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

[Helbereth]

My only suggestion is that in sorting the various titles, you should swap 'the' to the end and use the second word for the alphabetical listing.

IE:
Manly Tea Party, The
United States of Misha, The

Otherwise, it's a good archive.

For the biggest one's I hope that the authors will provide the info themselves (I'm looking at you Scissorlips, Helbereth and Hoitash) - I guess most of them have the stories in a word doc and can do a word count easily.

Ah, well... let's see. At last count, Tomorrow's Doom has gone over 350,000 words, and is closing on 400,000--the next chapter will push it over that mark, most likely, as it's within 5,000 words.

Also:

Code: Select all

[url=http://ks.renai.us/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=6797]Kenji Files, The - Dark Garden[/url] - Epilogue by [b]Helbereth[/b] (ongoing, 15,000+ words)
[b]PoV: [/b]Kenji/Emi (3rd person omniscient, past tense); [b]Pairings: [/b]Kenji X Emi (platonic); [b]Begins: [/b]ten years after Shizune good end
[b]Remarks:[/b] Sci-Fi, crossover, violence, nudity

And, for convenience:

Code: Select all

[url=http://ks.renai.us/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=6687]Tomorrow's Doom[/url] – Route by [b]Helbereth[/b] (ongoing, 350,000+ words)
[b]PoV:[/b] OC; [b]Pairings:[/b] Hisao x OC, several other OC pairings; [b]Begins:[/b] Two days after Hisao's canonical arrival at Yamaku
[b]Remarks:[/b] Sex, alcohol use

[ewx]

This is a mammoth project but I can't help thinking it could be organised better for easier viewing.


For starters, quite a bit of the information for a fic is on one line, which makes it difficult to easily see a specific piece of data quickly, instead having to look along the appropriate line and extract the information.
On a separate note, do you really need to write 'Pairing:' for each actual pairing? I think it's almost a foregone conclusion that if you see Hisao x Hanako, you know who the main pairing is in that fic.

Secondly, I'm not sure if the entries are being properly proofread. On quite a few occasions I've seen random spaces before colons, inconsistent capitalization and full stops/periods. It does not look good to have inconsistencies. Also, either get people to use one system in making numers easier to read. 1.000 and 1,000 systems are both used in places and if you can get people to do just one, that'd be great (preferably using commas instead of decimal points).
Also, one of the descriptions on a status of a fic just says 'status', which must have been quite an achievement to miss.
Also, pretty much get everything to be standardized. Random descriptors like 'mostly X' or 'sometimes Y' mean nothing when they're all used by different people. If the narration is not entirely done by one character, use partial and be done with it.

I think it'd also be nicer to capitalize the titles of fics instead of (or as well as) the name of the author. If I'm completely honest, 9 times out of 10 I don't really care who wrote something as long as it's good reading. One author could write hundreds of fics but it doesn't matter if they're all garbage.


Alphabetical sorting is all well and good, but only if you know the name of the fic. If you know the name of the fic, you could just search for it instead of looking it up in the archive (or alternatively use Ctrl+F on an archive organised any other way).

For a sorting method, I think sorting it by writing status would be good. Not many people out there want to read an abandoned fic (unless they've exhausted all other fics) and most people will want to read completed fics or ongoing fics.
Some sorting based length would be nice too, because all too often I've started reading and then finished a fic in under an hour and been left with a distinct sense of disappointment with the length (giggity).



All in all this is a massive job for you to undertake, but ever being an ungrateful sod, there are many ways in which I think this could be improved.

[Hoitash]

Word counts:

Master Detectives! is around 146,000 words, with the Akira Halloween Story around 15,700 words (the POV for Terror in the Night! is Akira, by the way, so maybe make a remark about that somewhere?.)

Road to Tokyo is about 48,900 words.

[ProfAllister]

Looks like For Want of a Nail is currently around 76.6k.

Damn. And I'm only around halfway done. Between Helbereth, Scissorlips, and Hoitash (?!), It seems somewhat unlikely I'll end up in the top 3 wordiest fics. Looks like top 5 is nearly a given unless people start getting extremely prolific.

And If I run a comparison to the word counts to the official routes, it seems particularly excessive. On the other hand, the official routes don't have to describe visuals (outfits, expression changes, etc.), so I guess it's not THAT big a disparity...

Also, kinda amused that, historically, I've gone near two months without an update, and someone assumes my fic is abandoned when there had been an update less than 3 weeks prior. Ah, well.

[DietKane]

why is katawa superpowers on here
ara ara logan let me lick your claws

[Comrade]

So I've taken your comments into consideration, and I've decided NOT include any of them, for various reasons.
However, if you see any mistakes, please report them immediately

[Mirage_GSM]

As for the reasons:

you should swap 'the' to the end and use the second word for the alphabetical listing.

Wouldn't really be a help... The alphabetisation is just to avoid any kind of subjective ranking. If you look through the list for a new story to read, you won't know a title anyway, and if you're just searching for the title of a story, you'll use the search function. We reserved the whole first page of the thread to make shure this would always be an option.

For starters, quite a bit of the information for a fic is on one line, which makes it difficult to easily see a specific piece of data quickly, instead having to look along the appropriate line and extract the information.

It may be a bit inconvenient, but it was done this way deliberately.
The forum software sometimes has problems displaying pages with too many lines. That's why we tried to use as few lines as possible per entry. It might not be a problem yet, but as entires start to mount up it might become one.

Secondly, I'm not sure if the entries are being properly proofread. On quite a few occasions I've seen random spaces before colons, inconsistent capitalization and full stops/periods.

I noticed a few of those as well as a few extra linebreaks, but I didn't want to PM comrade about each of those. I'll get those fixed eventually.

Also, either get people to use one system in making numers easier to read. 1.000 and 1,000 systems are both used in places and if you can get people to do just one, that'd be great (preferably using commas instead of decimal points).

That's what you get when you have people from all over the world submitting entries I'll get those fixed as well - but I'll use full stops instead of decimal commas.

Random descriptors like 'mostly X' or 'sometimes Y' mean nothing when they're all used by different people.

Correct. I'll see about getting rid of those. Thought I did, but some may have crept back in.

I think it'd also be nicer to capitalize the titles of fics instead of (or as well as) the name of the author.

You mean make it bold? It's an option I'll keep in mind.

For a sorting method, I think sorting it by writing status would be good.

Sorting by an attribute that has only three characteristics is not very helpful^^°

Some sorting based length would be nice too, because all too often I've started reading and then finished a fic in under an hour and been left with a distinct sense of disappointment with the length

IDK... I fear that might encourage authors to needlessly inflate their stories to get the word count up. also, all the ongoing stories don't have word counts yet... I know there are people who don't like short stories. That's why we included the word count in the first place.

why is katawa superpowers on here

Why shouldn't it be?

[Comrade]

Ok, do you guys think i should do the first split anytime soon?

[ewx]

As for the reasons:

Alphabetization doesn't cause any problems now but I can see people deliberately modifying their titles so they go to the top of the list. If people think it will get more people to read and comment on their fic, what is to stop people from deliberately naming their fics to get to the top of list?

Being at the top of the list would no doubt bring many more people to your fic than being somewhere in the middle of the list, just because you didn't start your titles with the letter A. Heck, I could call a story Aardvark and immediately be at the top of the list.


I've been planning to write a fic for a while, but I can see my choice of title being directly influenced by this. There's no chance in hell I'm calling it 'Xylophone' but 'Aardvark' suddenly seems like a fantastic idea.

Besides, if you were looking for a new story to read, surely you'd want to base your choice of reading on the content rather than the title? Sorting it based on content (i.e. pairings) would give the readers (a.k.a. the people who will be using this archive) a much easier way of finding something they want to read.
Typically in a library, items are sorted by genre first, then alphabetized. If I want to read a sci-fi novel, I don't have to sift through genres I don't want to read to find it.
While almost everything here is likely to come under the genre of 'Romance', you could easily sort it by pairings, as some people really like certain characters and don't like others.


As for digit grouping, most international bodies use a thin space to denote a digit grouping:

1 000

due to the difference in what countries typically use.
If you don't want to use that, the logical option would be to use a comma. It's used as the thousands separator by America (and we all know how most stories here are in AmEng), most/all Anglophone countries and the most populous countries: China and India.
I can guess that you're accustomed to using the German system which uses full stops but this isn't a German forum. Entshuldigung.
Technically if you want to follow the forum standard of using American English, you'll use commas.
Sources:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/goglobal/bb688127.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousands_ ... ral_system
(above shows the opposite of what countries use for the thousands seperator)

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

PoV: Hisao; Pairings: Hisao x Emi; Begins: after Emi's Good End
Remarks: Sex

You could quite easily put:

Hisao PoV; HisaoxEmi; after Emi Good End; Sex

It all fits on one line, it's fairly clear what each one is and it takes up less space.


I still believe they should be sorted by the status of the story. It isn't a problem when you go into a library and the book stops halfway through, and it shouldn't have to be a problem here. While it might not be the best indicator of quality of a fic, it does indicate whether or not it is worth the time to read. You can bet your socks that if people thought KS was complete and the game ended halfway through Act 2 they'd be pissed.

From the completed stories, it'd be good to then sub-categorise them based on their subject matter, i.e. Prologue/Epilogue/One-Shot/Route etc.


Believe me when I say that you guys are doing a good job, but I'd caution you on being too hasty. Some of these decisions don't seem well thought out and I'm worried about how this might turn out.



On a completely unrelated note, I keep hearing about the 'Miki Route Curse'. Can anyone tell me if this actually exists and why it seems to happen?

[Req]

I don't think the title thing is as big an issue as you make it seem. People will either use this list to find a specific fic they want to read (in which case they already have the title and alphabetical order is only convenient), or they come here to look for fics about specific characters, in which case a simple ctrl+f for that character would highlight the fics that qualify. the additional info, such as length, author and update status, would then be able to further narrow down the list for this second type of reader. People who read fics are a lot more interested in the content of the actual story, rather than alphabetically advantageous titles. Also, this is just my opinion -and please don't take this personally since I'm aware you were just giving an example-, but if an author feels the need to have their title start with a because that might get him more readers, he can't be all that confident about his own writing to begin with.

As for the Miki route curse: it's just called that way because even though a bunch of them have been started, to date none of them are finished.

[Helbereth]

On a completely unrelated note, I keep hearing about the 'Miki Route Curse'. Can anyone tell me if this actually exists and why it seems to happen?

Mostly, it's a silly superstition, but the track record for Miki routes speaks for itself; it's a race fraught with false starts, incomplete relays, and ankle-breaking obstacles (on a literary level). Nobody has ever completed a pseudo-route centering on a Miki relationship (OC or otherwise), though there have been at least a dozen attempts.

[Comrade]

There will be no changes regarding the form, unless there is a real problem.

[BlackWaltzTheThird]

false starts, incomplete relays, and ankle-breaking obstacles

I promised myself I wouldn't laugh. Safe to say that sets a new record for "shortest time to break a promise".

Also I really don't think this sort of thing is going to encourage people to give their fics alphabetically higher-placed names. This is creative expression, not advertising.

[ewx]

Mostly, it's a silly superstition, but the track record for Miki routes speaks for itself; it's a race fraught with false starts, incomplete relays, and ankle-breaking obstacles (on a literary level). Nobody has ever completed a pseudo-route centering on a Miki relationship (OC or otherwise), though there have been at least a dozen attempts.

Ah, I see. Now I have to try and find and read them all to see where they went wrong.

additional info

Unless I know the exact length of a story, you cannot currently search story length in any meaningful manner other than literally going through the whole of the archive and looking through it. While arbitrary definitions of length (i.e. less than 10,000 words is Short, Less than 50,000 words is Medium etc.) do not give an accurate picture of exactly how long the work is, it helps when searching. If I want to look for a long work, I currently have to sift through entries in the archive which saves me hardly any time compared to if I just looked at every thread in the fan fiction forum.

creative expression, not advertising

In general, people are lazy. If I gave you a shopping list, the chances are that you'd never forget the item at the top, even if the list contained hundreds of items.
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.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_ef ... acy_effect
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/04/opini ... snick.html
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/califgov.htm

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. 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?

While I'm sure people here care about the quality of a fic more than its title, there is no objective way to gauge quality without reading it first. And most people start reading through things from the top of the list. Opportunistic authors should not be rewarded.



Frankly as someone who has worked in administration and organizing files on a large scale, this archive is pretty much useless. Apart from the redundancies, typos (in both the entries and the main page text) and lack of proofreading, there seems to be something ingrained here that this archive is perfect as is and cannot be improved through constructive criticism, which is a damaging viewpoint to take. While I realize that you may not agree with my views, just dismissing them is both rude and careless.

I cannot help but feel the job of organizing KS fanfics into a meaningful archive should be given to someone else.

[Comrade]