Question Between WhatIf and Fabrication Lab

Let me note something here about the way I have the site CMS (content management system) set up to work that might help you clarify things a bit.

1. When you begin work on a story in the CMS, your story is in a category named WhatIF->In Progress. This category is only available to people who are flagged with the WhatIF author or editor rank (along with canon authors/editors). And generally, when a story is in the "In Progress" category... it should be considered a literal work in progress. You are doing the actual writing. Or you are copy-pasting into the editor. Or you're cleaning up the formatting. There's really NO good reason for anyone but the author and the author's designated editors to edit or even look at a story in the In Progress stage unless invited to. The only reason you can even see other people's In Progress stories is that I can't prevent it - the CMS makes it possible for you to view the in progress work of other people ranked the same as you... otherwise I would hide this stage from everyone but the author.

2. Once you ARE ready for some feedback from editors, proofers, and other authors... you are supposed to move your story to the WhatIF->Requesting Feedback category. Doing so still does not open your story up to the public. However, it DOES move it into a visually separate category, still limited to the same people who could see it while it was In Progress... but now with the implicit invitation for those people to give the story a look. It doesn't have to be finished at this point by any means, but moving it into the "Requesting Feedback" Category IS an indication that you feel that its far enough along that people should be able to respond to it and help you improve it. If you receive feedback that is likely to involve significant reworking, you might want to consider moving it back to "In Progress" while you handle that work (so additional feedback doesn't hit you on the same issues while you are mid-way through rewrites).

3. When you think you are ready for publication, ALL format requirements met, then and only then should you move the story into the official WhatIF category; publishing it to the site. This opens the story up to access by ALL visitors to the site: registered and public non-registered. We typically see more than 2000 readers in a given week, with more than 5000 unique visitors each month. And when your story releases, its title is the first line of text in the sidebar right below the login panel under Newest Independent Fiction.

While you retain the ability to edit stories that have been released, no story that has been publicly released should be getting rewritten. Typo fixes? Sure. Minor continuity corrections (like fixing an eye color that is listed as one thing in one place but something else later) maybe. But rewriting a scene? No. Changing major events? Definitely not.

Why? Well, partly because it skews the release listing. If you keep modifying the same story, it can push newer releases off the front page list before they have gotten their fair viewing... and confuses readers who see something listed as recently released but know that they read it months ago. Readers also can leave comments about your story and if you rewrite something based on a comment, other readers don't know that you have changed things ... and can start arguments/disagreements with earlier readers.

But also... because the WhatIF system isn't part of a writing workshop. It's an opportunity for you to web-publish your stories for an audience/readership numbering in the thousands. We hope you will take advantage of that... and that you won't be too upset that in exchange we expect you to bring your A-game. And by that, we mean that we DO expect the stories that you publish be 'done'. That doesn't mean you have to be done with an entire arc, novel, or have written every last word that will ever be written about that character. We don't do that with canon stories, why would we demand it of anyone else? But when you move the story to the 'published' category, that chapter, part, however many words it might be... should be 'done'.


Remember, before web publishing, when you committed to something being ready for release... it was going to the printer, typos and all, and if you were lucky you might get to fix a few little things in a second print run, if you were so fortunate to have sold enough books to merit one. And, of course, that assumes you already had a contract... you certainly didn't get published by sending incomplete / trial versions of scenes and telling the publisher that you'd rewrite it after they bought the book and readers give you some feedback on it. If you don't feel that you can reach a point with parts of your stories that you can commit to this degree of publishing... please continue to take advantage of the Fabrication Lab and this forums section, which ARE set up to serve as a workshop environment predominantly read by other authors and those interested in working with new stories and writers. You will still get reader feedback... it will just be limited/restricted to those who are already registered members of the community (you have to have a site membership to respond in the forums).

Tristra wrote: KD: Stop being a thorny little pestering B&*^% and calling people out

Huh, and here i thought everyone was mostly going to be a mature adult on the forum this time.

This shit isn't appropriate anywhere, so unless you're magically made a moderator, you don't get to instruct people on how they are allowed to post.

I WILL be a thorny asshole about showing some modicum of courtesy when someone gets sniped for an explanation of how things work.

Knock it off.

I'll do you one better JG. Tristra, please tell me who died and made you god above all? I'm one of the original Canon authors and the original admin of the site. I STILL have a pulse!. I never made you a moderator, and I personally will vote "NO" on any nomination of you to be moved to Canon status. You are dictatorial, abusive and if you don't get your way you whine about it to everyone. You even told us in PM's that, "I'm going to shut up for a year." It's been what? Three months?

Don't EVER and I Mean EVER tell a moderator and admin to shut up! We are doing our jobs! By trying to clarify things in the forums. You had better start qualifying your post with "This is my opinion...." and not try to come across as a authority on something in this universe when I KNOW you don't have all the information available that the Canon authors do.This universe is a labor of love by a lot of dedicated authors, Your actions to date have made you a laughing stock among us. I have a Very long fuse, You've reached the end of it. I don't give a rat's ass what you think about me, You disrupt this forum ONE MORE TIME in this manner, and I will hunt down and BAN EVERY account you've created on the site. DO YOU GET ME?

GrimGrendel wrote: Why is the WhatIf section exclusive? Why do people need to ask access to the IF section to be able to read and offer advice? I can kind of understand limiting the access to writers, but not really limiting the readers.

It's not really 'exclusive' per se. I haven't yet turned down anyone who has requested access to write. But I have two options... I can either start people with a default level of access that gives EVERY registered user the ability to post content at will on the site and then take that access away from them if it is abused... or I can start people without access and grant it to them for as long as they follow the rules.

Given how badly someone can abuse the ability to create articles and post them on the site in full view of our audience in a few short hours before we manage to stop them? I chose the more restrictive option. It doesn't really lessen the potential for malicious action, because as I said, I don't turn anyone down really. But it does prevent the options from being in front of non-savvy users who might accidentally do bad things by mistake.

And I will give access to people who just want to be proof/beta readers... or who want to be editors. The only people who I intend to revoke access on are those who don't do anything - if you aren't writing, editing for someone, or offering regular feedback as a beta reader... it's a matter of time before you will lose access. Those people are just readers who can't bear not having access to things other people have access to. And that's a bit of an insult to those earning their 'access by producing stories (or helping the authors who are doing so). And then there are those who break policy... loss of access is one of the few steel toed boots we have to ram up someone's orifi...

Once a WhatIf is published, is it still possible to change it, or does it get locked down?

answered this one in the previous long post - but again, it is possible to edit it but we prefer you try to minimize doing so.

In what way does is a Featured WhatIf different from a regular one? Is there more to the editing process?

A Featured WhatIF gets a little special attention by being placed separate from the rest of the pack. It earns this attention by going through the same degree of vetting that the canon stories do. In other words, the canon authors go over it with our regular fine toothed comb and make sure it meets OUR standard... the same standard we apply to our regular canon releases.In a sense, we're saying that "If this story actually worked in continuity, we would probably make it canon." And there ARE stories targeted towards being featured that may end up in the canon collection... because the author just happened to not only write a story that meets are standards but it also doesn't break any universe/continuity rules. So... more than likely, most Featured stories will be more divergent than normal (because if you're going to do that much work on a 'near-canon' story, wouldn't it make sense to shoot for canon)?

Thanks for putting up with my questions.

Happy to answer them.

GrimGrendel wrote: Thank you. Yours and Kristin's posts answered most of my questions.

The only question that remain (and the one that sparked this thread, my apologies that I was not able to type it out more clearly before) is about the WhatIf exclusivity affecting the development process of a piece of fiction. There is no real meter authors can compare against to know whether or not a piece of fiction is good enough to go into the IF, or whether they bit off more than they could chew and that they should settle for the Fabrication Lab.

I don't know if you've ever been part of a story site before but I can almost guarantee that you won't post the worst story I've seen web published. Why? Because I've seen some reeeeally bad stuff published by people who thought they were actually writing great literature. In fact, when I was working as a dramaturg for a professional theatre company that accepted unsolicited manuscripts, I read some full length plays that I had a hard time believing were written and submitted to a professional venue by adult writers. Bad. Ridiculous dialogue (there's no way that playwright ever read it out loud because no one talks the way his characters did), no plot, lots of soapbox grandstanding... just... awful.

If you honestly listen to feedback that you are given... whether in the Fab Lab or from even just two or three people who are currently actively giving feedback in the WhatIF feedback cycle (a problem that will improve if we get some more activity back on the site... things have been slow lately and that impacts a LOT of things), you will get tips that will keep you from publishing something THAT bad. But other than that... at some point, the only thing determining the quality of the work you publish is your ego. Commit to publishing. Make sure it is good enough that you feel its ready. And take responsibility for the flaws/mistakes you made when you do get feedback and use what you learned for your next story.

But MOVE ON to the next story. Don't get locked into a cycle of "Oh, I got negative feedback so I'll have to rewrite this." Could you write it better? Probably. But you're not going to enjoy it as much as writing something fresh. Are we going to get upset if you publish a bunch of really awful stories? Nope. That's why I don't understand the concern of exclusivity. The only people who are going to 'judge' you are the readers. If you put out stuff that is that bad, people won't read your stuff.

The only exclusive publications are the canon stories (which are 'mostly' limited to the authors we enjoy working with, who understand the team purpose, and who put more into the universe than they take out) and the Featured WhatIF's... which is one of the ways we acknowledge the best non-canon authors in the community. People who can regularly get stories into the Featured WhatIF are likely to be people we hope to recruit to the canon team at some point... but not always - some people just want to write their own thing, and that's not always an option when working in a shared universe team.

As Trista mentioned, there is at the moment no better feedback in the IF section than the Lab. The only incentive people have to provide better feedback is the exclusivity of the IF section giving off more serious vibes and expectations. So long as nothing really enforces or encourages better editing (and I don't think we want to enforce that), the exclusivity of the IF translates to less readers during development and less feedback overall without any definitive increase in quality of the feedback.

That's true. Especially at that moment when the board activity is low. Would it surprise you to know that we don't really have an answer for this?

We recently implemented the WhatIF system as a new option to give non-canon authors more options. Previously, there was NO other option but to post those stories to the Fab Lab and get feedback from them in the associated forums. So... I'm not sure that its necessarily 'bad' that there isn't a different, improved feedback system in place. My hopes were that the WhatIF system would replace the Fab Lab more or less entirely for 'completed' work. I left the Fab Lab intact more for the writing workshop aspect of the development cycle than for continued use as a publication location.

I can see that writers are encouraged to subscribe to the IF section, but editors and readers too should be encouraged to go check that section without submitting to the expectation that they need to write fiction to be able to review some of it. I think I read some encouragements along these lines, yet it could be made more visible. I don't know how this could be advertised, but I feel like it should.

It is my hope that authors will do some of this. An author who joins the WhatIF authors would invite their own editor and beta readers to sign up. Some of those beta readers would also then cross over and read other people's work. The authors themselves, when not in the midst of something would lend their own perspective to each others works. Ideally, for each new author who signs up to participate... we could be adding 2-5 more people to the WhatIF community.

But that assumes you bring those people with you. If you hope to accumulate them from the existing community... obviously, you'll have to convince them by proving yourself... and in slower activity times, those people may not be present to sway at all.

I also ponder what would happen if the IF section became open to all registered users as readers. Writers would still need to apply for it. Would it feel less professional? Those editors that take their reviews seriously would still be present in the same number, but there would be more eyes to catch the stray typos and more comments about the structure of the story, characters and so on. The only real downside I can think of is a heightened risk of the review thread falling into speculations. You probably saw that happen multiple times over the years, so I will just assume it can get pretty ugly. But even considering this, does the readers' exclusivity enhance or limit the development process?

Speculation is always tough on the development cycle, especially if you have some charismatic people (or well known popular voices - like a canon author) voicing "I'd do it by telling about X and Y... and you know the story is going to go through Z given what you've shown in Part 1"... you feel like you have to cater to those advocating certain things. Or you feel like you can't tell the story you want to because THEY already told the plot you were going to use and so you're forced to do something different just to not be seen to follow their lead.

It doesn't help that a lot of our moderation is handled by canon authors... and many of us don't read the main bulk of fan fic/whatIF stories so we can avoid getting tangled up in non-canon plot lines and remembering things that didn't happen in the plot line we are supposed to be following. And so we don't accidentally adopt your ideas. So the WhatIF forums sections tend to operate under their own policing.

To avoid that, wouldn't it be better to enlarge the pool of potential reviewers to the 500+ registered users? To open up more opportunities for feedback?

*shrug* we can't make people give feedback. Of the 600ish registered forums viewers, < 100 of them visit daily. When you're the author posting for feedback, you get two posts quickly and then three more trickling in over four or five days... and you feel like you're pulling teeth to get responses so you can move on. In five good reviews is a pretty solid response. I've published completed stories (> 20k words) that got fewer than 5 actual reader responses that weren't speculation in the first two weeks. I WISH we had the community size to get ten or twenty decent feedback responses to a new story... but... sadly, at this time, we aren't. And that has nothing to do with with the WhatIF/Fab Lab distinction... that's simply a lack (in numbers) of critical readers.

What you have to understand about the process of allowing non-canon authors to self-publish comes at a fair amount of risk to the site and community. In addition to the basic 'impression' readers have about the quality/professionalism of the site that comes out of having some content that diverges from the style/standards of the rest of the site, the addition of some content could cost us our advertising revenue or even our contract for the virtual server. Indirectly, a reduction in readership for any reason reduces advertising revenue (which is not significantly above the cost of maintaining the server, buying domains, and purchasing rights for extensions that we use)... and it also reduces the viewer contact and comments/praise authors receive. This can cause authors to feel that they aren't appreciated enough for the effort involved... it can also boost the ratio of negative comments to positive ones, making authors throw in the towel outright.

So, yes... making mistakes may result in some harsh reactions from staff. Especially if those mistakes are something that shouldn't happen if you followed existing guidelines / instructions... or have had a staff member explain to you a specific standard, only for you to do it a different way. The impression, in this sort of event, is that either 1. you are too careless in following our rules and standards and thus, potentially a risk to the site, or 2. doing your own thing contrary to what you know is our way specifically because you think you know a better way (or have a specific way you want to do it, despite our standards). This may be a false impression... but we can't always give you benefit of the doubt because there is little consequence to YOU if things are messed up... but very much a potential for problems for us.

Ultimately, it IS your responsibility to do it right. If that makes you gun shy... then good, you're going into it with the right attitude. Don't let it stop you from posting/submitting... but do let it guide your actions. If you aren't sure, stop and ask. I'd rather have ten PM's an evening to clarify some step in the process than to have to fix something that accidentally got posted that should never have been released publicly... but even after running the place for 18 months now, *I* still make mistakes - like releasing the Friday stuff this week with a wrong date so it ended up visible Weds night/Thurs morning instead of Fri afternoon when it was supposed to go live. But if you are careful, mistakes will be like that... an 'oops' but not harmful to the site or community.

And yes... if you do make a mistake, or are doing something wrong; you most likely will have it pointed out to you. Sometimes that message will be very blunt, especially if its a repeat of something in the guide or that you have already been told. Sometimes that message will be very blunt simply because it takes less time to deliver it simply and to the point than it does to work out the 'best' way to guide you through it gently. Sometimes that message will be very blunt because you're the tenth person to make that mistake or that there's no good way to achieve what you're trying to do because that's just the way the system works... nothing to do with you at all, you just don't have the context to understand why the person communicating to you that there is a problem is angry. It's not at you, at all.

In your specific case, Lighttech, you had gone from "not entered into the system at all" to "publicly published" in under 24 hrs and were asking for feedback and making basic format edits on stories you had already pushed to published. We don't mind if you do minor tweaks on stories that are published/released... but the ideal is that you get those done before it is in the public eye.

And everyone has to remember that requests for feedback take time. There are far more writers involved than editors/proofreaders. Even canon authors are lucky to get feedback on their work in under a week. We've got 60k+ words per week getting released now... how much time do you think it takes to proof and respond to that much writing? We'd love to have a dozen hardcore proofreaders/editors hanging out and helping out... but no one's come up with a foolproof plan to lure them into the traps.