madlodger Posted April 20, 2008 Report Posted April 20, 2008 Challenges and requests are set up to be done in the forum. Those forums per zone and top level category, are set to NOT require login. So, the user can pop over, post their challenge, and be done without ever having to make a forum login.Gravitation has 3 het pairs in it (Tohma/Mika, Hiroshi/Ayaka, Claude (K) and his wife). Plus, there are other minor female characters in the manga and anime as well. Yes, it is a YAOI manga/anime, but that doesn't mean that there aren't het pairs within the storyline itself, as there are. Okay.... For Originals, I did it in such a way as to compensate for that bedamned blighted near useless thing we call a search engine in the archive. So, say for example, you specialize in writing angst, and you prefer writing het. You'd then put your fiction in the angst top level, with the subcategory of het. It'll help make things easier to find. For Poetry (which is also now a top level, among others), I've set up different second level categories based on poetry TYPE. i.e. haiku, sonnet, etc. Where did Vampire section go? And Fantasy and DarkFic?
DemonGoddess Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Posted April 20, 2008 Vampire, Fantasy, and Dark Fic are all top level categories.
bookworm51485 Posted April 20, 2008 Report Posted April 20, 2008 Challenges and requests are set up to be done in the forum. Those forums per zone and top level category, are set to NOT require login. So, the user can pop over, post their challenge, and be done without ever having to make a forum login.Gravitation has 3 het pairs in it (Tohma/Mika, Hiroshi/Ayaka, Claude (K) and his wife). Plus, there are other minor female characters in the manga and anime as well. Yes, it is a YAOI manga/anime, but that doesn't mean that there aren't het pairs within the storyline itself, as there are. Glad to see a challenges section won't disappear completely. I will definitely be visiting it as soon as it's up. I've only read the beginning of the Gravitation manga, so I can't speak too much for that, but I know in the anime none of those pairings are major. K having a wife is never mentioned and I don't believe Mika is ever even shown together with Tohma. Either way, as a shonen ai series, I can't imagine that the het section will ever be used. Just because the pairings are there, doesn't mean they will ever be written on. I've been reading that section for awhile and the only het pairings I've ever seen in any of the stories is background to a m/m pairing. I was just mentioning it because you seem to be trying to cut down on pointless sections and that one just seemed a bit pointless to me.
madlodger Posted April 20, 2008 Report Posted April 20, 2008 Vampire, Fantasy, and Dark Fic are all top level categories. It used to be on one page. Now it's all separated. Would there be a single page with all shortcuts? Because I used to go to about 1/3 of Original subsections and now a part of them is at Original-Misc and the others are on the different page.
DemonGoddess Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Posted April 20, 2008 The top level categories for originals are now all on the originals main page. They became top level categories because of the sheer volume of stories they each had. So, to find those, you would (if you're another part of the archive) use the menu to browse to originals and switch your subdirectory, and you'll see them all there right on the main page for original fiction. As to the Gravitation het category, thing is, until we're done sorting through all those stories that were originally in ONE category, it'll be hard to say if it lives or dies yet. If there are stories in the archive for it, it'll stay. If not, it'll die. It's honestly that simple. Same goes with pair specific type categories, wherever they happen to live. If, after we've gone through each and every section, they don't meet the criteria of 10 or more stories, the stories will get merged into their parent pair type category, and that pair specific category will be gone. As I've explained before, what you're seeing now, is the recategorization, which is a very necessary occurrence before even ATTEMPTING to clean up the archive as a whole. We're looking at approximately 100,000 individual story uploads across all those subdomains. This is only the beginning of a large task. Something that's a positive already from all this, is that it's defnitely helped the overall health of the archive database itself. By changing levels, and subleveling more, what happens is that the queries that are in the script, are not looking for everything all at once anymore. So, by changing the structure, it makes the queries work better, which in turn means that the database isn't overloaded with too many queries at one time. Which slows things down alot. Causes time outs as well as other things. Also causes white space in tables, which is a very bad thing. White space can CRASH a database. Unrecoverably. Hell, I pay extra so that I have a faster than normal broadband connection, and I can SEE a definite difference in speed of execution for page draws. Now, as I can see such a huge difference with my connection, imagine someone who still has dialup. THEIR page draw and script execution time will have increased even more visibly than what I have seen with my connection. When one considers that in September of last year, for example, this thing was ready to implode in on itself, there is a real need for what is being done. Yes, there have been things done since then to help forestall any major problems with the database, but they have been small fixes, and only bought us some time to implement larger fixes which have a positive long term effect on the database itself. This particular fix, which is the largest one to date, will stabilize the database to the point of buying us time to do what needs to be done to the code itself. Rather than a continuous scramble to keep the thing from teetering on the brink of implosion, which means NONE of us have time to get to the coding. Because you all hear from me the most doesn't mean squat, by the way, insofar as what we each do. It just means that I'm the most vocal (and therefore the most visible) of the three of us. manta2g with her overall abilities with programming, xax with his overall abilities with query structure, and me, I'm an old hand with making data work efficiently in a database and restructuring things to make that happen. But, our strengths individually with this sort of thing all complement each other. So, you see, while you may see/hear from me most, it doesn't by any means mean that I'm the only one doing things. I can say with certainty that the task I'm doing now, would've moved at a snail's pace comparatively, had I not asked xax for some queries to simplify and speed things up in data manipulation. It also would be much slower if I didn't have the coded utility provided for me by manta2g to simplify other tasks as well, that this entire task requires of me. pffft. I'd still be working somewhere in Naruto if I didn't have those extra tools provided to me. Instead of being maybe a day or two away from finishing up this initial task, before we get to actually cleaning things up. I'd be looking at weeks left to this part instead.
DemonGoddess Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Posted April 20, 2008 Changes in tv zone: Angel, CSI, Smallville, Stargate: SG-1, and Supernatural are all top level categories. The other 2nd level categories have been split as in the other multi title archives.
DemonGoddess Posted April 21, 2008 Author Report Posted April 21, 2008 X-Men is done. pair specific categories are now subcategories of the pair types per top level. The movies categories have been merged into one for all the movies. Comics, I'm not quite sure what to do with. I know what I'd LIKE to do, what makes sense to me, but there's not enough there yet to split it up. So, there are categories added to allow for misc titles not listed. That's the extent of the changes there for now. Other than that, the initial recategorization is done. NOW, it's on the WORK. Sorting all of those stories in each subdomain.
Guest Agaib Posted June 16, 2008 Report Posted June 16, 2008 I know you've been working hard at reorganizing the categories and such. But as a suggestion, maybe it would be better if you put "het, femslash, group, etc" as top level domains in categories and used genre as sub domains? I know this would probably be extremely difficult to do, due to the volume of work it might require to reverse how the domains are organized, but personally it seems like organizing the stories this way would make it easier to navigate. Someone's sexual preference, I think, is unlikely to change as quickly as their preference for the writing style and genre.
DemonGoddess Posted June 16, 2008 Author Report Posted June 16, 2008 I'm assuming you're speaking about the originals subdomain? When we get there, I expect things will get shuffled around more. First thing with that will be to see exactly HOW the stories fall together. It's certainly going to be the trickiest of the subdomains to rework
luvsjazz Posted July 9, 2008 Report Posted July 9, 2008 I have a question about the reordering. Is the archive listing going to continue to be split the way it is now (separate alpha groupings plus additional groupings for specific fandoms like Weiss Kreuz) or will it eventually go back to a full comprehensive list? Personally, I feel like I'm probably missing out on some fandoms I don't read often, but do enjoy when I happen to run across thier names when listed out like they are on some other sites. Just wondering if this is a temporary change or if it will be permanent.
DemonGoddess Posted July 9, 2008 Author Report Posted July 9, 2008 The alpha listing contains a comprehensive list as a level beneath, for the titles which fit there. The reason the top level categories are set at top level (such as Wiess Kreuz) is because of the volume of stories that are in that particular category. Have a look at this, which explains everything in depth, as well as the sequence in which the work is being done.
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