Offprint updated, so I figured I'd make a thread about it. This update mostly concerns bringing back some features that were lost in the move from 0.4 to 0.5, as well as some bug fixes. If you find bugs, you can use this thread to report them, or just to give feedback on your experiences with this release. For suggestions for future releases, please use the questions and suggestions thread instead.

The patch notes are below, followed by a few notes of my own. Keep in mind this is a relatively minor update, so we aren't seeing any major new features added here.

Hey, everyone!

Today’s update brings back a couple features that were missing at the launch of 0.5 almost two weeks ago. Beyond that, we’ve got a few fixes that we’re putting in, and a new loading system that should make it more obvious when you’re doing something that requires a ping to the server.

Check it all out below!

Features
- Reading History is back—you can now view your reading history across prose, poetry, blogs, and newsposts via the site side menu or the Reading History tab under your portfolio.
- Collections makes a return—you can now create and manage collections of prose and poetry, and show off what your favorites on Offprint are so everyone can see!
- Loading bars are in—any request you make on the site will now show a loading bar right beneath the site banner if that request involves contacting the server, making it easier to tell when the site is fetching your request.

Fixes
- Sections of works migrated from the old API will now show their creation date if they don’t have a publishedOn date
- You can now navigate between sections at the bottom of section pages
- Newsposts should no longer double-count views
- Comments should no longer display the date twice
- Some CSS involving sections lists has been reorganized

That’s all for today. This update should be live within the next hour. Refresh your browsers in order to receive the latest changes, and have a good rest of your day!

Krickis's notes and thoughts:
The collection feature is what we on Fimfiction call "bookshelf" "library" or "favorites", an important feature for keeping tabs on your favorite fics. Unfortunately, there's no tracking yet (that's planned for an upcoming patch, to come out with other forms of notifications), but at least you don't have to manually go through the browse tab to get back to a fic you wanna read.

The need for a "next section" button at the bottom of a given section was pointed out on this group forum first, which is pretty cool.

The sections showing created on date is only relevant for people who have been posting on Offprint for a while now. For those of us who published content on 0.4 or before, we had to migrate content to the new update, and 0.4 and before didn't have chapter publish dates. This caused chapters to say they were published on 31st of Dec, 1969. Now they say they were published on the date they were created, which could be earlier than publication if the author created a chapter and didn't publish it right away (like I've done). This is relatively minor and won't affect new authors at all.

Of particular note, I have to retract something I said was coming previously. I had said in another thread that the "anthology" genre tag was going to be added soon, but after I said that, a member of the mod team opposed the idea of anthology as a genre tag in favor of a different system, wherein you could publish "flash fictions" with no minimum word count then bind them together in one anthology after the fact, which would allow you to have individual tags and stuff per mini fic. There was a lot of discussion about it, with two schools of thought (those who favored simplicity vs those who favored a more refined system) and in the end that feature was tabled for the time being. This is not to say Offprint does not want anthology fics, they're just still figuring out the best way to handle them, and until the dev team decides on what the long term solution is, it's all up in the air.

7408820
:D

How long does it take them to send out invites? Been waiting a week for them to get back to me.

7408882
Legend has it that verbally accosting people through discord makes it go faster!

7408923
>.>

7408926

7408882

Until moderation tools are implemented, the Offprint team is only able to maintain a certain level of control over the site. As such, the early invite alpha codes are only going out to people that the team feels require minimum moderation. Given that some of the past stories you've worked on in any capacity violate the code of conduct on Offprint, the team has decided to hold off on sending you an invite code. You are still welcome to join in the open beta when that is released later this year (late Spring/early Summer).

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

7408939
the fig has spoken

7408820
Well, having collections will be pretty useful, and not being able to favorite things kinda sucked.

Shame about the anthology tag. I can see where you might want better ways to deal with it in the future.

Really, it'd be nice to be able to tag sections with specific tags, and have the prose/poetry distinctions as a per section thing instead of per work. I'm highly in favor of no word limits¹, and being able to collect sections in volumes and make the anthology that way. Heck, I should be able to write a short story in one section, and then include that same section in multiple volumes/anthologies. I should be able to do an anthology of other people's sections, too, with their permission.

Having the tag is easy to implement, tho', and I was kinda hoping they'd do the easy version before trying to figure out the trickier ways to do it, since sometimes if you don't do the easy way instead of the hard way, the hard way never gets done, and neither does the easy one...

--Sweetie Belle

1. Or, more likely, no word limits for sections, just volumes.

7408939
Violate the code of conduct? I just read it and none of this even applies to stories. It's just a generic "don't be mean to people" list. So what part of my stories is an issue?

• Be civil, courteous, and considerate to all Offprint users at all times
• Refrain from inciting, encouraging, or enacting personal attacks towards other users or real persons in all content related to Offprint
• All forms of discrimination or bigotry (sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, religious persecution, etc.) directed towards users or other persons are forbidden
• Do not link to, post, or encourage illegal content on Offprint. This includes providing access to pirated software, encouragement of piracy/theft or other criminal actions, or work that is not your own without proper attribution
• Users may not engage in spam-posting, phishing, or similar behaviours
• Do not fish for interaction with your work, such as by offering rewards in exchange for following or voting on works
• Users may not share the private information of others (i.e. home address, legal information, etc.) either on or off-site
• Ban-evading behaviour is prohibited. Banned/suspended users may not create or use alternate accounts for the duration of their restriction nor attempt to circumvent other security measures put in place by site staff. To appeal a ban, please contact beatriz@offprint.net
• Users may not create alternate accounts for the purposes of ban evasion or to artificially boost the popularity of other works, nor to attempt to impersonate or attack other users. All other alt accounts are subject to moderator discretion
• All rules detailed here are subject to moderator discretion, and are subject to change as staff sees necessary

7408940
Not really. I can't see what terms of service my stories have violated.

7408939
And honestly, one of the first stories published to your site is calling a group of people "chuds". I guess some groups are okay to insult?

Twilight Sparkle Meets an Alt-Right Chud.

7409050
This blog post of yours stated that you "helped bring into the world" a "silly Aryanne clopfic", so we decided not to risk bringing you onto the site for now.

7409054
Well... yeah. Alt-right chuds are fine to insult.

Wow, this group is a drama magnet.

7409201
But why?

7409187
Mostly staying out of the drama as someone who isn't site staff (unless it gets out of hand to the point where I need to step in as an admin of this group), but I feel it would be prudent to point out the reason the alt-right is fine to insult is because they are a hate group (as defined by numerous organizations, as well as common sense considering what they stand for).

7409003
Actually, a lot of what you proposed is in talks to be the way things are handled. There are two kinds of anthologies at work on Offprint. What we're used to on Fimfiction (collections of mini fics by a single author) and a way to bundle certain specific stories together like a print anthology might. This would be useful for people with series, like I could bundle all of my Who We Become series together for easy reading, but could also be used to create certain collected works based on theme or some such. These works would be able to be between multiple authors, and collect prose and poetry together, the only stipulation would be that you can only add fics from people you're friends with (to prevent people becoming hangers on of bigger popular fics for no reason other than to hopefully catch some of that popularity for themselves). The debate is largely if these should be separate features or if single-author anthologies of mini fics should be handled by the same anthology feature for larger works.

The current (to my understanding) way things are leaning that is making everyone happy is to have these features as separate, but to allow certain specific features to single-author anthologies in which when you create a story there will be a toggle to mark it as an anthology of smaller works, and clicking that will allow you to individually tag each section with its own characters and genres. To avoid having two different features use the same word, the bigger multi-work anthologies that allow multiple users and the inclusion of larger stories will be relabled as something else (I proposed "Compilation" since "Collection" is already what's used for the bookshelf feature, although "Series" is being considered as well). In addition as a separate but related thing, collections are someday meant to be something you can make a more interesting public facing thing, where you can add little notes to it and make collections based on a theme, which is similar to the multi-work anthology/compillation/series feature but a little more subdued (people would only be able to see a collection you made from your page, but in turn, you wouldn't need to be friends with someone to add their work to a collection of this nature).