The Yamaku Library - The fan fiction archive -23/09/14

[Req]

Before this goes any further, please take this discussion to private messages or something, since it seems to be going in the direction of turning a useful thread into a stage for drama.
Considering this archive has only been around for a few days, that would be a shame.

[Comrade]

This discussion shouldn't even exist in the first place

[Mirage_GSM]

you could easily sort it by pairings

Sorting by pairings was one of the options we discussed before comrade opened the thread.
We decided on sorting alphabetically for now. If we notice a significant increase of stories beginning with "A" in the next months, we might look into that again, but so far I don't see it happening.

If you don't want to use that, the logical option would be to use a comma.

I thought you Americans would be used to the rest of the world doing things differntly than you do. ^^°
Admittedly the Americans aren't quite as alone with the decimal point than with other stuff, but this is still something half the world does one way and the other half the other way, so it basically doesn't matter which we choose. There also isn't a "forum standard"
Both comrade and I are comfortable with the full stop as the thousands seperator, so that's what we will use.

If you have everything on one line, why do you need to repeat the category each time?

Because we
a) don't want to require everyone to memorize the format and
b) the number of characters in a line doesn't seem to adversely affect the forums.

Some of these decisions don't seem well thought out and I'm worried about how this might turn out.

Believe me, we DID think about it. That doesn't mean we're not going to change anything if we notice it's not working, but for now, we'll go with what we have.

Or in a national vote, if two equally well performing candidates were listed in a certain order, the first candidate would receive a boost in votes. There have been many studies into these kind of things, which is why I'm surprised that none of you seem to take this seriously.

This is not a national vote. This is a fanfiction archive. The fate of the world doesn't hinge on one story getting three more readers than another.

How could I pass up the opportunity to be top of the fanfic archive list and get many more readers than if my works title started with an X?

Gee, how could you indeed... If someone has so little self-confidence he has to rely on things like this, they probably shouldn't post their stories online in the first place.
Besides, even if we changed to sorting by pairing, within a pairing, the sorting would still be alphabetically.

typos (in both the entries and the main page text) and lack of proofreading

This thread has been up for less than a week, and there have been submissions by about a dozen people. Typos will be dealt with, but I do have a day job and cannot monitor this 24/7. Patience is a virtue.

there seems to be something ingrained here that this archive is perfect as is and cannot be improved through constructive criticism

We will keep any constructive criticism in mind if and when it comes to making changes. The keyword here obviously being "constructive"
Also, take note that I'm trying to give you the reason for every decision we made, so we're not dismissing it at all.

[pip25]

While I don't agree with ewx on most points, it is true that the currently used way to present word count is impossible to search, and causes additional burden for the list administrators.
The latter would not get solved by this alone, but the former might be, if we used categories instead of exact word counts. For instance:
<1000,1000+,5000+,10000+,50000+,100000+
(The numbers are referring to word count, of course.)
This would give people an idea about how big the story in question is, while remaining fully searchable. Most people aren't interested in the exact number, I believe.

[AntonSlavik020]

I personally don't think a story being high alphabetically gives it much of an advantage. At least it doesn't for me. While I did start from the top and go down from there, I ended up at least looking at all the stories anyways. Being at the top gave them no advantage.

[Troy]

Very usefull

[Comrade]

Very usefull

You're welcome, have fun browsing the archive

[Snicket]

I'm a little surprised and a tad disappointed that non of my work was added to this 'archive' of yours.

[Helbereth]

So if you seriously think that people won't abuse that fact to get their stories more read, you're most likely wrong. For starters, I'd abuse the hell out of this ordering system.

Just because you lack integrity doesn't mean everyone else does.

[Rikabro]

So if you seriously think that people won't abuse that fact to get their stories more read, you're most likely wrong. For starters, I'd abuse the hell out of this ordering system.

Just because you lack integrity doesn't mean everyone else does.

So I take it you won't be reading my new serial fic "Aardvarks of Yamaku?"

[Dr.Worm]

So I take it you won't be reading my new serial fic "Aardvarks of Yamaku?"

Sounds like an Arthur/KS crossover.

...

That's an untapped market, right there. You gonna write this or what?

[Umber]

When we're all done poking fun, I guess we could try to understand that this archive is a work in progress that needs to progress. Mirage and Comrade are bound to get things tidied up over time, and if they do so under different processes that others wouldn't prefer, well. Meh.

Switzerland, ahoy.

Also wondering if 'One-Shot' would go into 'Type' or 'Remarks', or if it'd just be word count. I think the former of the three, but what do.

[651]

I remember another KS fanfiction archive, quite neatly organized.
Useful to have a forum-wide one running.

[Helbereth]

I remember another KS fanfiction archive, quite neatly organized.
Useful to have a forum-wide one running.

That one is mostly pastebin, and doesn't offer much where the renai forums are concerned. Having dug into the bowels of the forum here(back before I started writing my own and lacked the time or inclination to look beyond the front page), I found there are hundreds of posts, each containing one or more stories from as far back as 2009 (that I saw). It's a mammoth amount of stuff, and it's largely a no man's land that's as filled with interesting deviations as it is ridiculously bad interpretations--some of which are based on pre-release character models.

I don't envy Comrade or Mirage their task.

[Mirage_GSM]

I'm a little surprised and a tad disappointed that non of my work was added to this 'archive' of yours.

Don't worry, Snicket, I definitely intend to add some of your stuff.
The problem is, most of your work is well hidden in the KS-Shorts thread. I've been saving the shorts collection threads a bit, since it's easier to do word counts for fics that have a thread of their own.
Also, I'm (mostly) working my way through the stories chronologically. At the moment I'm back to January 2013.
I started doing the first short collection threads yesterday, but yours is quite daunting ^^°

Also wondering if 'One-Shot' would go into 'Type' or 'Remarks', or if it'd just be word count.

I played with the idea to use "Short Story" as a category, but the definition of what people consider "short" probably differs widely... Personally, I'd consider everything with less than about 5.000 words a short story, but I didn't want to open up another point of contention.
Also, what about short stories that are also Epilogues? So we have the word count, so everyone can decide for himself if he considers the story short or not.
In the beginning I was a bit sceptical about the idea of including 'type' in the first place, since there's not really a objective definition that can be applied to all stories, but I guess it is kind of useful to have for at least some stories.