Site Post » Patreon & Survey Follow Up · 11:48am May 13th, 2018
First of all, reminder that we have a Patreon you can find at https://www.fimfiction.net/patreon . Apparently a lot of people didn't know we had one so there it is. $5 will remove ads on the site for you. I'll be making the Patreon page more prominent in relevant areas of the site soon to make sure people actually know it exists.
Thanks everyone for filling in the survey last night. We had over 5,000 responses and I did in fact read every single comment left as they were coming in and finished reading them this morning. It seems there are a few features which we would potentially be interested in making premium features (part of the $5+ patreon rewards).
- Custom emoticons you can upload
- Custom titles / colours
- Animated avatars
- Avatar border frames
- Extra themes
- Custom CSS
- Higher tier patreon rewards that let you “gift” premium?
- Mass story download
- Banners
- Automatic day/night theme selector
- Free advertising slots?
- Author blacklisting
This is just a brief list I threw together based on some of the responses and my own ideas. This is by no means a list of features that are definitely coming, just ideas.
The reason we are looking at this kind of thing is that advertising is becoming increasingly difficult, and especially in Europe it's going to be almost impossible soon so I wanted to survey to see how people feel about ads and different methods of monetisation.
I'm curious to see what people think about those ideas. It should be noted that ideas involving paying authors directly or indirectly are not doable because they get too dangerously close to paying for fanfiction which is a legal line we aren't going to touch (as much as I think authors deserve to be able to make money from fanfiction).
Clarification: By author blacklisting I mean readers can block certain authors so you don't see their stories. This is good for readers and writers as it gives readers a way to avoid author's stories and not give themselves the temptation to drive-by downvote.
Just out of curiosity: how much does it cost per day to have Fimfiction up and running?
Oh?
That's the first time I've heard of this.
4859465
Site finances are not something I'm interested in sharing specifics of.
4859469
Fair enough.
So this would only be through patreon? because my idea of interactive pony packs might not work that way... well it could on a smaller scale but not in the same way. Maybe I’ll never get an interactive dark magic twilight but that would be sad.
Custom CSS, animated avatars and possibly also custom emojis are something I could see leading to idiocy, headaches and possible Bad Things. But the rest sounds good.
I still got no money to help out though. :(
I don't know what custom CCS is, but a lot of this sounds pretty neat. I did know there was Patreon, but I haven't contributed yet, although I might now that I have an actual job again.
In fact screw it, I just got paid and have a little extra money to throw around, so why not? This was the place I discovered my love of writing after all.
Since most of these features can either be added or removed (as appropriate) with various browser extensions (and most of them already exist in that form), will implementing these as paid features have any effect on allowing/encouraging/obfuscating the ability for people to make their own without paying?
4859475
Only a few of them could be done without site side work. Generally not opposed to people doing the ones that can (not like I can do anything about them).
And what, exactly, would 'author blacklisting' be good for? A feature like that is just screaming to be misused.
Do the free advertising slots mean advertising stories around the site, or would that be unfair to people who aren't a sponsor?
4859480
I'd imagine it'd be similar to blocking someone, though more to the point of preventing any of their material showing up on your end.
4859482
Because that would go so well.
Most of the features here are just bonuses like something Discord would have, and I can only imagine the inevitable problems that most of these would cause.
4859469
Could help though, as example I would mention https://www.bronyradiogermany.com. They have direct on the frontpage a bar where you can see how much they need for each month to keep the thing running and how much is already covered. Maybe for Fim it would encoureage people to donate more over Patreon. And once the runnning costs are covered, rest is either for your pokets or could be 50%/50% between you and social projects <- which also encourages people more to donate.
I don't mind extra features or ads as long it's not in anyone's face or preventing us from reading and writing, sadly I can't contribute as I'm one of those weirdos that aren't able to buy things online.
As long this site still functions on my PS4 web browser and the ads aren't in my face, I don't see an issue with finding other ways of funding the thing.
I know, from both sides of the equation, that advertising is a really rubbish way to support a site. The income per person is razor thin, and if you try to boost it by making the ads more prominent, you risk alienating your readers.
I was in the first batch of Patreon supporters, because I'm very happy to support a site that's brought so much into my life (and to get rid of adverts).
I didn't answer the survey because I already Patreon subscribe to pay the site back and hide the ads, but those look like interesting ideas and I could see making use of some of them.
These would be cool:
Custom emoticons you can upload
Custom titles / colours
These would actually be really cool
Animated avatars
Avatar border frames
Extra themes
I would actually totally use these, since I already use a injected custom css for my desktop for banners and styles!
Custom CSS
Banners
As for Mass story download I mean, you can kinda already do this through Film Archive where you can download the entire site's stories including a nice json file with all the metadata for each. (TBH I was considering writing a FimOffline version of the site that uses this that lets people browse and read offline identical to the main site).
That said, one thing that would be super cool is the ability to download an entire library in one go. I currently have a script that did this but I haven't run it in ages and its probably outdated.
Less interesting but still cool
Automatic day/night theme selector
Free advertising slots?
Author blacklisting
Im all for cool new features and some of these I would totally use :)
That said I support the site more so because I use it often and feel like giving a little towards the costs than to remove advertising. And I'm sure there are others out there who feel the same, so really any extra features at all are just awesome benefits.
All sounds good and now...after I finished the survey, I come to realize that there was something else I should have added, but perhaps this would be included up Custom Emoticons ?
More Pony Emojis please. Like some more Spike, Starlight, Celestia, Luna emojis and even some new ones like Tirek and Sombra?
Why is advertising becoming impossible in Europe?
I think custom emoticons would be popular.
Dang, so no customizable buttons? Losing the button that let me go to group threads overview with one click instead of a drop down menu severely lessened my interaction with the forums. Unless that's what you mean with custom CSS
I would pay to advertise my stories and other creative projects on the site.
+When I say stories or other creative projects, I mean stories, YouTube videos, music, and other creative projects that I have hosted on other sites.
I would not pay for any custom features though besides extra emoticons. I wouldn't mind paying for custom emoticons, especially if the custom emoticons were Discord or Luna emoticons.
If you go down the route of animated avatars, please please please give us a way to turn off the animation as well. I find it incredibly distracting to read text next to a field of bouncing, flashing images.
Judging by the trend Fanfiction.net has going on now for pretty much forever and the trend Deviantart has going on for a little while now (both trends that came to be because of pressure from the respective writer/artist community), I can already see where this is going, that authors here can block you from seeing their fics..... Bad idea.
Deviantart is doing that now, you get blocked by an artist and you can see nothing from them anymore; no art, no journal entries, not even their profile. This alone would be stupid enough already, as denying a user of the site seeing an artist's art does not contribute anything to protect the artist from harassment or cyber-bullying. Simply preventing the user from commenting and sending private messages always sufficed for that goal.
No, what makes this really dumb is that this "feature" (as well as the general blocking privilege Deviantart always had) was introduced in the naive belief that it wouldn't get abused..... Because of course it would and it gets abused a lot.
Speaking from personal experience, block "reasons" on Deviantart range from actual harassment all the way down to "My friend doesn't like you and told me I should block you, so I went and did that". That's only one of the happy stories about blocking other users from my 5 years of active Deviantart experience that I could tell you here. Another one would be "Eww, you believe in the existence of ghosts and you even dare to tell me it's rude to say that people who claim to have seen ghosts have mental problems? Here, have a block for your opinion about the existence of ghosts, because you have mental problems, too!".
Such a thing as using the block feature in a responsible way doesn't exist on Deviantart. Open your mouth and say ANYTHING and you are threatened with not only never talking to an artist again, but also to never see the art you love ever again.
And the most severe problem with Deviantart's system is, that every artist can now decide if you are able to view the art of your choice and spend your time on Deviantart the way you want to or not. Regardless of the block "reason", and whether that reason is justified or not, a blocked offender still has the right to enjoy a certain art piece they love and no artist has the right to deny them that.
Your own freedom ends where someone else's begins.
And this "feature" is, frankly, just the artists who block you deciding to attack your freedom of choosing what you want to look at in the Internet.
Needless to say, it doesn't even cross the artists' minds that they're doing a wrong thing with that; they love to have full control of everything they upload and of everyone who enjoys what they upload. If keeping the feeling of power this gives them means to block your access to their art for saying you disagree with them on something, then they're going to do that. Artists on Deviantart don't care for YOUR rights.
The block feature on Deviantart is and always was just an instrument for artists to silence users with inconvenient opinions.
And now that such a block even cuts you off from seeing the art, rather than just from commenting on it, it has fully become a way for artists to enact revenge on people for saying things that made them feel stepped on the tail or to blackmail people into submission ("Only say nice things about me and always agree with me, or you'll never see the art you love so much again!") by threatening them with denied art access.
Deviantart's system doesn't benefit people who suffer from harassment or cyber-bullying, it only benefits the tyrants in the artist community anymore. And there are a lot of those.
And before you say now "But, Fluttercheer! How do you want to know that the same would happen on FIMFiction.net? Why being so pessimistic?":
You don't know every author here.
FIMFiction.net has thousands of authors and new ones still register accounts and start to write here.
It is impossible for you to know if every author here, or even just most authors here, are mature enough to understand that cutting off readers from access to their stories is, no matter the offense committed, a morally wrong thing to do.
FIMFiction.net never discussed introducing such a "feature", so you can't know how authors here will think about it. Especially not for new authors who will come to the site in the future.
The bottom line is, it is impossible to read authors' minds. And once such a "feature" to blacklist people from reading your fics is introduced, then you can't get rid of it anymore once it shows how bad of an idea introducing it was, cause the authors who demanded it will scream and stop donating then.
There is no way how that couldn't go wrong. Deviantart has shown that account owners aren't ready for so much power.
4859480
THIS. Except that there isn't even a right way to use such a "feature", so I expanded on your argument by sharing my experiences.
4859483
>>> Having to create a couple of alternate fake accounts via the TOR browser, so you can read the fics of authors who are so entitled to decide for you what you can enjoy, without the mods banning all of your accounts for circumventing the blacklist.
That is how the future would look here then.
4859535
I'd assume that Knighty didn't mean that as blocking someone from even reading stories. That would be needlessly denying the site ad revenue from the site's most basic function and would probably make people rage quit the site if they're on the receiving end of feature abuse.
Welp... I think my thoughts just happen to mirror what a few others here have explained already. The blacklist idea us a very bad idea. Personally, I can see it as a site killer, with 90% of the core membership leaving once things reached a certain point.
My advice, do NOT do it, Knighty. Offering a blacklist option will only cause grief, and actually empower those who would abuse the system.
Well I feel like a doofus now. I knew there is a patreon but hadn't looked into it to realize donating will turn off ads. And then suggested that very thing in the survey.
I guess I should put my bits where my muzzle is! 
4859544
If the blacklist only functions to block me from having to see or be contacted by whomever is on my list, there's no problem. That's how this sort of thing usually works, despite the idiocy I'm reading about here from a couple other sites. There are certainly a couple people who deserve to be blocked, but I just scroll past them, a skill many more could stand to learn.
Every person having their own personal blacklist and filtering the site content for them would be a server heavy task, which is why, I guess, it's in the suggestions for paid features rather than being a thing already.
It sounds like the Patreon link could be more visible.
Correct me if I'm wrong but do you mean author blocking as you can block an author from appearing on your front page? As in say blocking a certain terrible smut writer one has no interest in from appearing on the front page? or do you mean the author can block people from viewing? You may want to clear that up in your post.
4859552
That'd be much better than what others understood by "author blacklisting".
4859544
Uh....
I thought a black list was where you block an author on your end so you don't see their stories or blog posts.
I didn't know it would be the author creating the black list.
Still I really don't have much else to say.
But maybe have it so the reader has control of what they can and can't see?
Just an idea.
I will break down my thoughts on the suggested list of site features.
1. Custom emoticons you can upload.
My thoughts: This could be a good idea if you offered Discord, Luna, or other emoticons people have been wanting on the site for a long time.
2. Custom titles / colors.
My thoughts: This seems kind of pointless. Does it matter what color a title is? Or whether it is customizible or not?
3. Animated avatars.
My Thoughts: Deviant Art does this. I mean it is an idea. It's probably not something I would use though.
4. Avatar border frames.
My Thoughts: Why does this matter? Unless the borders are animated or something, solve world peace, or pay my rent, I see no purpose to add them.
Edit: yellowbastion informed me this was their idea and clarified what they meant.
I wasn't really sure what Knighty was talking about when he brought up the icon borders but after yellowbastion explained what he meant, I can see a system like this being useful.
An idea I had is that maybe there can be a bronze border for bronze Patreon supports, a silver border for silver Patreon supporters, and a gold border for gold Patreon supporters.
5. Extra themes.
My Thoughts: Extra themes...for what? A blog? A profile? Seems kind of pointless. Then you will have a bunch of blogs uploaded with font colors no one can read like on Deviant Art. :L
6. Custom CSS.
My Thoughts: For blogs and profiles? Or? Again, seems kind of pointless. There are already enough customizable options available to make a profile look like you want.
7. Higher tier patreon rewards that let you “gift” premium?.
My Thoughts: This is a good idea. Giving people the ability to gift others is usually a good way to go.
8. Mass story download.
My Thoughts: This could cause trouble for authors in the future. Someone could mass download many works of different authors and upload them to different sites. I'm not too comfortable with this.
9. Banners.
My Thoughts: Banners for what? A profile? A journal? Seems kind of pointless.
10. Automatic day/night theme selector.
My Thoughts: There is already a way to switch between these things in your settings. This seems pointless.
11. Free advertising slots.
My Thoughts: I like the idea of having an advertising system but not for things that are on the site. Advertising should be set aside for people who want to advertise their creative projects (like YouTube video, music, and so on) that are off of the site. I just think it would be neat if you could have an ad for your creative projects on the site for like a month or something. It would reach a wider amount of people than just the people who are following you/ the groups you post in.
12. Author blacklisting.
My Thoughts: You can already block people. Blacklisting seems kind of pointless.
Edit: Knighty just clarified the blacklisting thing.
Now that I see the clarification, I also think that authors should be able to blacklist readers so they don't see their stories either. Also, blacklisting should extend to group posts. Right now the blocking system still allows you to talk to people you have blocked in groups. It would be better if their posts were blocked in groups as well. This would save group owners a LOT of trouble because people often take their arguments into groups, which is quite frustrating.
My Suggested Site Additions:
1. Add a donation button to the top of the site where people can find it easily. Encourage people to directly donate (though PayPal or another online tip jar) in addition to donating to your Patreon.
2. Please turn this site into a general fiction site. We've been waiting for this for years. T^T
3. Maybe offer image or other file hosting as a paid service? People would definitely be willing to donate to unlock the ability to store their images and other files on the site.
4. The possibility of having blogs featured would be great!
Free advertising slots?
Reserving a spot or two on the front page for users to promote site content would be pretty nice. It wouldn't have to be limited to stories, either. Groups, user profiles, blog posts, bookshelves, and stuff like that could be promoted as well. Some of those things just lurk in the background and hardly get any exposure at all.
4859538
There you have a point.
One problem that is still there is, that if enough authors pay for such a "feature", it could compensate for the amount of lost ad money from ragequitting readers, especially if even more authors than now come here (Keyword: General Fiction Site).
But even that would still create huge damage for FIMFiction.net. Not only is there the danger of readers who ragequit, such readers also have plenty of archives for FIMFiction.net that allow them to read each fic on another site if they want to do that at their disposal, which is essentially ad money getting lost to another site that hosts the same fics as FIMFiction.net does and makes the whole idea pointless in the first place, as readers simply read the fics from authors who blacklisted them elsewhere then.
In the worst case, it would mean such a huge loss of readers that the site simply collapses, because regardless of how many authors are paying for that "feature", there will always be more readers than authors and if even just the majority of them wanders off and reads fics in an archive that someone else is hosting, then the authors here on FIMFiction.net have no use from publishing on their accounts here anymore. It will also make them peeved seeing that their blacklisted readers can then read their fics without giving them something back in the form of upvotes.
And if authors feel it's pointless to publish their fics here because they don't get the attention they want, they will stop doing that.
No readers + No authors = No activity on FIMFiction.net
This adds even more reason why introducing a blacklist "feature" would be a dumb thing to do.
4859549
Are you talking about the way Discord handles it, that if you blacklist someone, you can't see their stories and comments anymore, but they can still see yours?
4859535
Thank you for the addition!
However, I have to say, that those four downvotes are hilarious.
I'm not in a good enough place financially for extra monthly expenses, so patron is out for me personally.
However, I wouldn't mind dropping some cash into the pot via PayPal or similar to enable some bigger, one time project. Like, say, greasing the wheels on the long teased expansion to general fiction.
Granted, I'm not sure if money is the problem in that case, but thought I'd... well, add my two cents, so to speak.
You really should put a 'Donate' link in the Browse drop-down menu so it is easy to find. I knew it existed, but had no idea where to find it again.
Clarification: By author blacklisting I mean readers can block certain authors so you don't see their stories. This is good for readers and writers as it gives readers a way to avoid author's stories and not give themselves the temptation to drive-by downvote.
4859568
I'm talking about how sites have handled blacklisting/blocking since the 90's. I have no idea how Discord does it. Generally though, when a user has a blacklist, it functions to block the blacklisted individual from contacting you through any site provided means (here that means no PM's and no comments on blogs, stories, etc. owned by the blacklister, and of course no replies). Someone who's blacklisted might not ever even find out. Being notified that you've been blacklisted only lets people know who to harass if they're mad.
What you and others have described is what's known as a ban, banning someone from access to web pages in the first place. Ban powers are generally reserved for admins, not users.
4859585
That's the good version that can't be abused.
Just to clarify the issue you're actually interested in, as a (more) mature member of society, I'm more than capable of ignoring people I dislike without the aid of a blacklist, so it's not something I'd be interested in paying for. Besides, even those people can surprise you with something good sometimes. I'd rather not burn bridges I don't have to.
4859558
This is already easily doable and there are third-party bulk downloads of Fimfiction stories available. I haven't seen any significant examples of what you describe being done with them, though. Closest I've come across is the occasional unauthorized re-upload of a famous story like Fallout Equestria or Cupcakes to other fanfiction sites, which eventually get removed when noticed.
I think an officially-supported bulk download option would be most handy for folks who are into analyzing and organizing data, assuming the bulk download has a good selection of metadata in it. And for the compulsive data hoarders who just like knowing that if the apocalypse happens they'll have plenty of reading material in their bunker for future generations.
Given some of the drama I've seen over the years I can see the appeal of author blacklisting for some folks if it makes the site behave as if the author they don't like simply doesn't exist, filtering their stories out of the feature box and search results and whatnot. Does blocking accomplish that? I've never blocked anyone so I don't know how it works.
4859591 As long as the bulk upload is not abused, I personally have no problem with it. I just hope that it won't cause trouble for authors in the future.
Knighty just clarified the blacklisting thing.
Now that I see the clarification, I also think that authors should be able to blacklist readers so they don't see their stories either. Also, blacklisting should extend to group posts. Right now the blocking system still allows you to talk to people you have blocked in groups. It would be better if their posts were blocked in groups as well. This would save group owners a LOT of trouble because people often take their arguments into groups, which is quite frustrating.
4859585
Yeah, no. The reality is that if someone dislikes a particular author, they're gonna keep following them so that they can downvote every single story they post.
I don't really care about blacklisting one way or another. What I would like to know is, would paying users be able to opt out of any future site improvement fuckery knighty might get up to?
4859480
How so? It seems to be no different than how a tag filter is used.
4859611
I'm assuming that you're talking about derpi tags, since on fimfic, it would be different. If you look at the reply that someone gave to me, they pretty much said that on a site that's a bit more than just 'look at the pretty pictures' (because seriously, fimfic and DA are designed to be more dynamic than that, and also encompass more diverse material, not that there's anything wrong with derpi in that regard) a feature like that are primarily used to attack people, and do other things - numerous users could simply turn 'off' an author's existence if they didn't deem them 'elite' enough for their work to view as well.