Self Posting in Update List

[Sunshine Temple]

Sky
Two years might be much, but stories published on sites with no RSS feed or other means of notifying readers that they've updated like FF.net updates (I'm thinking about The Shadow Chronicles here) are another possible exception.

[Could go with one year.
[Not sure that we need to deal with writers on sites that have auto updates and that don't
[As most of the fics that have updates posted have ff.net versions anyway.

I'd like to second the idea of a recommended list. It could be done in the same way as the Spamville Character Dossier - everyone posts once, and edits their post with links to what stories they think are awesome and a short description of why. It could link to other recommendation lists like the TV Tropes list (see the FanFic Ranting thread). I'm sure phpBB has a per post character limit, so that will prevent posters from listing 100+ stories. Make it a sticky and it might also prevent the "What are the best of the best out there" questions that are seen in Fic Search from time to time.


In short, three lists: one for updates, one for new stuff, and one sticky recommendations list.

[Well there's no reason why this can't be done.
[If you want to make a recommendations thread go ahead.

Spokavriel

For a major update how about if you have a major plot advancement. Like a Critical battle or something. Or maybe you have just revised two or more chapters of the story enough to change the tone of the fic.

[On an enforcement side that seems like a major issue.
[Someone can always claim there's major events.

[Sky]

Edit: Sky I don't think the Author of The Shadow Chronicles posts here. And really these are restrictions on authors doing self promotion. Nothing in this as far as I have seen should really stop someone else from posting about the update.

Then you misunderstand.

I am aware that Mark MacKinnon doesn't post here. I'm trying to think ahead - I don't assume that everyone who posts here posts to FF.net or MediaMiner.

I'm holding Mark MacKinnon's site, not his work as an example - if an author has a personal site that s/he uses for stories, the author only posts once a month, and there's no method of notifying readers with RSS or email automatically, then it looks like that author can't say "Hey, I posted an update!"

[Spokavriel]

How about on ending or starting a new story arc (Not back to back of course) But still on enforcement I really don't know a way to handle that any better than the whole Not Work Safe thing. Until someone reads and makes certain what was said is the case EI doesn't break or overly bend the guideline things remain unknowns.

And people can just as easily claim each days events in their story a story arc if they write a certain way.

[Sunshine Temple]

Thanks to Stratagemini's clarity here's the new rule: A writer is limited to one post a week containing updates on own fic(s).


Most people don't write more than one chapter a week, and this eliminates the (very slight) risk of spamming the update list via a mass of tiny, tiny chapters.

And that's it.

And the existing rule stands for everyone. Check the thread to make sure the update isn't already posted.

Here's some questions to keep in mind.
These aren't rules because codifying them would be a pain.

1) How long has the update been up? Will someone else post the update?
2) Is this a new story?
3) Are you reviving a dead fic?

If someone wants ot make threads for "New Fic" or for "Recommended Fics" or what have you. Great.

If the starter of the thread wants to set "house rules" for what kinds of fics should be in the thread. Go ahead and to that in the starting post.

[Spokavriel]

What if an author tries to say post a bibliography of micro chapters published over the past week with links to each one? Just to get the ridiculous overkill reaction that I just imagined out of the way.

[PCHeintz72]

Hmmm... I'm coming in late to this discussion... I know, but...

1. I am not an author myself, so the idea of me spamming any board with my own story is not possible. However... my own view is mentioning a story update in the update thread does not seem wrong... it is a story and it has been updated. Going on about it or taking the thread off track because of it would be wrong though. The one week rule seems a reasonable compromise. While not my own stories, that is one reason I do not update much more than once a week myself.

2a. I personally have always used 1 year as a benchmark for determining if a story is 'Probably Dead' dead or not. Even stories with traditionally 'long' waits between updates I do it for. Taking the already mentioned Shadow Chronicles... he and the story will be considered 'Probably Dead' by me on 5/23/2009, since it will have been a year. I've done that before, and likely will again.

2b. I do the same for authors that have not updated in that same timeframe. Though I am a bit selective on that and consider them dead if they have not updated a story in a series I care about, so even if updated, if it was for a series I've no interest in, I class them as 'Probably Dead'.

3. Many sites support RSS/ATOM feeds, or the to me inferior email alert systems, these days. Among them off top of head:
- DarkScribes.ORG - RSS Feeds (Site, Author, Story)
- EvaFics.ORG - RSS Feeds (Site, Author, Story)
- FanFiction.NET - ATOM feeds (Site, Category, Author, C2), email alerts (Author, Story)
- MediaMiner.ORG - RSS feeds (Site, Author)
- FicWad.COM - RSS feeds (Site, Author, Story)
- Live Journal - RSS feeds (Blog Site, but 2 different methods)

Heck, even Youtube.COM and AnimeMusicVideos.ORG support RSS feeds, as do a number of torrent sites.

Thus... that is likely as much as 90% of your updates. Even some individual author sites have them. I'm not convinced any limitations should be made to discourage anyone from posting a story with such a update method. After all, not nearly everyone out there bothers to monitor feeds (as of yesterday, I monitor 633 feeds that are fanfiction related, 683 total).

4. I do not think separate threads should be made for new stories or dead ones brought back to life. I myself, in my own separate updates thread here do not make any such differentiation. I merely class new stories or 1 chapter or so called 'One shots' all as 'Single File'. Multi-chapter stories can be classed as either 'Not Complete' or 'Complete'. I do not in fact call anything 'One-Shots' anywhere as I at one point did, and had one author complain since he specifically told me in no uncertain terms that none of his stories were one shots despite some being 1 file and a complete story.

5. I was curious... can the above decisions affect what I post in any way in my thread. Keep in mind, it has the above three classes, and I note at the bottom if stories are in preview and where, or in final form.

[Sunshine Temple]

What if an author tries to say post a bibliography of micro chapters published over the past week with links to each one? Just to get the ridiculous overkill reaction that I just imagined out of the way.

So it's one post with multiple links from what was posted over the week? Nothing wrong with that.

PCHeintz72
Hmmm... I'm coming in late to this discussion... I know, but...

1. I am not an author myself, so the idea of me spamming any board with my own story is not possible. However... my own view is mentioning a story update in the update thread does not seem wrong... it is a story and it has been updated. Going on about it or taking the thread off track because of it would be wrong though. The one week rule seems a reasonable compromise. While not my own stories, that is one reason I do not update much more than once a week myself.

[Yeah, the whole problem is that it's a "common sense" thing.
[Common sense is hard to codify.

2a. I personally have always used 1 year as a benchmark for determining if a story is 'Probably Dead' dead or not. Even stories with traditionally 'long' waits between updates I do it for. Taking the already mentioned Shadow Chronicles... he and the story will be considered 'Probably Dead' by me on 5/23/2009, since it will have been a year. I've done that before, and likely will again.


2b. I do the same for authors that have not updated in that same timeframe. Though I am a bit selective on that and consider them dead if they have not updated a story in a series I care about, so even if updated, if it was for a series I've no interest in, I class them as 'Probably Dead'.

[Agreed. It's hard to say what counts as a dead fic. I have the problem with the Fukufics list itself.
[Fortunately, dead versus not-dead isn't a part of the formal rules.


3. Many sites support RSS/ATOM feeds, or the to me inferior email alert systems, these days. Among them off top of head:
- DarkScribes.ORG - RSS Feeds (Site, Author, Story)
- EvaFics.ORG - RSS Feeds (Site, Author, Story)
- FanFiction.NET - ATOM feeds (Site, Category, Author, C2), email alerts (Author, Story)
- MediaMiner.ORG - RSS feeds (Site, Author)
- FicWad.COM - RSS feeds (Site, Author, Story)
- Live Journal - RSS feeds (Blog Site, but 2 different methods)

Heck, even Youtube.COM and AnimeMusicVideos.ORG support RSS feeds, as do a number of torrent sites.

Thus... that is likely as much as 90% of your updates. Even some individual author sites have them. I'm not convinced any limitations should be made to discourage anyone from posting a story with such a update method. After all, not nearly everyone out there bothers to monitor feeds.

[And people that host their fics on a non feeding site, normally mirror on another site.
[For that very update and review purpose.

4. I do not think separate threads should be made for new stories or dead ones brought back to life. I myself, in my own separate updates thread here do not make any such differentiation. I merely class new stories or 1 chapter or so called 'One shots' all as 'Single File'. Multi-chapter stories can be classed as either 'Not Complete' or 'Complete'. I do not in fact call anything 'One-Shots' anywhere as I at one point did, and had one author complain since he specifically told me in no uncertain terms that none of his stories were one shots despite some being 1 file and a complete story.

[True.
[But to be fair. As an Admin I can't really stop a person from making a new thread.
[So if someone wants to have a "New Stories" thread. They're free to make it.

5. I was curious... can the above decisions affect what I post in any way in my thread. Keep in mind, it has the above three classes, and I note at the bottom if stories are in preview and where, or in final form.

[Nope, no effect there

[PCHeintz72]

[And people that host their fics on a non feeding site, normally mirror on another site.
[For that very update and review purpose.

I actually would prefer more did that. But not for notification on update purposes, but for insuring their stories remain available somewhere should their personal home pages collapse.

The recent demise of anifics, the closing of the Abh Nation, and the upcoming demise of Geocities, shows what happens when authors to not double post to one of the bigger, more stable archives. I currently have 35 Geocities links (whittled down from some 68 ) to find alternates for, and had a good number of anifics links I already did such for. Taking Geocities for example, of some 33 authors I tried to contact, 1 replied and already knew, 2 replied and did not know, 8 had delivery failure, 3 have no normal email channel of contact, and the rest have not replied back (most probably moved on).

[True.
[But to be fair. As an Admin I can't really stop a person from making a new thread.
[So if someone wants to have a "New Stories" thread. They're free to make it.

I just don't see it as being a valid option or warranted, then there is the confusion and annoyance of enforcing it. However, since I rarely if ever go into the existing thread here, another one will make little difference to me personally.

Well... for my own thread. The current setup has been in place since 10/2007 when lwf58 specifically asked if I would post here and we discussed it by PM beforehand. I only make a new thread and thus have him unsticky the old and sticky the new one upon every new official full release on the internet I make.

Thus all 'partial update' posts correspond to that full list it is associated with elsewhere. In the past, that full listing was always the one on anifics... with it having gone the way of the dodo... currently no such list exists on-line, though I of course still am making them.

Even before anifics collapsed, I had been teaching myself VB.NET and ASP.NET. I've also been researching places to make myself a home page that supports them. I've got a rough idea what I want to do, but want to finish the current book I'm using as a guide first beforehand. I may or may not have time to make such a site to my standards since I start a new job on the 18th. We shall see.

[Nope, no effect there

Great.

[camk4evr]

Thanks to Stratagemini's clarity here's the new rule: A writer is limited to one post a week containing updates on own fic(s).

If strat hadn't suggested it I would have. However may I suggest that if the update has multiple chapters of the same story then the author shouldn't put a link for each individual chapter but should just, instead, post one link for the story as a whole?

I also have no problem with an author posting a link to one of his fics in a search thread if it fits the criteria for a search (in fact it seems kind of silly, to me, if they didn't).

[Sunshine Temple]

If strat hadn't suggested it I would have. However may I suggest that if the update has multiple chapters of the same story then the author shouldn't put a link for each individual chapter but should just, instead, post one link for the story as a whole?

I also have no problem with an author posting a link to one of his fics in a search thread if it fits the criteria for a search (in fact it seems kind of silly, to me, if they didn't).

Linking to the story as a whole makes more sense, but I don't think it needs to be formalized into a rule.

As for the Search Thing the "once a week" rule doesn't apply to that.

And it would only come up in this example:

A search thread is made for a Fic with X
A writer realizes one of his fics has X and posts that.
Then later on the writer realizes that he has another fic that has X and post again.

[PCHeintz72]

Linking to the story as a whole makes more sense, but I don't think it needs to be formalized into a rule.

I do not know if this helps at all, but I never link to a new chapter, I always link to the story first chapter or author pages. Thus those links never change unless the site changes it.

Also, while I do not post in this exact format in my partial updates, when I post on a individual story update elsewhere, I always use the following format:

The following has been updated to chapter XX.

SERIES/CROSSOVER 'TITLE' by AUTHOR - [Status=STATUS] - [Last Dld=DATE] - [Size=SIZE]

• [LINK TYPE] LINK

While the format of the link itself is not that important (I know full well I am fairly unique in how I display links), the idea of a specific line stating what chapter it has been updated to, and then of listing full disclosure on Series/Crossover, Title, Author, and Status and one or more Links is IMHO a good idea, regardless of format used as a standard. I list other deatails because I can (Size, Date, Link Type, multiple links), but those other bits are not as important as what I mentioned.

Full disclosure and being specific eliminates ambiguity, and listing what chapter/chapters are new eliminates what was updated.

With the above, someone whom updates multiple times a week can merely go back and edit the one line stating what chapter it is up to.

[Thrythlind]

hmm, missed most of this discussion and was not aware there was an implication about posting one's own update.

My apologies if my doing so caused this problem.

[Deric]

hmm, missed most of this discussion and was not aware there was an implication about posting one's own update.

Yes this started because you posted your own fic. However, you hadn't updated in at least TWO YEARS! I was happy to find out you had updated 'A New Life' and if you hadn't, I would never have known as I had stopped looking at your profile on FFN.

I will agree that posting an update for 'Webs' was a little crass -since it was new- but as stated above, I (and probably many more people) no longer searched for updates on your stories.

I would limit self promotion, but not entirely. If it is two weeks past the day it was posted and is a writer who has been on the update list before, I can see no reason for that writer not to announce there is an update.

My apologies if my doing so caused this problem.

Better to have it gone over now, than to have it continue to be ignored or, worse, have it happen multiple times.

[Thrythlind]

yeah, again, I wasn't aware that self-posting was discouraged, so I thought it was similar to the fic-plug threads on other sites. Many of which encourage self-posting.

[Spokavriel]

I think the main reason it was discouraged back in the first place was because this one guy kept doing his own OC works and giving the characters Ranma series names and using Archie Comics situations without even getting as in depth as Archie's digests ever did. That guy posted repeatedly about the same update a few times in the same day even after being told it stank and had nothing to do with Ranma.