WillowDarkling

I stumbled into this, and realized… come April 5th, it’ll be a decade for me.  (Yes, I found the registration confirmation email in my inbox.)

I have a sneaking suspicion, that people aren't leaving reviews, because they don't know what they should say in them.
It's something that I asked myself about, when I wanted to leave a review on a story I enjoyed.
I didn't want to just say 'good job', and I also wanted to avoid saying 'this is bad' or 'good', without being as objective as I could be.
So, I sat down and thought about what things a reader and writer of fan-fiction, might want to know or should know, about a fan-fic.
With this in mind, I wrote down a list of things that I may or may not put in a review, depending on whether or not I think it should be said.
This is the list that I now use, when writing a review.
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Was this story good or bad overall? Could you recommend the story? Give at least a vague reason or example as to why, it was good or bad for you.
Do the characters have, for the most part, 'clear' and 'reasonable' motivations that drive them to do what they are doing? If motives are in doubt, can you offer improvements to the motives of their characters?
Is the story too, out of place, to be believable in the 'cannon' of that 'universe'? If it does feel out of place, can you offer an improvement, so the story doesn't feel out of line with the 'cannon' of that 'universe'?
How is the wording and spelling? Is it difficult or easy to read through? If it is difficult to read through, can you offer a suggestion as to how the writer can improve on those?
Does the story's title, description and tags, give the reader a clear idea of what the story may be about, without, spoiling the story? Can you offer advice on how to make these more clear, without, spoiling the story?
What else, if anything, do you want the readers and/or the writer to know, about this story?
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These are of course, things that I felt would be important in a review, for both a reader and writer.
I think this would be a good template for those who are looking to give an 'objective' review, but don't know where to start.
Of course I'm always eager to hear other's thoughts and perspectives on the matter, and on the template I now use.

One of our members, Sessakag, has had the unfortunate experience of finding their story posted without permission on this site:  https://www.patreon.com/WhatIfFanfics/collections. 
The stories that have been used are largely in the Naruto fandom, although there are some crossovers as well. 
The worst part? It's behind a paywall. That's right--this plagiarist expects you to pay $10 to listen a story published by the actual author for free right here on AFF. See, that's the plagiarist's hook. These are AUDIO copies. Now, mind you, this plagiarist had their YouTube account suspended, most likely for the very same thing, but they don't seem able to learn their lesson.
If your story has been stolen, Patreon wants you to reach out to the "creator" on Patreon and ask them to be nice and take it down. If that doesn't work, they also suggest filing a DMCA takedown notice (https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/208377833). The catch is that you need a Patreon account to report the stolen content. However, the more times this thief is reported, the more likely it is that Patreon will be forced to take action.
I want to send a huge thank you to Sessakag for reporting this to us. Even if AFF can't tell Patreon how to run their site, we can be proud of our members, who respect the hard work put into creating the fan fictions we all enjoy.
 
UPDATE:
Patreon responded quickly to the DMCA request from Sessakag, and removed the story from the Patreon page, although the account hasn't been suspended. If you too have been a victim, please go and file that DMCA takedown notice with Patreon!
ANOTHER UPDATE:
It seems there are now YouTube videos where this person reads a story aloud, so they haven’t learned their lesson from the first YouTube suspension. If your story was used here, please report it and file a DMCA takedown request.

Have you activated your account under the new archive code? If you haven’t done that yet, that would be why you aren’t able to edit or delete stories. If you can supply me with a link to your archive profile, I’d be happy to check, and resend the necessary links to you if you still need to reactivate.

Guys, let’s not use this particular thread to chat about somewhat unrelated subject, please. 

The VPN kick is intentional,  the hackers we were dealing with kept using VPNs to bypass the site security and wreck havoc on the archives. 

Keurig whimpers in terror.  Little did it know that Halloween only marked the beginning of the spooky season, it was going to be enslaved for another grueling thirty days, without a prayer of overtime pay.

So, who’s tackling NaNo this year? *raises hand sheepishly* 
It’s been a few years since I dove in and drove myself to the point of insanity trying to cobble together 50,000 semi-coherent words, but I’m hoping it’s the kick in the pants I need to get back to writing regularly. Wish me luck, and don’t get between me and my Keurig for the next 30 days.  

I forgot the TOS email, didn’t I? See, diz is why I’m not allowed to operate the heavy machinery….      Hope you guys get this sorted. Not that I was much help   

I’m not promising to have it done exactly on time, but I think I have something...

!͉̦̥͂ɿ͙̬͚̆ͤ͊ɘ̜̦͊ͯͪͧ̑ͫ̅ʞ̥̰͉̼ͣ̽ᴎ̝̦͚̦̜͎̰̃u͒̂̎̂̈́d͔̭̘ͥ͒̾̿̎ ̦͎̼̭ɘ̹̭̤̹ͧͩͦ̇̓̓̃ʜ̈́ͣ̓ͦ̌̎ƚ̗̙̺̤̰̖̄ͦ ͙̲͇̰̳̪ɘ͙̝̙͗̂̈̓̏ḋ̳̰͉̪͕̠̉͛ͣ͐i̞̜̅ͨ̾̿ꙅ̰̱̼̙̉̓ͅᴎ̳̗̖͚ͭ̓̓ȉ͛ͯ̄̍̀ ̫̬̬̗̦̙͚̀m̈͐ͬͯ̓ͤo̼̮̗̰͔̅͒̊̀ͧ̅ͅͅɿ̦̀͑̊Ꮈ̦ͬͧͪ̅̿͆ͦ ͙̹ͮ̈́̑ͭ̔ꙅ̘̾̔͊ḭ̯͕͙̗̗ ̬̦̱̹̱̰͆̓ͣͅ|̦̼̱̰|̗͐̎̄͂̾ͨ̈ɒ̼͚ͤ̐ɔ̟͕̟̠̮̱ͧ̽̿ͦ́́̒ ̯͙̲̫ɘ͐͂̉̇͌̌ʜ̱͈͔̙ͩ̉͗̊̄ͥ̀ͅT̪̙͗̇̏͑̍̂😈

Ack!   Run hide, it’s coming!  

Yes! I’m doing this early =p So every body has time 🥰😎

I have removed the email address from your post Guest-madrasminar, and have sent it to @BronxWench in a PM. 
We’ve had a lot of spambots trawlin the site in the past few days, so it’s safer to not post emails in public posts. 
Willow Darkling, forum moderator. 

Sorry about that! I filled in the form. Please let me know if there's something I need to add.
Chapter 3 is up.

That’s certainly weird, so I’ll tag @manta2g so she can check it out. 
But you should also be able to go to your own profile page, and at the top of that, there should be a line that says “Write a public message on your own feed” and if you click that, you can put a status on that.

I’ve got mine setup to clear most things too… logins, cookies, cache, history, etc.  That’s generally a good & strong settings to have IMO.

Yes, generally speaking. My browsers are set so that any time I close the browser, it deletes all cookies. So I tried it again today and the same thing happened.

You of course tried the obvious, like clearing your cookies and that, didn’t you, @Deadman?   That’s usually the first thing BronxWench tells me to do when I have issues, and half the time it works  

It’s not as serious an issue as originally thought. Looks like it’s specifically messenger pop up and appears to be only me who has this problem. @Desiderius Price appears to be able to use the pop up without an issue.

This is all awesome information, and I’m sure that DG or Manta will get back to you on this as soon as they can. They just both work insane hours IRL, so it might be a bit of a wait. 
But if you have found a work around, try to use that until they can figure out the problem. It is possible that it is a browser related thing, but I am so tech-challenged that I beg you not to take me on my word on that   

Moved this to the correct forum for you guys, and I’ll tag @manta2g and @DemonGoddess since they are the tech admins for us. Hopefully they will be able to answer you guys soon. 

*le sigh* I speak English as a second language, but I’ve studied… now… four other foreign languages. I can’t speak any of them, really, to any extent, but I have retained enough that I can read simple instructions in the other Scandinavian languages (except for Finnish, obviously  And no offence, but Faroese is just gibberish) and I can recognise when people are speaking French or German, and related languages. And I still pretend to retain some of my ability to understand a bit of written Japanese   At least I am smashing my Duolingo course in Japanese, and I do have a BA degree in that, so I feel I must pretend that I still know a bit
I also tried to study Spanish, but failed miserably, because I kept mixing it up with my French, so I gave up and took German instead  
So, that’s native language, fluent in English, and studied four more, plus a bit of Spanish   The joys of a tiny country school system. 

Did not know that @manta2g was an ESL speaker like myself   

*le sigh* I speak English as a second language, but I’ve studied… now… four other foreign languages. I can’t speak any of them, really, to any extent, but I have retained enough that I can read simple instructions in the other Scandinavian languages (except for Finnish, obviously  And no offence, but Faroese is just gibberish) and I can recognise when people are speaking French or German, and related languages. And I still pretend to retain some of my ability to understand a bit of written Japanese   At least I am smashing my Duolingo course in Japanese, and I do have a BA degree in that, so I feel I must pretend that I still know a bit
I also tried to study Spanish, but failed miserably, because I kept mixing it up with my French, so I gave up and took German instead  
So, that’s native language, fluent in English, and studied four more, plus a bit of Spanish   The joys of a tiny country school system.