Some God Damned Indices

[Kerrus]

One thing I've noticed about the TFF story forums is a lack of organization. People post, and threads hang around until people stop posting, at which point they drift off the first page into the perilous wilds of beyond.

That, coupled with the fact that the Forum Search function doesn't, makes for a wild difficulty in finding fics, short of clicking on /topics by this user/ and hoping it lists what you want.

Now, ideally, there would be a simple solution, and honestly, I can't see why it hasn't been brought up before.

Indices. That's plural of Index for you literary impaired folk.

Essentially, each /ideas/ and each /previews/ forum would have a stickied index topic. Then users could each make a post in the topic. On that post they would be able to edit, and so would keep links to each of their topics /in/ that particular section.

Now this wouldn't just be helpful for users in general, but the writers in general. No longer do you need to go find story idea MMXVVIII, digging your way through topics years old and doing your best not to accidnetally necromanse something, now it would just be a link away.

And it'd be a bit more efficient then what we have now.

Alternatively, a more advanced version of this idea consists of having the first post in the sticky link to each 'author page' later on in the thread, thought that would require the input of someone consistently active.

Bleh.

 

[knight_of_ni]

The search function problem is Invision's fault, Hawk can do nothing about that.

And necroing is generally not a problem except when people necro for stupid reasons or don't add to the thread in anyway. Plus, if you ask politely, people will generally help out.

The idea is good, but the thing is that, well, if you are using the idea chances are that you have been looking at the idea recently, so it wouldn't be too hard to find it on request, and also, most people (well, outside the Naruto section, I haven't been there for a while except to look at pics and laugh at the new chapters) don't really use the ideas posted, preferring to write their own.

Also, you run into the same problem, the people would still have to do the same thing to find it. Since you don't have a way to divide fics into genre, you can't really implement this system effectively.

If you mean alphabetical order, well, you get the same issue, you would still be searching through the threads themselves.

This is a good idea, but in terms of actually using it, well, that would be work for Hawk (who probably needs a vacation from dealing with us ) and honestly, it would be hard to figure out how to put it together.

And honestly, searching through old files is a good thing, you find interesting stuff there.

 

[PCHeintz72]

You could always do it yourself. Though that is the hard way.

Make them part of your Favorites/Bookmarks. Figure out a system that works for you.

I cheat. In my case, I use my reporting program. I use what I call a series prefix and author name on story links, and a Page Type on Author Links.

Currently, of the Invision forums I go to, I have:
- 16 links for the Invision based Shinjis Sharing Inc
- 47 links for the Invision based Niklas Hawk Jonsson's The Fanfiction Forum

There are actually more stories than that I use from here, but instead, I give them the same author name, and then reference their pages, if not there, they are usually deleted, or here.