Not sure if this is on the list yet. When I receive forum emails on my Android phone (using the default email client app), the link isn't highlighted and there is nothing to click on. I have to navigate to the forum to see the new post(s).
Thanks.
Dirk
JP, if you choose Read->Groups Content and leave all of the filters set to All, you should see all work posted to any group of which you are a member, which presumably includes TNBW Premium and TNBW Free. The only stuff you wouldn't see is works posted solely to groups of which you are not a member. I'm not sure why someone would exclude posting to Premium and Free when they can do so, but someone may decide they only want reviews from people interested in the same genre.
I'm a Premium member, so I'm a little fuzzy on what you can/can't do if you're a Free member. I've seen that some people choose not to publish to Free, although I do. You never know where an agent might be lurking. :-)
Regards,
Dirk
A further advantage to reviewing is learning how to write (or not!) by reading other people's work. I've gained quite a bit of experience that way.
Dirk
I wouldn't worry if I were you, Jill. With rare exceptions, it's a great community of people who try to help each other improve their writing and get published. I've been a paying member since 2012 and have several reciprocal author/reviewer relationships that have been invaluable to me. Some very experienced, published writers on the site have taken a great deal of their time to provide me with detailed feedback, more even than I can give them, since their writing is much more mature than mine. I picked up another big-picture/detail-oriented reviewer just a few weeks ago.
Welcome to Premium.
Dirk
Ideally with the cursor already active in the text box. Saves a click for each inline item.
Sol, several people have created groups that require points to post.
If we wanted to post to Premium AND to one of those groups, would it require twice as many points to post?
Also why would some create groups requiring points to post? What advantage is there to creating such groups?
Thanks.
Dirk
One comment to what Janet Taylor-Perry said about free reviews/reviewers. Their lack of reciprocating may be due to a lack of understanding of how the site works.
I received two early reviews on my first draft, one from a phsychologist and another from a theologian, both of whom gave generally positive reviews even though my book has the potential to offend people in both of those fields (not intentionally, it's just the nature of the material). At the time, I didn't realize that reciprocating was the best way to get them to continue reading. Unfortunately, I eventually took down those chapters when I started posting v2 of my book and no longer know who those two people were. I'm holding off broadcasting a request for new reviews of v2 since I already have my hands full reciprocating with authors who are reading my latest posts.
Bottom line, lack of reciprocating was due to a simple lack of knowledge about the site when I first joined, not a reflection of the reviewers's own material. I suspect other new users may be in the same boat. Some of the free stuff I've read hasn't even received a reply yet.
Regards,
Dirk
I'd be curious to know how many people are posting to genre specific groups without also posting to Premium/Free. I post to both of those as well as sci-fi to get the widest possible audience.
You're welcome to use any of it, Sol. The main reason I used the forum for this is that I think more users will find it there, hopefully encouraging a discussion back & fourth among multiple participants. Are you suggesting we use regular reviews as a means of back and forth discussion rather than the forums? That would require users to click on each chapter in a book and scroll to the reviews to find a discussion like this one.
I'm not sure if I understood you.
Dirk
Linda, for new works, why not use the Read->Groups Content page? From there you can see all works posted to groups you are a member of, and filter by genre or story type. You can also see which works pay points. Admittedly, if someone posts to the Horror or YA groups, for example, without also posting to Premium/Free, then I won't see it.
Dirk
Oops. I justed cross posted this from your Premium thread. Ah well. Can never have enough links to a resource that good.
Thanks.
Dirk
Following is from a link that Janet Taylor-Perry posted at the end of an unrelated Premium thread. I didn't want this to get lost, so here it is:
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-edi … ou-in-2015
Dirk
As a way to encourage people to use forums, it would be useful if they could automatically post to forums associated with public groups without having to join the actual group. That might go a long way toward getting more people using the new forums without running into the max group limit of ten and without the extra step of joining the group.
Thanks.
Dirk
As long as I'm busy telling Sol what to do, I'll add this. :-)
On the forums screen that I hope you implement, you could have a filter called Classic, which would show just the old TNBW forums, leaving out the rest of the groups from that particular filter. It would require adding a field to each group's database record to flag if it is a classic forum or not. You could populate that field automatically once, indicating which groups/forums are part of the classic list of groups. There then should be no need to provide an interface to all users to flag a group as classic. We already know which groups are classic. It would require creating groups for all of the old TNBW forums. so tha the classic filtered list showed all of the group forums we want from the old site. If you won't want to mess with the database records to add a Classic flag, there are other ways to implement the classic list (e.g., a manual hard-coded query for all groups that correspond to the old forums).
I really hope you don't create separate forums when the new forums are so close to what's needed for backward compatibility and a simpler implementation.
Hope that makes sense.
Dirk
Writing Tips & Advice is probably the group/forum to use for Writing 101 type of information. I believe that's how the old site used that forum. Sol is working on bringing back the old forums, although he and I are debating how best to implement it in the Premium group. Feel free too join us there and give your feedback.
Regards,
Dirk
I didn't spend a lot of time in the old forums so I'm not familiar with everything it could do, but there's nothing stopping someone here from reading your post if it's in a public group, like Writing Tips. The limitation is they have to join to post, and they may not both browsing to Writing Tips very often if they're not an actual member. Sol and I are busy trading posts in Premium about how the "new" forums view should work. Please join us. I'm sure you can be of help.
Dirk
I was actually referring to whether my forum posts should be posted to Premium, Free, or both. If non-paying members can't see what's in Premium, then they won't know what they're missing. A lot of my recent posts in Premium and elsewhere have been to try to help the new site get off the ground. I want to include free members in that too. If they can't see Premium, then I need to post in both.
Dirk
From the looks of the web page/link, that will duplicate functionality that already exists in the new system. There would be two places to put Writing Tips & Advice conversations, for example. Ditto for other groups/forums.
Although I understand that it's not possible to give everyone a view of all that is private/invisible, presumably you could do a query based on what's public and what isn't? It would have to include all public groups + all groups a member is already part of. If that list is too large, split it over several pages, and add search/filters to allow members to find those groups/forums their most interested in. Ideally, the most recently active groups would be at the top by default.
Otherwise, how are you going to combine the proposed view's front end with the corresponding groups/forums in the back end? Will the new front end link to the new groups with the same purpose, like Writing Tips & Advice or Additional Feedback, or will these be two separate repositories of similar information? I hope it's not going to duplicate functionality. That'll make the new site even more complicated, especially for those unfamiliar with the old site. They'll see two nearly identical places to post and not know which to use.
There must be something about the implementation complexity that I'm missing if you're planning on simply duplicating the old functionality side-by-side with the new group forums that already do most of what people are asking for. They just need a filtered view of all forums available to them, minus the big graphic icons that eat up valuable screen space.
And, when we're in a specific forum that we're not already part of and want to post to, an Apply button would be needed that duplicates the current Apply button function in the group view. If the group settings allow a user to immediately join the group, a single click on Apply would be all that is needed before a user could post, all without leaving the forum. If Apply requires permission, then user has to follow those steps and return later to post to the group forum once they're a member.
It seems like that would give you one back end with just two different front ends.
Thanks.
Dirk
Sol, can you please clarify the difference between Premium and Free? Is the Premium forum only available for paying members to read and post to?
I'm wondering if I should be posting my threads in both groups to include non-paying members as well.
Thanks.
Dirk
I can't recall if I posted this announcement yet, so apologies if this is a duplicate.
After some back & forth with Sol, we've decided to keep the Writing Tips & Advice group permanently as a replacement for the old site's similarly named forum. The new group's forum is open to anyone to read and you can post simply by joining (a single mouse click).
I found the old equivalent forum invaluable to me when I first started writing and would love to see it resurrected here. So far, activity has been very limited and not all original users of the old forum have signed up to the new group.
Perhaps this post will drum up a few extra members and some activity.
Sol has posted a tutorial book to the Writing Tips group, and I've commented, but it could use other's input.
Thanks.
Dirk
Or post it to the Writing Tips & Advice group that's already here on the site.
Dirk
Kenny, what about creating a Writing Craft group and start your conversation there?
For those creating new groups, if you want members to join, please announce your groups here in the TNBW Premium and Free groups. Otherwise, you'll be waiting for people to browse through all available groups (four pages so far) before finding your new group. I don't remember to look there very often. Also, it will help cut down on some of the duplication that is already starting to creep into the total list of groups.
I'm also going to go out on a limb here and suggest that there probably shouldn't be a separate group per novel or other piece of writing. The number of groups would skyrocket and no one will find your group. Also, with a limit of ten groups per premium member, there are only so many groups we can join. If you want additional feedback about your work, you could post it to a genre-specific group (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.) and start a discussion there, or post to the catch-all Additional Feedback group that was created here to replicate the old Additional Feedback forum on the old site. I suspect the new one will eventually fall out of use given the genre groups now available.
If you want the widest visibility, regardless of genre, post it to Premium and/or Free and explicitly ask for feedback by starting a thread in these two groups. I would guess that most people are monitoring the Premium group for new posts, so, if they're interested, you should get some reviews.
Regards,
Dirk
Sol, I thought I would post this as a separate thread so it doesn't get buried in the many conversations going on in different groups.
I was wondering if you can elaborate yet as to whether/how/when the old-style forums will work on the new site.
To other TNBW members, please add to this thread with any additions or corrections to what I'm posting.
From discussions with others here, they'd like access to all forums on one page (or as few pages as possible), with a single click to see all of the discussions in each forum, preferably with the newest at the top. If there is a way to sort the list of forums, so much the better, especially sorting by name or by most recent activity.
The trickier part probably has to do with posting. Currently, you have to be a member of a group in order to post to its forum. I understand the reason for that limitation, but I assume it means we'll need to join the group related to each forum in which we want to post. Hopefully, there will be a way to apply to join a group right from within the forum page itself. In that way, those groups that are public to all members will require at most a single click on a "join group" button before being allowed to post. That would mean two clicks max to post.
Naturally, if the group's creator has placed a restriction on who can join, then the workflow will presumably require an interaction with the group's creator before being allowed to post. That requirement will probably discourage some people from posting in the restricted group's forum, which is something the creator of the group will have to live with and/or think about when creating the group. Most of the groups I've seen so far are immediately open for joining.
Please let ue know more about this, as we're chomping at the bit to read/post on the new site. Things are amazingly silent at present, at least in the groups I'm part of.
I was wondering the same in a post earlier today. Things have seemed quiet since joining the new site, either because of the holidays or because people are still figuring out how best to use the system.
Some of the old forums have been created on this site as groups. The best way to get easy access to the group forums is to join the corresponding groups. That way the groups show up on the right hand side of your home page, with a forum link under each one. All you have to do, is click that link. Also, if you join a group you can also post to its forum.
The other way to get to the forums is a little more cumbersome, but doesn't require you to join. Go to the menu at the top of the screen called Groups, click on it and select All Groups to see a list of all groups (there are four pages worth so far). Find a group you might be interested in, click on it, and click the Forums tab to take you where you want to go. I'm afraid you have to repeat this step for each group you're interested in. That's why I find joining groups is the easier workflow. You can, however, read the content of most groups without joining. Some are made explicitly private by the creator/moderator for their own reasons.
I've also read that Sol is going to resurrect some form of the old groups on the new site. I'm not sure how he'll pull that off without further complicating the group forum concept already in place. Will that mean there will be two places to go to post/read? Not sure yet, and it will probably take some time, although he is very responsive.
As a workaround for the old forums, Linda Lee created a group here called Old Forums, with one thread for each of the old forums (e.g., shred thread, strongest start, member announcements, etc.). Unfortunately, with only one discussion thread for each of the old forums, you really can't have multiple separate conversations going on in the same thread (e.g., discussions about two different pieces of work being shredded, or multiple conversations about writing tips & advice, and so on).
Since we're allowed to be a member of ten groups at a time, joining the groups of interest to you is probably the best bet. Have a look through all of the available groups so far and join those you like, or create new ones. You can announce any new groups you created here in the Premium forum. If there are particular people you want to explicitly invite into a group, make a connection with them and then send them a private message.
Hope that helps.
Dirk
