Make DLP Great Again​

DLP Direction Thread, Circa 2010

Current State of WbA

Other Fandom Library Needs You

Statement of Purpose
The objective of this document is to propose a series of UI, technical, and cultural changes for the DLP boards in order to promote new growth while retaining the essence of what made the forum so great to begin with. Some of these changes have been discussed or partially implemented for nearly eight years now, as evidenced by the Direction thread linked above. DLP has grown organically in a lot of ways, which means it has grown messily. There are 28 subforums for the various flavors of Other Fandoms, and there are a variety of subforums that have been dead for a decade. Other subforums will receive a thread a year, if that.

The user interface and forum organization leave much to be desired, with unnecessary navigation standing as an impediment to engagement. For Review and Work by Author are meant to be the backbone of DLP, and yet Work By Author is at the bottom of the forum. For Review is split into several sections, some of which are actually nested in other subforums. Activity in these areas has slowed to a crawl, and so the site design should be adjusted to direct traffic toward areas that will, themselves, generate traffic. Activity begets activity.

There are a lot of members who hold tightly to our roots as a Harry Potter forum that happens to have discussions about other things like Naruto and Dresden Files, but I think we’ve grown beyond just Harry Potter. We have authors writing in a dozen fandoms, and more besides who have moved on to original fiction. We have members who are reading, recommending, commenting on, and posting stories on other forums because DLP has not given them the platform to do so. Why should Lamora or Probellum post their quests on another site, and why do exponentially more fic recommendations happen on IRC than in the very forum whose purpose is predicated on it?

I should note that this is not proposing that we cease to be an HP fanfiction site, but simply that we give Other Fandoms and Original Fiction room to grow rather than being an afterthought.

I’ll not belabor the point, I simply ask that you all consider the following with an open mind, and with an eye toward the future success of DLP. I’ve been here for a decade now, and I’d love for it to be better than ever ten more years from now.


Thanks to all those who looked over this beforehand and gave their input, though I should note that these are not their collective views. (@Zombie , @Mishie , @Oz , @Seyllian , @Republic , @BieberGrl96 , @Halt , @Lungs , @apoc , @Newcomb , @Taure )

-Sauce Bauss


Site Redesign
UI Changes

• Front Page Reorganization
  
  • See Appendix A
    
    
  • Subforum Consolidation
    
    
  • Do a featured story once a week through an announcement. Either something in For Review, or something in the Library with a decent rating but few replies the way the neglected stories feature worked on vBulletin
• Usergroups in the New Posts feed, subscribed groups only

Library Changes

• Binary rating system, + or -
  
  • Convert legacy stories, but edit OPs to retain the old rating.
• Consolidating For Review(HP, Other Fandoms, Original Fiction), the Library, WbA(HP, Other Fandoms, Original Fiction)
  
  • https://forums.darklordpotter.net/posts/1037171/
• Expand Library to published works, encourage posting of quests, web novels, light novels, etc.

Digital Literarature Project

• At the very least, get the Project DLP skin up.
  
  
• Digital Literature Project is better than Digital Literary Project, but I know name and brand shifts were a point of particular contention.
  
  
• I'm not anxious to change the brand, but I'd like to have the option to not have Anakin glaring at me.

Quality of Life

• Strikethrough is in a sub-menu and is not easily accessible
  
  
• In-line quoting for editing of WbA(Not as necessary with the new quote system)
  
  
• Recommendation Engine on the forum
  
  
• Google Doc importer/BBCode converter
  
  
• Cross check For Review posts with Library List and Almost Recommended/Recycle Bin/Trash Bin
  
  
• Make Library list ratings available in the master list
  
  • How timely, there’s demand for it outside of me.
• Library list sort function, date recommended, last date posted, etc.
  
  
• Similar threads at the bottom of the page, as in vBulletin
  
  
• Collapsible Accordions, as on SufficientVelocity
  
  
• Search returns entire posts, which balloons to ridiculous levels if story posts are retrieved.

Tag System

• Whitelist/Blacklist for tags, though this can be put off with the ignore feature. It’s just slightly less convenient for grouches.
  
  
• Tag system expansion, tag examples/format for new review threads. Examples being things like author:, fandom, pairing, category, status, etc.
  
  
• In the FFN importer, have a dropdown for forum section
  
  
• Tag explorer if we don’t have one already
  
  
• Search function expanded/customized to take advantage of the tag revamp

PatronusCharm

• Patronuscharm could have filled the niche that AO3 has taken up, but we missed the boat on that one. I think the best way for PC to be revived and relevant is if it adopts features that allow for the easy running of quests.

Scryer

• Most of my wishlist for Scryer is already planned or being implemented.
  

Engagement
Other Fandoms

• Fiction.live
  
  
• Spacebattles
  
  
• SufficientVelocity
  
  
• QuestionableQuesting
  
  
• FictionPress
  
  
• Books
  
  
• Light Novels

Recruitment

• Reach out to any new Library Authors, 2005 style.
  
  
• Recruit authors and promising members on r/hpff
  
  
• As evidenced by the poll here, a plurality of members who did not find the forum organically via searching were directed here by authors.We should create an Other Fandoms C2 as well, in order to attract members from those fandoms. Whether that C2 should be a consolidated one or split up based on popular fandoms is a topic for debate. The latter is preferable, but much more tedious.
  
  
• Ditto the above for TFF
  
  
• Likewise for AO3
  
  
• I wanted to do a lifeboat for harrypotterfanfiction, but they don’t have a forum of any kind so R I P
  
  
• Aggressively seek out rising and active fandoms. RWBY, etc.
  
  
• Public recruitment should be a last resort

Community

• Encourage forum users to join IRC
  
  
• Post the link to the Discord on the forums, only IRC users know it exists and none of them use it.
  
  
• Include Discord/IRC instructions in the welcome PM
  
  
• Consider merging Lul Worlds into the main DLP Discord
  
  
• In page Discord chat? Embedded IRC?
  
  
• Publicize the DLP Steam group, get people gaming together again. Might need to do some more expansion/moderation of the Discord for that.
  
  
• Encourage DLP writers who write for other fandoms to recommend stories for that fandom, as well as the source material

Encouraging Writing

• Round robin, TGYH threads. DLPers are like the fae, flighty and prone to distraction. Give them a chance to write something short to get the wheels greased.
  
  
• Continue the competitions
  
  
• Bring back and formalize the Anthologies. Right now it’s a Joe thing that includes DLP writers, rather than being a DLP thing. When Joe is busy, the anthologies stop.

Quests

• Quests are massively popular now, with dedicated sites popping up and a surge of interest and activity across multiple forums and fandoms
  
  
• Fiction.live/anonkun is the most popular dedicated quest site by a long shot, but it carries a stigma because the admin is a terrible developer/sysadmin, and the majority of its content is pornographic
  
  
• Spacebattles/SufficientVelocity are extraordinarily popular for quests, but they have a shit culture and repressive rules.
  
  
• If a poll system could be implemented within posts the way fiction.live does along with a dice rolling system, DLP/Patronuscharm could become a quest hub, particularly for people who aren’t just writing smut.
  
  
• DLP authors have already run quests, and several have even run quests on fiction.live for the benefits it provides with the poll structure and dice rolling. Lamora and Probellum being the most immediate that I recall.

Gamification

• House Points / Forum points
  
  
• Paradox Forum style emblems as trophies
  
  • Reviewing
    
    
  • Authorship
    
    
  • Contest Winners
    
    
  • Something witty regarding good taste for getting X fics in the Library
    
    
  • Donations
    
    • Revise donation star/system to show one offs vs subscriptions, maybe? A lot of people donated only the once for the donation star. I’m guilty of this one myself.

Misc.

• Mobile application round 2: Electric Boogaloo
  
  
• Chrome Extension
  
  • Hide stories
• Track clicks through Scryer, prompt recommendations if enough DLPers are reading it. Use either custom alerts, auto generated threads, something.
  
  
• Since Scryer is already scraping ff.net, maybe have OPs be updated with update dates for stories in the library. Could even have a bot account that would bump threads when stories are updated to spur discussion.
  
  
• There is also the DLP C2. It could likely have the adding of stories automated rather than relying on the volunteer work of Enembee. This would alleviate the time constraints of having Other Fandom C2’s as well, and should not be difficult to program.
  
  
• WbA per thread statistics for authors. This has been proposed before, but also seems like it’s not true to WbA’s purpose. It’s not the place for stat tracking and readers, but for writing.
  
  
• Detect user agent and re-do alerts at a desktop or in the evening. Not sure how viable this one is through Xenforo
  
  
• ff.net integration for WbA

Logistics

• There are limitations to the time, ability, and willingness of staff to implement some of these changes
  
  
• Were every proposition to be pursued, it would be hundreds of development hours at minimum. That is not trivial.
  
  
• Xenforo has a mature paid plugin ecosystem, it would be possible to engage developers to create the necessary plugins
  
  
• Fund it through donations, get the userbase to invest in the platform they enjoy. Patreon and its like show that there is no shortage of willing wallets in the fanfiction community at large.
  
  
• What other features are limited by funds?

Appendix A - Proposed Forum Organization

Spoiler: Existing Format

Great Hall

• Hall of Shame
  
  • Introductions
• Announcements
  
  • Award Winners 2006
    
    
  • Award Winners 2007
• General Discussion
  
  
• Real Life Discussion
  
  • Meetups
    
    
  • The Burrow
• Gaming and PC Discussion
  
  • PC Discussion
    
    
  • Flash and Spam
    
    
  • Pokemon
    
    
  • League of Legends
• Multimedia
  
  • Billy vs. Snakeman
    
    
  • Academia
    
    • Programming/CS
      
      
    • Languages
  • Books and Anime
    
    
  • Humor Mill
    
    
  • Movies, Music, TV
    
    
  • Graphics Discussion
• Politics
  
  
• S&P
  
  
• Bookclub

Support

• Tech Support
  
  
• DLP Feedback
  
  
• Site Related Support
  
  • PC
    
    
  • News
    
    
  • Feature Requests
    
    
  • Support
    
    
  • Bug Reports
    
    
  • Tech Blog

Library

• Review Board
  
  
• Almost Recommended
  
  
• General Fics
  
  
• Humor
  
  
• The Alternates
  
  
• Dark Arts
  
  
• Romance
  
  
• Restricted Section
  
  
• Other Fandoms
  
  • Other Review Board
    
    
  • Almost Recc’d
    
    
  • Dresden Files
    
    
  • Evangelion
    
    
  • Fate/Stay Night
    
    
  • Firefly
    
    
  • Misc
    
    • Anime, Cartoons, Comics
      
      
    • Books
      
      
    • Games
      
      
    • TV and Movies
  • MLP
    
    
  • Naruto
    
    
  • Original Fiction
    
    
  • Stargate
    
    
  • Star Wars
    
    
  • Worm

Fanfiction Extras

• Fanfic Discussion
  
  • Challenges
    
    
  • Story Search
• Other Fandoms
  
  • Other Fandoms Disc
    
    
  • Dresden Files
    
    
  • Story Search
    
    
  • Worm
    
    
  • Story Challenges
• Original Fiction Discussion

Work By Author

• HP Work by Author
  • Mature WbA
• Dresden WbA
  
  • Mature WbA
• Misc. WbA
  
  • Misc Mature WbA
• Original Fiction WbA
  
  • Mature WbA
    
    
  • Poetry
• Story Quests
  
  
• Story Competitions
  
  • December 2017
    
    
  • Q1 2018

Games

• Little Italy
  
  
• Graveyard

Spoiler: Proposed Format

Great Hall

• Announcements

MAKE DLP GREAT AGAIN

• For Review(Consolidated)
  
  
• Work by Author(Consolidated)
  • Mature WbA(Consolidated)

Discussion

• General Discussion(HP)
  
  • Bookclub archived here
• Fanfic Discussion
  
  
• Other Fandom/Original Discussion
  
  
• Real Life Discussion(Consolidated)
  
  
• Politics
  
  
• Gaming and PC
  
  • Graphics(dead, could be consolidated somewhere)
    
    
  • Programming
• Multimedia
  
  • Books
    
    
  • Anime
    
    
  • Movies & TV
    
    
  • Music
    
    
  • Humor Mill(Dank Memes lul)
• Sick and Perverse

Library

• HP Library(Consolidated)
  
  
• Other Fandoms(Consolidated, there are 28 subforums for OF. Holy hell.)
  
  
• Original Fiction
  
  
• Quests
  
  
• Almost Recommended
  
  
• Restricted Section
  
  
• Story Competitions
  
  • Subforums per competition

Little Italy(Containment Board)

• Graveyard

Support

• Tech Support
  
  
• DLP Feedback and Improvement
  
  
• Site Related Support

Archive(TBD)

• Hall of Shame
  
  
• Billy vs. Snakeman
  
  
• Meetups
  
  
• Introduction Archives
  
  
• Academia

Appendix B

Spoiler: Proposed Timeline

Ordered by complexity for the most part, though not in all cases.

Immediate Changes

1. Forum Reorganization

Minor Technical changes

1. Project DLP skin
   
   
2. Binary Rating System
   
   
3. Strikethrough accessibility/usability
   
   
4. Cross check For Review entries with Library List/AR/RB/TB
   
   
5. Library List ratings
   
   
6. Library List sorting by date posted, last posted, rating, last update on ff.net perhaps?
   
   
7. Tag template when making threads
   
   
8. Prompt recommendations if enough DLPers are clicking a story through Scryer.

Major Technical changes

1. Gamification system with points, badges
   
   
2. Recommendation engine port, potentially put off to roll into Scryer
   
   
3. Alert timing or delay for user agents, desktop/tablet priority. Discussed prior.
   
   
4. WbA statistics.
   
   
5. FF.net import to WbA
   
   
6. Whitelist/Blacklist tag system
   
   
7. Search overhaul with tag system in mind
   
   
8. Mobile application 2: Electric Boogaloo
   
   
9. Give DLP/PC quest features to incentivize people away from fiction.live, including our own members
   
   
10. In-line commenting/editing, Google Docs style

Cultural changes

1. 
   
   
   • Encourage posting of stories from other sources such as those listed in Other Fandoms
   • Expand Library to published works
   • Recruitment from the listed communities
   • TGYH threads, round robins, etc. Encourage short form writing where people have fun dropping 1k-2k words again. Less stress and organization than the contests, while getting people writing again.

 

I for one support Premier Li's 5 year plan.

 

Dude. You and the others have done great work creating some awesome ideas.

Fully support in this.

Just curious, (and I know this is tentative subject), but perhaps some work needs to be done on the mod side. From what I've observed, the mods are pretty much god over their subforums. There is no way to appeal a decision by a mod. If you're banned, you're banned.

I'd point to some situations I've observed where it seems the user should have had the right to clarify their view before just an instaban.

Just a thought. If others are fine with Mods as the gods of their subforum all good by me. More just a suggestion and asking if the status quo is the best method.

 

DLP modding is fine. I don't want any of that stupid psuedo-legal shit on SB and SV. DLP culture is quite established, if you get banned you fucked up somewhere down the line.

 

I don't disagree; more just think its a question that should be asked and discussed.

 

This thread is not the time or place, nor do I wish to get into that discussion. That being said, I'm glad you liked Sauce's and I's brainchild. I'll admit, he did about 70% of the work, but I put in a lot of time and effort into it.

 

I'm glad you recognize that posting this pretty much half the work haha

 

If by 30% you mean 30 characters in your gdocs comments, then sure.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

The asians are cute...I guess. Though they look like they are laughing at someone's manhood. Does this mean SB's is 70% Larger than Seyllian's?

Maybe y'all should have spent less time developing the above and more time rezzing the Official Hotties thread.

 

Can someone ban Arthellion

edit: no appeal

 

@Sauce, I have to say it's great to see that all of the hard work that so many people have put into brainstorming ways to improve a forum that they all care about has generated so much discussion, but it really does feel like we've managed to miss something that I now see as being an incredibly simple way to improve almost every aspect of the forum.

We should ban Arthellion.

 

So mean!

After all I’ve done for you! I mean I know it’s nothing, but still...

On a serious note, awesome work you guys. I mean it.

 

Sauce trying to steal credit from Seyllian like Dumbledore stealing galleons from Harry's vault.

 

There I was, worrying that I'd only get thumbs instead of discussion. Little did I know.

 

To get serious again, I think that some of the visuals on the site can be cleaned up a bit.

I think that DLP would benefit from having an actual logo, or some such, that can service all of the profiles.

An example would be SV's:

I'm sure there are some members on DLP talented enough to do something like that. It definitely looks a lot nicer than Anakin.

Likewise, I don't see the purpose of rating threads outside of the Library, though if Sauce's proposed changes were to go through, that would also be changed.

 

That's true about the anthologies - old Joe gets himself busy with life quite often. If they could be conducted in a way where I'm not the chokepoint, that could help.

Either way, it is long past time I either got on with it or not. I'll take a look soon and see about making it less reliant on myself.

 

Do I understand correctlt that we would rebrand from Dark Lord Potter to Digital Literature Project? I'm in, but the current name/brand is established outside of DLP itself, it would likely take a bit of dedication from members active on other platforms (FFN, Reddit) to correct people still using Dark Lord Potter. Which I'm not opposed tom to be clear.

Second thing: binary rating. I don't like that idea. It seems too limiting. Just making a decision based on recommend/do not recommend isn't enough, sometimes it's kind of impossible. I lik the 5 point system we have now. It's not too broad (in a 10 system, you have people arguing that 7/10 is average, where logic suggests 5/10; I won't even go into x/100 points) and it gives enough wiggle room to provide a bit of nuance just by looking at the rating. This is how I use it:

1--trash
2--bad
3--average
4--good
5--great

And I think this is how most of DLP uses the ratings as well. I guess an argument could be made that sometimes people will just rate a For Review thread and not leave a review, but I don't see how that's going to change by changing the ratings. If someone doesn't want to put in the time to write a short review, they won't.

All for reorganization of the UI. Other Fandoms is a mess and WbA should be one of our main features, yet it sits at the bottom.

 

As part of the culture change you want more TGYH, round robins. I'd support this, as well as having WbA up top. To me, DLP represents the search for and practice of quality writing + community.

Would it be a good idea, then, to have a skills section of Wba, where the TGYHs and 500 words and less formal challenges can go and be encouraged and hopefully more used, rather than spread around the forum. Something for efforts less cohesive than novel length fiction?

 

Most of my contributions to this doc were more just based on discussion but I’ll lay out some broad ideas that contributed to this doc.

First of all, DLP these days tends to be more of a static community. The people here tend to know each other and come back and interact for that interaction and discussion with people they know - hence the activity within the real life and politics stuff, while the library is comparatively a corpse. There’s a bit of a trickle in here and there of new members (heck I was sort of one of them) but it’s mostly established.

Part of the reason for this is that the core thing the community developed around - Harry Potter and other fanfiction - has suffered massive structural changes. Harry Potter fanfiction as a whole has dried up significantly and as a community founded around that we’ve in large part lost the actual thing we formed around so the community connections are the main draw for most.

Part of these changes are oriented at adapting to the new fanfiction environment. Harry Potter ff is severely lacking these days, so more emphasis has to be placed on other forms of ff and fiction of all kinds. Now, there are some problems here, namely that there is simply a lot less fanfiction around, there are just no juggernaut fandoms these days to generate the massive amount of stories, authors, and readers that are the basic building blocks of the fanfiction community. RWBY and it’s newer fandom are somewhat popular in parts of the chats and userbase, but the fandom doesn’t even dent the top fifty most popular fandoms of ff.net. While DLP does need to focus on making different fandoms just as much a part of the core site activity as HP once was in order to get enough stories and content to subsist on, it’s also important to recognize that there simply isn’t as much fanfiction content as there once was.

This is why the suggestions here are two pronged.

One thing is an attempt to change DLP into a more active force is spurring the creation of fanfiction, to not just consume fanfiction via reading, reviewing, reccing, and critiquing but to write it and generate our own inertia. Sure, being a community of authors and reviewers we already do that to a certain extent, and in the past we have been a significant part of the writing community. But in the current environment not only are most authors on DLP not actively writing fics, but few other people are outside of DLP are too, leaving the readers and reviewers to starve of content and the basic activity of the site dies as a result.

Some of the changes like the renewed drive to recruit promising authors and resume writing competitions, contests, and the like, are a shot in the arm to try and get the gears of DLP turning again, to get the writers writing and creating content themselves because there isn’t much else out there. If successful, this could act as a potential resurgence in fic writing as a whole, but even if it isn’t it will start to generate activity more in DLP in terms of content being produced and consumed instead of languishing more.

The other thing is that increasingly, the creative energies of the internet that used to be channeled into fanfiction have found other homes. As mentioned above in the OP, quest writing has been gaining in prominence as have fiction on site likes spacebattles and sufficientvelocity. A great deal of this is trash, or porn, or both, but these sorts of sites have orders of magnitude more activity than DLP these days and produce a lot of content. A lot of fics posted in the library and the like are indeed, from SB and SV but it’s clear that we haven’t but paid enough attention to these places that are actually producing content while fanfiction.net and the like seem to wither.

Part of this is, as discussed, broadening DLP’s “core mission” so to speak, as Sauce has said. More priority clearly needs to be placed on other fandoms in order to provide enough content to satisfy DLP and get activity, but again there isn’t enough fics these days on fanfiction.net and the like - we need to embrace shit on these sites, even if it’s quests or webserials or whatever. Our “core mission” needs to be more inclusive because there’s just isn‘t enough traditional fanfiction on the sites we’re used to to sustain us.

The other part of this is, as with above, to not only draw this material into DLP to be consumed and generate activity, but to give it the attention and integration to make DLP a producer of other, non traditional writing like quests. There’s an excellent Harry Potter quest on fiction.live that started a few days ago, following a Pureblood girl whose family is imprisoned in Azkaban as she reaches Hogwarts age and has to deal with the post-DH society and her ostracization within it. It gets, at most, maybe eight voters on votes. Why? Because it doesn’t have porn and fiction.live runs off porn. Doesn’t that sound like something that would fit well on DLP instead? Why doesn’t DLP have the tools to run quests like these easily and support quality writing and content production of that sort?

That’s another part of the drive to spur content creation, to give attention and tools to these sort of non traditional types of internet fiction in order to help attract potential content creators here to generate activity (and to straight up invite them too).

In short, DLP has become a social club with a side order of fiction and fanfic rather than the place of activity, creation, and consumption that it used to be. This social aspect isn’t a bad thing, nor did it leech away at the original community, rather, there have been serious changes in the fanfiction community that have caused the withering of what used to be the main source of DLP’s activity. We do, however, need to change in order to address these shifts by broadening our core focus within traditional fanfiction and fandoms (i.e. ff.net, AO3, etc), extending this focus to non traditional sites and forms of web fiction (SB, SV, fiction.live, literally anything that produces quality written work tbh), and taking more steps to encourage DLPers ourselves to write and produce this content rather than just shitpost and read.

DLP must be the change it wishes to see in the world.

And ban Arthellion while you’re at it.