Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Why different threads?

Why do you have different threads for stories and feedback? To me it seems it clutters the page something awful. Yeah I know there are TOCs but those are not complete and slowly updated.

Just curious...

There were many reasons for keeping the feedback and story threads separate. I can't remember all of them now, but they were all good ones! The current system was the one agreed on after a discussion back in the early days of the forum.

I do recall that many readers wanted to save the stories on their hard drives for future reading, but didn't necessarily want to also save a stream of fdk posts at the bottom of the segment.

Others only had slow-loading internet connections and if the fdk threads were attached to the bottom of the story segment then it took them much longer to get the page uploaded so they could read.

There were others, but I believe those were the two main ones.

Anyway, it's been a tradition for a very long time now and seems to work just fine.

As for the TOCs being slow to update - most of the TOCs are updated on a regular weekly basis, each Thursday. There are a few which aren't done by myself but by their individual authors, so if those aren't being updated regularly, you'll have to take that up with them. But the majority will be updated by me to that weekly schedule.


LabRat

I was on a board that had it set up this way.

There was only one thread for the story and the feedback, all together! What a nightmare! For really good stories you had to trawl through tons of FDK just to find the individual segments of the story if you were playing catchup!

They eventually changed things so that there was two threads per story, one for the story, one for the FDK.

I'm still trying to decide which I like better, our method or their new one. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

I personally like the idea of a single thread for FDK, since I don't print it off.

However, some of our FDKers leave posts as long as the initial story post!

BUT, I also like the individual posts for the stories (easier to print, (I'm seeing a pattern here...))

But, again, having all the posts for a story in a single thread would make catchup easier.

Like I said, tough pros & cons.

James

Thank you Labby.
Hmm. they didn’t just copy and paste?

Even with a modem you should have really large textfiles to get a lag.

That’s what what my grandpa used to say, when people suggested changes. Well if most people like it that’s it. It just seems very jumbled to me.

It wasn’t so much a complaint that people where lazy helping me get to my fic for free. It’s more that if you are reading a hot story you scroll the board first to get the update. The TOC is more useful when the story is finished.

Do you mean that all the installations of a series and the feedback would be in the same thread? That I can understand would difficult.

I just thought that each new chapter would have it's fdk at the bottom. The story would always come out at the top.

Personally, I like the seperate threads for the story and the feedback. Since it's part is in a separate post, each post is in order. If you start adding feedback to each story part, suddenly part 1 is on March 1, part 2 is on March 2, part 3 is on March 5 and part 4 is on March 4! Or someone comes in late to the game, and posts feedback to each story part, and suddenly all the posts are the top of the list again. Not always a bad thing, but definitely not where you thought they were.

When people start adding story posts to the story themselves, that confuses me, too. The way we have things set up here, I'll often ignore the additional posts, thinking it's a new person who doesn't know how we do things here.

If you're looking for an easier way to find new story parts, Arawn, take a look at the left hand side of the screen on the Fanfic page. You'll see that most of the authors use the blue arrow to indicate a new story part. It makes it a lot easier to find them.


(I believe that, too, is tradition )

ML

You are right MLT. I haven't noticed the blue arrows. That should make it easier. Thanks.

Still I think a combination would be better.

BTW I would like to thank you for your stories, Especially "First comes marriage" I don't know how many times I have read it.

I prefer using the traditional phrase: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I like keeping the threads separate, though that may just be familiarity talking. I remember when the convention was set up, way back when on Zoomway's boards -- that was sometime in the late '90s. Prior to that, message boards had been very difficult to navigate, as I recall, so this was a huge step towards order. I think one of the factors was that way back when, UBB hadn't given us the option to jump to the last post in a thread; you had to start at the top every time. That innovation didn't start until we began these boards, in 2003.

/me searches for her cane... you youngsters just don't know how good you have it; in the old days, we had to walk five miles to read fanfic! In the snow! Uphill both ways!

Anyway, we're open to the concept of changes -- we'd just have to be convinced that the change was actually an improvement, if you see what I mean.

James, it sounds like those threads would have part one, feedback, part two, feedback, part three, etc... I can see that would be really annoying to keep up with.

Why bother to do that when it's quicker and easier to hit the "save as" button?

Actually, I like too the separate threads. I post each segment of my fanfics here in english, and in french version on a french message boards. There, there is only one thread for the story and the feedbacks, all together. That's pretty awful! A real mess!

And I wouldn't like either only one thread for the differents parts of the story, and one thread for the feedbacks, because, if every parts were posted the one after the other, you'll have to scroll down a lot to find the parts you're interested in. That wouldn't be practical.

Only one thread for the feedbacks would be problematic too, because if a person forget to tell what part his feedback is for, it could be difficult sometimes to follow what that person want to say (except of course for those who post the feedbacks just after a new part of the story was posted. In that case, it's pretty obvious which part the feedbacks are for, but if a person is a little late, that'd be a problem).

So, I really think the way it is here is the easier for everybody. Separate threads for separate parts of the story, and their respective feedbacks.

I've read fanfic on message boards under both methods and I much prefer the way it's done here. It's a big step towards organization. I'm with Pam -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Nan

Do you mean that all the installations of a series and the feedback would be in the same thread? That I can understand would difficult.

yes.

Yes, that is exactly how it was.

And after much contemplation, I have to admit that I lean more strongly to this board's method than any other.

James

Thanks, Arawn. Glad you enjoyed them.

ML

I like the way where the FDK is kept in a different folder than the story.

The hard part for me is sometimes finding the FDK when there is a phrase put in with the title of the story. I find it entertaining and cute, but I have sometimes have to use the search function to find it. Oh gee I'm

I find many boards very difficult to navigate through. I like this one.

Don't worry, SuperRoo, you ain't alone on that one. I find them entertaining too and they sometimes make me laugh. But, boy, are they frustrating when I'm updating the TOCs and end up searching up and down the page without seeing the fdk folder because I skip past it and don't recognise it AS the fdk folder!

It would help, I think, if the story title was always first on the fdk folder header and any commentary came after it, rather than the other way around.


LabRat