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

[Snicket]

@Mirage_GSM,

This is true, i 'was' an avid Ks fan when i first joined. Resulting in much fan fiction and PS work.

[Rikabro]

If you guys are open to the possibility of sorting the stories somehow other than alphabetically, what about by the date they were originally posted here? That might make it handy for people who want to use this list to see "what's new" in the archive, and it would tell an interesting story about the different trends in KS fanfic and how it's changed over the years. Just a thought.

If someone already suggested this then I'm sorry, but I'm simply too lazy to read the whole thread.

[Comrade]

If you guys are open to the possibility of sorting the stories somehow other than alphabetically, what about by the date they were originally posted here? That might make it handy for people who want to use this list to see "what's new" in the archive, and it would tell an interesting story about the different trends in KS fanfic and how it's changed over the years. Just a thought.

If someone already suggested this then I'm sorry, but I'm simply too lazy to read the whole thread.

That would be a bad idea, I doubt people care about when a fic was published, and it would put all of the new fics at a disadvantage
I see no reason to not use alphabetical sorting, so the whole discusssion is kinda pointless.

[pip25]

If you guys are open to the possibility of sorting the stories somehow other than alphabetically, what about by the date they were originally posted here? That might make it handy for people who want to use this list to see "what's new" in the archive, and it would tell an interesting story about the different trends in KS fanfic and how it's changed over the years. Just a thought.

The thing is, that's how the forum itself is organized to begin with. Topics are ordered by the date of the last post, and even though that does not exactly coincide with the last update to the fic, for most of them it's a pretty good indicator of activity. (The exception being a couple of the more popular stories such as yours which get feedback long after they're finished, but they're still pretty much a minority compared to the 700+ fics currently on the forums.)

[Comrade]

If you guys are open to the possibility of sorting the stories somehow other than alphabetically, what about by the date they were originally posted here? That might make it handy for people who want to use this list to see "what's new" in the archive, and it would tell an interesting story about the different trends in KS fanfic and how it's changed over the years. Just a thought.

The thing is, that's how the forum itself is organized to begin with. Topics are ordered by the date of the last post, and even though that does not exactly coincide with the last update to the fic, for most of them it's a pretty good indicator of activity. (The exception being a couple of the more popular stories such as yours which get feedback long after they're finished, but they're still pretty much a minority compared to the 700+ fics currently on the forums.)

There's actually over a 1000 fics here

[Guest Poster]

In order to make the entries more distinct, would it be an idea to allow authors to submit short summaries (with a strict maximum of like 4 lines) to add to the entries? Or would that make the list take up too much space?

[pip25]

In order to make the entries more distinct, would it be an idea to allow authors to submit short summaries (with a strict maximum of like 4 lines) to add to the entries? Or would that make the list take up too much space?

Way too much space, I'm afraid. I already dread the notorious Firefox layout-breaking bug rearing its ugly head pretty soon, and even spreading the fics to multiple posts on a single page won't help against that.

[Comrade]

Originally i wanted authors to add descriptions, but that would not be possible because a lot of the fics were written by people that are no longer with us. Also, a lot of fics are written in a way that will not allow a description without major spoilers.
It would also make the entries way too long

[Rikabro]

The thing is, that's how the forum itself is organized to begin with.

You can sort the forums alphabetically too if you want. The archive is different in more significant ways.

I doubt people care about when a fic was published,

You think people "care about" what letter of the alphabet a fic starts with? The ordering is already arbitrary. Chronological just seems more fitting for something like an archive. Either that or sorting by genre (the way libraries do), which would be a lot of work, of course. For example, the KSG writebin sorts by character, and each character's sub-section is sorted by genre. This was originally because the bulk of the writebin's content was epilogues. I like the idea of having "smut" and "pseudo-routes" and "one-shots" and "epilogues" all discretely sorted out though. It makes it easier for people to browse for something specific.

and it would put all of the new fics at a disadvantage

New fics already enjoy the advantage of appearing on the front page of the forum. I would think people would primarily use the archive as a way of browsing older fics as opposed to newer ones.

But since you've already said you're not open to discussing this anymore I'll agree to disagree. It's the only thing that I really don't like about the archive, it looks great otherwise.

[Comrade]

Anyway, changing the Sorting now would be annoying, difficult, and unnecessary.
I will not change it, the alphabetical sorting is easy for me to edit, and easy to use.
Also, sorting chronologically would be a huge pain in the ass to spread over multiple posts, and I'm not going to deal with that.

[Leaty]

I'd just like to remind people that if they disagree with the way Comrade and Mirage are handling things, they're more than welcome to create their own archive in a Google document and hotlink it from their signatures.

[Comrade]

I'd just like to remind people that if they disagree with the way Comrade and Mirage are handling things, they're more than welcome to create their own archive in a Google document and hotlink it from their signatures.

However if they decide to do that, mysterious people in black will take them to a "better place"

[pip25]

You can sort the forums alphabetically too if you want.

Wow, you're right! I never noticed this option before! O_O
Anyway, I think alphabetical sorting is the most helpful for maintaining the list. All the standardized extra info such as "pairings" and "remarks" are there to make the list searchable by keywords using the browser's search function. I think that's the expected way to look through the archive, instead of going through the alphabetical list itself.

[Silentcook]

However if they decide to do that, mysterious people in black will take them to a "better place"

...Er, what? Just to be on the safe side, if the "mysterious people in black" are supposed to be the mods and "a better place" is supposed to be a ban, then no. That's not gonna happen.

Then again, I assume this to be just an off-color joke.

[Comrade]

Off color jokes seems to be a thing I do a lot recently. Please forgive my nonsense people