Site Post » Clarification On Fimfiction Expansion · 11:14am Dec 24th, 2014
So clearly I made the mistake of thinking my few mentions of site expansion over the last year or so had been picked up by the masses. Now everyone, rightly, has a multitude of questions about it, so I'm going to clear some important things up.
Fimfiction.net will always be for ponies
The Fimfiction you know and love (or hate) will always be like this. It will always only show MLP stories. If you're a user who only cares about MLP, you have nothing to worry about because nothing is going to change for you.
The site will have new branding for the expansion
We will operate two domains for the site. The primary domain which will be whatever we call the site and the second will be Fimfiction. The new branding will never take over the existing branding on Fimfiction, they will just run off the same back end.
It's not happening soon
We have been working tirelessly on a list of things that need doing for site expansion for over a year now. One of the last key features is tagging, which will make it easy to show content for a specific fandom without showing other. Still, we have a lot more work to do on the backend to get there
But what about the pony haters?
If someone is truly dedicated to hating ponies, there's nothing stopping them doing it right now. Even so, ratings are limited, meaning you can only do 100 a day anyway, so a single user can't do much anyway. We're also working on a rating weight system that will mean downvoters votes mean very little.
But what about 502fiction?
This ties into the point about it not happening soon. You may have noticed that the site for a while now has been pretty damn performant. Everything tends to load very quickly, and that's because we've spent a lot of time recently optimising things for the future and making sure we can scale as easily as just adding new servers
Will I need a new login?
No, you don't. As I said, they will run off the same backend, fimfiction.net will just act as a gateway to the site with a filter for pony content over the top.
Fair enough, but if major info could be released like this then I'd be much happier. It makes it clearer on what you want to do.
Thank you. This is exactly the type of information we need to hear.
Myself and hopefully plenty of others will have their fears put to rest by this.
Sounds great to me! I asked in the other thread, but for total clarification, what of original fiction? Alexstrasza said it would happen in a 90% likelihood, but just wanted to get news from the source, if you don't mind. Also, if it is so, how will it be handled? Will there be tags that can fit into original stories, and will we, the pony authors who write original fiction, be able to carry over our fanbases from here to the other site?
I ask only because I am very excited about the prospect. Fimfic has been the most readable site on the web for a long time, and reading original fiction on here would be great. Not even to mention a better community, plus the ability to give Fimfic authors a chance to make it big with original story. Since, even if it's hosted for free, telling an agent or publisher that your story has 50,000 views carries some weight.
I realize this is for the future, but will the new site use the same log-ins in some type of cross-promotion, or will anybody interested need to make new accounts?
I also realize it's rather petty for a freaking fan-fiction writer to worry about branding of all things, but I thought I'd ask.
I don't see an issue with this really. ~<3
2674743 Original fiction will be handled identically to fanfiction, it just won't have a tag for the series it's a part of. It'll have an "Original fiction" tag.
Thank you for this clarification! I can now say that I am starting to like this idea. And we get to keep the emoticons!
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Sounds great to me! Like I said, I'm really excited about the prospect of bringing my original fiction over here, since I'd be able to not just promote my own writing but show off more of my writing skills beyond pony. Great move, I say.
I'm happy with this
Thank you kindly for the clarification. :)
quickmeme.com/img/d6/d61f98730c3c24ebd6fa5742c131f9a3ca88e1a39a48a6852d39f5dd70de8184.jpg and my soul and maybe my first born
Thank you for the clarification.
I was one of the many who was surprised by your earlier mention, though it wasn't a completely unexpected one - while I don't read a whole lot of other fanfiction, I've read enough to agree that fimfiction is one of the best reading platforms around.
The idea of leveraging the platform / codebase to capitalize on other audiences is a perfectly logical one. Still, "the site is going general" could be interpreted in a number of different ways, so hearing your thoughts / considerations / approach is reassuring.
Perfect~
I still reserve the right to do the 'told you so' dance should things go horribly, horribly wrong.
this was all i needed to hear to be completely and utterly okay with this idea
and i was already leaning towards okay....
Woo! Color me excited. Also looking forward to that weighted rating system. That sounds like a good thing.
Look, the system here is pretty freaking sweet. The technical side is fine, and the look and feel of the system is fantastic. Expansion is the completely understandable, why shouldn't you take your creation and share and care it with the world of fiction lovers at large?
The issue was fear of the loss of identity and what little connection this community has, this clarification, at least for me, alleviates any concerns or worries I had. Thank you very much for taking the time to write it.
Finally, a place to put my Doctor Who x Sherlock smut.
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> not superwholock
pleb
2674772
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aaaaaand imma stay on this side of the Equestrian Wall
Well. now that that's clarified, color me intrigued. there's some features on this site that I've been praying fanfiction. net would use. (like being able to tell if someone has even logged in within the last few years.)
This helps, thank you.
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I don't actually watch Supernatural.
What happened to the banner pictures?
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That's ok, I didn't even know superwholock was a real thing until this morning. I just wanted to be special.
Okay, few. Had me worried.
2674800 You haven't been on for a while have you?
Thank you very much for this Knighty.
Now see, announcing it THIS way makes sense, and users like myself will be a LOT less displeased. I'll even support the new site when it arrives by porting my non-MLP stuff over (where applicable--a lot of the stuff I write won't meet the submission rules, I'm sure, such as my most well-known Sailormoon story).
Despite some of what I've said over in the comments on the other blog post, I'm ENTIRELY behind the idea of a general fanfiction site that uses THIS site's build, because Fanfiction.net is horrendously designed and posting there is a nightmare.
It'd just have been nice if you'd announced it this way in the first place...you really do need to work on your people skills, knighty.
And coming from me, that's really saying something.
2674800 They are still there, in your heart. But in all seriousness, Knighty axed them to save bandwidth.
Wasn't there something going on a long time ago about a fimfiction app?
~ TOOWC
That makes a lot more sense, but if that's the case then what's the excuse for removing all the FIM branding if they are on different sites but the same backend? The pony site should keep the branding of pony, and the general site should lose the branding of pony.
Simple.
Either way you just saved me writing out a blog post writing that I'm getting off this ride before it crashes and burns, THIS change shouldn't be as much of a problem... if only you had said that initially lol.
Please can you just answer me this one question
If the sites are separate then this makes no sense whatsoever, if anything the pony branding of the site should be increased so it doesn't look like the general site.
Now if this new site support all fanfiction except pony which goes on FimFiction, I'm fine with that because fanfiction is a mess website wise but the same culture issues won't go away although could be reduced with increased moderation on this new site that fimfic already has so we'll see but seriously... that post above I quoted doesn't make sense if they are split can you clarify?
I am curious how Groups will work. Will you have each fandom segmented or will the groups list be a truly daunting list of everything under and over the moon?
2674816 no I don't get off the site.
2674820 oh never herd about it.... I miss seeing trixie all the time.
2674824 I haven't really decided on that particular one yet to be honest.
Wow. That's a heck of a challenge. I mean, finding and reading one hundred stories all wroth an up vote in a day?
I graciously accept this quest you bestow upon me your highness.
Though seriously, just to get the story strait; you are creating a, somewhat separate, expansion for FimFiction running on the same basic skeleton of coding and format but for generalised fiction, both fan and original verity?
And here I didn't think you could get any more awesome Kighty.
I'm no expert in computer coding and programming (yet) but I've got a Dad who is so I seriously understand how difficult the work you do is. Just to let you know, the effort is highly appreciated. If there is a donations box please point me in it's direction. I am firmly in the Christmas giving spirit right now.
And hey, who know? Maybe we can even spread the spirit of our little fandom and community to a few others even if they have no love for the show itself. The internet could sure use it.
Wait, wait, when you’ve been saying “expansion” in the past you actually meant this? Only you could somehow think that “expanding FiM Fiction” could ever be construed as “starting new sites that are only tangentially related,” much less actually mean that.
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Tags.
Thank you for this clarification. That eliminates the large majority of my concerns - I really like having just a pony specific community not diluted with generalization or other fandoms.
Been thinking about this for a little bit, and the problem is this: people who mass downvote stories are not one person spamming downvotes across dozens of stories; they are a bunch of people spamming downvotes at the same one to five at a time. We already have problems with downvote bombs by groups behaving as bullies and by people who disapprove of certain settings or topics in stories, and this doesn't at all safeguard against a massive increase in exactly that. The ability of moderators to deal with this issue has been scaled back, not up, so I can't say I'm optimistic about future enforcement on this issue in particular.
This is probably a good start, but because downvotes are very visible things, you'll never be able to make them not have an impact on people, which is kinda more important to the community than the impact of downvotes on a story's Feature chances. The only way to make them less troublesome is to remove them entirely, but that's got its own set of problems.
Or maybe it's just me that doesn't care what ends up in the feature box due to a long history of most of it being badly-written junk. I do kinda ignore the front page completely most of the time.
But whatever, this is just about the downvotes and I'm not actually that worried about them, just pointing out flawed reasoning.
Thanks for the clarification, I rescind most of my points of contention.
Wow, you're really going to general fiction? Thank God.
I was actually literally thinking of suggesting the move myself, but who the fuck am I and what do my opinions matter. Your site looks so much better than FF.net for instance, and I think it would be a shame to just keep it restricted to the pony fandom.
This is the best news I've heard in a long time.
Edit: original fiction too? I feel like crying... THANK YOU BASED KNIGHTY
I'm not sure what to think of this. In itself, the idea of a general site with the same features as Fimfiction isn't bad. While there are surely also flaws and there other sites that do a few things better, Fimfiction is basically my favorite fanfiction site.
Of course, this isn't really happening (and also impractical), as the site itself will change.
I think it's kinda naive to say that nothing will change for Fimfiction users. Even if Fimfiction itself will be a "MLP Mode" that only displays MLP-related stuff, you can't really "segrate" everything. If nothing else, then because of the users. If it's successful, there will be others, who don't care about MLP much (if at all) but will be part of the entire userbase. Sure, they won't do much with the MLP side, but they are still part of the site and mingle with MLP fans (except for those who strictly stay on "Fimfiction"). In the end the userbase itself will change.
Of course, the MLP fans will still be strong, especially when Fimfiction itself (sort of) stays. So, in the end, the change might be small for people who remain purely on the MLP side. Still, I can't believe that nothing will change for them.
If I have to name on advantage of Fimfiction, over other FF sites, it's that the "community" is closer (mind you, there are also bad sides to this). Sites like Fanfiction.net and AO3 feel cold and "soulless" in comparison (but at least you don't have to deal with idiots as often there). One result is that stories get more attention easier than on other sites. Even as a nobody, you can reach quite some people and get reactions to your stories, which would get ignored on others. I think there are basically two reasons for this:
1. Fimfiction has features that make new stories quite visible to others. This is something that a general site would also have, unless the features itself change, which would also change Fimfiction
2. The small focus. Since this site is about a single fandom, pretty much every story is relevant to everyone's interest in at least one point. There are several aspects to that, that may make it easier for stories to get noticed. A general site doesn't have this and might make it harder to notice new stories, particularly by small writers.
Again, things might not change much for pure Fimfiction users. But I have trouble believing that they won't change at all.
One issue that I could foresee is that "general" users might complain that MLP fans get special treatment with Fimfiction (and I doubt that they'd accept a "Grandfather Clause"). I can imagine that this, possibly in addition to other factors, might lead to the removal of Fimfiction. However, considering how long it'll take to make the expansion, how long it'll take to form a sizable general userbase, that'll noticeably (as in, more than "just a loud minority") complain about it and how long it'll take until such a decision is reached, this might not happen until the MLP fanbase is borderline-dead anyway.
Would I use the entire site or just stay on the Fimfiction side? Probably a mix of both. As long as nearly all fanfiction I read and write are about MLP, I don't have much use for more. Of course, if I read/write more stories of other stuff or even lose interest in MLP (this actually happened for several months this year) than I will make use of the general side more. In that way, it's pretty adventageous, since it's not too much of a change (I tell you, it's pretty tricky to go back to AO3, after nearly purely using Fimfiction) and has all the stuff I like about Fimfiction.
I'm still not entirely sure about the whole thing, but I'm tending to be positive and I'm curious how it things will develop. In fact, part of me wants it to happen more quickly (not that I want to pressure anyone).
Anyway, thanks for the clarification. I admit, it got me worried a bit, when I read about the expansion in the previous post, but now I'm more excited than anything.
2674845 can't use it I'm on silk from a hand me down kindle fire HD of unknown age.
Okay. Let me see if I can make an analogy.
You're saying that the main, general fiction site will be, like, a great big soap bubble. And FiMFiction will be like a smaller bubble stuck to the large bubble. Technically separate bubbles with their own pockets of air, but they are ultimately linked to the same source.
And furthermore you are saying that
-there won't be any url changes
-there won't be any mass influx of users to the FiMFiction side of things
-there won't be any content crossing over from the larger site into FiMFiction and vice versa
-there won't be any incentive for the trolls from the larger site to come over into the smaller site because they're still technically separate and neither bubble is bothering the other
-That in the end, TO THE PERCEPTION OF THE AVERAGE USER, they will ultimately appear to be two separate sites
-And that in the end, to use another analogy, they're basically just two light bulbs running off the same battery. All part of one device, but two different bulbs.
Is this basically what you're saying?
I hope it's pay-to-win.
2674749 Original fiction? Knighty, you expansionist genius.
2674772 Sherlock and Doctor Who? Damn, that pretty much blows my fan fiction out of the water.
Oh my god all this butthurt. Bahahahaha, makes sense that basement-dwellers would fear change. ¡Viva la Revolución!
Love all these fucking "logical" people hosing down your exciting announcement with cold, flat beer and chewing tobacco spit. What ever would you do without your loving userbase?