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toafan
Group Admin

Please remind the author that they might get more views if they disable the view password:

Also, that publishing would help. 'Cause the view password will automatically go away when you publish it.


Proposed new rule: only things which have actually been published are allowed to be added. This will require a lot of work to check and maintain, but it may well be worth it.

Also proposed: No longer allowed to add your own stories. I'm not sure if we could actually enforce that, unless we changed how we accept fics. But it may be needed.

Those of you who see this: Thoughts?

Periphery
Group Admin

780171

Hmm, I have a feeling that someone who submits a fic that no one else can even see is likely to ignore rules anyway. Let's just remove that one for now, since it should go without saying that people need to actually be able to see a story. Plus, uh, "OMG just read long desc plz" doesn't exactly speak highly for its quality.

We'd pretty much have to switch to an approval system to enforce a rule for not submitting your own stories, and we still only get a few stories added a week, so I don't really want to make it harder to add something unless it becomes a frequent problem.

I suppose I should also do a round of shuffling stories around. I still cringe a little every time I do this...

toafan
Group Admin

780312 Thanks for that.

According to my calculations, we need to have an all-group meeting, to settle some questions about the rules and to clarify what our limits and goals are. I guess I'm implicitly volunteered to do that. Thoughts?

Periphery
Group Admin

780404

Doesn't hurt to get a conversation going now and then, so go ahead. We've been tiptoeing around the issue of reorganizing the folders for a while, for one thing. Maybe time to actually make a decision about it.

:applecry::fluttercry::pinkiesad2::rainbowhuh::raritydespair::twilightangry2: I'm Ottawa here by just be nice and tell me it is not accepted hum I'm just mad at you and ps when I wrote read the long desc I was very sleepy I'm new don't do this to me

Periphery
Group Admin

780889

Once your story has some actual votes to go on, it can be resubmitted if it meets the criteria for this group. But people need to be able to actually see it first.

toafan
Group Admin

780889 Hey mate. So that was you?

I get the sense you're a little mad. That's sorta understandable. I can't predict how you're going to react to this, so I'm going to do this as nicely as possible and hope you don't take this the wrong way.

It's great that you want to tell a story and get it seen. It's also great that you thought of us for getting seen. However, you made a couple of mistakes that mean we can't help you right now.

First is the view password. What the view password does is it prevents folks from seeing your fic before you publish it, unless they know the password. With the password on, even if we leave your fic in here, you're not going to get any views, because no-one can see it.

Second is publishing. This group is for really good fics that could have been really popular, but didn't get the attention needed to do that the first time around for whatever reason.[1] However, that means they need to have missed a first time around, and unless they've been published they haven't done that. I'll admit that it's not actually stated anywhere, which could be confusing, but that's one of the (implicit) rules.

Third is rankings and ratings. We have rules about what we allow and what kinds of ratings it can have, and even though I'm not sure they do what we want, they're what we have in place; which means they need to be followed. Since we can't see your fic, we can't check if it breaks those rules. (This looks like the view password mistake again, but it's not. I'm not sure how to make it not look like the view password mistake again, though.)



[1] And maybe for fics that dropped off the radar since they're so old. I'd really like to see something that offers both, but I'm not sure if this is the place. That's one of the things we need to talk about in the group discussion I'm organizing.


Now, all that said, using "OMG just read long desc plz" as the short description doesn't help any. That, combined with your ... unpunctuated comment here, is... concerning? worrying? Are those good words? And so, the unsolicited help department thinks you may be interested in any or all of the following:

+ ezn's guide - I haven't read all of it myself, unfortunately, but it comes highly recommended.
+ The School for New Writers - these guys can be rather harsh, but they mean well and they actually do want to see you suceed. I encourage you to read up on them before asking them for help, however.
+ Wanderer D's How-Tos
+ The author help group
+ The Author Support group

Of course, the unsolicited help department may well be wrong. Please don't hate them, they just want to help.



780431 I'd like your opinion on this. In particular, I'd like your opinion on what this group is for (point two and footnote), although anything you want to throw in is fine.

Periphery
Group Admin

781703 Well, the most simplistic way of phrasing it is right there in parentheses in the group's name. Of course, a purpose like "deserves more attention" can't help but be at least a little bit subjective, so it's kind of complicated to define exactly what "deserves" should mean.

Both parts of how you put it were good, but I'm not sure that covers it completely yet. Just to be kinda picky, I don't know if "popular" is a great word to use, even with "could have been" in front of it. I guess I'd rather just say it as stories people would enjoy if they knew about them. Practically the same thing, I suppose, but I guess I just don't like the word "popular" for some reason.

So, yeah, on one hand, we don't want people to submit every random fic that made them chuckle once or twice, but on the other hand, the group shouldn't seem like it has such lofty standards that people are afraid to submit anything. A story doesn't have to be an absolute masterpiece to deserve more attention.

To be honest, I myself even have a really hard time deciding whether or not to submit stories here, and I've only ever added like three. Here's one story I've been mulling over ever since it added its second chapter: Just Winging It. I wouldn't call it the best story on the site, but I have been enjoying it, and it seems like it could be going to some interesting places. The main thing that has me leery is the potential for too much focus on fanon characterizations of background ponies. That's probably just me, though, because I never really care much for anything that the fandom decides "This is how things are" such as Derpy being a mother, or that Vinyl Scratch and Octavia have some kind of half-romance, half-rivalry thing going on. But that's just a potential problem anyway, because so far this story is focusing on Scootaloo pretty well. It's kind of hard to give a verdict when it's only 6147 words into the story right now.

Another thing, sometimes I find myself wanting to use the group to encourage an author to not abandon a story due to low interest. That almost sounds like a good thing, since if you want to keep reading more, that must mean you enjoy a story quite a bit, right? The problem is, I tend to be kinda guilt-prone, and hate seeing people disappointed by something they put a lot of work into. But just because someone is disappointed by how much attention their story received, that doesn't necessarily mean it was actually any good. So because of that, I hesitate to add "stories you want to see continued" as a factor.

I suppose ultimately, the question you should ask yourself before adding a story to this group is, "Is this a story people would want to know about?" It doesn't have to be the best of the best for that to get a yes, but it should still be pretty good, and the basics of good grammar and general coherency are musts. Plus it's an attempt to insert a bit of objectivity into the consideration. If you could wipe all memory from your mind of having read a story, would you leave yourself a note first telling you to read it again, or would you feel like you wouldn't have missed much if you'd never read it? And even then, the answer won't be the same for everyone. One of the more popular stories on this site is "A Slice of Life" and I pretty much hated that story. One of the very few fics I've ever down-voted. And I thought Rainbow Factory and that sequel to My Little Dashie were both kinda crappy too, yet they're both among the ten most-viewed stories here, with well over 90% positive ratings. And my favorites list certainly wouldn't be the same as my recommendations list.

I'm not sure how much that actually answered the question, but it's a tough thing to define.

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