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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

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.

Fair enough, Sol. May the Force be with you.

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

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