The Planning Thread for "quality fanfic archive"

[Ninja Caterpie]

Yay, we have a new reviewer! All we need is Xanthine, and we've got the lot! :P

 

[Post Office Buddy]

4:11 AM EST... Almost forgot that x.x

Okay, so I have finally finished updating my scale. I added a lot to it, and I think it's safe to include this in the first post now, An-chan. Again, if you have issues with any of this, then please inform me (I would prefer via PM, as to avoid clutter on this thread.)

1. 30 points: Plot - This is quite a critical element of the story. In fact, without a good plot, there is no reason to accept the story. What we really want is a plot that seems logical, isn't clich'ed, and isn't full of holes. If the fic is a parody, then it is okay to accept clich'es, since that is most likely one of the things being parodized.

• • 15 points: Originality - Has this idea been done to death? If so, then how well did they throw their own twist into the fiction? If it is a "new" idea, how creative was it? Also, does it seem like it has been plaguarized? (Note: any plaguarized fictions will automatically be thrown out and the moderator of the forum it was posted on will be contacted along with the original author. Please report all plaguarisms to Post Office Buddy or An-chan along with the source and we will deal with them.)
  • 10 points: Cliches - Are cliches used with little thought, or do they seem to be placed in the fiction on purpose? Certain parodies will obviously use cliches like crazy, so in that case we would rate them on how well the cliches were utilized. Were they placed carefully to bring about the best possible humour, or were they placed in poorly chosen areas that negatively affect the overall humour of the parody?
  • 5 points: Plot Holes - If there is even just one plot hole in the fiction, then at least one point will be deducted. Further deductions will be based on how prevalent these holes are and how well the author covers them up.

1. 30 points: Readability - Perhaps even more important than plot. Without readability, then you have basically undermined what we are trying to do. This category is split into 3 parts:

• • 10 points: Grammar - This is extremely important to readability. If there are a million and one grammar mistakes in just a short chapter, then it will quickly turn potential readers off.
  • 10 points: Punctuation - Simple as this sounds, many writers tend to overlook punctuation rules. Comma rules could slide a bit, especially if it's something as complex as separation of clauses or whatnot, but most others have no excuse to be wrong.
  • 5 points: Format - Unless a fic is a parody of noobish writing, then it should not be a block of text. A good fiction should be formatted correctly, with a line break between paragraphs.
  • 5 points: Spelling - Take the total number of spelling errors in the fiction and divide them by the number of chapters. Deduct one point for every two average errors. (No division needs to be done in One-Shots since they are, well, a One-Shot.)

1. 20 points: Character Development - This, too, is crucially important to a good fiction. A fiction that doesn't do a good job on character development tends to overlook many other important characteristics of a good fic. If a character is bland, does not grow, etc., then the writer did not focus enough on that aspect.

• • 10 points: Realism - Is the character a Gary-Stu or a Mary Sue? How realistic are the character's actions? Does s/he have flaws of their own or are they seemingly "perfect"?
  • 10 points: Growth - Does the character progressively grow in one way or another throughout the fiction? Does a human/Pokemon become stronger/wiser throughout the fiction? Do they seem to learn from their mistakes?

1. 20 points: "Speed" - What I mean by this is how rushed the fiction sounds. If it seems like the writer went from point A to point B as quickly as they could, then they obviously didn't put much thought or effort into the fiction.

• • 10 points: Realism in Traveling - Does the speed at which the characters travel seem realistic, or do they start in, for example, Viridian City at 9AM and end up in Pewter, traversing the Viridian Forest in the process, at 9:30AM? Considering the routes are most likely a mile or so long, and the fact that wild Pokemon or other trainers would most likely attack the character along the way, it would take quite a while to get from one town to the next. Caves are also a good example, since fumbling around an unfamiliar cave would take quite a few hours for even the most experienced hiker. Pretty much, if the time it takes for the character to go between cities seems too game-like, then they will be deducted points from this criteria.
  • 5 points: Detail - Does the writer seem to only name items rather than creating imagery through description? Do they fail to mention how an item was obtained before the use of said item?
  • 5 points: Evolution Factors - Sometimes Pokemon evolve at ungodly speeds throughout a fiction. Realistically, if you were to receive a Pokemon, then it would take you many months to evolve it into even it's first evolution. Again, if this seems too game-like, then there will be deductions made.

Under this system, a fiction should score an 70 or higher to be accepted. Since, in school, a 70 is slightly below average, then I feel this is fair to authors and their fictions.

I'm considering lowering the qualifying score to 60. If you either object or agree with this change, then please PM me to let me know. Please don't post it on this thread as we want to avoid too much clutter.

A big thank-you to Dark Lakitu for posting above. I was afraid that I would have to edit my above post and risk it being ignored. I swear, you read my mind.

 

[An-chan]

I'm going to wait for POB to answer my PM before I put the grading scale on the first post.

Welcome to this project, anon! As I believe POB has already read your fic, anon, I think he can decide whether it's eligible or not. If not, then I can go and read it, too. I have no reason to believe it isn't, but it has to be evaluated anyway. Oh, and also, once you finish that parody, I'd love to have it on our archive! It's hard to find great parodies and it just isn't a real archive without parodies. This far it's completely eligible. Once you finish it, you can give your permission - if you don't suddently suffer from severe brain damage and lose your writing skills or something...

I just have to poke you with a stick now. Why doesn't anyone read my only full fic to decide whether it's okay or not? I can't nominate it myself, because that would be cheating and besides, I'm not sure if it is good enough. So, please someone go and decide whether it's good or not. Okay?

We want them at least nearly complete so that we don't have readers getting to the middle of the story just to discover that the author discontinued writing it. Also, we want to start the archive off with a decent selection of quality, finished fictions before broadening our search to include works in progress.

I could not have said it better. That's precisely the reason. I thought I said so in the first post? If I didn't, I have to add it there right away.

I actually realized mid-VM to An-chan last night that you were the author of the Gary Stu parody.

LOL, how many people can seriously say they realized something mid-VM? Usually VM's are two paragraphs at max... But then again, we're not quite normal xD

All we need is Xanthine, and we've got the lot! :P

I think she's busy :( It would be awesome to have her with us, though. We would just need more points to be given in each gategory, because she notices every mistake. I usually notice about two thirds of spelling mistakes and punctuation/grammar mistakes on one read, but maybe that's because this isn't my native language. Don't worry, though, one day I'll be just as fluent as the lot of you!

 

[Grovyle42(Griff8416)]

What happens if the author has no plans to discontinue to story for any reason?

 

[JX Valentine]

I think she's busy :(

Actually, I've mentioned the reasons why I'm not applying to the quality fanfiction archive to POB. Ironically, it was going to be only between the two of us, but because you asked, this is what I said as a commentary to his grading scale, which he'd PMed me in its beta form. Certain phrases bolded for emphasis.

Between you and me, this is basically the problem I have with the fanfiction archive: you're trying to judge fanfics based on your own standards, and the standards aren't the same ones everyone has. There's a lot more to judging fanfics than what I've seen from this. For example, in the plot section, you focus a lot on originality, but you don't really seem to examine the plot itself -- as in, the positive points. Instead, this rubric makes me feel as if you're mostly hunting for the bad things, rather than looking at the overall picture.

Additionally, as I've implied concerning pacing, you're missing a few things that would be considered the separation between a good fic and a bad one. You focus (with this scale) on multichaptered OT stories (which are inherently cliched plot lines [according to the definitions in the rubric] anyway, meaning they'll actually fail the first part of this test), so you don't consider how time would actually work with a one-shot, how well romance is executed, et cetera. As in, you're looking through a very narrow porthole where you really won't be able to find an abundance of good fiction, rather than a broad range under which multiple fics can fall.

That is, of course, aside from the fact that I don't agree with the idea of having a committee of any kind deeming a fanfiction "good" or "bad" for the following reasons:

1. Again, your definitions of good fic aren't my definitions of good fic. Half the ones you've listed on the first post I've actually found boring and mundane. In fact, hilariously enough, I wrote a lengthy review on Dark Lakitu's that said I felt Breaking Out was a dry and generally poorly executed piece.

2. Same reason I brought up in the bad fic contest thread concerning insult by exclusion.

I apologize if all of this seems biting or rude. Just giving you my two cents.

Note: I realize the entire point of this archive is basically to filter quality from the bad fic (ergo, #2 is inherent), but it still has a feeling of elitism to me. =/

Also, yes, I apologize for what may be interpreted as a flame.

And no, I wasn't kidding about that review. It's an example (considering I haven't reviewed the others). In your defense, I do think Saffire Persian's a good author, that Farla can pick quality stories, that katiekitten deserved FFotM, and that Ace is capable of original plotlines. However, on the flipside, I also think that Ace has serious problems with characterization (even in parodies), that Saber's fic is filled with grammatical oddities (considering you're judging fics partly with that in mind) and Ye Olde OT Plot, that Gardevoir Girl's repetition of the same word at the beginning of every paragraph is not poetic (and is, in fact, disruptive to the narration), and that most Pokemorph fics on FFNet are addled with enough illogical angst to make me want to shoot myself repeatedly in the face (despite the fact that I still read them because they're usually also filled with amusing Mary Sues).

And that, in a nutshell, is why I'm probably not what you're looking for.

 

[An-chan]

=D

I had no idea you lurked here, Xanthine!

I actually agree to your points. I haven't read all the fics we have nominated this far, so I don't really know what to say about that yet. Thus, I'm going to shut up about the contents of those fics. However, what you said about this being elitism is, on the moment, quite true. In a way, that's exactly the point: when there are archives where anyone can post, it's hard to find the good ones. If fics have to be accepted, the overall quality obviously rises. That's what they do with universities and high schools, right? They filter the material coming in so that the results are better. It is indeed elitism. However, I have to defend my idea here a bit. I never thought we'd be gong with that scale from word to word. Originality isn't the only part of the plot, obviously, but I think that even an old, overused plot can be concidered original if it's done well.

Also, about the thing on definitions of a good fic: that's why we want to have as many judges as possible. People have different tastes and that's simply a fact. Thus, to appeal to a larger audience, one has to have lots of people to choose the material to present to that audience. Of course this archive of ours is never going to appeal to everyone. We're just making it so that it appeals to us and hopefully many other people. I, for example, dislike most horror stories, but if we have another judge who just loves horror stories, my opinions don't matter that much anymore. We're trying to be fair, but one can never be fair to everyone. You can never ever appeal to everyone (that was one hard lesson for me to learn, trust me), so you should just give up and do as you like.

The most important point is by far the readability. That's the main point, kind of. It's horrible to read fics with no sense of grammar or spelling whatsoever, so bringing them to an observed space will likely increase the readability of the fics that have potential but are quite ignored because of their horrible formatting.

On another note, you're one interesting person, Xanthine. I'm filled with questions I'd like to discuss with you xD Your opinions are so close yet so far from mine...

What happens if the author has no plans to discontinue to story for any reason?

We will not take it into concideration yet, but later on we'll look into it. Later on meaning once the site is up and running. And I think that even then it should be several chapters long already or a good way into the plot. If you know what I mean.

 

[JX Valentine]

I had no idea you lurked here!

Actually, to tell you the truth, I only briefly glance at the posts now and then. POB and I were just talking about the archive, and after he sent me his scales, I figured I might as well take a closer look. I'll admit I skipped a lot of the posts.

However, what you said about this being elitism is, on the moment, quite true. In a way, that's exactly the point:

Yeah, that I know, but it still feels uncomfortable to me because of the entire "definitions aren't the same" thing. It feels as if unless clearly and solidly defined, you're basically just putting one valid opinion over another.

If fics have to be accepted, the overall quality obviously rises. That's what they do with universities and high schools, right? They filter the material coming in so that the results are better.

Unfortunately, there's a difference between people and fanfiction. With people, it's easier to define who belongs where. For a liberal arts school, you'll want a high GPA and a ton of extracurricular activities spread across a variety of fields (music, interest groups, sports, volunteering, et cetera). If you can meet certain numbers for each, you're more likely to be accepted.

With fanfiction, the definitions are slightly more slipperier. Take Dragonfree's Quest fic. A number of people say it's an original, well-executed plot. I know of others commenting that it feels pretty generic. (At least, concerning the FFNet version, glancing at some of the earlier reviews.) Without defining what either mean with a solid list of criteria, what's well-executed for one person is obviously not quite up to par for other people.

Also, about the thing on definitions of a good fic: that's why we want to have as many judges as possible.

Even then, you'll have problems regarding nominations thanks to clashing opinion. I've already given you an example: people have nominated the aforementioned fic. I've stated I didn't think it was quality. What do you do then? Go with the majority and put it in the archive, even if the fic might have glaring problems?

You can never ever appeal to everyone (that was one hard lesson for me to learn, trust me), so you should just give up and do as you like.

But the problem here is that you're labeling your archive as a "quality fanfic archive." Therefore, you need to make sure you actually have a system in which you can find fanfics that fit that definition because people are going to go to it trying to find what you're calling "quality fics." I feel as if the system you have right now has a pretty serious fault in that:

1. You haven't completely defined what is and isn't quality.
2. You're throwing in fics that violate the ones you have so far anyway.
3. You're not taking into consideration the problems a difference in opinion would actually bring up. What's quality for an individual isn't quality for the whole. What's quality for the majority isn't necessarily quality, either, depending on what the actual definition of quality is.

I'm sorry, An-chan, but you can't ignore that problem and say "you can't please everyone." You're making a quality fic archive, and therefore, you're saying that all fics therein will be good fic by general definition. You've got to address the problem with cross-opinions and subjectivity, or what you'll have instead will really just be a favorites list.

 

[An-chan]

Before I say anything, I have to remind everyone that I'm not the official voice of this project. I only present myself. No misunderstandings, please.

Unfortunately, there's a difference between people and fanfiction. With people, it's easier to define who belongs where. For a liberal arts school, you'll want a high GPA and a ton of extracurricular activities spread across a variety of fields (music, interest groups, sports, volunteering, et cetera). If you can meet certain numbers for each, you're more likely to be accepted.

With fanfiction, the definitions are slightly more slipperier. Take Dragonfree's Quest fic. A number of people say it's an original, well-executed plot. I know of others commenting that it feels pretty generic. (At least, concerning the FFNet version, glancing at some of the earlier reviews.) Without defining what either mean with a solid list of criteria, what's well-executed for one person is obviously not quite up to par for other people.

I don't think it's that simple with people, either. I got into a high school of visual arts even though that's not my cup of tea at all. Seriously, I don't get along with people there very well and I'm far too sloppy to ever be a visual artist. Also, I'm not interested in that sort of career at all. Then again, our neighbour, who thinks of that place as the only high school he wants to go to, didn't get in. I still don't know why, though. It's not that easy to tell who's suitable for what sort of stuff.

Then again, fanfiction is both easy and hard to tell where they should go. You can take an easy approach: I want few mistakes, a coherent plot and characters I'm not going to foget right away. If we go with a definition like that, we'll have fics we hope a lot of people will want to read. But, then we'll expect them to have similar tastes to us. The other option is to try to take a completely objective approach (which, of course, isn't quite possible, but one can always try) and look at grammar, fromatting, readability... Stuff that has nothing to do with tastes. Then we have lots of ways to approach the subject in between.

The thing is, this is a lot like some short story collection. We can not do this without messing our tastes and preferences into judging. We're bound to end up with something that has nothing that appeals to certain readers. We're trying to do our best in finding good fics and not just fics we like, but we're also bound to fail at some level. We try to have an objective look on the fics. That's not possible, but at least we try to do our best.

Even then, you'll have problems regarding nominations thanks to clashing opinion. I've already given you an example: people have nominated the aforementioned fic. I've stated I didn't think it was quality. What do you do then? Go with the majority and put it in the archive, even if the fic might have glaring problems?

I just realized that is a problem. Of course, we could nominate any piece of crap we found, so it's not about that. They'd get turned over anyway. I just realized we're bound to have some problems if there's a situation where a jundge or even several judges disagree. We can't go by the majority, we can't do this democratically because that's not how you separate quality. Of course, that's how it's got to be done unless someone comes up with a better system. This has got to be thought over a bit.

But the problem here is that you're labeling your archive as a "quality fanfic archive." Therefore, you need to make sure you actually have a system in which you can find fanfics that fit that definition because people are going to go to it trying to find what you're calling "quality fics." I feel as if the system you have right now has a pretty serious fault in that:

1. You haven't completely defined what is and isn't quality.
2. You're throwing in fics that violate the ones you have so far anyway.
3. You're not taking into consideration the problems a difference in opinion would actually bring up. What's quality for an individual isn't quality for the whole. What's quality for the majority isn't necessarily quality, either, depending on what the actual definition of quality is.

I'm sorry, An-chan, but you can't ignore that problem and say "you can't please everyone." You're making a quality fic archive, and therefore, you're saying that all fics therein will be good fic by general definition. You've got to address the problem with cross-opinions and subjectivity, or what you'll have instead will really just be a favorites list.

1. Very true. I think I might have said something about "readability, good plot" and something, I don't really remember. But that really isn't enough. We have to be more precise, don't we? Published books don't have spelling mistakes or stuff like that, but not all of them are quality books. I've read many books, most notably ones for teenagers, that were really badly done. The plot might have been close to a good one, but they were always so incoherent... And again, that's just my opinion. "Quality", in this case, is a matter of opinion. We can't measure a fic's quality, and that's kind of a problem. It's not necessarily a matter of liking, because I've nominated some fics I didn't precisely like. I thought they were well done and interesting and thus nominated them, thinking they might be of a sufficient "quality". I don't really think what I concider as quality...

2. Not exactly true, because no fic has gotten in yet. Those fics are waiting to be judged, they're not accepted yet.

3. Wiktionary defines quality as "level of excellence". I think that's what we're aiming for, but it's also always a matter of tastes. We're not trying to create a favorites list, I'm sorry if I sounded like I was giving up on appealing to people with this archive. Of course quality isn't the same for everyone. In my search for fics, I found a page where the admins and readers had given out awards. Half of those fics were simply bad in my opinion. Almost all of them were AshxMisty fics, which consisted mostly of Ash sleeping, his head on Misty's lap. I guess seeing Ash sleep on Misty's lap appeals to a lot of people, but it can't still be concidered as quality. Heck, seeing references to Finland in stories appeals to me, but I don't still think those stories are the awesomest ever. The fic should have to be overall excellent, but that's still a matter of preferences.

This is going to be hard and the overall outcome won't be perfect in terms of what we're trying to achieve. But we will be closer. Hopefully, when people hear about archive, we'll have lots and lots of people to choose the fics that get in. The point isn't to have only fics that I like or POB likes or Solovino likes or anything. My purpose, at least, is to gather a collection of pieces of fanfiction ranging from fairly good to excellent that has something for everyone. I'd like to have every genre presented and all in as good language as possible. I want to create an environment where it's easy to read all sorts of fics, not having to fear the next link you click will lead you to an incoherent piece of serial spelling mistake or a fic with no punctuation whatsoever, making understanding the story quite impossible.

I think I've misplaced my words and wrongly used the word 'quality' in my enthusiasm and I'm sorry for that. I didn't think things quite trough. I'm not going to stop trying until this proves to be a complete mission impossible. It might happen, and we might have to drop this idea. This might be the stupidest and most naive idea ever, but we don't know before we try. And I want to try.

And Xanthine, I actually really appreciate you criticizing this project and I don't care even if you're going to it in a flaming-kind-of way. Seriously, you have interesting thoughts. besides, I might sometimes look like a flamer myself ^-^' I got bad rep because of a misunderstanding the other day (I think I'll never take part in a conversation outside PFFP again)...

 

[Grovyle42(Griff8416)]

We will not take it into concideration yet, but later on we'll look into it. Later on meaning once the site is up and running. And I think that even then it should be several chapters long already or a good way into the plot. If you know what I mean.

How's 20 chapters, but not halfway through?

 

[JX Valentine]

Most of this I'm actually not addressing, not because I don't feel like it but instead because you've got good points. Just getting that out.

2. Not exactly true, because no fic has gotten in yet. Those fics are waiting to be judged, they're not accepted yet.

Sorry; I must have misinterpreted what the list in the first post meant.

3. Wiktionary defines quality as "level of excellence". I think that's what we're aiming for, but it's also always a matter of tastes. ... I guess seeing Ash sleep on Misty's lap appeals to a lot of people, but it can't still be concidered as quality. Heck, seeing references to Finland in stories appeals to me, but I don't still think those stories are the awesomest ever. The fic should have to be overall excellent, but that's still a matter of preferences.

You're actually getting closer to a more objective archive by separating the concept of "preference" from the concept of "excellence." (Or at least sort of doing it and then not.) As you've said before, you're looking for certain qualities that would define a good fic -- readability, plot, et cetera. You just need to put down into words a list of things that you think would make a good fic, then expand and add on that to see if you can make that list be general. Bang. There's your guidelines.

Another way to interpret my rants is that I'm saying that an archive like this wouldn't work well because one can only be subjective, so then what's the point of trying to create an archive of quality fics if they're not actually universally considered quality? As in, it would be rather disappointing to walk into a store, pick something out, and find out that it's not as up-to-par as you thought it would be. Pretty much the same concept here. Anyone can surf an archive and build for themselves what they deem to be quality fics via favorites.

I want to create an environment where it's easy to read all sorts of fics, not having to fear the next link you click will lead you to an incoherent piece of serial spelling mistake or a fic with no punctuation whatsoever, making understanding the story quite impossible.

See, if you were just doing that, I'd say this entire thing would be easy and tell you to set up a writing exam for your judges to check for grammatical excellence. But you (generally) seem to be trying to do a lot more than that, and I really don't think it'll work unless you fully separate preferences from quality and find a solid set of definitions that can handle plot, characterization, et cetera, for the reasons you've already brought up. It'll just end up being about taste unless you can find a happy medium, and, really, if it's just about taste, people can easily just collect their own fanfiction that appeals to them.

 

[Post Office Buddy]

See, if you were just doing that, I'd say this entire thing would be easy and tell you to set up a writing exam for your judges to check for grammatical excellence. But you (generally) seem to be trying to do a lot more than that, and I really don't think it'll work unless you fully separate preferences from quality and find a solid set of definitions that can handle plot, characterization, et cetera, for the reasons you've already brought up. It'll just end up being about taste unless you can find a happy medium, and, really, if it's just about taste, people can easily just collect their own fanfiction that appeals to them.

I actually have to agree with this. I thought of something similar to this on my way home today after dropping some friends off at their houses. Maybe what we should aim to do is accept nominations and have judges work one-on-one with authors to make the fictions good quality. Xanthine had several great points above and in her PM to me, the most important of which was my scoring for originality. The point she made was that any fic that follows cliches will automatically fail the criteria set for that, and thus would be down all of those points. Besides, originality might not be what readers are looking for; they might want a fiction with a plot similar to other fictions just as easily as they would want an original plot.

So, I propose we meet halfway. Lets focus on readability above everything else, and in that put most attention on grammar/spelling mistakes. If the errors are sparse and/or easily fixable, then we should help them by showing them their errors and how to fix them, along with why they are wrong. In fact, I think we should just throw out the entire plot grading and base our judgement purely on technical issues. That way we will have the variety we want with the quality we strive to feature. We just need to develop a key that would balance everything out evenly. I think I'll begin working on this tonight, and might have something workable by the Wednesday at the latest.