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FFN screw up

Discussion in 'Fanfic Discussion' started by Thaumologist, Nov 20, 2022.

  1. Thaumologist

    Thaumologist Fifth Year ~ Prestige ~

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    Afternoon all

    Was checking my inbox, as I'd noticed no emails from one author I follow that posts daily. No email alerts came through for a while.

    Went to FFN, found no updates on story alerts recently, but checking the author alerts showed updates. Went to check the twitter:
    https://twitter.com/FictionPress/status/1590553084685881344
    https://twitter.com/FictionPress/status/1591103781437308929

    There was an issue with email alerts. As part of this fix, ALL users have now had email alerts turned off. You need to manually turn this back on, and will need to do this every six months, for some utterly fucking stupid reason.
     
  2. Mr. Mixed Bag

    Mr. Mixed Bag Seventh Year

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    I mean making it a setting is one thing, but the fact that it switches back to no automatically is what I can't wrap my head around. Defeats the purpose of making it a choice in the first place, and I can't see a single reason for it outside of giving people a headache once per six months.
     
  3. Heleor

    Heleor EsperJones DLP Supporter

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    It sounds like FFN is trying to save money -- sending a bunch of emails that people ignore (or worse, get marked as spam) is actually very expensive at scale.

    This uh, is not a good sign. There's an FFN backup project, right?
     
  4. Thaumologist

    Thaumologist Fifth Year ~ Prestige ~

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    Based on the info on Twitter, looks like it's supposed to combat bots and inactive accounts, which I have to assume is a cost thing for them.

    But not contacting anyone to let them know is a dick move. And they still look to have not fixed the issue with contacting hotmail, for whatever reason.
     
  5. Teyrn

    Teyrn Order Member

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    Checked my settings, they still seemed to be set to send alerts. Odd.
     
  6. Mr. Mixed Bag

    Mr. Mixed Bag Seventh Year

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    It's not actually in alerts. It's a new option listed as "Email Opt-in" under settings, which is strange, because as far as I can tell having this set to No renders all your alerts settings useless now.
     
  7. TheWiseTomato

    TheWiseTomato Prestigious Tomato ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Bit strange, I had to opt in, but the same morning I was getting favourite and follow alerts.

    Edit: I did miss several chapter announcements though.
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2022
  8. Mr. Mixed Bag

    Mr. Mixed Bag Seventh Year

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    I posted a chapter earlier this morning which usually means at least a couple of reviews in the next few hours from readers with notifications on, but this time nothing. Really few views on that chapter, too, which definitely points to emails not going out. Not sure if it's everyone or just a portion though.
     
  9. Thaumologist

    Thaumologist Fifth Year ~ Prestige ~

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    I can't tell whether I was getting story alerts or not, but I was definitely not getting author alerts. Don't have anything written, so not getting notifications for my stuff though.
     
  10. Warlocke

    Warlocke Fourth Champion

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    I discovered this horse shit on Saturday, when I decided the lack of alerts must be FFN fucking up alerts again. I never saw any announcements, I just went straight to my alerts page so I could start manually checking for new stories/chapters, and noticed the Opt-In message.

    Some time last year, I had to start getting alerts sent to my neglected gmail account and have it forward them to my Yahoo account, because I simply wasn't getting alerts from them on Yahoo. :rolleyes: Of course, the only reason I have the Yahoo account is because, for some dumb reason, AT&T don't have their own e-mail service; if you get internet through them, you get an @att.net email account, but it's actually just Yahoo.

    As a side effect, where you would normally be able to tell Yahoo to allow you to access your mail from a 3rd party app, like Thunderbird, if you try to access security settings like that from an AT&T account, it takes you to a page for AT&T that lacks that option (the last time I checked, at least)... so you're stuck using the browser and getting their lovely ads if you're on AT&T.

    It's not like Hotmail and Yahoo are small email providers, and FF isn't exactly an unknown quantity, so I wonder what FFN's problem with those providers (or their problem with FFN) is.
     
  11. Heather_Sinclair

    Heather_Sinclair Chief Warlock

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    Mine says it'll auto-reverse to no every 90 days.
     
  12. James

    James Unspeakable

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    If it's the same thing as mine, the NOTICE after opting in says "90 days". the MESSAGE IN THE OPT-IN BOX ends with "…Setting will be auto reset to no/disabled after 6 months."

    Clearly, a lot of thought had been put into this.

    Not to mention sending one email a week before expiry with "click here if you want to continue to receive notifications" is beyond the single ff admin.
     
  13. Iztiak

    Iztiak Prisoner DLP Supporter

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    Seconding this - Is there a backup project?Between this and the 200 billion ads littering FF.net, the site is not looking particularly healthy…
     
  14. TheWiseTomato

    TheWiseTomato Prestigious Tomato ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Just yoink your old faves if you haven't already.

    There's always Ao3.
     
  15. dudeler

    dudeler High Inquisitor

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    But I hate Ao3 with a burning passion, the tag system is beyond retarded and I can never find what I am looking for. Also it seems like most of its content is romance or slash or some weird kink where Harry ends up being impregnated by Tony stark and Voldemort at the same time.
     
  16. Othalan

    Othalan Headmaster DLP Supporter

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    That is an oddly specific example.

    Anyway, while AO3's tag system is indeed pretty stupid, in most ways it is a major step up from FFN. If you learn how to use their tag filter properly, its much easier to find general categories of fic that you're looking for. Individual titles are still about as frustrating to search for as they are on FFN, in my experience, so make of that what you will.

    But otherwise, why are you surprised that it's majority romance/slash/weird kink? That's exactly what FFN is most of the time too, except they have stricter rules about the particular kinds of kink that are allowable on their site.
     
  17. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    It's not hard to click "Exclude categories" and then check the "m/m" box.
     
  18. Oment

    Oment The Betrayer DLP Supporter

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    There's also browser-based add-ons to exclude tags, authors, etc.
     
  19. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Yeah, I've got one set up to automatically exclude Harry/Malfoy, Voldemort/anyone, Snape/anyone and a few authors who are utter dogshit and/or disgusting.
     
  20. Drachna

    Drachna Professor

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    upload_2022-11-28_11-3-24.png
    So I'm assuming that they added this new email opt in feature in order to make their app look more attractive. I have no idea why they're calling the email updates 'flaky'. I haven't had a problem with them in years.