do, then there would be only one thread, not one per group.
However, such a capability would need to be able to associate the same thread with multiple chapters, otherwise there would be one per chapter, which would turn the group forums into a mess. Even one thread per work would probably be overload eventually. Everyone might create such a thread just in case and have it never get used. Then you have forums full of orphaned threads.
Another problem that would have to be addressed is what to do if an author has chosen not to create an additional feedback thread, but a reviewer wants to leave additional feedback. Then you get back to the current problem of not knowing where to put the thread and hoping the author sees it. If you allow reviewers to create that thread if there isn't already one, then you have to have to support notification to the author and, potentially, others about the newly created discussion.
On the other hand, using the existing chapter review mechanism as a means for discussion about a given chapter (as I think Sol is suggesting) also seems like a very logical thing to do, but it hides discussions from general visibility. If someone starts a discussion within a chapter that I've previously reviewed, how would I know about it unless I go back and check? There would need to be a way for the reviewer to subscribe to chapters in order to be notified about ongoing discussions about those chapters. Also, how would others who are not reading the book potentially participate in discussions if they have to search the bottom of each chapter for activity.
And, just to make everyone nuts, if there is a discussion going on inside an inline review, the only people who would know about it are the participants in the discussion. I don't read other's reviews in detail, clicking on each inline comment, so I'll never know about the discussion. Right now, even the author doesn't know if a third party is commenting inside an inline review left by someone else, although I presume that part will be addressed.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the only ideal way to handle discussions would be to have a mechanism to browse/search/participate in discussions at the chapter level, work level, group level, or global level. That requires a very different architecture and a lot of work.
Dirk
I was trying to use my android phone with the default browser to respond to someone else's entry on the Wish List thread. I was able to read their part of the thread, but when I was typing my reply in the Write Message box at the bottom of the screen, after a few paragraphs, the view kept jumping up to display what I was responding to, rather than where I had been typing. I had to abandon the reply. This may be because my reply was too long for the android screen and things got confused. That's just a guess though.
Dirk
Dunecan, you're generaly correct, with a few caveats.
If you edit over an existing chapter, then you don't need extra points to do so. Simply editing, however, will not cause your chapter to reappear at the top of the list of works displayed on the home page. It also won't notify your connections that changes were made. I usually use this approach when I'm just trying to incorporate my latest changes before *new* readers see my chapters. Reviewers who've already read the chapter won't receive points for reviewing it again, in spite of the new edits.
If, however, if you want everyone to be notified of the changes, then you need to re-publish using points. Simply specify the same chapter number as the old one, but increment the version number. You may not want to delete the old version of that chapter, since it includes all of the reviews you've already received. If you delete the old chapter, then the old reviews go with it. Instead, you can either leave the old version visible (if you want reviewers to see and compare both the old and new versions), or make it inactive, so that it is no longer visible to reviewers, but is still available for you to refer back to it. All reviewers will receive points for reading the new version.
I believe all of the above also applies to short stories, poems, etc.
Hope that helps.
Dirk
I suggest pop-tent, bubble-shelter, or pop-shelter. Pop-bubbles is too ambiguous.
Do you think I could fit one into a personal AI?
Dirk
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
Welcome, Rosie.
Sarcasm is prohibited for everyone except KHippolite. This is a thread for wishlist requests, hence the topics of discussion. Sometimes we're just trying to understand how the new site works and is intended to be used.
Dirk
Well, when I first read all the talk about creating a new forum for every piece of work, I really couldn't understand the need so thought I'd just sit out this particular debate , but then I kept reading different posts about how good it would be and all so I decided to go ahead and jump in. But alas it looks like Sol must've read my mind because he pretty much said everything I was going to say. But I'm gonna go ahead and regurgitate some of it anyway so as to put my vote out there should one be taken.
The problem is not that there is no forum for all this feedback bandied about; the problem is that virtually no one uses the built in forum of the inline review. Not only do most folks not respond to any of the highlighted areas within the text of the piece being reviewed, virtually no other reviewers make additional comments to the ones already made. I've made a few attempts to get some response, but so far nothing has happened so I simply quit leaving additional comments for the most part.
If authors really want more feedback, then pray tell why don't they offer some opinion on all the comments left in the inline review instead of only a few words in the final comment section. You can agree or disagree with what was said or even offer a totally different interpretation. You can question why the reviewer sees things that weren't intended at all or show why you chose to do something a particular way and start a conversation in which others could offer various points of view. In other words, you've got a forum built into the review process just as Sol envisioned and implemented.
I really don't see why Sol would entertain making any changes to the existing forum parameters when the potential for the obvious feedback choice is almost totally ignored.
That's my vote on the long ballot. Take care. Vern
Vern, I know about the feature you mention and use it, but I'll bet not everyone even knows that a third party can add their two cents to an inline comment. I discovered it by accident while re-reading a review I received. I do respond to inline comments and then usually leave a note at the bottom that I've done so, otherwise a reviewer would never know which of their many suggestions I've replied to inline. That little hindrance could be resolved by having some sort of indicator (a different color?) on the inline comments when there is more than one comment. The solution would also require some form of notification (at least to the author) that there is more discussion taking place in an existing inline review, and some way to find it, besides hunt and peck.
The inline capability is great for individual nits. The posting (chapter) view is great for chatting at the chapter level (if I don't have to scroll endlessly). And the group forum is great for whatever anyone cares to use it for (chapters, books, general discussions, etc.).
Dirk
1. Another wish list item (drooling on this one) would be to have a bottom button at the top of each forum page, and a top button at the bottom of each such page. That would allow us to easily click to get to a page (e.g., I clicked 4 to go to the last page of Wishlist Cont.), and then one more click to go to the opposite end of the page. I suggest putting the buttons immediately to the right of the page numbers. That way, you simply click on a page and, with the slightest mouse movement, can skip to the top/bottom. This would be really handy for those of us with joints as old as dirt. Ideally, you could add similarly named buttons on the posting view page to do the same thing, and anywhere else where pages grow long with time.
2. On a related note, I'll restate my wish for a button at the top of the posting view page to dive directly into a regular review as you can with an inline review, without having to first scroll to the end of the chapter. I rarely use regular reviews anymore, but I know many still do. I think it would be a very nice shortcut and would address at least one of the click/scrolling complaints you're getting.
3. And as long as I'm redesigning your posting view (grin), we also need a button at the top to jump directly over a chapter to the beginning of that chapter's reviews. I've noticed that many of my reviewers like to read the reviews of others before diving in. I do it too.
I'm sure you have screen real-estate issues, especially with tablets and phones to support. You could accomplish 2 and 3 combined if you change the Leave Inline Review button to Goto Reviews. Have the Goto Reviews button take me to the start of the reviews just below the chapter, where you then already have two side-by-side buttons to leave Regular vs Inline reviews. I think it would streamline the posting view a lot and add a touch of extra simplicity for new users trying to find their way around. Admittedly, you may hear some initial grumbles if you change Leave Inline Reviews to Goto Reviews, requiring an extra mouse mouvement and click to get to those much loved inlines.
Thanks as always.
Dirk
Sol, this may be a new bug. I reviewed Janet Taylor-Perry's Abyss, chapter two, this evening between 9-10 PM ET. I had numerous problems getting the inline comments to submit. It may just have been a performance issue with the site. However, I discovered that a little impatient duplicate clicking eventually made the inlines submit. I subsequently saw that I had left 55 comments, which is way more than I actually had left.
Google Chrome on Windows 7.
Dirk
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
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
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
