As many of you know, with the board update, we finally have the ability to add multiple prefixes to each thread (we told you this would happen… eventually). Back in 2014, it was decided that multi-prefixes would be the best way to deal with the Disney VS Legends divide (info here). Unfortunately, because the update took so long, we had to come up with a fix in light of the new movies (info here) however now we have a plan to make things make a little more sense (… hopefully). Note: D-Canon refers to Disney-Canon which includes everything LFL considered G-Canon (Episodes I-VI), the 2008 The Clone Wars movie and TV series before the buy-out, in addition to everything created by Disney. Step 1 will be converting EVERYTHING back to their base Before/Saga/Beyond prefixes. We can batch change thread prefixes. We know many older fics won’t get re-prefixed (and re-prefixing thousands of pre-2014 stories individually with an additional assumed "Legends" prefix isn’t feasible) but we still want people to have some sort of sense of where a story would belong. Step 2 will be adding individual “Legends” “D-Canon” “PT” “OT” and “ST” prefixes in addition to the existing Before/Saga/Beyond. So, for example, a story about Darth Revan would be prefixed as “Before” and “Legends” and a story about Mara Jade as the main focus in The Last Jedi would be prefixed as “Saga”, “ST”, “D-Canon”, “Beyond”, and “Legends”. Step 3 will be (obviously) re-vamping the posts in the Fanfic FAQ and Welcome New Users threads regarding the new system. And then letting everyone who is still around re-prefix their older stories, and then going forward with the new system. We know this isn’t a complete confusion-free plan. While we now can require threads to have at least one prefix (something we will turn on), we can’t pick options for required prefixes. So we might very well get newbies prefixing stories as simply something like “D-Canon”. We will try to encourage the use of at least the core Before/Saga/Beyond, just to save some headache for our index-creating users, but with the changes to the Awards category system, having a strict Before/Saga/Beyond system is no longer critical. Plus we now have tags (YAAAAY!! More info here) to help further let readers know when a story is placed. Keep in mind that this might take a few weeks to implement. We know users currently can’t edit their own their own thread titles and we are working on other projects as well. We just wanted to let everyone know what the plan is. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Bri and Mav
He card-read good! I mean, I have a spell of insomnia out of nowhere, but I get it. This is awesome. And the great categorisation confusion of '17 (it hurts to write the full number, so I'm leaving it like this) will never ever ever occur again. YESSSS! Ask 'em tech admins about horizontal rules whenever you get the chance.
I'm saying it again, I love the upgraded boards! A few comments from me: 1. Mashup prefix: With the new software we can still only filter threads using one prefix at a time (right?). I therefore think we should have a "Canon/Legends Mashup" prefix in addition to the individual "Canon" and "Legends" prefixes, so as to avoid a situation where you filter fics by one continuity and have to wade through the list to find those that are also labelled with the other. 2. Limit on the number of prefixes: Maybe we want to avoid a situation where each thread is labelled with half-a-dozen prefixes, since that could make the fic list a bit cumbersome? We also have the new tagging system to refine our search anyway. I think that a max of three prefixes per thread would work well, meaning one for the continuity and up to two for the era (e.g. the Mara in TLJ example above would be covered by Mashup + ST + Beyond instead of having 5 prefixes). 3. Multi-era prefix: This would be again to avoid a situation where you need a whole line of the thread title for prefixes. I don't think that there are many stories that would need this even under a three-prefix limit (I mean, we already have "Saga" for stories that span more than one trilogy) but for those few stories that extend from Before to Beyond this could be useful.
We've decided to leave this off as it isn't that common and can be covered by a tag as opposed to a prefix as it is more of a genre rather than an era. I just looked and we can put a limit on number of prefixes, so Mav and I will discuss what is reasonable. Mav and I have gone back and forth on a multi-era. The prefixes are already quite broad and the few stories that would need it could just use the 3 broad before/saga/beyond so that their story which is set in all 3 eras show up when people search for each era. Edit. And now I'm confusing a bunch of conversations Mav and I have had over the past week(there's been too many). We are open to the idea of a multi era prefix. Tagging @Chyntuck so you see this late edit.
@Briannakin I'll get back to you with numbers after I'm done with the 2017 index, but my impression is that there are quite a few mashup fics out there (although this impression may just stem from the fact that it's such a pain in the backside to decide how to index them ) Multi-era is obviously limited to just a handful of stories and it only makes sense if there's a limit on the number of tags.
So, as an example, for my DDC which takes places half in the OT and half post ROTJ, the main prefix would be Saga -- the part during the OT fits with the Disney canon and the part afterwards sorta mashes ST with Legends in that Legends characters show up. Yikes. I too think 3 and no more than 4 prefixes would be enough and the rest of the specificity can come through tags.
Okay, Mav and I have discussed it and we have decided we will add a "Mash up" and "Multi-era" prefixes. However any headaches this may cause for indexing or awards is out of our hands. There will also be a limit of 5 prefixes per thread.
If we don't lose the existing prefixes, I think most of my efforts can be covered fine by the five Saga tags, eg. Saga ST, rather than having to resort to multiples. I do like a 'multi-era' tag though.
Ooh, I will have to give the prefixes a whirl. I did notice something though: when i paste my new content it doesn't copy cleanly and by that I mean I will have two spaces between paragraphs instead of one. Is there a way for me to fix that besides manually removing them or setting my word doc to a different setting?
Whoops. This is why two procrastinators shouldn't be put in charge. We'll take a look at this and see if this course of action still makes sense.
