20 replies to this topic

[TikiTDO]

When I went to check out the FF.net front page today I saw an interesting, if somewhat old entry. Looking around it seems that no one's posted about this, and as I'm sure few people visit the FF.net front page very often, I thought I'd mention it.

October 12th, 2007 -- The site is looking for 25 volunteers to help test a new feature in development. We are looking for long time users of the site that are both active readers and writers. Interested parties must have an site account for at least 1 year and is knowledgeable to the world of beta-reading. If you qualify and are willing, please email support@fanfiction.com with "Tester Account" as the subject line.

Perhaps I'm reading a bit too much into things, but it really does seem to me that FF.net may be implementing some beta reader/editor system or even allowing volunteer editors to help out struggling authors. As someone who's been on the site a lot longer than is healthy this is probably some of the greatest news I could hope to see.

[Tohno Shiki]

That is rather interesting...

The implementation of a new beta reader scheme could do wonders for the standard of ff.net stories, and possibly make it easier to find good stories to read. Hope it does work out...

[Vespar]

I wonder if they'll become more strict with their rules.
I think they've got a rule about literacy, and how attempts should be made.

However, this might then put into question about the better writers who dabble in adult content.

[TikiTDO]

I doubt this would cause many changes to the rules or to stories with adult content.

Unless a few thousand people sign up, and spend 8 hours a day on editing, there would simply not be enough manpower to keep up with the number of stories/chapters posted per day. To get an idea at how much content comes in daily you need only look as far as the Naruto section. With 3 more hours left in the day there have been 346 updates today. Other, less popular categories drop to around 50-80 updates, and there are also the really small categories which may have a few as well. All together it's probably safe to assume the Anime section alone gets 800-1000 updates daily. Considering there are 8 such sections I would not be surprised to see at least 5000 new stories/chapters a day. It also pays to consider that several stories may already be edited, and would thus waste the editor's time as he or she reads though.

Also forcing proofreading could open the road up for abuse. Imagine a situation where a someone signs up for an editor and encounters a wonderful story about a pairing they HATE. Some people would leave and go to another stories, others though may decide to put in some nasty comments or try to get it kicked off.

The way I see this working is it will be an opt-in system, where the author can make their story available for beta reading, and a few volunteers will select one from the list and see if they can help out.

[Nick Soapdish]

But with 25 volunteers, those 5000 stories drop to just 200 apiece each day.

[Wilson]

Lol, that would be wonderful. SOme stories have really gd plots, but honestly, their grammar is horrendous.

[whoamii]

Haha, agreed, Wilson! Bad grammer irks me...even if mine isn't perfect.

[narutokage]

Lol, that would be wonderful. SOme stories have really gd plots, but honestly, their grammar is horrendous.

you can say that again. Sometimes the grammar is so bad I have to read something else just to get my brain on the right track again

[Vespar]

Maybe these people won't actually proof-read submitted fics, but just delete any that looks like spam?

[Vyse]

I'll just cross my fingers for a yaoi-filter and a better/easier way to organise stories and chapters. I would love to be able to search for a word, like "blind" and don't have to sort through dozens of different yaoi stories to find some that looks ok.

And add new shait to the reviews, like "Grammar: x/10" and "Plot: x/10". This way, even if they don't write.. you get something concrete out of the reviews!

[Recompense]

I'll just cross my fingers for a yaoi-filter and a better/easier way to organise stories and chapters. I would love to be able to search for a word, like "blind" and don't have to sort through dozens of different yaoi stories to find some that looks ok.

And add new shait to the reviews, like "Grammar: x/10" and "Plot: x/10". This way, even if they don't write.. you get something concrete out of the reviews!

Amen to that!

[whoamii]

I'll just cross my fingers for a yaoi-filter and a better/easier way to organise stories and chapters. I would love to be able to search for a word, like "blind" and don't have to sort through dozens of different yaoi stories to find some that looks ok.

And add new shait to the reviews, like "Grammar: x/10" and "Plot: x/10". This way, even if they don't write.. you get something concrete out of the reviews!

if that's not what they're doing now, then they should consider it.

[TikiTDO]

I don't think having grammar and plot scores would help much. Most of the even remotely popular stories on the high traffic communities have hundreds of reviews, most of which are just "OMG GUD STRY." Something tells me that these type of reviewers would just automatically put 10/10 for everything. A better way of doing scores is setting up some simple checks, such as a spelling checker, a grammar checker, and a thesaurus/word counter, that can automatically generate a score based on spelling mistakes, grammar problems and word spread. True, the logistics of this would be terribly complex to do well, but it would still be doable.

[narutokage]

I don't think having grammar and plot scores would help much. Most of the even remotely popular stories on the high traffic communities have hundreds of reviews, most of which are just "OMG GUD STRY." Something tells me that these type of reviewers would just automatically put 10/10 for everything. A better way of doing scores is setting up some simple checks, such as a spelling checker, a grammar checker, and a thesaurus/word counter, that can automatically generate a score based on spelling mistakes, grammar problems and word spread. True, the logistics of this would be terribly complex to do well, but it would still be doable.

but that would be difficult since some author tend to use japanese words in their stories and the grammar checker would pick those as spelling errors. don't u think? I am not too sure about that though

[Vyse]

Even the dumbest of idiots should give a crap story bad reviews, however this is not the case with fanfiction.net. So I guess you're right TikiTDo! But I still think it could be helpful with something like that, so we could somehow know a story with crap grammar without having to read any of it. They can still write a decent summary and have aweful grammar in-story, right? Oh well, I wish it was possible to find a fail-proof way of doing it.

But the yaoi filter is something I've wished for, and I really do think loads of people will like that adition.

[Vespar]

but that would be difficult since some author tend to use japanese words in their stories and the grammar checker would pick those as spelling errors. don't u think? I am not too sure about that though

It shouldn't be difficult to implement a rule in spell-checker that would overlook words that start with a capital letter (names), are written in capitals (acronyms) or use hyphens. That should cover quite alot of mistakes.
Shouldn't be too difficult for it to use both types of English as well.

[Onionhead Attacks]

I think ff.net is starting to input some of the features on the site right now as we speak... though I don't think it's worth mentioning on the front page =_=. Like the resigned navigation bars and how the story your mouse is hovering over, from a list, lights up. The only problem I have right now is how the character filters isn't working for me D: Every time I enter the characters and hit "enter" the dictionary page pops up with the definition of the word "word"

[Tohno Shiki]

Ah that happens to me sometimes. Just refresh the page and hope for the best...

[Wilson]

I am hoping for a longer summary allowance. Hnestly, some stories have the crappiest summaries...

[Jwolf0]

I think ff.net is starting to input some of the features on the site right now as we speak... though I don't think it's worth mentioning on the front page =_=. Like the resigned navigation bars and how the story your mouse is hovering over, from a list, lights up. The only problem I have right now is how the character filters isn't working for me D: Every time I enter the characters and hit "enter" the dictionary page pops up with the definition of the word "word"

It looks like that problem's extended to logging in. Every time I try it takes me to that same screen. :/

EDIT: Never mind, looks like it's fixed now.