State of the Forum

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Watashiwa said:
I'm against telling people to write stories JUST for this site. TFF should be a place for writers to pitch ideas and get real feedback before posting elsewhere so they don't have to beg for constructive feedback.
This is something very different than what I thought. Like, my opinion was that if we have stories that are ONLY on TFF it would attract members, but in retrospect, the members would mostly be readers. I can get behind the idea of doing something so that we can attract writers looking for feedback - and decent members to give that feedback.

This ... needs consideration. Can we have some variant of the above be our official motto? Something that says we are a place for writers to hone their skills, as opposed to a place to come and read exclusive content?

Hope you get better soon Wata!

-chronodekar
 

AoMythology

Apparently a report-er
chronodekar said:
Watashiwa said:
I'm against telling people to write stories JUST for this site. TFF should be a place for writers to pitch ideas and get real feedback before posting elsewhere so they don't have to beg for constructive feedback.
This is something very different than what I thought. Like, my opinion was that if we have stories that are ONLY on TFF it would attract members, but in retrospect, the members would mostly be readers. I can get behind the idea of doing something so that we can attract writers looking for feedback - and decent members to give that feedback.

This ... needs consideration. Can we have some variant of the above be our official motto? Something that says we are a place for writers to hone their skills, as opposed to a place to come and read exclusive content?

Hope you get better soon Wata!

-chronodekar
I'm with Watashiwa. If you'll remember, I wrote earlier that authors no longer post here FIRST, not exclusively.

Edit: I also located the person I was looking for. It was actually ndf, with this HP story:
http://thefanfictionforum.net/showthread.php?tid=21323

Again, sorry daniel_gudman for the mixup.
 

~NGD OMEGA~

Well-Known Member
Exclusive is counter productive in a closed forum anyway. You need a way to get the word out after all otherwise there's no reason for people to join in the first place. The prominent author posts a popular fic, links the site in their bio, drawing readers here to see stuff early and offer input to help sorta thing.

Besides the core idea of TFF was previews anyway, a sort of mass beta site to get input prior to actual mass release. Sometimes this could reshape where the story may have gone, for better or worse, spark discussion that lead to someone having ideas for their own stuff, and of course the potential negatives of the writer dropping it when too many problems cropped up.

By way of example the most prominent case of this I recall being a part of was in Bleach regarding a fic that had good ideas but was yet another ss rewrite. It lead me down a rant that made me outline potential divergent confrontations to shake things up that I later compiled into another thread that saw some interesting ideas spawn prior to the Fandom dwindling with lack of interest.

That's the sorta interactions that pulled me here, so any solutions leading to more of that sort of thing is key from where I'm standing.
 

biigoh

Well-Known Member
Watashiwa said:
Couple things real quick since I'm sick:

Yes, we plan to open new forums. If you know writers in a specific fandom who want feedback, please tell them to talk to me and we'll see about getting them established.

I'm against telling people to write stories JUST for this site. TFF should be a place for writers to pitch ideas and get real feedback before posting elsewhere so they don't have to beg for constructive feedback.

New features are something I'd really like to see and I'm generally open to suggestions. There's a limit on what I can do with icyboards' format, but that's no reason to stop thinking about it.

Content, though, is king. The big issue with TFF as it currently exists is that most of our primary boards are old fandoms, and what's still active is seeing talk instead of writing. So yeah, we need people writing for Harry Potter and Type-Moon, but we should be recruiting people interested in RWBY, the various MOBAs, Hero Academia and as always Pokemon.

So yeah actually daniel, I would like to see you do a monthly thing. Throw in some writing challenges and Iron Fic over the summer and recruitment and... well, at least we'll have fun. :)
Worm. :>
 

~NGD OMEGA~

Well-Known Member
Oh yeah, that has such a following on Sb and the like that it tends to swamp every thing else and make the forums more of a quagmire. Between that and MLP you have at least two fandom guaranteed to generate at least some traffic even now.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
So this is going to sound just like, super elitist,

But I would rather have a small-to-medium stream of high quality traffic, rather than just aiming at volume.
 

biigoh

Well-Known Member
daniel_gudman said:
So this is going to sound just like, super elitist,

But I would rather have a small-to-medium stream of high quality traffic, rather than just aiming at volume.
Well... a Wildbow subforum; so it's Worm, Pact, Twig and so on.. wouldn't be bad... it's the tail end of the hype as it were.
 

~NGD OMEGA~

Well-Known Member
Honestly, traffic breeds traffic. Frankly, I'd vastly prefer shit I don't care about when it comes to fic discussion, like say MLP or Worm, to be regulated to their own forums where I don't have to bother with them. At the same time, if that traffic brings in more people, and those people start spreading to other areas, that's win win, I get to ignore that shit and the other areas become more lively and spawn more ideas and other fun stuff.

I liken this to how I came here for Naruto, probably the most high traffic board on the site overall, and once I grew disgusted with that series to the point that I didn't frequent that section anymore for anything related to it, I moved into the other areas instead. Bleach in particular when it came to fic related discussion. Naruto kept trucking along fine without me, but thanks to me having my focus entirely on other areas, I was able to breed some life into Bleach and the like.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
daniel_gudman said:
But I would rather have a small-to-medium stream of high quality traffic, rather than just aiming at volume.
How would you define 'high quality traffic' ? :huh: Like what would make a TFF member a better author or critic?

-chronodekar
 

PCHeintz72

The Sentient Fanfic Search Engine mk II
High traffic for an individual author does not really mean better in any way. we've proven that time and again. it generally instead means controversial.

I point to Ozzallos as a example, as I actually like a number of his stories, though not all. A single post by that author here can generate a couple hundred responses...
 

~NGD OMEGA~

Well-Known Member
Another one I just thought of for utility if nothing else. Pokemon needs it's own section, if only because content for it is constantly split between the anime and game sections. Making that easier to find might help things on that front.

Edit: and I missed it was mentioned already. Derp.
 
Would have preferred the Mark All Forums Read button to be moved towards the top, near User CP or such, instead of the very bottom but at least it's on every page now.
 

PCHeintz72

The Sentient Fanfic Search Engine mk II
NuitTombee said:
Would have preferred the Mark All Forums Read button to be moved towards the top, near User CP or such, instead of the very bottom but at least it's on every page now.
I merely created a shortcut for it in the favorites/bookmarks
 
I could have done that as well, but I dislike multiple bookmarks for one site, even if they do different things. Especially on the off chance that I accidental click one over the other. I had a userscript that added it to the top but I lost it when I changed computers and I've been too lazy to recreate it.
 

PCHeintz72

The Sentient Fanfic Search Engine mk II
NuitTombee said:
I could have done that as well, but I dislike multiple bookmarks for one site, even if they do different things. Especially on the off chance that I accidental click one over the other. I had a userscript that added it to the top but I lost it when I changed computers and I've been too lazy to recreate it.
Wow... you would hate my setup. I have 160 for this site for example.
 
I'd hazard a guess that most of those are thread related. For those I would keep them in a separate Bookmark folder like Fanfiction/Images/Debate or such.

But for the main forums I visit I have a folder with links to new posts for each of said forums. I suppose I could add the mark read link under the main one, but it'd just take up more space and possibly lead to accidentally clearing the posts before I read them.
 
It seems I can no longer clear individual forums by clicking the black dots indicating there's new posts.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Is it just me or did all our avatars just vanish? (the image next to your username)

-chronodekar
 

AoMythology

Apparently a report-er
Same with me, in MS Edge and Firefox both. (I am using a Lenovo laptop, 6000 series Intel CPU, an NVidia 9xx card and Windows 10, in case that info helps.)
 

Knyght

The Collector
Pretty much all of the formatting options are gone when for new replies and the text box has shrunk.

Fun.
 

The Ero-Sennin

The Eyes of Heaven
Staff member
Sorry about that, pardon my dust. Things should be back to normal by the end of the week.
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
What the fuck happened to our pictures? Why are they being forced through an icyboards proxy?

That's gonna cause problems with any NSFW pictures.
 

PCHeintz72

The Sentient Fanfic Search Engine mk II
I know the forum 'disappeared' for a while last night, as I could not find it or get to it, maybe it was done then.
 
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