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Please actually read the entire post before commenting! I have done my best to alleviate most potential concerns about the system, and comments that are just repeats of problems brought up in the post may be ignored or deleted.
knighty brought up an interesting idea tonight. We've had a problem for a very long time with how our moderation system works (click here if you aren't sure how it works now), which is that if none of the moderators feel like approving stories, nothing gets approved! The reason that moderators are unwilling to approve stories is that it's massively boring, and massively unrewarding work. When we approve stories, we only occasionally get a thanks, and when we fail stories, we're pretty likely to get a scathing message asking how we could possibly fail their stoiy. This leads to situations like the other day where our only active approver went out of town, and we ended up having 200 stories backed up in the queue to be approved!
So we started exploring other options. One option is to just bring on more moderators who are more willing to do this work. That presents its own set of problems. We have to train these new moderators on our rules, we have to work with them constantly to ensure they are not making errors, and we have to hope they have Skype so that we can communicate with them. Plus, we have to ensure that they're trustworthy and that they're going to be active and... it's a huge hassle, and all we get out of it is the hope that they might approve enough stories to be useful before they get bored. Another problem is that (and even we're guilty of this occasionally) they tend to make mistakes, which leads to junk stories that otherwise definitely violate our rules getting past moderation.
A second option is to just drop approval entirely; let ANY story get uploaded to the site, and have it hit the front page and be searchable immediately. This approach has a lot of obvious problems, and doesn't solve the primary one of administrative fatigue. While we wouldn't have to deal with story approval, there would be a very sharp increase in the amount of reports to deal with, and if those reports aren't resolved VERY quickly, users would start getting generally upset at the quality of fics that get submitted... trust me, you should see the sort of thing people submit when the queue is moderated.
The third option we're exploring (and I should stress that we are just exploring this right now) is a Newgrounds-style approval system. Instead of having moderators troll through an approval queue, we instead give the power to the users. We're not sure on the specifics, but it would probably a Steam Greenlight style question: "Do you think this story belongs on the site?" Users would then simply select Yes or No, in accordance with the rules. Now, of course, a system like this does not come without its own problems. knighty and I went back and forth on some of these and came up with some solutions (note that Newgrounds uses almost all of these safeguards as well).
First off, I'm sure most of you are screaming "But what about potential abuse?!" Yes, this system by itself is rife for abuse. However, there are some pretty simple things we can do to cut down massively on potential abuse. The first thing is that only accounts older than a week would be allowed to vote on stories for approval. We could always adjust this number if need be, but this seems like a pretty fair number to us. This also prevents people from just spamming a bunch of accounts to upvote their own or a buddy's story. Secondly, we will of course be monitoring this system to ensure there are no unexpected abuse cases that come up - and will be acting quickly to fix them. If we notice you doing ANYTHING to abuse this system, expect some harsh consequences!
The second concern we had was that of nobody actually participating in this system. The average view count of a story on the front page, drawing ONLY from front-page views, is actually quite low. The average story barely gets 20 views - many stories do not even get 10. If we simply released this system out into the wild, we'd almost certainly be in an even worse situation than we are now. That being said, we decided to implement some sort of rewards system for users who participate actively in this system.
Users who participate in approving stories might be rewarded a new icon for their profile, which would show up on comments and on their User Bar at the top of the page. We might hand out little awards to put on your user page, or maybe even custom titles... username coloring, stuff like that. The one we're by far most likely to do is the user icon, since it's quite simple and unobtrusive, but we're not open to expanding on the reward system is the system sees inactivity. We really want people to USE this system if we implement it! EDIT: Of course, you would only be rewarded for stories in which you voted in line with the majority decision. Randomly spamming votes will get you nothing (and may even get you banned).
In addition, any fics that are failed by users may be flagged for administrative review, to ensure that there are no "downvote storms" on stories which do, in fact, belong on the site.
The basic goals of this change, therefore, are:
-- Reduce administrative workload and fatigue
-- Give more power to the users as to what they think is appropriate content on the site
-- Reward users more actively for participating in the community while improving the overall quality of work on the site
-- Get knighty to do some damn work
I'd love to hear what you guys think of this. I should stress that we are NOT moving to this system yet! This was just an idea we banged around for a bit. Even if we DO implement this system, if it ends up not working out, we will just revert back to the old system. We wanted to give you all a heads up before we did this though, as it would be a fairly radical shakeup of the way the site works now.
knighty and I are gonna go play Borderlands 2, but we'll be back to look over your comments later. Have a nice day.
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Comments ( 662 )
I approve this approval system
I approve this approval of the approval system.
that's a pretty good way to trick the userbase into doing your job for you poletron you lazy ass
(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
Sounds like something worth trying, at the very least.
>>378807
cosmo please go
>>378807
How polite.
I agree with the Newgrounds-style system. IP checks to reduce sockpuppets and rewards for showing initiative and helping approve stories sounds like a good idea.
This actually sounds like a much better system, especially for when the queue is so backed up. Plus, I personally love the idea of actually getting rewarded for reading all the stories that hit front page.
Sounds reasonable. If you coupled this with a way to improve freshly posted story views, it could work better. I always found the front page to be unappealing to scroll through. You could have a small box next to the featured box - a 'New Box' so to speak. People could be encouraged to look at new things for the sake of keeping things running. I don't think people would mind such a feature/responsibility.
I had what might have been a good idea, but I'm too drunk to remember.
Though this system still has a chance of abuse, and some amazing stories by new authors could be overlooked in favor of a more known name, also, if you get enough yes votes it would be nice to inform the yessers that the story got through, thus assuring at least a healthy viewer base.
I think this is a fantastic idea. I'd like to see how it works out.
>>378818 Like you needed an excuse to read all of those stories.
That sounds like a pretty good idea for a system. The moderators work really hard to approve stories, so anything to help them out I'd be okay with. If you were to try a trial version of it then see what happens from there, then all for the better.
I'd be okay with this, but, maybe upgrade how old the user must be. We don't want some half-assed guy clicking 'no' to a story. Maybe 3 - 4 weeks seems reasonable. Hell, go 10 weeks. Make them wait and earn the right.
Anyways, we'll see how this flip-flops.
>>378823
That's a good point, though that might get spammy for approvers... We'll consider that.
you have just offered us what Steam gave TF2 players. Hats. in this case they are metaphorical hats, but hats nonetheless. But you know what? I WANT SOME HATS!!!!
I would gladly participate in this kind of system, but there are some changes that I would ask. maybe instead of 1 week, it be 2? just asking, because 1 week seems too short. as long as you guys/girls would be able to control the horrors of the internet user, then I see no problems with this.
I'm certainly up for anything relieving the stress of our crabby administrators (kidding! mostly...)
The only question I have is, would the work you guys would have monitoring users for abuse of the system wind up being just as much, if not more work than the current load?
It seems a reasonable approach. For keeping down the possibility of abuse, you could potentially (depending on what kind of response you can eke out of the user base) try only presenting a randomly-selected subset of pending stories to any given user. That would make it harder for any person or group of people to game the system.
It blew my mind when I found out you guys take the time and effort to pre-screen every story submitted to the site. Anything that makes that job easier sounds good. I'd definitely like to see it done on a trial basis, just to see how it goes.
I could get behind this. Are you guys thinking of copying any of the other NG-style rewards for the fics in addition to the voters? 'Daily Best', more long-term ranking displays, etc?
And just for the record, is this also a move for users to suss out quality issues, as well as rules issues like the moderators currently only do? (Can we get rid of the bazillion 'I died and went to Equestria' fics this way, in other words?)
I say this is a great idea.
Could one of the rewards for participating be, say, being allowed to have your own custom banner for one of your stories? Like Harmony or Antipodes?
>>378835
Yeah, we might end up making it 2, but that's the sort of thing we can always adjust later. Some people are asking for 2 - maybe.
>>378838
The idea is that it won't, but it certainly could end up being that way. But think of it this way - if it is, we have the same amount of work we do now, and users get to have more power. Sounds like a win/neutral to me. That's a thing probably.
How about we take all the crappy authors...
... And put them in a Recycle Bin...
Just kidding.
Don't know why I wanted to say that... Hrm... Meh.
I already gave me two scents.
>>378843 I also believe rewards are in order.
A few concerns I've come up with so far:
1) What's stopping someone from blindly upvoting everything just for userpage shinies?
2) I might be misremembering, but don't even established/popular authors get their fics disapproved sometimes? That would be a thing of the past with this system.
3) Unpopular premises (uncommon ships, OC fics, anything human, etc.) could well go unread, and depend on point 1 up there to ever see the light of day. And if there's ever a choice between an unpopular premise, a Luna Is Bad At Modern Things, and an LOLsometa fic then well, sorry little fic. And yes I know meta fics are against the rules, but you and I both know that thing would be upvoted to hell.
4) What's the point of approving fics at all if everyone can see unapproved fics?
I like the idea of active users getting pins, or letting them decide on the fics that get sent through, because alot of the fics that get sent trough are terrible.
>>378839
Not a bad idea, something to consider... people might still just sit there until they get their "chosen" story though. We'd also maybe like users to choose stories they are interested in, and a random selection is unlikely to facilitate that.
>>378841
Not right now, but we'll see where it goes. We do already have the Featured Box, after all.
To be honest I like how this sounds. But I do also agree that the reward system has to be to a minimum, anything too 'in your face' will draw people just looking for the title or such.
>>378843
If it's Pink Floyd themed I approve of it
The idea does indeed have its merits. But I have to say, do you have any ideas on the table for appeals to disapproving stories?
Also, can you go into more detail, if you can, on the user ratings themselves? Is it the strories drop below a certain approve/disprove ratio or is there a finite threshold of downvotes?
I approve of the new system, even though it still sounds like its in the conceptional stage and has many kinks to work out.
However my big concern is the large one-shots that got in excess of 10k words, and exactly how long it would take for a fic to get approval onto the site. If I can make a recommendation, perhaps keep the ten-minute queue updater thingy.
>>378844 Very true. It sounds like a very good idea to me, was just a little worried about the backfire potential.
Oh, just thought of something.
You could add a limit for the story to reach in order to be posted.
Let's say it has to reach like, 25 up votes or so. If it reaches 25 down votes, then it's immediately disapproved.
Seems legit.... and I think it would be interesting to see how it works out....
So what happens if someone gets a bunch of people (not bots, literally other people) to upvote his fic (with the possibility that it may be crud), and people see that it actually is crud and downvote it? Wouldn't that technically mean you are voting against the majority? How would you protect against that?
I've been wanting a system nearly identical to Newgrounds here for a long time. They do indeed give rewards for voting, and those who vote more get more voting power.
Now, this would also mean you have 2 separate queues, so it might be rough at first (your front page crawl as usual once a fic is approved, as well as the approval queue). You should also give some sort of boost to the fic itself upon approval if you go to this system. (IE any thumbs the fic gets in approval should transfer over to it's front page number). Obviously you still only get one vote per fic but it can influence the desire to read a fic or not when it hits the page. Overall, this could be a very very good thing, and leave the mods to deal with fixing issues rather than reading absolutely everything submitted, like mods should be doing.
It's a good idea but it seems like it could be abused. I'd be fine if there was a trial run of it.
I can sense a potential disturbance in the force from this sort of system, in that it relies on a certain measure of user activism and awareness. Neither of which you're guaranteed, even with a rewards system.
Picture a scenario in which a bunch of users who are only in it for the icons and such simply go in and maybe just sort of skim a story (or, heck, who guarantees they read it at all?), then vote for an approve/disapprove because, darn it -- rewards. Move to the next story to repeat.
The problem is that you can't guarantee any sort of quality in approval from the relatively few users who'd care enough to do the job in the first place. Because even with a vague reward system in place, it's not particularly rewarding to read a terrible story. Moreover, you would probably have to consider that, even with certain baseline rules in place, people would inevitably vote for rejection on terrible stories (or, at least, stories they believe to be terrible). Whether or not they technically fit the rules.
Frankly, what I'd imagine happening with the proposed system is that the mods would go from policing stories to having to police the users approving the stories. And that's assuming there're enough users who participate in the first place. No guarantee of that, really.
Invoking more moderation staff might seem like a bit of a hassle, but I guess you could view it as an investment. Once you've actually found a trustworthy user with whom contact can be made, you've got another pair of hands helping to approve stories for the duration with a relatively low amount of added input. Compare to an ongoing hassle of worrying about users who might be ruining the "Greenlight" system.
I've uploaded several stories and never felt that the delay between 'hitting submit' and seeing my story appear (usually a few hours, never more than 2 days) was onerous, so if the only problem with the current system is that people don't like the delay, I don't have any problem leaving it as is.
Then again, I'm not a mod and don't know what kind of fatigue they're under, so if this makes the site easier to run on their end, no objections. :-)
Oh, also, make sure to run a 'beta' system first. To see how it works. It always helps when Users give feedback first before rushing into the idea.
well, certainly a good idea, but what if some people get a lot of stuff and people start getting all jelly and just stop's helping out entirely. But that wouldn't really happen a lot sooo, why the heck not. I approve of this approval system like others aproved of the aproval system before I approved.
>>378833 You'd have to be able to toggle whether you wanted to get notifications for all approved stories you voted yes on, of course.
LOL DELETED TEXT.
I'm not so sure about the user-vote system. I think participation will be the biggest issue with this idea, as well as time frame. Site traffic and how long a submission is up for voting will largely affect what goes up on the front page.
Another problem is a very specific participation issue - it would be difficult to ensure people are actually reading the thing before they vote on it. They could click the link and it counts as words read, but there's no way to truly enforce any requirement to read before voting. Also, it's easier for a small group to follow the rules than a massive group who is more often than not keeping an eye out for quality or their favorite authors than the rules themselves.
A long term effect of this going into place could mean a downturn in perception of quality in the site's work. Take for example, EQD - there is already a stigma that because a small elite group screens stories for approval, the volume of Fimfiction's approved submissions unintentionally misrepresents the quality of the fiction. Now imagine a popular-vote system in which untrained blokes like me suddenly have a say in what goes up. I am considered to be a novice writer at best and a sloppy hack at worst. Hundreds of site users just like me would be suddenly empowered to make decisions that we aren't fully trained to make. Don't hand the keys over to hundreds of folks like me who don't really have an eye for this stuff.
Finally, this approval system would be a subtle reflection of the front-page-to-featured/popular system. Stories will show up on one queue, and people read them and the turnout is reflected in what comes to the forefront. Same principle, really, or similar enough.
That is a GREAT idea!
It will give me something to do when I'm bored!
Because it IS possible for me to get bored.
I think you should smooth this out for a bit then start using it.
>>378849
1) We'll implement some sort of penalties if you vote "incorrectly" too many times in too short a span. As a very rough example (not what we'll actually do) if you vote wrong 50% of the time, you might get your privilege taken away. Also please check my edit on the blog post about halfway through.
2) Maybe... we'll keep an eye on that. It's certainly something we already struggle with, but there's not much to be done about it.
3) Also not much we can do about this... and frankly we won't be SUPER bothered if people downvote stuff that's REALLY bad... again, we are going to be checking each fic that's failed.
4) Not everybody will bother with this system, in fact I bet the vast majority won't even participate or care.
I'm really going off now, so I will come back and read the comments later. Bye bye!
>>378807
Uh oh, Ponychan is leaking. We're doomed.
This seems like it could be the greatest thing to happen to the site in my... *goes to check* Five months of contributing and untold millennia of lurking.
It could fail, sure. It's not foolproof, by any means. But I definitely think that we should at least try it out, because it hugely benefits involved users like me.
Firstly, we can get rid of the shit fics that are TECHNICALLY allowed but still are really awful and do not contribute to the site in any way. (See: Anything submitted by this guy). Wanderer D, alexstraza et al. get to stop weeping about having to approve awful, awful stories.
Also, it provides incentive for people to read more up and coming authors instead of just staying within the bounds of well-established authors. This is important! Plus people who already read a lot of front-page stories will get cool perks for doing the good work that they already do.
And of course, there's the perks for you guys. I love our moderators, and seriously, you guys definitely deserve a break. Doing all this for us because you love attention out of the kindness of your hearts, it's really great. Thank you.
>>378807 Can we please, please have an archive of all the things Cosmo has gotten banned for?
>>378871
It was a joke. Look at his userpage, he's not banned.
Youmustbenewhere.jpg
>>378862
It could be because of the larger user base on NG, but this has never been a problem there.
But doesn't also face the problem of having revolutionary ideas fail due to the authors who came up with them are not strong writers?
Aside from what's been mentioned already, I have a question: Exactly how many votes would be required for approval, and what ratio of upvotes to downvotes would get a story approved? Requiring a large number of votes could make it too difficult for some stories to get enough thumbs up for approval, and if the number is too small it could get rejected just because a handful of people who dislike the premise happened to be the ones who voted first.
Another suggestion is that maybe each person could just choose a few tags, and then only stories with those tags would end up being posted on their page for approval. That way if somebody dislikes shipfics or grimdark on principle they won't have to see them.
>>378885 I'm all kinds of stupid tonight.
It's worth a try... ultimately it is up to you.
Though even with the one week thing I still can see the voting be somewhat abused.
I would suggest maybe putting a timer about 30sec-1min (maybe longer) or so that disables you from up-voting/down-voting when you go into voting that way people don't just randomly up-vote/down-vote.
For example: You go into a story with the voting feature. The up-vote/down-vote buttons are grayed out or something of the sort for 30sec-1min or like I said maybe longer. Once the timer runs out the up-vote/down-vote buttons change to being clickable and thus less abuse. (At least I think there would be less abuse)
I was actually thinking that something like this might be better just the other day. I've noticed that recently there have been periods where no stories get approved for several hours, which leads to serious overexposure of some stories and kind of breaks the feature box. Not that I blame you guys or anything; I sure wouldn't want your job. But it is an issue that needs to be solved.
I'd participate actively in a system like this. Though,
This bothers me greatly and I wish there was something that could be done about it, but I can really think of nothing. Restructuring of the Feature Box to include recent stories could be a step in the right direction, and I have ideas about that, but the likelihood of them being paid attention to is quite low. As is this comment. But I digress. Not a bad idea.
I hope it will prevent that one lucky story at the end of the publishing queue from sucking up all the front page attention while other stories get buried within 20 minutes. Not naming any names, of course.
But isn't this just going full circle?
Already, "popular" authors (god I hate using that word) practically get their stories in the higher ranks automatically, while the lesser authors are forced to suffer in silence?
Call me a hypocrite, but with the way things have going as of late, I hardly trust the featured box anymore. Yes, it gives authors their moment of glory, but a moment is just that.
>>378877
Point 3 I'm less concerned with fics failing, and more concerned with fics not getting votes in either direction and sitting eternally in limbo, because there's always a more popular author/premise drawing attention/votes.
And if you check every failed fic... how is that different than what you do now?
I think if this does go up, you'll have to be careful to really impress that people should be voting on whether it fits the rules, not whether they like/dislike it. Not like people will read that part, but might as well try.
>>378889
Well, I hope so. I have a lot of reservations about the new system (mostly summarized by "omg change") but if it works out well, all the more power to knighty.
So long as you don't mind the user-base throwing out half of the story submission rules ("no meta fics", "no mst3k fics", "no scripts" etc) and also throwing out the usual "just plain bad" fics even if they don't violate a particular rule.
If you go to the Newgrounds system, perhaps you could use a three tier voting system: Yes, Yes But, No. "Yes But" would be for fics that meet the requirements for being posted here, but are lacking in the spelling, grammar, style, and formatting department. Let the stories with Yes votes appear on the front page, and require the writer of a Yes But story to click another button when ready for their story to appear. Let these writers know about the resources available to help writers. I don't know how many would listen, but it might help.
Penis.
I rather like this idea.
Years ago, when forums were still sparkly and new, I ran a role-playing forum that required the members to accept applications, based on a majority vote- the new member needed to be literate and, most of all, not a freaking idiot. Often, we'd get a backlog of stupid users trying to apply, but no one wanted to approve/deny because they didn't want to feel like an ass.
This did not go over well. We eventually tried going back to 'anyone can join', but the forum died within a year. It was sad, and many womanly tears were shed (we were, somehow, exclusively female which confuses me to this day.)
I rather like the idea of shiny stuff for profiles, but those who *do* approve must have a love of writing and reading. Writing, first and foremost, so they know a good fic from a bad one- reading is obvious and if I need to explain it, shoot me now. I like the idea of a week old account; but perhaps a certain amount of fics approved already (five?) before being allowed to approve themselves? I'd hate to think that my 'real' novels were being handled by someone who doesn't know what they're doing, let alone something I just typed up for fun!
Overall... our poor mods are underrated and deserve a lighter workload. Seriously, having been in this position before it's worse than dealing with a snarky editor when you get some dipstick who tries stuffing a cloppy gorefic they ran through Babelfish a few times into the approval queue.
(Sorry if none of this makes sense. I've been up for eighteen hours, ten of which have been spent writing and doing complicated math, after which I discovered that the math was unneeded for my novel's research, so my brain is fried. Thanks, W.H.O.!)
Not sure how we could help anyway. I like the newgrounds idea but it would instead be an issue of putting more stories up on the front page or giving approved stories limits like:
The more watchers you have the higher your priory is on the site to get uploaded. You need an account for about a week or 2 before you can submit your story(s) to keep spamming weeded and force some to just get more done or work on it more if they can. and the old if your approval rating is low then you are on the same level as new stories.
Like having a Watchers cap (over 100 watchers or whatever they high watcher number is having their own box compared to everyone else)
however everything here has even more issues.
best choice to me is getting some new moderators who only do that. Since for my money two of my stories while fixed now in their non reedited form should never have been posted if moderation rules were tighter.
When I read the title of this post, I read "approval" as "portal," and had a bad feeling... While I like how Newgrounds organizes their stuff, I don't feel it would work well on this site. But after reading, I realized you meant something completely different. I'm just an idiot!
Anyway, this does sound pretty cool. It would take some serious getting-used to, but I'm game.
...Although now I'm having nightmares of someone like rawhavoc getting all the bonuses from this system, then beginning to feel like they have authority...
Go for it, but make author names invisible to voters in order to prevent favoritism.
>>378877
1) It sounds like you could, with reasonable safety, blindvote for whatever's currently in the majority and get away with it. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose?
4) Question, then: what happens if the queue fills with stories that nobody's bothering to look through? It's evident that even with thousands of people on Fimfiction daily, not everything on the front page gets read. What's the guarantee that a tiny fraction of that number will muster the sort of willpower to make sure everything gets a fair approval? If it's an unappetizing process for the mods, on whose honor we can count to make sure that everything in the queue will get read eventually, it'll surely be even more unappetizing for the users -- who'd be motivated primarly by somewhat gimmicky rewards.
Some background checks are necessary for those who are likely to be chosen for this possible new system so the system won't get abused. So only the honest folks that will give the waiting story a fair trial gets to do it.
Definitely some positives with this system, although I am worried about the abuses.
Perhaps a trial period?
And I do think the "only available for users with 'X' weeks" should perhaps be more than one week. Perhaps two or three?
P.S. and thanks to you and the other mods for trying to get rid of backlogs.
I approve of the system. Although I do think that a single week is a little low.
I'm concerned about prejudiced down-votes personally. People who automatically down-vote clop stories for example. Yes, there are people dickish enough to look through clops just to down-vote them all out of spite. Perhaps having voting trends looked at so users who always vote certain types of story out of principle are weighted less than people who don't show such solid trends?
>>378909 Hypocrite.
I would say my thoughts on this, but no one cares.
Well, that and the user input is what's wanted...
>>378942 I doubt it should be 2-3 weeks. To me it should be like up to 7+ weeks, especially those who are known to be trustworthy. Though that is just me.
The theory is that there will be more good than bad, that the users honestly (and accurately) checking a story will outnumber those that aren't. I think you stand a good chance of this working out in the long run.
Perhaps require a reason for disapproving a fic? The user has to at least point out what rule was broken. This might help if you have to manually check a story or go find users that are abusing.
Actually, I don't see this system working. See, this is the internet. It's full of lazy people. Even with a rewards system(Hey, look! A picture! I feel so rewarded[/sarcasm]) it requires people to actually do work. You will get the ones that read front page stories anyhow, but those users are not that common.(Mostly because of something called real life. (You know, half of my readers are those guys. Maybe I should be nice. (Nah.))) If it works, great. If it doesn't, then I preemptively say 'I told you so.' (Because I will not take the time to come back and say it.)
I like the idea of an approval queue where users can vote for quality, and I would certainly do my part in voting on new stories.
I think this definitely deserves a trial run (as you say, it can always be reverted later). There is lots of room for abuse, but as most people are lazy, it's very easy to cut down on that abuse. Take steps to counter dummy accounts, don't let people who only downvote have a say, etc.
It you set it up on the basis of "as long as it violates no rules, it will be approved", you could also implement a checkbox for a user who rejects the story to mark which rules it breaks. This lets you see if someone is just randomly rejecting stories.
It's a good idea, and a good system which has worked on other sites. The only concern I see is that it would really need a lot of active participation, which might be a problem. You guys have better data than me, but looking at the number of users online and a comparison of chapter views versus comments or ratings made, it seems like you would need to implement some sort of reward for doing what is, as you say, an often unpleasant and unrewarding job. Maybe some collective rewards; for example, after the community approves or rejects 2500 stories, we get a new piece of banner art or a new emoticon or something.
Also, I'm going to guess that Poultron plays a Gunzerker, and knighty a commando.
Here's a thought. How about a system of trust? For example, I have 4 stories that I've published. 3 completed, 1 on Hiatus. I'm currently working on 2 more at the moment. Now, what if, since I've already proven myself as actually publishing stories that follow the rules, the moderation is more lineant when I go to publish new stories. This way, only new authors need to be screened, and it helps ease some of the burden.
Of course, this has it's own sets of pros and cons associated with it. First off, there seems to be a lot of people who only publish one story so there is still a lot of work for those. Plus you'd have to determine at what point you trust someone to not do something stupid. Finally, there is still the fact that some idiots out there would still abuse such a system. (But then again, will there ever not be?)
Anyways, those are just my thoughts on the matter. I can't say too much about the Newgrounds system, cause I've never really dealt with it before. I'm just worried that nobody will do the moderating, unless they're specifically asked to. It is tedious work after all. Just my 2-bits.
Maybe you guys should have an "overflow queue" or something so if there are crap loads of stories to moderate then you could let users up/down vote them that way we still have mod approved stories and they can get approved at a faster pace
>>378952 makes sense. I think a trial period with accounts already activated would help.
>>378953
LOVE THIS IDEA!
My views have likely already been voiced above, but as a Newgrounds user I feel the need to point out a major flaw in the submission process regardless in case it was missed. Many Newgrounds users end up being obsessed with their statistics including ban and protect points, mostly protect points. As such many users on that site tend to vote yes on everything without actually viewing the submission just to make sure they get their statistics. However whether this ends up going the same way or not is not clear, the people on this site might do the same thing but end up doing it for declining stories if that ends up getting them more success with their statistics, many people tend to always vote with whatever is most likely to provide on the specific site without giving any attention or care to the submissions.
As well as that initial problem, there is also the fact that many people may decline work as it isn't their personal taste. Grimdark stories is a good example of this, many people vote such stories down and if given the power to decline such stories, such people may choose to decline it even if it is a good story just because they don't like it. This may end up being the same for mature stories also, you may get many people come on to decline such adult stories in mass as I have seen people attempt that on other sites, and if given the power they may do it here.
As a whole the Newgrounds style is very good, however it depends on the users you give the power to vote to. You will need to see whether the general userbase of this website who would vote on stories can do it in a unbiased and effective way or if they will ruin it. If it looks like this site can trust its users to properly handle the power then it would likely be a good way to approve stories. But it is always best to check.
Huh. This...could work. I see potential here.
Although I think established authors would have a much easier time getting fics approved - and more quickly - under this system, which seems kinda unfair. I can also see users trying to exploit networks of friends, requesting them to approve their fics through private messages (posting such things on blogs for readers to see would be too obvious for the administrators to pick up and ban said user). Not that these drawbacks outweigh the advantages, and people who authors who are already established and have networks of friends here are probably less likely to submit stuff that's against the rules, given that they would have some experience of the site by that point. But I'm just throwing that out there.
One thought: what if instead of just a downvote with no accompanying info, every downvote had to be accompanied by an explanation of why the fic shouldn't pass approval. Like some websites where when you report a post, there's a list of checkboxes, one for the most common rule violations, and you have to pick which one it violates. That could really cut down on abuse and prevent things like someone holding it back just because they didn't like it.
I'm not against reducing mod workload, really I'm not. But letting the collective userbase judge whether a fic gets on or not? No. Just no. It's all ready agonizing enough now waiting to see if I did everything just so and didn't do anything that might get it banned.
I'm a cynic and therefore I believe that for all the 'love and tolerate' that is preached, the abuse is probably going to be massive with people decling stories based only on if they're shipping or clop or humanized or simply an idea they don't like. Even if there was something to counteract the abuse, it would still amount to a lot of work for the mods.
I trust the mods. I believe they're as fair and impartial as they can be. They work hard and they know the rules imtimately. The average user doesn't. Hence why I don't trust them or myself for that matter to make a good choice.
My only suggestion (and question) is this; Is it possible to program something to do your jobs for you?
Yeah, the workload isn't worth it far as I understand. Especially the number of 'reminders' about stories and catagories that pop up on the news blog up on the front page.
And then the writers themselves can't be trusted to mod each other. You've got every age range covered in a place like this, and that means immaturity will be rampant. It'll turn into a flame war spite fest in a time considerably less than ten seconds flat.
One Idea I might toss up is a delayed automated story approval system. Make the act of uploading and getting a story published require more than two brain cells to complete the task. Make it require a bit of hoop jumping. After all, the approvers technically jump through hoops trying to sort stories in a timely manner, why not just move the burden to the uploader?
As a rudimentary concept, consider the following:
Step One: You create your story and begin pasting your text in.
HOLD that at Story create. The user must wait one hour and respond to an 'are you sure' message that appears on their dashboard when that hour is up. This will hinder impulse uploads and ensures that YES, the user DOES want to upload this.
The second check is an automated word-count checker. Granted, these are easy to defeat, but use it anyway. It checks for the minimum word count of the story. If the story does not meet that count, it gets rejected with only a 'We're sorry, your story did not meet certain criteria'. Without telling the user it's actually the word count so they can spoof it.
The third delay is a randomly generated initial publishing delay cycle. Anywhere from five days to fourteen days. The user gets a message in their profile editing page asking them to confirm. It will not light a message in their inbox, it will not send an email, there will be no warning on the front page. The user MUST actively check their profile editing page for the publish confirmation command. And they must do it THAT day, or it resets and requires them to resubmit. Which means that if anyone wants their story published, they have to be ready to commit to a specific set of tasks.
And as a coup de gras, bury the instructions in the story minimum requirements FAQ. If they can't be bothered to read those required criteria in a story, they'll never find the instructions.
It has its flaws, I'm sure. It's quickly thought up as an alternative method. It will not beat out a human approver, but it'll prevent the tinderbox that is user-side approval, and provides a sufficiently difficult exercise in following instructions to defeat some of the neanderthals that try to post collections of words that they consider a 'story'.
You can find more creative and innovative ways to make this process more user UNfriendly and it will turn away more impatient people. Granted, crap will still make it through, but unless you want to spend the rest of eternity in a thankless routine, or policing what would become Nu4chan it will at least act as a filter for the most impulsive, worst instruction following, poor quality people who can't be bothered to understand what they're doing when they hit SUBMIT.
Debating this in a Skype call
Friend:
Me:
I don't really go to newgrounds, so I have to ask... and I fully admit to this sounding stupid... isn't this a bit of a mobius loop? How will fics be seen to be voted on approval if they have to be seen to be voted on whether or not to be approved?
Did... that make any sense?
This is a really good idea. Also, >>378909 he makes a good point. Do you believe there might be a way where we could get the lesser known stories into the spot light a bit? Beside, it is hard as it is to try to keep up with all the new stories coming in. You release like, what, a good 30 stories a day. If not more. Then, somethings, there are none being release for a multiple amount of hours. Being apart of the TWE, I usually have to read the 'not as good' stories (which have been most of them lately) so that I can help them improve, if they are willing to. The stories on the home page sometimes don't stay long enough to scroll through to see what's new.
So, the only things, if possible, that I would recommend needs change is the the time lapse of new stories and a way to give lesser know, but good, fictions a chance to get some spot light.
From hell, to you, and back again,
Soto Konoha, TWE Admin
[Complaint that was probably already stated goes here]
Anyways, this sounds kinda risky, but I suppose less stress for you people is a good thing.
This may work well for flash submissions on Newgrounds but....
Something is gonna go horribly wrong. And don't say it won't, because somewhere along the line, something will snap.
It COULD work, but I would suggest you contact Newgrounds themselves and see how their site is working for them.
It'll give you another viewpoint to work with.
>>378939 Whoa, I did not think of that. I really like that idea. >>378880, please consider this.
Nothing is perfect, but this is a good thing, go for it guys.
>>378968 I think there is a way to counter this, there are some people who like grimdark fics so there should be a system where whenever a grimdark fic is in the waiting line, the person who likes the grimdark gets a message that a grimdark fic is open while having an option for those who don't like grimdark fics to block those types of fics, of course im trying this while thinking so if you see a problem with this feel free to tell me.
I think counting on anyone to do anything is a mistake. The everything approved / removal based on reports system seems like it would be at least marginally easier - as is, you guys have to at least glance at every story in the queue. This way, you'd have to read a good deal less of a percentage, with the trade of being a 'perceived' quality - and let's be honest, anyone who thinks the majority of submitted stories are of high quality is deluding themselves.
How about a League-of-Legends-Tribunal-esque system?
Simply put, those who volunteer for the duty are given a random sampling of, let's say, ten works from the site to browse through. They're free to do so at their own leisure, and at the end, they are able to vote a green or a red light. Once a single story has been given enough votes (Let's say... twenty-one, perhaps?), it's either passed up for the moderators to pass judgement on, or else if it recieves a low score (again, off the top of my head, 33% or less), it's downvoted and put out of its misery.
The system would ensure that people don't simply browse only for whatever specific type of work takes their fancy, though they could perhaps state a preference for stories involving a certain character, or something similar. The random draw of stories makes it all but impossible to abuse, and if the reward system you suggested is implemented, readers would hopefully vote honestly (though there might be, by necessity, a "Skip" option if you can't decide to vote yes or no on something.) The worst dreck would be filtered out, and the Moderators would only have to deal with works that have recieved approval from readers, especially if voters were required to give some (small, no more than 50-ish words) justification for their vote. And at the end of the day, the power and the majority of the workload goes to the readers, with the Moderators' workload reduced to a simple rubber stamp with veto power where necessary.
Just an idea. Mind you, whichever system you end up using, I applaud the decision to come up with a new system, and I hope whatever happens the Moderators end up doing well out of it. Cheers!
If this new system is tried, the wording should be EXPLICITLY clear that it is for the purpose of whether or not if fits the rules and is NOT the same as thumbs up/down.
I'd like this system, as I'd also like to mod stories but simply don't have the time to do it 24/7. Also, keeping the 'badge' or whatever small and only really visible if you were looking for it would mean less people going after it for the sole purpose of having it.
>>378923
I find your idea of requiring raters to have a published work done as having much potential... although it could also lead to people putting up stuff just so they can rate. Also, it should be a word count, not a story number, as some of us prefer longer continuing stories that last for months.
>>378939 That is a GREAT idea!
So, would the normal process be completely removed in exchange for this, or would it just lighten the load, or what? I'm not sure I'm huge on a dramatic increase in bad fics on the front page. I like to watch that spot.
>>379013 Mm, good idea. Generally, I can't stand people who publish one billion novellas (60.000 and under) and just a few 100.000 word novels, so word count would be a far better choice.
>>378994
Agreed. Things will most definitely go wrong, but that's unavoidable. All systems have their own problems that need to be dealt with, and this will be no different. Either way, since the current system is particularly flawed, switching to this new suggested one might be better in the long run.
I would just hope there'd be a smaller, more trial based stage, where everyone tries out the new system before a full-scale, massive switch to it.
>>378830 I find your post offensive towards those who, through no fault of their own, only have half an ass.
>>378973 I hope that third step is a joke. There's been plenty of times I've been without power/Internet/local gravity for the space of a day- not to mention this site has run into issues that have kept it difficult/impossible to access for extended amounts of time- and I'd be beyond peeved if I had to redo the whole five-to-fourteen-day cycle you spell out because of something beyond my control.
As far as this new method is concerned, it's definitely better than anything I could come up with, but there are still a number of holes that other commenters have done a good job have pointed out. Personally, I would suggest something like what JapaneseTeeth mentioned- allow users to choose what story categories they would rather have a vote on, then randomize what stories in those categories they would be presented to vote upon. Also, I might suggest giving them an occasional random story outside those categories, with an alert that it's something they might not like, and giving them the option to vote.