Unable to access the fiction archive

[Slammr (imported)]

I'm grateful for all the fine work of archive administrators and volunteers. Sorry if I came across as an ingrate. My intent was to offer suggestions for features I thought would be useful for writers and readers, not to gripe about the lack of them at this moment. Programming is well outside my skill set, so I'll just STFU now.

We get a little touchy about this at times. You'd be surprised at how much work is involved, the programming all done by Tal. From what I've seen, many more search options will be available than ever were before. None of this is going to happen overnight, though. 10,000 stories need editing, and only a handful of people are doing the editing. If someone says, "I don't like how it is, now, so I'm not going to read the stories," I would be inclined to make sure he never reads any of them.

If you want one of your stories back up, let us know the name of the story, and maybe, someone will edit and format it to put it back up. As I said, there are 10,000 stories and someone has to edit and format each one.

[talula]

Hehe. Yes we do get a bit touchy. I for one admit full guilt. Guess we can talk more about what is going on.

As Slammr mentioned there will be search options never before available. Over the years folks have made suggestions and we listened to them. I currently have a program written that spits out 459 separate index pages. These include a-z alpha, a-z author, a-z [A][F][G][S][T], a-z Bi, Gay, Minor, Nullification,Penectomy,Straight,Testicles,TG,Gene ral Warning themes, Stories rated 4.1 and above, archive classic stories, your bookmarked stories, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and (at paolo's request) Klingon. Random short, medium, long length pickers, a full text search (limited in nature), the new stories (which we don't have any so that is last) and a pile of ways to get random stories specific to a genre or theme.

Don't think I forgot anything.

So you see, we have been busy. This stuff is almost ready to roll out but I gots to put it all together in a nice little bundle (or in this case 3 bundles), then we have to test. Look for it soon.

I'm not so sure about the hit ratings though. It is a point of debate and it's my contention that they really don't tell you much. Someone could sit there and mash a story all day and drive the ratings up (unless we programmed it not to do so). As it sits we are a closed system (as opposed to the open system we had before) and so I"m thinking that the rating system should be a more accurate measure. True there are those users that will not rate a story no matter what but perhaps a sort of nag system can be put into place. Imagine this! A system where you have to rate at least one story out of ten read or else the screen blanks out! hehehe. I'll think about it...

Anyhow. Hope this keeps folks a bit more happy.

tal

[Slammr (imported)]

As an author, I relied on the hit counter, but that was often all we had. I still like the idea of a hit counter, and I think it's a fairly reliable indicator of how well a story is received. Certainly, the count can be run up, but who would deliberately do it? It defeats the purpose of the hit counter - a form of feedback - for an author to do it. I've posted enough stories to - I think - see a reliable correlation between hit counts and the popularity of a story. I'll be interested to see how the rating system works, but if possible, I would like to see the hit counter included.

That, of course, is up to you. You're the one doing the work.

[Cainanite (imported)]

The one lonely story I had on the site, and I guess still have, had the hit counter at the bottom. I had ignored the story for a long time. One day before the site went down, I had a look at it. I nearly fell out of my chair at the amount of hits the story had.

I can't remember the number, but it blew me away. It was in the thousands. It may have been tens of thousands. As of April 2009 (wayback machine) it had 9438 hits. Either someone was clicking on it OCD style, or it was popular. That being said, there are a lot of stories that had much much higher hits than my old crappy story. It was interesting to see that is for sure. If you had asked me when I wrote it how many people might read it, I would have said 20 or 30 at most. It was an eye-opener.

I'd kinda like to see the counter back too. As Slammr said though, I don't have to program for it. I just need to get back to editing.

Opinions are kinda like assholes after all, everybody has one. This is just mine... opinion that is...

Ima goin' back to editing now.

[Nickolai (imported)]

OK, now that I have backup from some other authors I'll pipe up again to plead for a hit counter. I've gotten direct feedback via forum posts and emails on only one of my stories, but it was gratifying to see via the hit counter that the other ones were being read. Writers thrive on knowing someone has at least bothered to click on their stories.

Otherwise it's like dumping words into a black hole. Why bother? If you aren't a writer you have no idea how rare it is to get some recognition on this forum, and that's the only compensation we get for our time.

I know the same applies to the other volunteers who keep the forum running and as I said before you have my gratitude.

[stuff11021 (imported)]

Hi all

just wondering if there will be a "new story" index as in the days of old?

its gt=reat to read the latest postings

Thanks so much, keep up the good work

[Cainanite (imported)]

Welcome to the EA.

Before everyone jumps on you for asking, it has been asked A LOT! No worries. All the functionality of old will be returning. I've seen a sneak preview, and it will be extremely nice and user friendly. There will be a New Story index, and a host of other indexes coming soon. You'll be able to search through the stories in a host of ways we've never been able to before.

It won't happen fast, so please be patient. There are still over 8000 stories to convert before everything is back on line the way we hope.

Until then, keep reading and coming back. Welcome again.

[Paolo]

Right now, there are no "new" stories.

I guess all of the old 10k+ ones are going to be new again, so to speak, but to ask for new stuff is out of the question right now.

[talula]

Many of the new stories which we have put into a readable format could be classified as new, because they are now readable! (thanks the the tireless proofreaders).

[Paolo]

Amen!

I just cleaned up 2 that were a NIGHTMARE and should be very appealing to the straight crowd.