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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

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

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

I'll add my voice to this request as well. I've been surprised many times by my browser doing god-knows-what when I start typing while still outside the inline text box. Would love to see it fixed soon.

Thanks.
Dirk

Actually, I use the edit feature (posting without points) very frequently. As I receive reviews, I make changes to my chapters and edit over the old content before other reviewers drop by to read the chapter as well.

If I were making big changes, I would re-publish (with points) and ask/hope the same people to re-review it. I don't do this since I'm saving all major changes for my next draft.

Dirk

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

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

Thanks, Don. It's an interesting idea. Mama does do organic (see below).

I eventually decided to include a bunch of tractor front loaders inside the warehouse to scoop/dump the dirt into the utility carts. It's the warehouse-scale version of that monstrosity in Kenny's picture. I was trying to avoid using them because I wanted the work to be backbreaking. What I eventually settled for was "exhausting". It's still a nasty Warming-exposed work environment with cooling fans blowing dirt everywhere, so the filth and discomfort level is about the same.

Funnily enough, it turned out Mama does ship organic stuff. After I started rewriting to incorporate everyone's feedback, I added a couple of extra guided missiles during the taxi chase. They end up plowing into one of Mama's trucks labelled Organic Fertilizer. Naturally, the truck expodes in the middle of rush hour traffic sending manure raining down on everyone below.

Don, I included a chase through a crowded open-air market in response to your suggestion for a more interesting escape from the spaceport. Also added a paragraph addressing your questions about the terraforming process, and a part where Leonardo is about to kick Joseph and Paul out of the cab when the hunters show up. Turns out he lost his boys to his ex-wife so he finally decides to help them. Plus, let's face it, he's the crazed cabbie. He'd probably do it for kicks.

K, if you're reading, I added your suggestion of the pizza drone. Awesome! The cab buzzes past it and the drone gets whacked by a guided missile, exploding into "a fiery ball of metal, plastic, and mozzarella". :-)  I also gave the cab's AI a personality, so it's less like HAL, and made it smarter than 3PO, except that Leonardo keeps hitting it with his fist on the dashboard. It keeps resetting, eventually frying the altimeter, so the AI doesn't know precisely how low they are to the ground when that moment comes.

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I love the result.
Dirk

Thanks, Tom. I agree option "a" seems better. Unless I can think of something else, I'm going to go with it. I think I have a little more leeway since it's space opera rather than hard-core sci-fi, so "entertainment" is also a factor, hence the many plotholes in the Star Wars series. I try to stamp out as many of them as I can, so I appreciate the help.

These days, a real sci-fi story set 2000 years in the future would be forced to pretty much automate everything, probably also excluding the insane flying taxi ride that takes place later in the chapter as the slaves try to escape. Self-driving vehicles are only about 10-20 years away, so I wonder what will happen to taxi and bus drivers at that point. Not to mention speeding tickets (a major source of revenue for some towns). A vehicle could pick up passengers, drive them where they want to go, accept Apple Pay, and then continue on to wherever the dispatcher programs it to go next. I've been on airport tramways that were fully automated almost ten years ago. I did wonder with those what happens when someone gets stuck halfway through a closing door. Yikes!

Dirk

What a monster! Topsoil, however, is only a few feet deep, at most, but let's assume there is machinery at the digging site. I assumed so when I wrote the scene, but didn't bother to write about it, since it was outside Joseph's POV. You still need a way to get it in and out of a cargo hold. Hence, the canvas utility carts. It's really about the most cost-efficient way of getting it from a dirt pile in the warehouse, dumped there by dumptrucks, into the ship by either slaves digging vs robots digging that are maintained by humans. I also considered some form of tractor front loaders (baby brothers to the one in your picture) to lift the dirt from inside the warehouse and dump it into the carts that are then pushed into the cargo hold by slaves. I probably have to include them.

Any other suggestions on real back-breaking work that cheap slaves could do?

Thanks.
Dirk