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RegisterPosted by: Adric
« on: September 15, 2018, 06:42:33 am »The point Adric was making didn't register with me ...
Sorry - I subsequently edited that post to make its purpose more clear.
Sorry - I subsequently edited that post to make its purpose more clear.
Posted by: ivor
« on: September 14, 2018, 04:26:33 pm »The point Adric was making didn't register with me .......duh!
I agree with Jack about the icons being a giveaway if you try to put certain twists in a story. That can be frustrating!
I agree with Jack about the icons being a giveaway if you try to put certain twists in a story. That can be frustrating!
Posted by: Kat
« on: September 14, 2018, 04:04:19 pm »I'm normally okay with the icons, but - since I tend to enjoy stories with a twist, I have had some stories where the surprise was ruined by an icon. On the other hand, the icons do make searches a LOT easier, and adding a blurb would mean changing the entire layout of the index pages, so I can see how it would be a problem to go with that. Still, it does seem like a nice idea, for the people able to write a good blurb, at least.
I don't know anything about the technical side. I'd think a little blurb that could pop up as one mouses over a title would be nice.
Kat
I have no idea how to make that work, but they do it with a lot of stuff these days, and it does sound like a great idea.
I'd second Plag's/Eeyore's suggestion, but somehow I doubt that would advance the cause.
Kat
Posted by: Jack
« on: September 14, 2018, 04:03:03 pm »I'm normally okay with the icons, but - since I tend to enjoy stories with a twist, I have had some stories where the surprise was ruined by an icon. On the other hand, the icons do make searches a LOT easier, and adding a blurb would mean changing the entire layout of the index pages, so I can see how it would be a problem to go with that. Still, it does seem like a nice idea, for the people able to write a good blurb, at least.
I don't know anything about the technical side. I'd think a little blurb that could pop up as one mouses over a title would be nice.
Kat
I have no idea how to make that work, but they do it with a lot of stuff these days, and it does sound like a great idea.
Posted by: Kat
« on: September 14, 2018, 02:53:02 pm »I'm normally okay with the icons, but - since I tend to enjoy stories with a twist, I have had some stories where the surprise was ruined by an icon. On the other hand, the icons do make searches a LOT easier, and adding a blurb would mean changing the entire layout of the index pages, so I can see how it would be a problem to go with that. Still, it does seem like a nice idea, for the people able to write a good blurb, at least.
I don't know anything about the technical side. I'd think a little blurb that could pop up as one mouses over a title would be nice.
Kat
Posted by: Jack
« on: September 14, 2018, 02:41:14 pm »I'm normally okay with the icons, but - since I tend to enjoy stories with a twist, I have had some stories where the surprise was ruined by an icon. On the other hand, the icons do make searches a LOT easier, and adding a blurb would mean changing the entire layout of the index pages, so I can see how it would be a problem to go with that. Still, it does seem like a nice idea, for the people able to write a good blurb, at least.
Posted by: Kat
« on: September 14, 2018, 02:29:31 pm »Quote from: Plagosus/Eeyore
I just accidentally zapped a long post. :evil:
I'll summarise it:
Flag you're overelaborating. We already have enough, if not too many, icons. Some stories bristle with icons. Basically the system is fine though there is some overlapping and a mismatch between what you want some icons to signify and what people take them to signify. The impression given is that the icon tail is waving the archive dog.
If you really want an improvement go for something completely new. How about blurbs for all new stories? They would be a far better indication to readers of what a story is about and whether they are likely to enjoy it.
The blurb suggestion being a sensible one, I'm betting Flag will shoot it down. Anyone care to make a friendly wager?
Kat
Posted by: Adric
« on: September 14, 2018, 01:04:10 pm »I happened to notice a recent change in the appearance of MMSA authors' stats:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Posted by: ivor
« on: September 14, 2018, 02:22:47 am »It's all the fault of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats...
I can't trump that!
Posted by: stevieweeks
« on: September 13, 2018, 04:58:49 pm »It's all the fault of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats... 
Posted by: ivor
« on: September 13, 2018, 04:19:00 pm »Yep - finally the truth has emerged.
How much easier it would have been if he'd said that in the first place. We could then all have saved our time. It is unfortunately impossible to have a rational conversation with someone who has fixed preconceived ideas and is also irrational when he is not being simply arrogant and rude.
How much easier it would have been if he'd said that in the first place. We could then all have saved our time. It is unfortunately impossible to have a rational conversation with someone who has fixed preconceived ideas and is also irrational when he is not being simply arrogant and rude.
Posted by: Jack
« on: September 13, 2018, 01:41:39 pm »Kat,
I had wondered if this was the same crusade again.
For the record, I'm pretty sure this all started because, when there were regularly a dozen or more of us in chat every day, we passed stories around ahead of time. When someone submitted it, most of us had already read it. When it was posted, we all voted for it - often without reading it again, because we'd already read it. However, Flag wasn't really interested in the facts of the matter. Instead of asking what was happening, he made his biased, bigoted assumptions, and made it so you couldn't vote unless you'd been on a story's page for a while.
This seems like another case where he's using his biases and assumptions to justify the conclusions he wants to try. It's a shame that someone who's obviously intelligent doesn't want to find facts and deal with legitimate problems, but that's how it goes from time to time. What it really comes down to is that MMSA is still mostly a good place, and still the best place for this type of literature.
I had wondered if this was the same crusade again.
For the record, I'm pretty sure this all started because, when there were regularly a dozen or more of us in chat every day, we passed stories around ahead of time. When someone submitted it, most of us had already read it. When it was posted, we all voted for it - often without reading it again, because we'd already read it. However, Flag wasn't really interested in the facts of the matter. Instead of asking what was happening, he made his biased, bigoted assumptions, and made it so you couldn't vote unless you'd been on a story's page for a while.
This seems like another case where he's using his biases and assumptions to justify the conclusions he wants to try. It's a shame that someone who's obviously intelligent doesn't want to find facts and deal with legitimate problems, but that's how it goes from time to time. What it really comes down to is that MMSA is still mostly a good place, and still the best place for this type of literature.
Posted by: David M. Katz
« on: September 13, 2018, 11:26:19 am »Stevie is pretty sure that Emlyn would have been sent a short, polite, note if one of the moderators removed his posts since they are very courteous and all...Dear Stevie, Indeed they are all courteous, so much more likely there was a technical glitch.
As far as I know, it must have been. I haven't removed any posts on this thread, and anyone else who can edit/remove posts normally lets me know if they do. It's always been my policy that, if I do need to edit/or remove a post, I let the person involved know, and let them know why, so they can avoid that problem in the future.
I haven't removed anything either. Em, please repost your comments.
Posted by: Kat
« on: September 13, 2018, 10:17:41 am »Quote from: Flagellant
Not irrelevant. Just more meaningful. So yes, you don't get it.
The idea is to make the stars reflect the true level of feedback as a percent of responding, rather than just showing (maybe) you got 30 friends to vote for you to hit an arbitrary threshold number and game the system to your advantage, or (maybe) you wrote something that didn't get widely read for some reason, so didn't get voted on as much, but the average voting response was higher than the low number of votes and therefore lack of a recommendation star would suggest. It also evens out some archive anomalies.
Until I have time to run some detailed analysis of viewing figures on a large number of stories this discussion is obviously going nowhere. So thread locked until then.
Aha! Now, right before he locks the thread, we get to the real ugliness behind this latest bee in Flag's bonnet. I'd like to ask him for some specific examples of stories he thinks don't deserve their stars because the writers had thirty friends vote for them... but that's impossible now.
As I recall, the last time he changed vote thresholds, it was due to his misapprehension that some writers had abnormally high vote percentages, which represented gaming the system. He had to back off that one, but here is the same old bullshite.
Flag's antagonism towards the Bransom writers is longstanding and obvious. He and Bottom both think there is a cabal among a group of us to vote for one another's stories, no matter how badly written they are. As I suspected, he wants to find a way of punishing these writers.
Of course, people vote for their friends' stories. My friends don't write bad stories. I wish Flag had the honesty and courage to make a direct accusation or to offer specific criticism of stories he thinks are so undeserving of their stars.
Kat
Posted by: Jack
« on: September 13, 2018, 06:01:02 am »Stevie is pretty sure that Emlyn would have been sent a short, polite, note if one of the moderators removed his posts since they are very courteous and all...Dear Stevie, Indeed they are all courteous, so much more likely there was a technical glitch.
As far as I know, it must have been. I haven't removed any posts on this thread, and anyone else who can edit/remove posts normally lets me know if they do. It's always been my policy that, if I do need to edit/or remove a post, I let the person involved know, and let them know why, so they can avoid that problem in the future.