I really like the idea of a 'writing corner' so to speak. An area to discuss writing and how we can improve; whether that be guides, snippets from a blog, or even a critiquing booth.

I like many of dlp's members started by lurking in search of quality stories. I didn't actually join until two years later. The reason I joined was because I was inspired. Is this what quality looks like? I didn't know Ron could make me feel this way, Matt; or a white rose could be larger than fantasy life, Joe. Are these really amateur writers? If they can do it why can't I. This community took me from an apathetically obsessed reader to someone who wrote fanfiction and posted it here. I did it because I wanted to improve and where better to get critique than among those who also seek quality. Luckily that account disappeared into a one way vanishing cabinet when we moved sites, so you can't judge that dumpster fire of a story.

We are a fanfiction community. Our capital to attract members is our authors and their stories. I think anything to facilitate the discussion of writing, especially for the growth of ability, is a goal worth pursuing.

 

Reading about people wanting a place to discuss pieces of their writing, seeking writing advice, posting writing guides, etc. had me confused. Why can't we do that in the WBA? After looking at the WBA forum, I realized how bloated it is.

• Story Showcase has not had a new thread since 2013 even thought we've just had a story competition conclude
• Dresden WBA has 5 threads active since January 2018
• Original Work WBA has 2 threads active since January 2018
• Misc + HP WBA are the most active thread
• Story Quest WBA is also lightly active, but considering it is a very specific subgenre, it might be worth to keep it as is

I would suggest simply streamlining the whole place. Make WBA a place to discuss writing, to post fanfiction or original work for critique, to post and organize the writing competition. I suggest the following:


Room of Requierement

• Review Board
• Work by Author
  • Story Competitions : Have the 2018 Winners as a sticky. Announce the Quarterly winner in a banner top page of the forum, or on the sidebar in a prominent place.
  • Writing Workshop : Megathread about grammar rules, writing guides, critique my scene, etc. You could wrap in Original Work in there as well probably.
  • Fanfiction: HP, Dresden, Naruto, it doesn't matter, it all goes there. (Use the tag system significantly)
  • Story Quest: Probably better to keep it as its own subforum really.

 

Yes. But when we did the migration it disappeared. I'll pm you the details.

 

Well now, that's interesting!

 

I disagree with combining fandoms. DLP is still a primary HP forum and HP should remain a separate category.

I do agree with combining all the old story competitions to year and merge the two 'story' forums together. Here would be my idea.

Work by Author

• Story Competitions: Have the 2018 Winners as a sticky. Announce the Quarterly winner in a banner top page of the forum, or on the sidebar in a prominent place.
• Writing Workshop: Megathread about grammar rules, writing guides, critique my scene, help come up with a title/summary, plot ideas, etc.
  
• Fanfiction Harry Potter.
• Fanfiction Other
• Story Quests

 

The poll on Eclipse combined with the bug with the problem with permissions blocking rating in For review misled me.

 

I like the idea of combining the two, I have to say. Speaking just for myself, I don't read all that much HP fanfiction anymore, only when I stumble on it and don't look out for it much myself. So I would only very rarely if ever click on the HP WBA section. But if they were combined, maybe I would stumble upon a HP thread that interests me and make me engage there. I am sure the same or the reverse is true for other people as well.

 

I think the idea of combining is a positive one.

Let’s be honest, Harry Potter, as a fandom is not growing. Nor is it really the “focus” of this site anymore.

If you look at discussion and posts, HP posts seem to be in the minority. There is little discussion about things in the books that haven’t been done to death.

Actual HP discussion seems to be declining, not increasing.

 

We have a system of tags, why not use them more efficiently than we currently are. Stuff like




are ridiculous and serve no purpose. While I understand that tags are mostly used for Search purposes, we could use them for at a glance information as well. Have the thread have 1 main tag (Harry Potter, Dresden Files, Other) and a series of tag that can be customized by the OP maybe with a limit of 5 tags total so that at a glance I could see:



and understand what's going on. I can't tell you how many times I've clicked on a WBA thread, read a summary and still have no idea what the story was about (I'm looking at you Faithless by Default ). Genre and Rating could also be requisite tag when posting in WBA or For Review. The genre list and rating list can be tackled from FFnet, or the Library subforums.

I know that Library and For Review thread are categorized with something similar. Have some tag be color coded (like harry potter) so that we can clearly identify them at a glance in a forum filled with other fandom. The rating could be used as a way to get rid of the Mature section. I don't know how possible this is, but can we make the forum issue a warning the first time you're attempting to read a mature story?

Additionally, by grouping HP, Naruto, etc. we might attract more readers to those fandoms, provide more feedbacks for author. I personally discovered Dresden by reading a HP/Dresden crossover in the WBA. By showing an active forum (Fanfiction WBA) instead of 3-4 inactive one, we ensure that viewers see that there is more to DLP than a couple of HP WBA stories. There are active author in other fandom that wants your critique. By grouping Writing Workshop+Original Writing, we also ensure more visibility to a subforum (Original Work) than it would ever see on its own. No one comes to a fanfiction website to read original work. But if said work is parsed through writing guides, and other fanfic? Well maybe I'll give it a shot! Throw in the anthologies in the Writing Workshop perhaps, and we could garner some activity in there (if anyone wants to step up and restart the anthology project).

I'm really just spit-balling and trying to offer ideas here. I don't reckon this is what the forum needs necessarily, but it certainly can't hinder in my opinion. I'm all for DLP being a HP fanfiction site foremost, but we can't ignore the fact that the fandom is not as active as it once was and that our current most active subforum of WBA is Misc Work. Making DLP about more than just writing HP fanfiction, but writing quality fanfiction should be one of the goal we're aiming for.

 

The ability to add footnotes for the author of a thread would be nice. It could be a highlight of certain text like RapGenius or just a number at the end of a line so you could do some Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel type worldbuilding.

Also can you stop automerge with an option or something? Maybe like only when you threadmark.

 

Can you not do this on your own? I mean, when I’m working on a paper in word I’m not using any special footnoting tool to do it. I just have a section at the bottom of each page that is, uh, footnotes.

This just seems like a lot of work for our admins.

im with you here though.

 

True enough I suppose. I was thinking of it in a superceding Word type way as a convenience to attract writers to host docs. In my head it was just the ability to make a spoiler tag only be 1 word. Like a spoiler=1][/spoiler function

Edit: by 1 word I mean x words

 

I’m on mobile so this will be brief. This is a Harry Potter fanfiction site at its core. So while discussion may drift away, we can’t undermine the importance of Harry Potter on this forum. However the rebranding of this site allows yet another opportunity for the admins to push this as not just a fanfiction site but a writing site and I see them doing that. So to attract other fandoms we focus on writing. But if we’re just looking for a common reader who isn’t thinking of writing at the moment, Harry Potter seems like the only viable option. We don’t discuss other fandoms due to lack of interest on this site so new readers won’t have a purpose.

Writers from other fandoms and everyone (not completely stupid) from HP is the way to go.

 

@Selethe and I were chatting and she had a good point. One of the things we need to do is make sure all of DLP's services are interconnected and navigable. Meaning, one shouldn't have to go searching to find DLP's IRC, Discord, Scryer, the C2. We've taken several steps that have really helped on that front, but there are a few more we could do. DLP's name is never actually mentioned in the C2 description as the main example that spurred this. Likewise, maybe we should advertise or provide a link to the C2 on the forum the way we do Scryer, or even link the C2 on Scryer itself.

It's our foothold on ff.net. The largest C2 on the site, the first thing you see on the communities page, and yet it has no direct mention of us. Google DLP and you'll find Data Loss Prevention or Digital Light Projectors. Sure, if you refine the search you'll get to us but why not make it easy? We can't link directly on ff.net, but we can definitely do a little better with promoting the brand.

On that note, we should probably have a chat about the C2. It's had three stories added in the last two years, and two of those were added at the author's request. 90% of the stories from the last four years have been DLP authors, and even good things by them tend to hit low 4's in the ratings. We've gotten very discerning in our tastes, but that's led to a dearth of activity on the C2. Go back three pages and you reach the days when @Grinning Lizard was still alive.

5 stars might be too high a bar for 2018 if not even DLP authors can hit it with regularity. If you sort by thread creation on each Library category, there are like six stories in the last five years to hit that bar, and five are DLP authors. These are stories that are 4.5 rounded up. All it takes is one or two one bombs to ruin any chance of a story getting into the C2. While 4 stars isn't as good a marketing name, we should consider adjusting if necessary.

Contractual Invalidation is 4 stars. Forests of Valbone is 4 stars. Victoria Potter is 4 stars. Out of the Night is 4 stars. The Last Enemy is 4 stars. Circular Reasoning is 4 stars. Never-ending Road is 3.6 stars. Jon's HP/SW cross, Equilibrium, is 4 stars. Strangers at Drakeshaugh is 4 stars. Blood Crest is 4 stars. Black Comedy barely makes it, and that was a cult classic that was rated ten years ago. Ectomancer hits 5 stars by the barest of margins. Half-Blood Romantic is 4 stars.

Most of those are only in the C2 thanks to the authors being DLP members. If even those can't make it in, then nothing short of a published masterpiece has any chance these days.

We should also consider adding more members to the staff for the C2. @enembee and @Vir have taken it upon themselves as volunteers for years, but we shouldn't leave that burden on them. If we formalized the accession process, perhaps by having library mods be C2 mods? That way when a story is added to the library, they can add it to the C2 if it qualifies.

We should also clarify exactly what a DLP Featured Author is. There are many established DLP authors whose work is not on the C2, either through oversight or modesty. @Zombie has several stories that have not been added. @Anarchy has 20 HP stories and only one is on the C2 to my knowledge. @Plothole has been writing Half-Blood Romantic on WbA since day one, and it's not included. What, exactly, is a DLP featured author?

 

please don't open investigations into how my stories got into the library

 

I haven't done anything to the C2 in many years

 

On the topic of the C2, we should create a C2 for Other Fandoms as well. If we put it in the General category, we can include all constituent fandoms.