Regarding the C2

There were two objectives of the C2 when I originally created it:

1) Create a C2 that only show-cased the very best (by DLP's standards)
2) Promote authors who belonged to this community.

All of the feedback I've received since would imply that it succeeded at those two goals. If there is a consensus that we need new strategic objectives for the C2, then it's worth devising a new strategy. If not, then I don't see what good diluting our exceptionally high standards will achieve— change for change's sake, and all that.

It was always 'feel' rather than 'rule' by which people are were considered 'Featured Authors' by the C2's standards. Both Zombie and Anarchy would certainly qualify, if they want to. I don't know who Plothole is (certainly by my lack of attention rather than anything else) but if there are authors who have become prominent, or missed, and someone is willing to vouch for them, I'll do the honours.

Likewise, if the Mods want to nominate people to the mod team for the C2 (my attention is elsewhere), I'm more than happy to add them.

DLP at large

You're all clever people and I'm late to the party, so I assume this has been said already in this thread, but I'm opinionated, so here's my $0.02:

DLP will never be saved by a culture change, or inviting new people, or gamification. DLP was successful in the past because it made big authors. People like Joe, Jbern, Pers, Nonjon, Santi and dozens of others found their feet here. But more importantly the community cared about developing new writers— somewhere along the road people stopped doing this.

I don't think it's possible to overstate how important this was for DLP's success. Good writers teaching other writers to become better increases the amount of quality fiction being produced here and a direct result of this is increasing the number of people who visit DLP regularly. There was a point that you would post something to DLP and within 24 hours you'd have 8-10 insightful posts analyzing your writing and your story structure, asking questions and encouraging discussion. When I stopped posting to WbA, the quantity and quality of responses had almost entirely fallen off. I genuinely felt as though I got better (and more) constructive criticism from FFNet for everything I wrote post Skitterleap.

That said, a quick glance through WbA makes it seem like this has changed somewhat in recent months and so props to those of you working at it. Making it more visible immediately upon arriving at the site is a nice touch too.

 

Out of the park, bitch. <3

 

Simply having a bunch of stories shouldn't qualify me. It's not me being humble or anything, but I'm really not that good of an author. I don't know why it is, but the WBA doesn't really help me. I've got a ton of stories in there, but far more that aren't even in there. Like, the only story I've completed in the last 8 years is "Euphoria" and none of that was posted to the WBA at all. But, if I were to have any stories added to the C2, that's probably the one I would want in. The one I have in there currently is only in on a technicality, and that's because I won one of the writing competitions in 2011. I can't even say it was the best story, more like just the least worst and the most ambitious.

I don't want to hate on the WBA, but it just doesn't work for me. And when I feel like the WBA isn't working for me, I simply stop posting there. This has been the case for several years now, and it's improved slightly since it's been brought up several times in the past year, but it's still nowhere near what it used to be. This isn't a complaint, not really, more just an observation. Like, I'm currently on chapter 6 of my current project (Faithless by Default) but I've only got the first chapter in the WBA. Maybe it's just because I need different type of help, or maybe I'm just being a choosing beggar. Or maybe it's just that bad stories bring bad reviews. But aside from the one or two people who left line-by-line edits, the rest of it was just no help at all. It was just people saying that parts felt redundant, or specific passages that the reader personally didn't like. I'm not going to rewrite a story to fit a specific reader's personal taste. Like, I had 4 people read this story in IRC, and I edited it myself a half-dozen times. Just saying these mistakes exists isn't helpful to me - I would have fixed them to begin with. What I really need is examples. Like, if I got Sirius's voice "wrong", how does it look when it's correct? Because obviously I thought it was fine because that's how I posted it. And then there's the mixed signals, where I have people telling me there's too much in the first chapter, while simultaneously saying there's not enough. If I took all that advice and just started lopping sections of my story, I would be left with only 1000 words and it still wouldn't satisfy anyone. What am I supposed to do with that? Well, the answer to all this, I've found, is to just keep writing, and to hope inspiration comes to me later in the story once I've taken more time to develop everything.

 

I think getting a good handle on frustrations in the wba is probably super important.

In a way wba’s always been the site to me, more than any other part of it.

 

@Halt - is it not as simple as the author being one who posts in the WBA and their story is generally liked by the community? Maybe that’s too simple.

 

Honestly, it was mostly a question of whether X author was a credit to DLP's image. "If I were to be judged by standing next to this person, would I feel good about that?"

I would like to add, however, that the list is by no means comprehensive. There are definitely authors who were missed and thereby unfairly slighted.

That said, I'm open to suggestions.

 

Sorry to bump this thread, but can I make a suggestion that we move some Review Board fics into the Library or Almost Recommended section? There's some stories there from 2017.

 

I think the rule was that it needed to have 5 comments +votes so it might be the reason. IF not get attention of a mod.

 

I don't how discussed to death this has been already, but a suggestion I have is to make the 'rating stars' available only to people who have posted on the thread. The way it is now seems to perpetuate something of a minimum effort culture. Of course, I can see people simply deciding neither to post nor rate. What are you guys position on this?

 

I feel if people don't post in the thread when rating currently, then they wouldn't bother writing a review so they could leave a rating.


I mean, I like the idea, because it means you'd actually see people's reasons for rating, and I aim to leave a review if I rate, but if there's already a load of posts, then I wouldn't have anything to add, so it might be low effort if I bother.

 

I'm in favor of limiting the ability to rate stories to those who've left reviews in-thread. It's less so to encourage writing more reviews than it is to discourage people from leaving 1-star/5-star ratings on stories that don't deserve them. There are a number of fics which users have given mainly 4-star/5-star reviews but their thread average reads far below that.

 

Makes sense, but our already low level of ratings will decrease even more. I should say, I am in favour of this, but perhaps we need to just prune fics in for review that don't have enough attention paid to them?

 

I'm very much in favour of having to make a post in the review thread before you can give it a star rating. My previous idea was actually to make it an integrated thing, so 'submit new post' in a review thread has an alternate button called 'submit review'. It would be largely the same, but perhaps visually review posts could stand out a bit more, or have the reviewer's star rating next to their post. The potential downside would be people could just shitpost a few words like 'this is great' or 'lol im not reading this', but as long as the guidelines on reviewing are followed that shouldn't be an issue.

Hopefully combined with some of the recent discussion on critical reading it'll create a platform that encourages authors to want their stories in 'For Review', because they know they'll get useful and hopefully objective input on the quality, in more general terms than they could expect from WbA.

 

I'm gonna revive this thread with an idea we discussed on Discord just now: the Inquisitorial Squad.

Basically, the idea is to establish a concrit group. Not like Zenzao's 500 Club, because the central conceit would be reviewing. Two approaches were suggested:

A) A group of people who want to contribute come together, they decide on a work in any of the WBAs, and everyone tries to review it in a week.

B) A more general approach, where users are given "points", a badge, or maybe a trophy in return for reviewing. Users could also place a request to this group to review their work en masse.

Both ideas could also be coupled to a Discord role, which could function much like the Wordsmiths role does now.

 

I like option A) @BTT.

Would this be limited to WBA, given the emphasis on "review" in your post, or would this be expanded elsewhere, like perhaps Library threads with few reviews?