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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

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

Discussion in 'Non Star Wars Fan Fiction' started by NYCitygurl, Jan 11, 2014.

  1. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002
    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 {

    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 http://boards.theforce.net/threads/nswff-writers-support-group-januarys-topic-strength-in-characters.50007187/]Support[/url] Group and http://boards.theforce.net/threads/lost-in-a-good-fic-the-well-of-lost-plots-social-thread.30964920/]social[/url] thread! 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!
     
  2. mrjop2

    mrjop2 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 6, 2007
    That's sad to hear. I always loved the awards.
     
  3. laurethiel1138

    laurethiel1138 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 6, 2003
    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 :)
     
  4. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002
    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!
     
  5. Mira_Jade

    Mira_Jade The (FavoriteTM) Fanfic Mod With the Cape star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2004
    Which is a pity, too, because there are some gems back in the older pages. Soon-ish, we can only hope. 8-}:oops:
     
  6. TrakNar

    TrakNar Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 4, 2011
    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
     
  7. Mira_Jade

    Mira_Jade The (FavoriteTM) Fanfic Mod With the Cape star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2004
    We could definitely do more Write By Theme challenges, that's for sure. [face_thinking] And thank-you for that about the spoilers. I had forgotten that they could do that. :)

    Does anyone else have a thought they would like to share? :)
     
  8. Juliet316

    Juliet316 37X Hangman Winner star 10 VIP - Game Winner

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2005
    Any changes to the disallowed works list?
     
  9. mrjop2

    mrjop2 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 6, 2007
    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.
     
  10. TrakNar

    TrakNar Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 4, 2011
    Speaking of prompts... More prompts would be nice. They don't even need to be a challenge, just have a thread full of prompts.
     
  11. Mira_Jade

    Mira_Jade The (FavoriteTM) Fanfic Mod With the Cape star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2004
    I think that more prompts is something that we can definitely do! [face_thinking]

    Juliet316 - I don't think we have heard of anything specific added to the Disallowed Works list, but if you need us to check a particular fandom - or know of one we need to add - we would be happy to do so. :)
     
  12. Juliet316

    Juliet316 37X Hangman Winner star 10 VIP - Game Winner

    Registered:
    Apr 27, 2005
    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.
     
  13. Mira_Jade

    Mira_Jade The (FavoriteTM) Fanfic Mod With the Cape star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2004
    Oh dear. That is . . . well . . . I don't even know where to start with that. :eek: But yes, that is definitely a name we will add to the list. Thank-you for bringing that to our attention.
     
  14. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002
    Thanks, Juliet! And everyone, please feel free to bring authors who should be on the disallowed works list to our attention at any time :)
     
  15. Mira_Jade

    Mira_Jade The (FavoriteTM) Fanfic Mod With the Cape star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2004
    Are there any other thoughts to share? [face_batting] We'd love to hear from you! [:D]
     
  16. Mira_Jade

    Mira_Jade The (FavoriteTM) Fanfic Mod With the Cape star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2004
  17. mrjop2

    mrjop2 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 6, 2007
    Curious to know what kind of things are being considered instead of the awards.
     
  18. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002
    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.
     
  19. laurethiel1138

    laurethiel1138 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 6, 2003
    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 :)
     
  20. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002
    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.
     
  21. mrjop2

    mrjop2 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 6, 2007
    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.
     
  22. Idrelle_Miocovani

    Idrelle_Miocovani Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 5, 2005
    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... [face_thinking]

    What could be done to inspire more interest in NSWFF, maybe from writers who are currently posting on on the SWFF side of things?
     
  23. mrjop2

    mrjop2 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 6, 2007
    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.
     
  24. Mira_Jade

    Mira_Jade The (FavoriteTM) Fanfic Mod With the Cape star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2004
    I think that that is a little doom and gloom for the situation, mrjop! ;) Do cheer up. [:D]

    Yes, it is true that we have a smaller window for users on the NSWFF side of fanfiction. It is to be expected. This is a Star Wars website, and the NSWFF really is just a bonus for the people who post here. Now, that said, just because our numbers are fewer, I don't think that this forum is any less fun or interesting at times. We have plenty of things that encourage user participation - challenges, prompts, discussions (that also have exercises with them, all to acknowledge our fellow author's, may I add - just without voting), and while our numbers are few, the feedback and participation we get there is very interesting and encouraging. Now, while we are always looking for ways to improve and expand, I do not want to put down what we have going here, either. :)

    Even on the SW side of things, participation is slower than it used to be. Perhaps it is the board move, perhaps it is a waning interest, but with both more people coming back after the movie and the new SW movie coming out, I am looking forward to seeing our numbers grow - on our side, and the SW side of fanfiction. Perhaps then we will bring the awards back,. Until then, we will still do something fun this year to acknowledge our fellow authors. And, I have to take a moment to say - even if our numbers stay where they are, I have still loved posting with you guys in this crazy, tight knit community. Because of our smaller numbers, that is also something we have over larger sites - a more personal, intimate feel, and I have enjoyed getting to know each one of you. [:D]
     
    Idrelle_Miocovani likes this.
  25. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002
    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!