Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Why Old Stories Are Being Bumped Up

Thank you so much for letting me know what the problem was for the broken links. I was able to fix all the broken links in the "Missing Lois" TOC (all 203 of them) in less than five minutes. Here's how:

I opened the TOC file.

I copied the entire TOC contents over into MS WORD.

I did a Find/Replace search:

Find: http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=

Replace: http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=

Copied the file back over to the TOC page.

Clicked Submit.

Checked my results.



I still have to go back through the individual posts and FDK threads, though (adding Blue Arrows, fixing any internal broken links, and adding all my FDK threads to my watched topics). At least, my TOCs are correct now. I wish I had known this when I did Wrong Clark, line by line by line by line, the other night. I thought I'd pass along this technique for anyone else who writes long fics (or is fixing them).

Silly question... does the search only go back 5 years? If so, updating my stuff is gonna be... fun. Haha. Oh well.

Sara

Since I found a Haircut Challenge from back in 2003... does math in head... I'm going to say 'no'. It's best when using the "search" function to remove all dates (leave it blank) to get best results, unless specifically looking for something within a certain time frame.

Before Annie showed how to browse years by page numbers (above), I tried to find one of my stories posted in Oct. 2011. It had a generic enough name that the name search didn't work, so I did a search of every one of my posts putting in a time limit: 2 years was too short. 3 years was too long. I actually found it by plugging in 2.5 years.

I was concerned about that myself but as Virginia says it seems to work with blanking out the dates totally. Now the keyword indexing on the Subject line seems to be somewhat hit and miss. I found parts to SQD's Everywhere by searching for stopquitdont in the author line but if I put "Everywhere" in the subject search, zilch. This is making the TOC updates a bit more of a challenge and just when I was thinking I was getting good at finding things...

I am unsure whether to raise this as a ticket as it is tricky to reproduce as some stuff works and some doesn't. It seems as though the more unique the words the better it works. It found every part "Gawain the Black Knight" by Deja Vu but nothing of "Getting It Together" by Antonia.

Of course some of the authors may have just submitted to the archive and never posted anything in the boards. This place likes to keep you on your toes

Bewildering...

Mike

Mike, if you can find the TOC, can't you just do a universal Find/Replace to correct the broken links (as I described above), so you don't have to search for the individual links themselves? Or is it that you don't have management powers to open the TOC to access the links? If you "quick quote" the TOC, shouldn't that give you access to the links, which you then can copy and paste over in WORD and do the Find/Replace option?

Thanks Virginia!!! I understand better now.
regards
Artemis

Virginia,

Probably was not clear (my wife will tell you I am NEVER clear...). A lot of what I was working on was attempting to create TOCs for posts that never had them before. Also the issue with the keywords exist in the TOC forum also (2120 threads and counting). However it IS easier to find there than in the fanfic forum

That said I currently have no privs to open up the TOC and make changes but that seems to be in the works. My approach was working just fine until I began getting into fics with titles like "Going home now", none of those words seem to be indexed.

The additional problem is that things seem to be pretty (very?) dynamic. LabRat sent me a message saying she could not get "Vampire Murders" to find anything but "The Vampire Murders" would. I turned around this morning and searched "Vampire Murders" and found the parts. However the same holds true for me, I would not be able to find something but Labby could find it immediately. It MIGHT have something to do with when we are doing the work as the mind sometimes does not work properly or consistently at 3AM .

Some authors seem to like to use pretty novel titles to their fics(Sue comes to mind) which makes the search work well, others more generic and those can be problematic. However we just have to work through them.

Thanks

Mike

Yikes! There are stories floating on the boards which never got a TOC?! More power to you, Mike. That seems like a daunting task to fix.

EDIT: Mike, are you sure about "Everywhere" not having a TOC? I just did a quick TOC of StopQuitDont's work (as I did for MozartMaid, yesterday with TOC Forum highlighted, StopQuitDont in the Subject line, and no dates indicated) and it came up as well as a bunch of her other stories.

I suspect it is (a daunting task that is). LabRat and I have not discussed how to decide what to make TOCs for and when. I have been searching for parts for some of the longer ones and I suspect they would be more useful but mostly I was just trying out different things trying to make sense of the search...

Speaking of not worthy, I am so glad that you are handling things like "Wrong Clark", my god how much more is there of that monster? I would like to start reading it but prefer the e-book stuff and I am so far behind now that it would take me over a year to catch up

Mike

For myself, I'm creating a new TOC when:

a/ the link to the TOC in the Fanfic Index is broken.
b/ the mbs search engine doesn't find a TOC.
c/ some searching around the TOC folder around the same dates as the story posts doesn't find it either.


LabRat

Virginia,

I believe LabRat was updating the TOC. She just could not find Parts 1 and 2 which I provided. I just checked and she had updated it this morning after fixing the broken links.

Mike

Virginia,

Thanks for the technique. I had to modify it a bit due to the fact that some of the parameters are different on some of the TOCs than your format.

I went with
Replace: cgi-bin/boards/ultimatebb.cgi
With: ubb/ultimatebb.php

which leaves all of the other parameters the same.

Thanks again.

Mike

Thank you so much for your interest in my little vignette. This summer, when I take a hiatus from writing Wrong Clark (well... posting it, at least. I can't stop myself from writing it...) besides taking a family vacation, cleaning and repainting my office (and hopefully finding my wedding ring, which I lost 5 years ago), I have promised LabRat to prepare Sections I & II of Wrong Clark for G.E. Section I is roughly the first 100 parts on the boards, and Section II will be slightly less than that (she says crossing her fingers and knocking on wood). Both those sections will be complete on the boards before I take a pause in posting, (she says crossing her fingers AGAIN and knocking on wood AGAIN) even if it means I have to up my posting schedule to make it so. I'm also hoping to catch up on my cushion and make it more comfortable than the current 5 parts it is at now. (I had a 20 part cushion when I started posting in 2012.) That will give many people time to catch up with the story, should they wish. I have made it (and will fix the links, so they can do so again) as easy to read as possible. Firstly, I've broken the story up into smaller story arcs (See TOC for more details) and, secondly, I've added a link to the next part at the end of each part.

You can see why updating all the links for this story is an arduous process. Each Part has at least 4 links in it: the *previous* part, the *next* part, the *TOC* link, and a link to FDK thread. I finished fixing all the broken links (and apparently the non-broken ones as well) in the TOC the other day and now I'm working on correcting all the broken links within each individual part and FDK thread. As of this morning, I've updated everything *after* Part 103. The Find/Replace method has been very helpful in this process. I wish I had stumbled across it a week ago.

I am no longer making predictions as to when I hope to be finished writing this story (and I'm just talking BOOK 2 here, people, there's still a BOOK 3 of the trilogy) and I've demolished all the limits I've set for myself. (That it wouldn't be longer than Missing Lois, that I would finish by the end of the first year, that I would finish by the end of LAST summer, that it wouldn't be longer than 150 parts). It is what it is. It is an outlined story and I'm approximately 2/3 of the way through it... believe it or not. Luckily for me, there is a lot of fun stuff coming up to write about, including an Nfic chapter or two which some Reader made me promise to write, so I'm hoping that means it will be easier and quicker to write. The darker (Lex POV, Lois and Clark fighting) scenes can be depressing, which doesn't inspire my muse. She loves fun banter to heavy angst. Don't get me wrong, there *will* be angst in Section III, just a different kind of angst than there was in the darker Section II. Although, I have to admit today's scene wrote itself much faster than I was expecting. Speaking of which, I better get back to it, if I'm going to post tomorrow night. Thanks again for your interest, Mike.

AND now you know what it takes to write an epic: a tendency to ramble like a babbling brook after a heavy week of rains, an inner editor on vacation, and the ability to type quickly.

I responded to some over in the other thread but at 3AM some of what you posted is just hitting me. So the second part of the TRILOGY will become a TRILOGY itself? This is amazing in itself.


At 2/3 through you have another year to go to complete this 2nd Part of the original Trilogy. I agree about the preference of banter to angst but with L&C you frequently get the banter due to the angst as it is kind of their defense mechanism...


No thank you for all of your work and dedication. I am quite amazed at people who can write fiction and absolutely blown away by people who can keep a story on track for over two years and probably closer to 3 eventually.

Mike

Mike M and LabRat:

THANK YOU!!!!

I was fully intending to help by updating my own TOCs, but I got distracted and frustrated (with searching) and busy with work and life...

Now I've checked, and everything's been done already! You guys are amazingly awesome!!!!

Sara

Sara,

No problem. I was just trying to make sure that LabRat was not stuck doing the entire job.

That just didn't seem fair.

Mike

You're welcome, Sara. Things went very much faster once Virginia came up with her trick of simply swapping out the urls with a global search & replace. I was even able to do a huge chunk after that on my Nexus instead of having to wait til I could get to the pc.

So, yes, all TOCs should be back to normal. If anyone finds differently - let me know.

LabRat