MOD 2014 NSWFF Announcements/Discussion Thread -- Share Your Thoughts!

Welcome to 2014, NSWFF!

In the past 15 or so months since we returned from the temp site, Mira and I have been thrilled to see fun stories and great friends—and new stories and faces, too! We’re excited to see what the new year has in store.

To help us make this the best year NSWFF has ever had, we’d like to have a discussion about the state of our forum, as well as make a few announcements.

New FAQ
We’re going to kick off the new year with a new FAQ! Mira and I are working on an updated (and non-shortened) version. It’s a huge piece to overhaul, so please remain patient while we get it going. If there’s something you want to make sure is included, feel free to let us know.


Challenges
We’ve had a wide variety of recurring and one-off challenges, including roulettes, 50 Sentences, and Write by Theme. Which ones would you like to see brought back? Do you have any ideas for new challenges? We want to hear them!


Spoilers
They happen, but we’d like to avoid them as much as possible. We have an across-the-board two-weeks policy. This means spoilers for everything—books, comics, TV shows, movies, etc.—must be under a spoiler tag for two weeks after its release.

To make a spoiler tag:

{spoiler]Snape killed Dumbledore!{/spoiler] but use [ instead of {

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

Snape killed Dumbledore!

Though you can post unhighlighted spoilers after two weeks, please keep in mind that, with a global audience and busy people, someone in the thread might not have had time to see a movie or read a book two weeks after its release. If you know someone in your discussion thread hadn’t seen or read something, it’s courteous to continue to use spoiler tags even after the spoiler period has passed.

Story threads with spoilers should have “Spoiler” somewhere in the title for the two weeks after the material’s release. After that period has passed, it’s still nice to mention that your story has spoilers in the first post.


Fandom Tags
Please include fandom tags at the beginning of your story title! It’s a very easy way to tell what fandom your story is set in. Feel free to use a commonly abbreviation. For example:

[Harry Potter] The Boy Who Lived
[HP] The Boy Who Lived


Story Index
Mira and I have been talking about creating a story index that would list every story, by fandom, ever written in NSWFF and keep it updated! However, we’re a little lacking in time. Is there any interest in this, and if so, would anyone be interested in keeping it updated?


Awards
After much consideration—including looking at participation numbers from previous years—we have decided not to participate in the awards this year. NSWFF has some amazing stories, but it doesn’t have enough regular readers and writers to go through a whole nominations/excerpts/voting process.

Mira and I are working on a fun idea to do instead of the awards, but we welcome input from all of you!


Social and Discussion Threads
We love seeing you in the [link=[url]http://boards.theforce.net/threads/nswff-writers-support-group-januarys-topic-strength-in-characters.50007187/]Support[/url] Group[/link] and [link=[url]http://boards.theforce.net/threads/lost-in-a-good-fic-the-well-of-lost-plots-social-thread.30964920/]social[/url] thread[/link]! Don’t forget to pop in to chat and share your ideas. Additionally, if there’s a fandom discussion you’d like to see, always remember that you can kick off a discussion yourself!



As always, we welcome your feedback about any and all of the above. We want to make NSWFF a fun place for all of you!

That's sad to hear. I always loved the awards.

A technical question: Do you have any idea of when our old posts will be restored to their original lengths? It would be nice to be able to read old stories without being frustrated by chapters cut short.

Lauré

Unfortunately, we don't have a clue. We keep being told that they're working on it. There are definitely stories I'd love to reread!

I'd like to see the Write By Theme challenge some more, along with general writing exercises that might help kickstart a very dead muse.

Also, to add to the spoiler tags, you can also specify the spoiler by adding the "=whatever" to the tag, like "spoiler=whatever."

whatever (open) whatever (close)

whatever

Any changes to the disallowed works list?

I just can't get excited about challenges. I've got to REALLY love the story that I want to write to be able to do a half way decent job on it. Challenges just adds too much restraint for me. It's also a reason I really never accept prompts for fan fiction stories. I just can't put out the same quality of work unless I am completely in love with the idea and the story. So, I for the most part, don't do challenges or take prompts. That's just me, though.

Speaking of prompts... More prompts would be nice. They don't even need to be a challenge, just have a thread full of prompts.

I would definitely add Diana Gabaldon to that list. She had a rather specatular reaction several years back where she wrote several (now deleted) blog posts comparing fanfic to people who use drugs, pedophiles and white slavery (no, I'm not making this up). The posts started because somebody asked if they could write fanfiction of her works for a fandom charity auction for a cancer patient (one I've participated in in the past myself) and the posts got deleted shortly after one of her more rabid fans posted said cancer patient's personal information.

Thanks, Juliet! And everyone, please feel free to bring authors who should be on the disallowed works list to our attention at any time

Curious to know what kind of things are being considered instead of the awards.

We're still ironing out the details, but we're open to input if anyone has ideas! We want to make this experience fun for you all.

How about some awards by fandom instead of by category?

1. We don't always read everything, and some fandoms inspire us more than others, so it would be a fair way to judge without playing favourites. And sometimes excerpts are difficult to choose and may not always reflect the overall quality of the work.
2. The categories inside the fandom can be as diverse as needed to take into account the variety of offerings. If, say, there's a lot of S/U offerings in the ST fandom, there could be a special "Best S/U Romance" for that subset.
3. If there aren't enough fics to make a fandom competition worthwhile, then there could be a "Multiple fandoms" category with their own awards subset like the old formula, only perhaps reduced in scope. It could give more obscure works some visibility.

I know that means the formula would have to be somewhat revised yearly, but I think it might be an interesting way of creating interest. For added difficulty, there could also be a rule stating that you can't vote for your own work if it does end up being nominated.

Just a few ideas to chew on as you think of something...

Lauré

Thanks for the input! We are trying to avoid doing actual awards with voting etc. because not very many people participate; it's a ton of work to go through for a very few people.

I really don't know anymore. We used to try so many things including story of month, but it just seems that is NSWFF is dying because of this move. I really wish I could get back into writing Star Wars because there's a lot of fun over there, and nothing over here at all. I've had to branch out my writing to other sites including Archives, FF.net, and Tumblr. There are pros and cons to all the sites. Man, if someone could create a forum that mixes the pro's from all of these sites, that would be one booming site.

If we're not doing anything involving voting, then there's really nothing that can be done. Anything would be at the discretion of a single person and his or hers likes and dislikes. I mean, we can't do a story of the month because the only way that would be fair is by voting. That means, no writing contests, no form of recognitions for writers, and other fun activities. Without those, I really don't think there's anything that can be done to attract people here. In fact, we may loose people.

I think that in order to have more things available in NSWFF, then more people need to be involved on the board. But in order to get more people involved on the board, there needs to be more things available or more things that inspire interest. It's an interesting (albeit frustrating) cycle. Hmm...

What could be done to inspire more interest in NSWFF, maybe from writers who are currently posting on on the SWFF side of things?

The problem, i see, that this is still considered to be a Star Wars site. I think that is a BIG hindrance for the NSWFF. Go to any other Fan Fiction site, Star Wars is on the lower end of traffic. With a name like Jedi Council Forums, I think all the Star Wars people will rush here to read Star Wars fan fiction before the NSWFF. I wish there was a way to separate us from all things Star Wars. (I love Star Wars as much as anyone, but with a website named Jedi Council Forums, all we're ever going to attract are Star Wars fans). I wish there was a way to promote this forum without tying us with with the Jedi Council Forums. I mean, look at Tumbler. I think to say Frozen and How To Train Your Dragon is dominate there over Star Wars any day of the week.

Trying to overcome this huge blockade is the real challenge here.

Numbers were so low for the two times we tried that we decided not to do the awards again before the move, actually; post-move traffic patterns were not the only cause. And really, we try different things to see what sticks; the awards just didn't with our group--which doesn't mean we won't revisit, but it means we want to try other things to see if people like them more. Not having the awards because of participation issues has nothing to do with whether we do challenges or other community events.
And we do plan to do them! Like we've said, we have ideas, but we want your input, too, so we can learn what type of events you all are interested in!