How do you use this website? · 9:23pm Jan 15th, 2019
I just got back from my third meeting with my therapist, and we've been doing a lot of talking about my Youtube channel, if you can believe it.
This is somewhat tangential to that discussion, but along the same lines, and something I've been wanting to poop out onto this site for about a year and a half now. I think I might end up pulling the trigger on a few other "big idea" blogs like that in the near future, but for now, we'll go with this.
I think, like the one where I asked about jobs, this is just me making an attempt, with a small sample size, to unravel The Mystery That Is Other People. What I'm looking for this time is a bit more of the day-to-day of how you utilize the internet, in particular Fimfiction. I'll start below the cut with an explanation of what I do, and you can follow that format or use your own in the comments below, and we'll see if we can't get this sorted out somehow.
I'm not even going to talk about how I post stories, because frankly, I don't do that too often, and there are plenty of blogs out there about choosing tags or writing descriptions, what have you. If I was going to do that, I'd just give you a glop of writing advice, because that's basically the same thing.
No. Like most websites I use, I check this one twice daily: morning and evening I lied, it's more like five times daily. :B I then also check it around 10 PM if I go on Discord that evening, in a final surface-level scan of my own personal corner of the internet.
Now, when I say "check", I mean I take a look to see if there are any new blogs/stories in my feed, new comments, and new PMs. The last one takes a little mental fortitude, because I have to remember how many I had yesterday. (I always clear the feed and comments every day, so that's not an issue.)
Usually, I'll look at a PM as soon as I get it, though sometimes I let them sit for days on end without even checking out the title because I'm a big, stupid doo-doo man and getting private messages scares me. D: I'm always afraid it's something bad, when 99% of them never are! Right now, I'm not doing commissions anymore, so I don't get a lot of PMs; I'm working through The Mare Time Forgot with a couple dudes, plus I have two 'phantom' PMs for some reason that I can't get rid of. <.<
The feed and comments I'll then open in new tabs, so I can go through them one by one. I always try and read everything (though there's one person I follow who only ever posts blogs in-character, and I tend to avoid those. c.c) New stories go on the RIL unless they sound really bad, by which I mean 'not my fetish'. :B Comments are comments are comments, and I answer those as necessary or hilarious. I don't do anything with new watches; bookshelf adds, on the other hand, I will often check out.
Usually, I'll open the story from the link and go take a look at the last three months' worth of views to see if there are any trends. Of course, since the most recent site update, the referrals part isn't terribly useful, but sometimes I'll type an unfamiliar URL in to see who's talking ponies there. :B
That's my feed, though. The actual Fimfic bookmark I use takes me to the front page, and at least once a day, I'll click through all the featured box story titles that aren't familiar (half the time, they've been there for days and I just can't remember it), though I've stopped looking at the bottom three. Those are the ongoing fics that have recently updated, right? I've found I tend to be already watching the ones I'm interested in watching, so... yeah, I don't pay any attention to that anymore. Once in a great while (just recently, as a matter of fact), I'll sit back and scroll down the page, checking out the new fics, recently updated and popular, though the latter is usually just an extension of last week's featured stories. I might even add something to a bookshelf!
Let's talk bookshelves!
My RIL, as I have often said, is where stories go to die. Whenever I watch an author, all their stories go on my RIL, though I tend to avoid anthologies and, as I've said, sex fics I just am not going to like no matter how good they are. If an incomplete story sounds good enough, or the sequel to something I've really enjoyed isn't complete, I'll put it on tracking. I've got that shelf set to tell me whenever the story updates, and once it's finished, it goes on my RIN, which is in the document I keep all my reviews on before they're posted.
My other main bookshelves are Favorites, which is pretty self-explanatory, and Reviewed, which is where I put everything after a review is posted. Like, I literally open up every story, add it to the bookshelf, and anything that got an H goes in the Highly Recommended folder of my group. I don't think I'll talk about posting for the RCL, since that's something I, specifically, do and isn't going to have any relevance for most people.
I have one more bookshelf I call the Backburner. At the end of the year, I will go through my RIL, looking for incomplete stories that haven't updated in over a year, plus stories that have been cancelled or put on hiatus. Every single one of them goes on the Backburner; conversely, everything on the Backburner that's now complete goes back on the RIL. I have the Backburner set up to give me update blogs that link to the stories; this leads me to frequently wondering why I'm reading a particular blog, when I don't recognize the author's name at all. Fun times!
Speaking of authors, what makes me follow them? Well, usually it's liking two or three of their stories. I'm more likely to follow someone if they have a smaller number of stories, to be honest; and of course, if they write something I really like, and/or that's their only story so far, on they go. Like I said, any author I follow gets all their stories on my RIL, and that's why it's over 7000 after seven years on this hellsite! :B
The other thing I do twice a day is check out the recently posted tab of the groups section. I don't know why I do this, most days. If someone posts something to the RCL recommendation thread, that's a thing I need to keep tabs on, but otherwise it's either people complaining about stupid bullshit I don't care about (I am extremely tired of people just posting a Youtube video, giving the thread its title, and not attempting to foster discourse by, say, giving their take on what's being discussed. I have shit to do, people.) But sometimes there'll be something funny or cute-sounding, or I'll actually find a discussion I want to weigh in on. I wish groups was better at following up on that kind of thing; like, why don't we get notified when someone replies to a thread we make, unless they literally hit "reply to this post" on the first post?
But, bitching aside, I think that's about it. I guess I could talk about settings? I've got light mode and mature on, I have the feed set to compact so I can see more posts and open them, and everything else is probably not relevant.
Okay, so, how do you do it? :B
I figured I used the site like anyone else, for reading, writing, commenting etc.
I don't have any consistency with it, I guess. :B
I use it mostly for writing, and to get away from real life for a change. (Big surprise there!) I also write other things, though, like original works, but anything pony goes up here.
I'll read on this site occasionally, and I manage/own a few groups like the Button Mash Group, but I like real books over fan fiction. That's why none of my stories over here are more than 50k words long. IMO, if it's just a fanfic, it shouldn't have that much thought and effort into it.
I don't like Night Mode particularly.
Fluttershy is best pony.
I check the site throughout the day. I'm not active enough to get many notifications outside the newsfeed, but I like using the newsfeed to see what the folks I cared enough to follow are up to. (I don't follow people "just because"; I only follow people I want to see future content from, whether that's blogs, stories, or something else, and prune my follow list every so often.)
If I'm coming here to read, I'll go look through the relevant bookshelf for a likely target; I have multiple RIL shelves for different purposes.
Sometimes I'll jump on just to look at a story in the new/updated queues or the feature box, if someone mentioned it on Discord.
I have all my PMs emailed to me, so I'll read the PM email as soon as I see it but leave it unread on FIMFic until I respond to it. (I have a terrible memory; if I clear that notification badge I'll completely forget I had a message.)
I don't participate in any groups and rarely in comments, so FIMFic is a pretty quiet/low-key experience for me.
Every night, I turn off my computer, and it stays off until I get home from work (weekdays) or wake up (weekends). In all other circumstances, I am on FIMFiction. I might not be doing anything on FIMFiction, just leaving it open, but it is always there. Every once in a while I’ll poke it to see if there are any alerts. This allows me to notice PMs and comments promptly. This does not mean I’ll respond to them promptly. In many cases I’ll read them then hold off to think about how I’ll respond. In fact, I make it a point now not to respond to comments on my review blogs for at least a day, at least partially so that I can address a lot of them quickly.
We all know about my review blog. Every Saturday after my daily reading I open up my schedules, get rid of the reading week I just finished, and add a new one, maintaining a consistent six-week schedule. This can take anywhere between thirty minutes to an hour-and-a-half depending upon how complex the schedule ends up being. It involves a lot of searching, opening and closing new tabs, figuring out wordcounts, deciding if the story can fit, and where it needs to go to do so. It’s the busiest I get on the site by far, and that assessment includes the actual review day.
By Thursday, assuming I did everything right, I’ll have a pre-made blog ready to go. Almost. I collect all the cover art, save it, resize it so it’s all somewhat uniform, re-upload to a server, and apply it to the blog. I then re-read the blog line-by-line as a quality check before publishing. After that I have to spread the news around (i.e., “You can has review!”) to each person reviewed and update the review map.
Needless to say, Saturday and Thursday are my most intense days. Let’s not go into the actual reading that happens every day, shall we?
I have multiple bookshelves, mostly for my personal scoring system. I doubt I have to explain how that works. I also have a bookshelf for tracking incomplete stories that I’d like to read when they finish. Every once in a while (read: when I feel like it) I check it and purge it of anything that hasn’t updated in a year. I also have a private bookshelf for potential Seattle’s Angels recommendations. There are also bookshelves for tracking stories on my reading lists, such as Requests. I... don’t use these like I should. At all.
I don’t usually follow people. Honestly, it never occurs to me. Like upvoting. Sometimes I’ll go through my Pretty Good and WHYRTY? bookshelves and just start upvoting until FIMFiction thinks I’m abusing the system and tells me to quit it for the day, because really, I should be upvoting those stories. I tend to follow people when I see something of theirs and realize “I’ve been really enjoying what these people do, story or otherwise. Why the heck am I not following them?” I have to consciously realize that they deserve it. The good news about this is that I don’t throw stuff around willy-nilly, so it feels more exclusive when I do. The bad news is that sometimes people who totally deserve it get missed for way longer than is appropriate.
I don’t downvote. I ran the numbers on those things (because I’m nuts that way). They’re too damaging to a rating score. I won’t hurt anyone that way. If I don’t like it, my review will explain why.
I only read in Dark Mode. I find it’s easier on the eyes. Plus I like the dark (says the guy who works in a windowless office with the lights off).
I avoid leaving comments unless I see something I just can’t ignore. Comments aren’t worth as much as a whole review, which the author is guaranteed to get anyway.
When I publish stories, I don’t go around to 50 different groups adding it. This is partially because it’s too much work and partially because I don’t like spamming things like that. I’m not very good at self-promotion.
I’m probably forgetting some things, but this has gone on long enough.
Nothing, apparently. You do follow me, after all
As for the topic at hand, my usage of Fimfic waxes and wanes over time. Right now, I'm on a whole lot. I think I might be closing in on 3 million words read in the last 20ish days? I could go back and count, but that's way too much effort.
Bookshelves are amazing. I can keep track of every single story I've read, and I can sort them based on how much I liked them? Sign me up! Also, I can keep the bookshelves for stuff I didn't like private. That's a nice feeling. No need to smack those authors in the face.
I'm totally sitting on about 10 unpublished stories waiting for the right moment to strikeNight mode or bust.
I probably check the site at least 10-15 times a day. Probably more lately since I had a couple of new stories come out.
I spend about 2 to 5 hours a day shitposting on Facebook (the “My Little Pony: Friendshitposting is Magic” group is AMAZING.) and around an hour a day on Fimfiction, mostly reading blog posts and the comments on those blogs. Occasionally I’ll actually read a story. Even more occasionally I’ll write a story! I need to get back into doing my video reviews, even though hardly anyone notices them.
I keep so many stories in my library and I have a lot of little piddly ones that aren't important, but my main ones are very important to me. I try to collect every story I've ever read and put it in some kind of folder. My favorites used to have that purpose until I started compartmentalizing everything into "meh" folders, the Graveyard (same as your BackBurner, but was renamed after a message from a bummed-out author
) and whatnot. When I come across a story that has a chapter check marked but isn't in one of my folders I will put it in my "Undocumented" folder. I get excited when I come across one of these because they're usually old and "vintage" to me lol. I'm too much in love with just documenting things because the site keeps track of word counts and stuff.
Honestly with the state of this site I feel like there's a lot more to be uncovered from early years than to be read to date, with a few VERY good exceptions.
4997604
That's just the thing: I feel like I can't assume everyone else internets the way I do. And there's only one way to find out!
4997612
Yeah, I keep PMs (and sometimes comments) unread until I can deal with them. That's very handy, but also easy to undo for yourself if you're not careful.
4997619
Interesting! I do most of my organizing on the Google docs document I mentioned earlier. Anything I plan to read gets the URL copied in with a note of the wordcount, and I format everything once I'm ready to actually sit down and read it. I've also got my reviewed bookshelf set to notify people I've added their story, and I really trust that to do all the alerting for me. c.c
4997632
You're a fun person. :V
4997654
Funnily, after I've published a new story, I have to really work to keep myself from doing just that. XD
4997665
This is news to me!
4997665
I have three Google Spreadsheets: one for records, one for my six-week review schedule, and one for the day-by-day reading schedule. They all basically feed off one another, and I rely on them far more than I do the bookshelves. In fact most of the time that I check the bookshelves is just to see if I missed adding something to the schedules; it’s happened once or twice.
I always hit the “Now Reading” Bookshelf (it’s shortcutted) exactly one week before I’m scheduled to read a story. It works to let the authors know what’s coming. But when it comes to the actual review, I like using a comment in the story because not only can the author not miss it (people tend to take note when they get a new comment), it also alerts anyone who checks the comments later, serving as a long-term self-promotion tool I can use and forget, but which is always working. It’s like seeding little ads all over the site.
4997665
By killing all your rivals?
In a word: Unhealthily.
In more words: I spend a majority of my work day reading horsewords from my phone, commenting on them, and taking notes when inspiration strikes. No one's said anything. I'm not sure how, and I'm certainly not going to ask. It's gotten to the point where doing anything Fimfic-related on anything other than a mobile device has gotten kind of weird, grating against an engrained habit. I look at any feed items, notifications, and PMs as they come in and respond appropriately.
My bookshelves are fairly straightforward: One for stories I'm currently following, one for those that have finished, a Read Later, an RCL candidate shelf, a shelf for the stories that inspired Never the Final Word entries that haven't yet made it to that compilation, and a few others that I'm either not divulging or that have mostly outlived their usefulness but I can't bring myself to delete, because they might be useful again at some point.
With a few exceptions, my author-follow policy is simple: If I like two or three of your stories, that suggests a positive trend, and I'll follow you to see if that trend persists. I generally discover new stories through links on ones I've already read, or by looking into intriguing authors who found their way onto my Read Later list, often through stories getting added to groups, occasionally through the feature box.
Somewhat ironically, weekends are when I spend the least time reading fan fiction, though I'm still doing Fimfic-related activities. On Saturdays, I write the next Friendship is Card Games blog, reading or watching the source material, writing my reactions, and designing the cards. I also send one to a friend, Phil Srobeighn, who does a full mock-up of the card in Magic Set Editor. Over the course of Sunday, I put up the blog, upload the image to Derpibooru, and post any new entries to Never the Final Word (Vol. 2) and Group Precipitation that have accrued over the week.
I don't have a lot of time to write, and frankly, I don't use the time I have for it very wisely. (For example, I could've been polishing a story instead of writing this. :raritywink;) But still, this site has given me over seven years of fun, and hopefully more to come.
FIMFiction & related MLP
When at home, using a desktop, I check up on my (nonexistent) story reads with a script that generates a stats page. Frequency of checking is driven by a mixture of boredom and anxiety. Regardless of what the stats show, I’ll drop in on the site perhaps five or six time per day, looking for blog posts. I hit FIMFiction, EQD, and then MLP Arena, and these days, I’ll spend more time there, a traditional forum system, than on the other two.
On mobile there’s not much difference. Due to squandering way too much time in medical facilities (yes, still bitching about that) I’ve done some reading on the small screen. Otherwise, I’ll try to knock a few items off the RIL on Friday after work or on Saturday evening, because I live such an exciting life.
As for following, I think I’m more likely to follow somebody who blogs, but they have to have something interesting—ya know, like this—not just daily blather.
I stay off the front page. I’m far more likely to be looking at the BBCode documentation than be on the site’s front page looking for something new. I’m lazy: I let people like yourself and Paul do all the hard work in searching for good stuff.
Other Internet usage
Every morning I read news on the phone because apparently I’m not depressed enough. Despite doing that for about 15-20m, I don’t consider myself well informed.
Daytime reading, outside of work related research, has me dropping by Ars Technica, MacRumors, etc. In the evenings, I piss away my life on Fark: that needs to stop.
Several times per month, I will read multiple articles at a time on sites like Brain Pickings, Longreads, The Public Domain Review, and The Passive Voice. I recently watched all the Scrivener videos on Literature and Latte, probably the most productive and satisfying usage of the internet in the last quarter.
> TFW checking for updates to stories I follow
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/592/375/4da.gif
4997660
You do.
4997619
I find the first somewhat curious, the latter unsurprising.
4997664
Just make it a private bookshelf and they won’t get any notifications
4997612
Perhaps I am not in the right groups, but there seems to be little going on in them outside of story additions. Such an underutilized part of the site, or maybe just no longer relevant.
4997665
When I do click through by mistake it's like WELP I GUESS I'M DROPPING EVERYTHING TO REPLY TO THIS NOW
4997709
I share a number of Discord servers with people who are more active in groups here, and it's an unusual day to not get at least some mention of some drama or foolishness going on in some new thread somewhere.
4997619
It is pretty frustrating for authors when their stories get added to "Oh my god best stories ever" shelves but they don't get an upvote, just because shelf count doesn't affect a story's metrics the same way upvote count does. Good on you for realizing and going back to try and fix it every so often.
Yes! I'm the same way (though I'm not a reviewer, so if I don't like something, I just close it and move on; not interested in tthe negativity).
4997715
*sigh* At least they are used...
Unhealthily as well. I have different sets of stories open on my phone desktop, and laptops. My RIL has fortunately stopped growing at a pace greater than one or two a month, and i know from experience that 70% of RIL i will start then give up on. Most stories come from followed, recommendations, you, RCL, Seattle's Angels, and once a month when i go through what EQD has been posting.
The only part that is "unmanageable" is when I find an author with a ton of good stories i've never heard of before, like saltyjustice, that gums up my pace and keeps my tabs overfloweth. Otherwise, things are starting to become manageable.
I add a bunch of stuff Ill never read to RIL and Read When Finished, leave for 6 months, return, and see none of those fics have updated. Repeat 2-5 times, then remove them :< :< :<
The search for sunset and pinkie shipping, lament there isn't enough. Once that's done, I get antsy and email you a bunch of idiocy that occasionally has a neat thought in it. I resolve to write a bit, then head to work the next day and return totally drained of energy thoughts and motivations. Then I remember that Sunnybuns is a state of mind and read one of my old faves again.
<.<
4997740
This explains a few things. :V
I spend hours every day writing blog posts, of which I post maybe 1 in 30, usually several months after writing it. Most of my time on fimfiction is spent feeling guilty for not reading stories by friends, for falling behind in everything, for not writing stories or posting blogs. If I do any of those things, I feel guilty for doing that instead of trying to get a life.
I go back and edit trivial comments days later, when no one will read them, because author OCD.
I look like I'm always on because I always leave a fimfiction tab open in my browser, but most days I do nothing except check notifications. I read thru my feed about once a week, usually Saturday, and write insanely long comments on threads that are several days old. I currently have 4 very long and difficult replies to write, any one of which would take too much time to write tonight, all of which I feel guilty about. Each reply usually leads to a further reply, and more guilt.
I try to respond to every PM and to read every comment made on a story of mine or in reply to a comment of mine, but frequently fail. I fail most often at the ones that are most important, because I procrastinate on them, hoping I'll think of the right thing to say.
I follow authors mostly because I read a comment they wrote that I thought was brilliant. A lot of the smartest people on fimfiction have never posted a story.
I seldom read stories from the featured box anymore. I have more than enough more-reliable recommendations from the RCL, Seattle's Angels, & word-of-mouth. If I'm going to go diving into the slush pile--which I used to do a lot more--I'd rather try someone who didn't get featured; I have more chance of discovering someone that way.
I seldom agree with PresentPerfect about a story.
But his reviews come from a consistent point of view, so they're still useful to me.
4997610 So... you publish stories over 50K words somewhere else?
People still use this site?
I check the site daily, sometimes several times a day. My RIL list is what's on my kindle. I DL and convert stories using Calibre, and the only one I read on site are very short or make use of hidden text or images that won't convert.
I ought to have a downloaded shelf, but didn't think to start one early enough to be useful.
My shelves are Top Favorites, Favorites, Tracking (I almost never read unfinished stories any longer.), Read, and Dusty Tomes for stories that last updated more than a year ago. I almost never down-vote a story unless it makes me angry for some reason, and I have to be blindsided by it as well. A story I simply dislike or DNF, I just don't upvote.
I use PMs to keep in contact with a couple of people on occasion.
I write on Gdocs and upload to the site by cut-and-paste. When I write... And I might again when I'm unemployed next month.
I follow people who write good blogs, which doesn't correspond exactly to good writers.
That's about it.
The wrong way, of course
.
I check the site for new notifications roughly 15 times a day. If I have a few minutes of free time and there are less than ten things in the feed, I might check that as well. If the feed counter is in the double digits, I might sit on it for a day or more before going through it all. PMs tens to get read immediately, though.
I haven’t posted a new story in a long while, and I produce nothing of import on the blog front, so I haven’t seen much of any notifications lately. When I do get one, I click through to the user page and maybe read a blog title or story description. It’s always curious to see users that have a handful of followers but no stories or blog posts.
Virtually all of the stories on my RIL are from review blogs like yours, RCL, and SA. I just wish I could then faster, that’s where I spend the least amount of my site time, ironically. Occasionally I’ll look though the featured box or new stories list, and usually come away feeling depressed.
4997766
This sounds miserable. Please post more flawed by your standards but still great by ours blogs.
Boy this must be a lot of reading in these comments. (And apparently I'm the worst of the lot. Sorry!)
I want you to understand how rare it is that I saw this blog the same day it was posted. I usually check my feed once every two or three months, mostly to get rid of that annoying counter once it gets into the 400--500s. I've been jumping back and forth on the site today on my laptop because I discovered the wiki for Diaries of a Madman and have spent a significant portion of the day contributing to it, and I thought "What the heck, I'll check if there's anything else interesting going on these days. Yep, Seattle's Angels is still going strong. Must be nice to have finished fics worth submitting there."
I still use Fimfiction pretty regularly, but these days I really only ever open it on mobile, since ponyfic is still (somehow) my number-one reading material, despite having only watched maybe one or two episodes of the actual show in all of 2018. Honestly, I'm still fascinated by the mythology, especially alicorn stuff. I don't think that will ever get old for me, which is honestly slightly worrying (wish I could afford a therapist
). A lot of my original projects lately have been borrowing elements pretty heavily from alicorn stuff, since it's such a goldmine of ideas.
I'm still plodding through my own RIL, which has been sitting at around 5 pages long for a year or two. Between keeping up with half a dozen (or more) updating stories and caving to the temptation to go back and re-read old ones I liked (I've done Project Horizons two or three times now since I discovered it in 2014 or so, and I'm honestly considering tackling Diaries of a Madman for a third time, for wiki purposes. Someone save me), I've only spent between a third and half of my fic-reading time in the past two years trying new stories.
The one thing I have going for me on that front is that I don't add to the list at nearly the same rate as I used to. Hardly anything in my RIL was written after about 2015. I think I added a few new ones about six months ago, maybe. (Oh, except while writing this comment I added about 10 more. Thank you so much for that!
)
Also, I'm a much different ficcer than I was when I added most of these, and I've been skipping a lot that I wouldn't have added to the list if I came across them for the first time today. I try to work backwards through the list, starting with the oldest additions, and I'm currently working through page 4 of 5, meaning I've skipped over an entire page's worth. I should really try to clear those out, now that I think about it.
I decided on a system for my bookshelves a long time ago, and I've stuck to it: Top Shelf for books I would pay to own in print (one of which I now do); Middle Shelf for the rest of my favorites that I either look forward to updates from or would like to re-read, but aren't as awe-inspiring to me as the Top Shelf; Lower Shelf for fics I still enjoyed, but will probably forget about after a year or two (or less); and Tried (which I hope I succeeded in making private) for stuff I gave up on without finishing, mostly so I don't forget about them and put them back on RIL only to be disappointed again years later.
I sort most everything I read into one of these four shelves, with the exception of new and gimmicky short fics that catch my eye on the front page and I peruse without much thought. I'm usually a very active, analytical reader, and my RIL is reserved for fics that look like they might be worth my full attention.
Oh, and I have another shelf for stories that I read before I started this system, that I want to go back and try again to give a proper rating, but I keep forgetting that it exists.
Honestly, I kind of avoid the rest of the site's features now, since I'm kind of scared to come back to activity and keep up with new stuff. This is a very different fandom than it was in 2011, and the supply and demand for quality fics isn't what it was when I was excited to see what new stuff people were coming up with. It's a much bigger job to sort through for the gems, and the qualifications for being a gem aren't the same anyway.
So if anyone has some recommendations for "best fics of the past four years" to give me, I'll happily take them.
Oh, and quick PSA from someone who regularly uses the "Read" function on this site: don't overdo it with the fancy hyphen/tilde line breaks, because when you do that, it means some of us will be listening to (literally) two minutes of "Dash, dash, dash, dash, dash, dash, dash, dash, dash...." (Thanks for that, Pink Eyes.)
Oh again, I wanted to mention that my trick for pre-judging fics that I posted about a few years ago still holds true: most good fics (in a reasonable range of view-count and length) have a 1:10 like/view ratio. Anything significantly higher than that (on the upvote side) is usually exceptional, and anything about 1:50 or worse has something wrong with it. Anything in between is usually more a matter of taste or niche interest, I've found, and can sometimes be amazing, as long as it's your kind of thing. I really wish this site had a function to sort by stat ratios like this. It would be the ultimate ranking of fic quality, I think. Shortskirtsandexplosions will always be an exception to this rule, one way or the other.
I'm sure I'll get around to Austraeoh eventually. Maybe in another ten years.
I tend to check Fimfiction in the mornings and afternoons as well. I always keep a bunch of tabs open, with all the stories I plan to read next + whatever I am reading right now (if it is some longer fic). I keep the tabs organized by my reading priority for the story, from right to left. Shorter fics tend to get priority.
Anyway, I will then open the feed page, open all fresh blogs on a new tab, and go over them in sequence, leaving the larger ones (Mostly reviews) for later. I then check notifications and PMs (If I have any, I am not that active). I have a terrible tendency to forget about PMs for days on end, but I have been getting better at responding to them. I then will move to read through the RCL emails, and prioritize whatever is in the queue against my ongoing to-read fics.
I never open the front page. I will add maybe 1 fanfic out of 3 of authors I follow to my RIL. Again, that is where fics go to die, specially for fics from known authors, since I tend to prioritize new authors (AKA potential RCL nominations) over existing ones. But I am very selective when it comes to adding fics there, so it is sitting at a spry 500 fics. Oh, and it contains both Completed and Incomplete fics, I just filter out the incomplete ones whenever I decide to pick something to read.
I have 8 other library folders, namely:
Tracking: For incomplete fics I started reading, and whose chapters I try to keep up with. Also includes short story collections I am very interested in.
Shorties Collections: For minific collections I have read something on, but that I don't follow closely.
Proofread: I keep this private (for some unfathomable reason). It stores the handful of stories I did some kind of proofreading on.
5 separate collections for read stories, called "The Absolute Best", "Great Fics", "Good Fics", "The Meh Collection", and "The Dregs". Only the first two are public and will notify authors. I only upvote fics on the top 2 categories, and only downvote fics on the last one. Shockingly, the amount of fics in each fall roughly into a normal distribution.
Finally, I also tend to have at least one story open on my phone, which I will read when I have some downtime on the go. I don't really have a commute nowadays (I live 2 blocks away from work), so this is almost never, so I try to keep to stuff that can be read piecemeal.
Back when I had a two-hour commute (which was when I used to post reviews) I used to download fics to my Kindle, then would mark them on fimfiction manually as read, and copy my notes so I could compile a review.
As for my non-fanfiction web usage, it is a complicated affair involving two browsers, three different time-based blocks, and a ton of RSS.
The UX designer in me is fascinated by this thread, so thank you for that!
I check Fimfiction about ten times a day. It's usually just to see if I have any notifications and then I zip away pretty much immediately to some other sector of the internet.
To my horror, I don't actually read any stories. ('Frick I need to someday). But I will read every personal blog by every writer I follow. I don't know what it is with Fanfic writers but I love hearing about their lives far more than any fanfic they write. How are they doing? Are things going well? I just like hearing about kind people's anonymous lives.
I actually get kind of bored when an author writes a post just about ponies.
I feel like this weird habit comes from my genuine trust of most writers on this site. I mean not only do they write fanfiction, but it's for my little pony of all things. And it's all still anonymous. I cannot stand any website that encourages using real names.
Basically fimfiction is my absolute all-time favorite social network.
I literally got one of my best friends from this site and last year he flew over from Europe to attend my wedding. Actually, I have quite a few friends where my main point of contact is fimfics messaging system.
4997795
Wow. c.c I'm like this with stories, but still...
I feel this so hard. XD Don't read The Mare Time Forgot this way unless you feel like hearing "Tried. Failed." for about two minutes straight.
Also, here's a couple recommendations. :V
I check my feed way more often than I need to. Like sometimes there won't even be a notification and I'll still reflexively click on it. I rarely get PMs/notifications (;_;) so I basically always look at them as soon as they appear. I don't use the compact view, though while once upon a time I would read every single blog post that got posted and put every story on my RiL, nowadays I only look out for things that specifically interest me.
I've joined a decent number of groups, but I almost never look at the tab, nor the threads that rarely pop up on my feed. I've just never felt like I could get into them, plus they seem to be a magnet for drama and I get enough of that from following GaPJaxie and MrNumbers. :V
I like to fiddle around with my user page, though I currently have a set-up that I quite like, so I don't think I'll be making changes anytime soon.
I have fifteen bookshelves. Six of them are used for sorting out what I want to read, or immediately read, or reread, or for tracking incomplete stories, or good fics for when I need to quickly find a sizable one shot for phone reading, or short fics I can quickly read before sleeping (except they're like 90% horror, so this bookshelf's usefulness is rather suspect). Four more are used in my escalating scale of favorites, including one for stories I want to download and keep via Calibre, one for recent highly recommended favorites (which very rarely I blog about), and one for where I put stories that enter my Top 15. Then I have two bookshelves for stories I've read/stories I left unfinished (specifically with no intention of continuing). And then the last three are for random things, like contests or whatever. No bookshelf for stories I don't like, because why would I want to keep track of that?
I follow people for cool stories or cool blogs, or folks whom I've met through Discord. I feel like a large number of the people I currently follow are now inactive, so I've slowly been looking for new people.
I comment occasionally on stories, rarely on blog posts and hardly ever on user pages. For stories that I really like I try to write a good summarizing comment on them, especially if it's a case where I've read a story without the opportunity to write comments along the way (e.g. downloaded stories when I'm away from the internet). That said, sometimes I just write really quick ones over multiple chapters, which I try to avoid since I don't want to blow up people's notifications, particularly if I'm binge-reading their story. I used to comment typos I found, but nowadays I find that typos don't really stop me from enjoying a great story, and I'm more likely to PM them to the author in the rare cases I collect them. I don't like leaving negative comments, 'cause I feel really happy when I see a notification, and assuming that others feel the same way, I'd hate to mislead like that. So stories I don't like just get put on the Stories I've Read bookshelf and left alone.
My rating scale is something like Top 15 Bookshelf, Downloaded Stories/Recent Highly Recommends Bookshelves, Favorites Bookshelf, Upvote, No vote and very, very rarely Downvote. I only do the latter when it's a story that I find really wastes my time. Out of over 1300 stories read I've probably downvoted less than 10. Coupled with the reluctance to leave negative comments, I usually feel bad about this, since really I should be leaving a comment if I'm going to downvote.
View mature on, light mode (simply out of habit, I don't have anything against dark mode).
New stories to read are almost always from my bookshelves which themselves come from interesting new releases or recommendations from blogs like yours. The featured box doesn't really interest me anymore, but I occasionally check it out for the standout non-clop.
4997632
Darn it C2, it's been SoonTM for over three years now. Your trademark is going to expire at this rate!
4997795
What do you mean by saying the qualifications have changed?
I don't need to search for good stories. The Royal Canterlot Library and Seattle's Angels do a great job of picking stories that I like, faster than I can read them.
4997766
No, not really. Things that I've written that are my own works, outside of mlp, are usually more lengthy.
4997908
Basically it's a matter of quantity and... foundation, I guess. For the first few years, you might argue there were more fans and possibly more site users than we have now (but I wouldn't know, because I haven't seen any numbers), but the sheer number of fics out there has drastically increased. It might be more accurate for what I mean to use the word "classics" instead of "gems", though I'm not just looking for classics. It's the same pattern you see in published literature: in the 1800s when mainstream novels were a new concept, it was relatively easy for good authors to churn out classic works, far more than we see today. It isn't because the quality of the authors or books has decreased, but that the supply and demand have expanded and evolved so much. Back then, there were only, like, three genres of fiction, whereas today I don't even know how many you could name.
What I'm trying to say is that there's far more competition for good fics these days, so barring some miracle, nothing is probably ever going to stand out as much as My Little Dashie, Fallout: Equestria, or Cupcakes. A big part of what drew me to this community in the first place was the cultural-phenomenon aspect (which, now that I think about it, is probably true for a lot of early bronies as well), and that's not really there anymore. While I'm not just looking for new classics here, that is, ultimately, the goal of my whole system.
"Faster than I can read them" is a good way to describe why I don't keep up with those anymore, mostly.
4997811
Huh. I actually had no idea he was a fimfic friend. I don't think either of you ever mentioned that. Who is he here, if I may ask?
4997865
Sweet, thanks! There's at least a couple there I'm interested in and haven't added before. Apparently shipping and long-form slice-of-life really aren't my thing, which is another reason I'm so picky.
I forget if you ever glanced at any of my fics. Shouldn't take too long, if you feel like it. I could use some encouragement to finally finish that next chapter of Minoan Crisis.
A day late here, which is par for the course these days, but here's my FiMfic schedule:
I get email notifications of PMs, and I have a widget set up on my phone to look at notifications. I usually read my PMs in the emails, and go read comments as soon as I see that I got one. I love it when people acknowledge I exist!
I usually check my feed once in the morning and once at night. I read very few fics these days, and I'm about equally likely to read something by someone I follow or a random story posted to a group or from the front page. My criteria these days seem to be 1) does this story have sufficient Applejack? and 2) is the amount currently posted something I can read in one sitting?
I'll read any blogposts that cross my feed. Seriously, blog about anything. I love blogs.
My big problem these days is that I spend most of my waking hours paying attention to my kid (or at least trying to be in a position where I can easily pay attention to my kid,) so I can't really respond to things easily. This means I have to put them off until the kid is asleep, which also my time for writing, and chatting with friends, and various household administrative tasks, and they often get forgotten.
Um, what else... I have bookshelves set up for things I think people looking at my bookshelves might want to find, a Read it Later for stories that I'm never going to read, a watch shelf for other stories I'm never going to read, and a few private bookshelves for blogging things I'm never going to get around to.
I'm admin of several groups that I mostly ignore unless someone is like "hey, admin!" and then I do whatever they're yelling at me about.
I miss being more involved in things.
That's about it, I think!
4998192
I actually haven't, though I have already read and reviewed the stories about Rachis Barbule. :O Were those edited at all before you published them on your account?
I use this site solely to track a few stories that haven't finished yet. There is so little new content with any merit that I don't bother to look anymore, and I've pulled down most of my stuff because I frankly don't really want to be associated with this site.
4997795
My recommendations are, as always, my favorites list.
I log in:
Both on this account and as Baal Bunny maybe twice every weekday morning, then once during my lunch hour, once during my afternoon break, and then in the evening just before going to bed. I have one bookshelf on each account, the default "Favourites" shelf, but I have the one on my AugieDog account set to "Unlisted" because I'm basically anti-social and don't want anyone to know that I'm reading their stories.
I try to respond when folks leave comments on my stories, but I usually wait until I've got a couple to respond to at once since I have a hard time thinking of things to say other than, "Thanks!" I seldom comment on other people's stories unless I notice a continuity error or something similar, and the only private messages I get are from people replying to my Royal Canterlot Library interview requests. I think I've only downvoted one story in the six-and-a-half years I've been hanging around here--Aragon's recent take on the Student Six struck me as falling disappointingly short of his usual high level. I mean, a story by Aragon so uninvolving that I couldn't even finish it? I could hardly believe it possible!
Most of my reading on the site consists of submissions to Equestria Daily and stories nominated to the RCL, and I don't need to log in to do that. Still, I do click on random things every once in a while and have found some fun stuff that way.
I've never used the "Read it Later" or "Tracking" functions. If I want to read something and it's got multiple chapters or is Incomplete, I'll just add it to me unlisted "Favourites" and remove it later if things don't work out.
When I'm working on a story, I prefer just typing it in Word, then copy-n-pasting it onto the site here before doing the final editing pass. And I'm pretty sure I use the "indent" function a lot more than I think anyone else on the site...
Mike
More sporadically than I'd like.
Lately, my feed gets fairly big, and I'll open a bunch of new tabs of which I only get to reading the non-review blogs right away. Stories I mostly get to eventually, particularly updates and those from people I follow which are under 20,000 words.
Eventually I take recommendation blogs and either get to a couple stories that catch my eye from them, or bookmark the blog for later.
I also stalk the comments of a couple stories. (I figure you know which. :V )
I comment less than I like to or should, sometimes including typo-catching/corrections, though I've shifted to mostly doing that through PM if there're more than one or two.
Also I edit, mainly for Somber (and that's done off site).
Sometimes I consider writing a blog, then realize it would mostly make me look bad because while there's stuff I love, I find it extremely difficult to get the motivation to express that (which I find much harder than expressing negativity, especially in a discrete or analytical way).
4998017
He's not that famous on FimFic, unless you're looking for Esperanto speakers. In which case, he's a great go-to to consult on Esperanto.
4998346
I don't think they were, no. Considering what they were, I don't think there was ever much room for them to be edited. They definitely weren't as standalone as some other entries. And honestly, making any changes to the poem would be a feat, and not really worth the effort.
But "Goldie Delicious" and "Binary Suns" are both quick reads, and Minoan Crisis is still stuck under 50,000 words, so I'll let you decide if you want to take a look or not. None of them got much exposure back when they came out (Only "Binary Suns" got enough views to register on my ratio rule), but I got a lot of good feedback and I'm proud of all of them.
Frequency of Checking: Daily, at a minimum. If it's a bad day, roughly once an hour. I intend to reduce this, as the majority of site surfing is totally unproductive or even counterproductive.
Response to New Blogs/Stories: Always check the feed. Most are ignored unless they're personally relevant, intriguing, or recommended by someone (see below).
Response to New Comments/PMs: Always check. Feel compelled to reply to them all ASAP, with rare exceptions (usually if they're long or insightful ones). May procrastinate if my reply is harder than I thought it'd be to compose, leading to the opposite extreme of total silence. At least, until I finally grit my teeth and do it properly. In the case of PMs, I generally get suspicious if someone PMs me out of the blue, which reduces my chances of replying.
Response to Watches/Bookshelf Adds: Brief check. That's it.
Attitude to Featured Box: Almost never check unless I've published something recently. I prefer following specific recommendations from people I trust (generally reviewers).
Bookshelves: Not in use. Been obsolete for years. I have off-site ways of tracking interesting stories.
Criterion for Following Someone: Minimum requirement is that they do at least one interesting thing which appeals to me. What appeals to me is a matter of taste and has never been codified.
Settings: Night Mode is always on (no contest). Mature filter is on unless I need to do a total count of stories on-site for stats. Feed includes every category and in full display.
Obsessively. I check it first thing in the morning, before I go to sleep (read: when I should have been asleep three hours ago), at work, at home, basically all the time. In theory, this kind of behaviour spikes after publishing a story. In practice I haven't got the knack of climbing down from alert, and keep checking whether my stories have got one more vote.
I read quite slowly, compared to some people, so my reading list grows a lot faster than I can work through it. To manage this I have different tiers of reading lists, from R3 to R0. A positive review gets a fic onto R3, or bumps it up to R2. It takes a bit more special to get onto R1 - though a few favourite authors can get there easily. I also have an R ❤ list for when I really just want something fuzzy, and an R ▶ list for things that have audios. If a story is under 2000 words I'll sometimes read it straight away, but otherwise everything goes through that filter. This system doesn't help me get through them quicker, but it does help me read the higher priority things first.
I don't get new things to read from the feature box, but every time I publish a thing I check obsessively whether it's popped up (and I might be guilty of doing some maths to try and increase my chances). I have mature fics visible, because a few of them are great, but the vast majority of clopfics are horrible and make me hate humanity.
I also write really slowly, and writing takes away time and attention from reading, so when I'm in the middle of a project I actually don't read very much.
I read every comment pretty much immediately. I often reply to PMs as quickly as I can.
I upvote quite generously. I almost never downvote, because I know that downvotes have too much power. A single downvote can easily destroy 20 upvotes when it comes to rankings, and a lot of authors will take it to heart. I'm not afraid of somebody getting angry, but I am afraid of contributing to somebody who's already had a bad day making it that much worse because of one little click.
I use dark mode, on this and every other site and application that has one. When I write in google docs, my default formatting has a soft orange background, not white. Too much white is unpleasant to look at, especially late at night.
4997619 4997715
Yes! To all readers on behalf of all the minor authors, every upvote counts. If you like a story, please hit that button.
In my case, I first get linked to a story from one of my friends, and either I start reading it or I bookmark it for later. I read at the speed I could tell the story in casual conversation, and tend to not spend much time reading other than the evening when I should be going to bed, so the bookmarks tend to pile up since a couple of my friends are quick and avid readers.
Once I start reading a story I tend to pay attention to the author if I like what I'm reading, and by the time I've finished reading a story I've decided whether or not I want to seek out any other stories in the same setting or not, bookmark those, follow the author, etc.
I tend to... Upvote? Thumbs up? A story once I've read a moment in it that made me pause and just enjoy the feelings it's given me, that's often when I decide if this belongs on my favorites too.
Occasionally I'll be moved to actually comment on a story, which always is awkward for me as I know I am putting my words somewhere others can see them, and I don't generally like being visible to the public. Sometimes, though, the culture I see in the comments, plus the story itself, makes me want to come out and say something, like I am now.
Finally, I follow relatively few here, but keeping up with my feed here is something I rather enjoy, and I stop to read the longer blog posts occasionally. I have rather enjoyed a few of yours since I started paying attention to things here again last fall, and so decided to answer you here.