Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

njc wrote:

The reviewer may not see it until the review is begun.

If it's at the beginning of the story and optionally, as also stated, at the beginning of every chapter, then the reviewer simply isn't paying attention and ostensibly isn't paying attention to the story itself. And if the reviewer is that blind, what makes you think they will see or pay attention to anything the site puts up. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Sometimes you just have to accept that a person doesn't really want to do their due diligence. In that case, the battle to woo them, is probably a waste of time. Sometimes your war effort is better allocated elsewhere. Take care. Vern

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27 Reply by njc

Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

Mistakes happen.  The goal is to help people avoid them.

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

njc wrote:

Mistakes happen.  The goal is to help people avoid them.

So, you want to change things because someone makes a mistake instead of because it is actually a problem. Everyone makes mistakes, so should the site be changed for every mistake someone makes? I don't think so. If it is a true mistake and not simply because they refused to read the directions, then correct them just as has been pointed out over and over again. If someone points out a mistake in a story, the author may correct it or ignore it. If the author of a review points out that the reviewer should start with chapter one, then the reviewer may correct his "mistake" or ignore it. Either way, it is unnecessary to change an entire system every time someone makes a mistake, if you are blaming the problem on a simple mistake. If I make a mistake and review the same story twice and thus receive no points for the second review, should the site change and reward me points for my mistake even though it has already told me I would not receive points for a second review and I didn't bother to read the warning or ignored it? A simple mistake is no reason to change things when the individual author has the same tools, as previously stated, to warn the reviewer if they so desire. At any rate, I rest my case. To each their own solution. Take care. Vern

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29 Reply by Dirk B. (edited by Dirk B. 2022-02-15 04:15:09)

Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

I'm glad to see people are keeping long discussions to a minimum in this thread. It doesn't help Sol use this thread, when debates go on for pages. Please consider starting a separate thread, but I think the point has been beaten to death.

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30 Reply by njc (edited by njc 2022-02-15 05:15:08)

Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

What is the virtue in a system which leads people to make mistakes?

By mistake, I don't mean "He didn't do what I want."  I mean "He didn't do as he intended because something was not obvious."

What is the virtue in leading people to make mistakes?

For a GUI the interface IS the instructions.  If someone is misled by a GUI, the instructions were misleading.  The answer is not more instructions, or exhortations to Read The Instructions.  The interface is the instructions.

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

Dirk B. wrote:

I'm glad to see people are keeping long discussions to a minimum in this thread. It doesn't help Sol use this thread, when debates go on for pages. Please consider starting a separate thread, but I think the point has been beaten to death.

Good luck with that.
smile

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

I knew the battle was lost when I saw Apricots's post. Does anyone think Sol is going to read interminable discussions? If it doesn't stay on track (see the guidelines in first post, which I'm sure you all read), I'm simply going to delete this thread and start over.

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

Dirk B. wrote:

I knew the battle was lost when I saw Apricots's post. Does anyone think Sol is going to read interminable discussions? If it doesn't stay on track (see the guidelines in first post, which I'm sure you all read), I'm simply going to delete this thread and start over.

Dirk--
I agree with you. But this has always been the nature of the TNBW forums. Long unedited discussions about the subject at hand frequently devolving down rabbit holes that have nothing to do with said subject spattered with snark. You might try a word limit and delete those posts that exceed it.

good luck again,

dags smile

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

Sol, now that the group cleanup is almost done, you may want to consider restricting access to the Create Group functionality. Something to prevent a proliferation of more abandoned groups.

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35 Reply by Dirk B. (edited by Dirk B. 2022-03-25 23:40:12)

Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

I'm not sure if this is a minor enhancement (I think so), but all short works should be visible on the home page, same as short stories are. The easiest way to do that is to change the New Short Stories section to New Short Works and display all short works there, excluding books and poems. This change would mean those who publish essays, articles, scripts, etc. could expect their posts to be found at a glance. I just reviewed someone I found by accident, whose posted short story was set to type essay, making it almost impossible to have it found. Since there are very few short works on this site that aren't short stories, this suggested change would have virtually no impact on others, yet would allow all types of works on the site to be found with just a glance at the home page, making the site potentially more interesting to authors of all types of works. The type of the short work would have to be displayed along with the rest of the details normally displayed under New Short Stories.

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

njc wrote:

The reviewer may not see it until the review is begun.

Then, just maybe, they should not start a review while asleep at the wheel. Take care. Vern

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

I'm wondering if it would be possible to make a minor change to how the site handles links on the home page that take you to a posted chapter. Currently, the site displays the most recently posted chapter. If someone has posted multiple chapters in quick succession, it still takes you to the most recently posted one. For example, if someone posts chapters 16, 17, and 18 in rapid succession, the site lists chapter 18, and that's where the link takes you. Pretty much everyone then has to look at the pick list of chapters to see if there were any earlier chapters they hadn't yet read, at which point they have to switch to that chapter. Ideally, the site should take you to the "next" chapter you're supposed to read. For example, if a member hasn't read chapter 15 yet, it ought to take you that chapter, not chapter 18. It might be a little goofy to list chapter 18 on the home page and then take you to chapter 15, but I think people would see the advantage of that and get used to it pretty quickly.

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

Hi Dirk, I understand the issue you are trying to solve but it's really bad user experience to list a link to one thing and then redirect to another. The. listings on the homepage have always been a challenge. We used to list all chapters chronologically and then people complained about writers flooding the homepage. So, we instituted this system. Based on complaints, or the relative lack of them, I think it's the right balance. But always happy to consider other ideas.

Sol

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

Fair enough.

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40 Reply by Dirk B. (edited by Dirk B. 2022-09-27 13:40:03)

Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

One alternative might be to have the chapter link take you to the posted chapter, and clicking the book link takes you to the last unread chapter.

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Re: Minor Enhancement Requests

Sol, would it be possible to give some kind of indication on the home page and the inline reviews tab that a previously read review has had additional comments added to it? Right now there is no way to know if someone adds extra comments, so a lot of them are never noticed. The easiest approach would be to simply change the status of the review back to unread and leave it up to the reviewee to open the review to look for more feedback. A slightly better approach is for the updated review to be flagged as Updated rather than New on the reviews tab.

Thanks
Dirk

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