The thing about joining a new fandom is that there are always people who were there before you, who set up systems and habits and their own way of doing things, and these systems all had reasons and logic behind them when they were established. Sometimes because it suited the constraints people had - eg dialup, or people wanting to save story segments to their hard drive. Sometimes because it seemed to be the most sensible system anyone could think of at the time. Sometimes just because someone started doing it that way and everyone followed.
Yes, we began maintaining a separate feedback thread because doing it the other way (as attached to the story) was inconvenient for a lot of people. I remember many requests for feedback to go separately. Then TOCs emerged because - as you're noticing - it became difficult to catch up with all parts of a story. In the beginning, not too many people were posting fic here, and it wasn't posted in instalments - you'd get an entire fic posted at once, because that's the way the Archive accepts fic. And then we moved to instalments, and it became difficult to find earlier instalments, so the fanfic index was set up - have you found that? If not, then click on the big Fanfic Index link at the top of the fanfic folder. There, you'll find all fic listed by title, with a link to the TOC. And, of course, then TOCs came - someone came up with the idea for a table of contents, and it took off.
So that's why we do what we do. Now, it's a system the old-timers are used to, so I can certainly see why some people are looking surprised that it doesn't work for others and wondering what the problem is. We're in a situation where there are a lot of new members here (which is wonderful, by the way), and it's only natural that you're thinking about ways it could be done differently.
So, what are you thinking of? I'm not sure, personally, that having the feedback threads in a different
folder would work especially well, or be popular. Posting each subsequent part of a story in the same folder? That might work. I think the reason it wasn't done originally was that it would take too long to load for those on dialup. Maybe, also, it would be a pain to scroll through to find the newest chapters? I don't know. Also, I'm not sure but there may be a limit to how long (not number of responses but number of characters) a thread can be. Don't know there.
Anyway, the admins
are always open to suggestions - these are your boards! I do have to say that in some fandoms any attempt to change the way things are done will get people completely slapped down.
That's
not the way we work here and I don't think it's ever been. But, as Yvonne hinted, it can feel like a bit of a slap in the teeth if the approach seems to be 'this is crap and it needs to be better'. But do suggest changes or improvements all you like, though!
Wendy
Boards Admin Team
