Liberal Arts Major
When I began investigating the previous system in order to implement the same sort of changes I made with the article system, I was pretty blown away by what I saw. As it was, there was literally zero editorial control of anything whatsoever. It was so open-ended it made the entire article submission process look like a total waste of time, since you could just make a "novel" and add anything you wanted as a chapter. I assume this was due to the "oh fuck it" nature of the system: the dichotomy between projects and chapters introduced another layer of complexity in the system and it's not like anybody sat down to figure out how it should work when ns first put it together.
So the first thing I did was hatch up a plan. The reason I'm not entirely confident it all works right is that I stopped midway through putting everything into place (on account of school and general laziness) and when I picked it up today I wasn't entirely sure what, exactly, I did. So there may be components missing. Also it didn't help that, due to the workings of Filezilla, I accidentally deleted the homepage's index file and had to reupload a version from 2008.
Name Change
The sharp ones among you may have noticed the change from "Novels" to "Fiction" everywhere I could think of. The reason for this was that "novels" wasn't really a good title for it since nobody was actually going to write a novel and it excluded fanfiction ("novellas" would even have been better); "fiction" is an all-inclusive category that is fairly well-defined in contrast to "articles".
Small User Page Change
If you look at your user page, the contribution section is a little different: the left-hand side is now split into three cells, the top two reflecting your contributions to either the article (left) or fiction (right) systems, the bottom cell being a general "go here" box. This is just to make everything a little more organized.
The New Fiction System
Here is the meat of this update. The fiction system is two-tiered. Using a book as analogy:
Proposals are like the book as a whole. There's a name, a description, an author, and an editor, but no content. Once you submit a proposal, it goes into the editor queue to be reviewed. The editor who accepts it (i.e. Kenri) "signs on" to the project and will receive a notice whenever you add or edit a chapter. Additionally, if you edit a proposal, the edits will appear as if it were a new proposal and can be rejected or accepted independently of the original; if accepted, the name and description of the original proposal will be updated and a new editor will be assigned (now there's no alert for these edits so if you make them you might want to PM the assigned editor). Otherwise, a proposal behaves like an article: they can be withdrawn or deleted and editors can remand them. If a proposal is deleted, all of its attached chapters are deleted as well. An accepted proposal is sometimes referred to as a project, but I don't think the terminology used by the website is very regular.
Chapters are, well, like the chapters in the book. They don't have to be accepted, although they can be edited by an editor. When a chapter is edited or added, the editor assigned to a project will get a system note telling them that. Though as far as I know currently it's impossible for anybody other than yours truly to withdraw or delete chapters (I'll get around to changing this eventually), you can't add chapters or edit the existing ones of an unapproved or unsubmitted proposal/project, which gives editors some degree of control if you, say, submit 100 blank chapters (by remanding the project). Previews presumably work for chapters like they work for articles.
Other than that, the only thing of note is that the editing interface is equal parts ugly and incomprehensible since I just threw it together. If someone has a better idea, draw me a picture.
There are a few more things I would like to implement in the near future, but I don't know when any of those ideas will come to fruition because, well, I don't have to tell you guys! Also, I should probably get around to fixing some of the things (e.g. deleting chapters) that are obviously missing from the fiction system. That's slated for "when everyone has hoverboards like in Back to the Future II" as well.
Message last edited by Ogordemir99 on 8/24/2010 at 11:50:30 PM
Editor
If TFN ever gets a banner, I think this needs to be on it. Just this entire quote. <_<
The sharp ones among you may have noticed the change from "Novels" to "Fiction" everywhere I could think of. The reason for this was that "novels" wasn't really a good title for it since nobody was actually going to write a novel and it excluded fanfiction ("novellas" would even have been better); "fiction" is an all-inclusive category that is fairly well-defined in contrast to "articles".
I was the one to pitch this change from fanfics to novels, but IIRC my intention was for it to become articles/reviews/fanfics/novels as opposed to articles/reviews/novels. Either that or I'm a fool (and not just a fool who doesn't know the definition of "novel"). But I approve of this change either way. >_>
Actually, the whole thing is sounding pretty awesome. Now maybe I will be motivated to write more than one chapter of something and actually submit it! Maybe! Possibly!
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"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
I LOL'd
I was the one to pitch this change from fanfics to novels, but IIRC my intention was for it to become articles/reviews/fanfics/novels as opposed to articles/reviews/novels. Either that or I'm a fool (and not just a fool who doesn't know the definition of "novel"). But I approve of this change either way. >_>
Reviews and articles are basically the same except for the ratings icon business, so fanfics and novels were unlikely to ever be separate. Also I agreed with the novels recommendation because at the time I figured all the content would be vaguely novel-like but when you consider the possibility that that won't be the case and then compare it to "articles", well, it looks kind of silly. >_>
Now maybe I will be motivated to write more than one chapter of something and actually submit it! Maybe! Possibly!
Of course not, don't be ridiculous!
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu