Warnings, Skins, Garbled Text, Categories

[curi]

First off, I have a feeling that my comments are neither new nor unique, but I'm really not up for scanning the whole history of suggestion topics. (I could suggest that this forum compartmentalize further, with stickies for "presentation" and "story options" and "communication" and clear and concise explanations for why certain frequently requested features just aren't feasible, but... *cough*I'm a control freak*cough*)

So, I hate the warnings system here. It's pretty annoying to try to figure out where the summary ends and where the warnings begin, especially when there's so much other information readily available (Time of publication, time of last update, time of last edit, etc). It would be nice to see warnings have a separate line of their own instead of just being tagged on to the summary. Additionally, until I uploaded my own story, I was unaware of the meanings of a lot of the "warnings," and it's not as though the abbreviations and terms are universal (I'd never heard of most of the anime terms—that frequently show up where they are not wanted in non-Anime categories, despite being very clearly labeled "Anime"— or WAFF, and a lot of the abbreviations are nonstandard, as well.) or there is a well-publicized list of definitions easily accessible from any page. Perhaps it is available on the FAQ, but it would be really nice to give "Warning Definitions" its own page from the Info & Support dropdown. And I'd like to see Dub-Con added to the warnings, because there is a shade between Non-Con and, um, Con. (Maybe it's there and I overlooked it; I don't know. I also don't know if I failed when I was unable to add a warning to my already-published story or if that feature just doesn't exist.)

I understand if the warnings can't be separated from previously published summaries, but it would be a nice feature to add. It might screw a bit with unified appearance, but considering where we are...

I want skins for the archives. I hate the purple/grey thing, and I don't get the number five, and I want to be able to change colors and fonts, because Times New Roman is a print font, not a screen font, and sometimes for weird reason authors make text lines that are too big for my screen. Bastards. */end pout*

This is maybe kind of a bug, but I don't find the weird garbled text thing anywhere else on the web where I visit. (You know what I mean, right? Where there will be two words and they'll be all jumbled and you can sort of figure out what the author actually typed, but it's still guessing? Yeah.)

Next on my laundry list—categories. Mutiple! Sometimes a story isn't a threesome/moresome but it's also not just one ship. Or, with AUs and Crossovers. Stories shouldn't be double posted, but it would be nice if they could belong to two categories at the same time, though I get the sense that it's not possible the way the archive is currently organized.

I promise we're nearing the end of my comments. I'd love to be able to sort by title, as well, or story length, or warnings, or whatever. Will that feature ever appear?

Finally, I just wanted to say that I do appreciate the hard work the staff put in to making AFF a good archive. It's a tough job and there aren't a lot of people who understand that it's volunteer work and that you have a lot to handle. The end.

Curi

[DemonGoddess]

First off, I have a feeling that my comments are neither new nor unique, but I'm really not up for scanning the whole history of suggestion topics. (I could suggest that this forum compartmentalize further, with stickies for "presentation" and "story options" and "communication" and clear and concise explanations for why certain frequently requested features just aren't feasible, but... *cough*I'm a control freak*cough*)

So, I hate the warnings system here. It's pretty annoying to try to figure out where the summary ends and where the warnings begin, especially when there's so much other information readily available (Time of publication, time of last update, time of last edit, etc). It would be nice to see warnings have a separate line of their own instead of just being tagged on to the summary. Additionally, until I uploaded my own story, I was unaware of the meanings of a lot of the "warnings," and it's not as though the abbreviations and terms are universal (I'd never heard of most of the anime terms—that frequently show up where they are not wanted in non-Anime categories, despite being very clearly labeled "Anime"— or WAFF, and a lot of the abbreviations are nonstandard, as well.) or there is a well-publicized list of definitions easily accessible from any page. Perhaps it is available on the FAQ, but it would be really nice to give "Warning Definitions" its own page from the Info & Support dropdown. And I'd like to see Dub-Con added to the warnings, because there is a shade between Non-Con and, um, Con. (Maybe it's there and I overlooked it; I don't know. I also don't know if I failed when I was unableto add a warning to my already-published story or if that feature just doesn't exist.)

First of all, yes, this has all been covered extensively here in forum. The forum itself has a robust search feature, so you might want to use it to bring up the topics that are pertinent to your concerns. As to the warnings/story tags, you have to understand that this software for the archive is old. Because it's old, there are many, many limitations as to what we can and cannot do with it. We have something working for upgrade (it's being completely rewritten) but that takes a fair amount of time to write a program to where it works, from the ground up. So, for now, we have what we have. There is a definition for the story tags/warnings in the FAQ section here.

I understand if the warnings can't be separated from previously published summaries, but it would be a nice feature to add. It might screw a bit with unified appearance, but considering where we are...

Again, there are many things that the current software simply will not allow us to implement.

I want skins for the archives. I hate the purple/grey thing, and I don't get the number five, and I want to be able to change colors and fonts, because Times New Roman is a print font, not a screen font, and sometimes for weird reason authors make text lines that are too big for my screen. Bastards. */end pout*

That is also something slated to be done for the future. Different skins, with a selector for what the user wants to use, other than the default. It is not, unfortunately, an option now.

This is maybe kind of a bug, but I don't find the weird garbled text thing anywhere else on the web where I visit. (You know what I mean, right? Where there will be two words and they'll be all jumbled and you can sort of figure out what the author actually typed, but it's still guessing? Yeah.)

It's actually data corruption leftover from the 2003 crash. That is being cleaned up at present

Next on my laundry list—categories. Mutiple! Sometimes a story isn't a threesome/moresome but it's also not just one ship. Or, with AUs and Crossovers. Stories shouldn't be double posted, but it would be nice if they could belong to two categories at the same time, though I get the sense that it's not possible the way the archive is currently organized.

Definitely not a possibility. It has nothing to do with organization, but that the software doesn't support it as an option.

I promise we're nearing the end of my comments. I'd love to be able to sort by title, as well, or story length, or warnings, or whatever. Will that feature ever appear?

Finally, I just wanted to say that I do appreciate the hard work the staff put in to making AFF a good archive. It's a tough job and there aren't a lot of people who understand that it's volunteer work and that you have a lot to handle. The end.

Curi

Sorting by title'd be nice, but.....we'll see. That all depends on what kind of addition to query loads it would create. The object to what we've been doing the last few weeks is to REDUCE the query load, not to increase it. Let's get done what needs done first, and then we can look at different features that we can incorporate into the new code. Our sort is by latest added/updated, which is common to any other fiction archive I've ever seen as well. This is normally because readers want to see what has been updated, not so much sort it all alphabetically.

[Omnicat]

What I came here to suggest is somewhat similar to some of the above, so I'll spare everyone the bother of yet another new topic. ^^;

First thing; I screwed up a little while ago by posting challenges in the fiction archive. I now know that the new policy is to not allow that anymore (I initially stopped reading the public notice it was mentioned in after said notice started talking about all the money I'm not able to donate), but I'm still confused. To avoid anything like that from happening again, it might be a good idea to get rid of the "challenge", "list" and "non-fic" warnings. You know, so people won't get the idea that it's still allowed because it's still possible to warn for it?

Also, a warning I'd like to see added; can we please, PLEASE get a "lolita", "loli", or "lolicon" tag? At the moment all we have to chose from is "shouta" and "minor", and that just feels unfair. I don't want to use a "pedo" tag when I write about a fourteen-year-old girl and an older guy. She's not a little kid or a prepubescent anymore; she'd be old enough to consent to sex in a lot of countries. But since a lot of other countries don't agree, I'd still like to warn my readers. Labeling it "minor", with its description of "pedophilia", makes me feel dirty, though. If M/M writers get a chance to avoid "that dirty word", M/F writers should get the same honour, methinks.

And... maybe a "futa" tag? I've noticed there's an "m-preg" one, for males getting pregnant, so "futa" for woman with dicks would be the logical counterpart. (Though maybe it's not popular enough in fiction? I know hentai artists can't get enough of it...)

That's all. I hope this is more useful than annoying to you. ;

[DemonGoddess]

you're absolutely correct in that the tags need updated. We do have that on our to do list, which is HUGE by the way. Gotta remember there's really only two people (manta2g and I) who are doing that part of the work. So, with manta2g concentrating on the new software, and me on the cleanup, it's just sitting there in the ever growing "honey do" list. ugh.

Y'know, even if you're unable to donate, PLEASE do read the site news. It contains important things such as the newly revised Terms of Service, the cleanup project, and a host of other information.

The challenges/requests, searches and all that were eliminated to make the database itself a bit more manageable and begin stabilizing it. The archive database is 6.1GB at present. Believe it or not, when all that was done a few months ago, that actually DROPPED it from 6.7GB to 5.9GB at the time. Of course, new story additions and new chapters and whatnot will make the database grow more. . At the time I started this whole cleanup project and whatnot, the database itself was VERY unstable. Which is also why the entire archive is in a bit of a state of flux. That will change, of course, as we proceed and complete the sorting, moving, creating new sub subs as necessary, and everything else that needs done.

[Omnicat]

... there's only two of you? O_O Wow. Good luck with that.

Glad to know all that, and seriously... good luck.

[DemonGoddess]

that handle that end of things, yes. There are more of us who handle other aspects of the site.

[Guest pontaloon]

as far as the warnings go i would like them to be a little more specific. like "Death" for example is very vague. i have read some stories where a minor character dies or even an OC dies with this warning label. similarly, i have also seen the death of a main character in a fic with that same label. now i won't even read a fic with "Death" on it because i hate it when main characters are killed and i just won't risk it.

now i feel like im really missing out of some really good fics through...

i just wish that there was something like MainDeath (for main character death) and MinorDeath (for minor character death) or something like that. that way i will be freed from my self imposed limits!