The Truth About FF&W

To help decide on a benchmark for minimum amount of words per chapter, I have my OpenOffice set-up at Verdana font at size 9.6 (which is the exact size of the font used on the forums). 1000 words is a page-and-a-half, and 2000 words is three pages. That should be a decent-sized chapter and easily do-able.

When I created the quality rule, I debated about including a minimum word count per chapter. The reason why I didn't add any minimum word count was because I didn't want that to be the only qualifier. So long as the story was readable, it could be short as it needed to be. If/when you add a minimum word count to the rules, just clarify that stories shorter than that are allowed as long as they're of readable quality. That would also count towards poetry, in case someone only has one poem that they want to share at a time (and none of them are epics).

Perhaps it could be added as a suggestion? Chapter length doesn't account for chapter quality, but chapters less than a few pages on a word processing program tend to be underwritten or just flat-out bad, from my experience.

Skunter said:

Perhaps it could be added as a suggestion? Chapter length doesn't account for chapter quality, but chapters less than a few pages on a word processing program tend to be underwritten or just flat-out bad, from my experience.

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This was my reasoning behind it. I mean, I won't go checking every chapter and copy and pasting it into word, but if it's too short it'll be pretty obvious. Although I do think I'll leave the rule alone for chapters that have good quality. I'll post it as a strong suggestion in the rules section.

What about adding separate/new section for other fanfics? Sadly, I've gotten bored of Pokémon fanfiction because there is just such a lack of diversity among the fandom now; and it's rare that I ever see one that interests me. And I tire of scrolling through all the pokéfics to find one that's not Pokémon.

It would definitely interest me.

As for reviewing, I would love a 'quality check' so to speak. Maybe mod approval before posting or something. I just tire of telling people the same things over and over and often not seeing a response, getting a snappy response back, or not being listened to.

PhantomX0990 said:

What about adding separate/new section for other fanfics? Sadly, I've gotten bored of Pokémon fanfiction because there is just such a lack of diversity among the fandom now; and it's rare that I ever see one that interests me. And I tire of scrolling through all the pokéfics to find one that's not Pokémon.

It would definitely interest me.

As for reviewing, I would love a 'quality check' so to speak. Maybe mod approval before posting or something. I just tire of telling people the same things over and over and often not seeing a response, getting a snappy response back, or not being listened to.

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As of right now, I don't think there's enough activity to make a separate section. I've seen it work successfully on other forums, so I know what you're talking about, but I don't think there's enough non-pokemon stories to qualify for another section. If we're only getting a couple updates on a busy day when all the stories are grouped together, I don't think a separate section would do all that good. Maybe when the section gets more popular.

The quality of fics here is pretty good when compared to other forums. It's pretty rare when a fic gets closed down and it's going to have to be a pretty bad fic in order to get closed. I'd rather work with the writer to improve the quality rather than close the story and ignore the problem. If bad fics and not relevant threads become a big problem, then I'll go as far as moderator approval, but for now I don't think it's that big of a problem.

Telling people the same thing over and over again is part of reviewing. That's why it's better in my opinion to do a couple reviews a week rather than as many as possible. Just to keep your patience up and that reviews don't get snappy. If you feel disrespected because of a response to anything in this section, please contact me. I'll be happy to sort it out.

Agreed that we don't have the activity for a subsection for non-Pokemon works, really. And the prefixes are there to help you sort through stuff (you should also be able to just search for fics with a specific prefix which would remove the trouble of sorting through them).

No to mod approval too imo - as said, it's not a problem right now (nor is implemented on active forums either), and the report button is already available for fics to be raised for breaking rules.

It's not the ones that get closed I'm talking about. It's the three paragraphs of, excuse a lack of a better word, crap. Or the person that doesn't know how to format, or use dialogue punctuation, etc.

But these are still far and few between, aren't they? And they can benefit from members giving feedback too, as opposed to a need for Slayr to close the thread and take time out to address them, while the forum appears less active as a result to everyone else.

PhantomX0990 said:

It's not the ones that get closed I'm talking about. It's the three paragraphs of, excuse a lack of a better word, crap. Or the person that doesn't know how to format, or use dialogue punctuation, etc.

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If the fic obviously shouts that the writer thought that they would decide to write a story, thought about it, wrote it out, and uploaded it all within five minutes, I will close the thread. If it happens multiple times a day, I will then put up moderator approval.

I'd much rather work with a "crappy" writer and help them out rather than just shove them away. I'm speaking from personal experience because my first fic that I posted didn't have any formatting whatsoever. No indents, no spacing between paragraphs and dialogue, nothing except spaces between words and punctuation. If it weren't for the kind words of a few people, I would have given up writing forever. That's why I find it hard to lock writing threads and I'm willing to work with people. You never know just how much they'll appreciate in the long run.