Katawa Shoujo Forums

Well, I can see some positive and some negative aspects to this idea.

Pros:
- Currently many great fics are hard to find here, since they are buried somewhere in the Nth page of the section, or exist in some obscure form, for instance on Pastebin. I wouldn't have found a couple of the best stories I've read here if other people wouldn't have provided me links to the threads elsewhere. A "compendium" style thread could work around this problem by presenting links to stories that people here deem worthy of attention.
- A thread or threads like this would also make it easier for those who'd like to read fanfics with a specific character (or possibly of a specific genre). The forum search is not really capable of providing this functionality and some types of advanced search queries seem to be broken, even.

Cons:
- "Stories people deem worthy of inclusion" is, obviously, a criterion that is very hard to define. Steps would have to be taken to avoid such threads to be full of people whose only goal is to advertise their own stories; new fanfics are already advertised by their position on the first page, so immediately including them in such lists would be, in my opinion, unwise.
- The list(s) would need a maintainer or maintainers, most likely the thread openers, who would have to be responsible for the content of the list(s). Obviously, this should under no circumstances be the mods' job - however, mods will still likely have to become involved to an extent, if only to see whether a thread is properly maintained.

Sea wrote:Assuming this doesn't go away, It might be nice to make a 'Compendium' of fics, not just Misha ones. Given, it'd take a while, but I could throw in some time and we could categorize by views or something. Just an idea.

^^ This.
I know I'm planning on making a "Compendium" thread for my fics (once I get over two) to have a clean(er) link in my signature.

The thread could be locked or something, so that only the one who opened it could edit it or something along those lines, and people who want to have their fix featured would have to fill a form and send it to the person (or people) who maintain the thread. Those "maintainers" could be elected in some sort of poll, or be appointed by the mods, I think this could be a great way to strengthen the KS community here.

Thread locks prevent any sort of modification short of mod intervention. This kind of thing is not gonna happen.

Generally speaking, the duty of maintenance is expected to fall on the creator. Nobody from 4LS is going to do any thread gardening - except to smash pests, that is.

Hmmm, they could be open but still have the whole thing of having to register your fics if you want to be featured, I think.

Since the list would most likely only be the first post of the thread, people could recommend stories to be added right there. Perhaps a good rule for inclusion would be that a thread opener can never recommend his/her own thread, and the user recommending a story would need to have made 10 posts in the forum already, or something along those lines. (The latter is necessary to avoid sockpuppet accounts, or at least make them harder to set up. Or maybe I'm just being overly paranoid. XP) Then again, this would be mostly up to the thread maintainer, I suppose.

Yeah, that sounds like it might work, though I think the thread opener should be able to recommend his own fics, and that some sort of application form with certain requirements the fic must meet. Also I think there should be more then one person who maintains the thread, if it does ever come into that stage, it is a bit too much work for one man.(or woman, whatever)

Well the way i see it, rather than have a rather *grey area* of what is deemed good or not (since that is entirely subjective), I would imagine having it list every fic, by character category done on this forum also stating if its completed, in progress or dead fic and a link to the front page of each fic. Pages that link to other websites like pastebin should not be included, only show whats on this forum.

You could quite easily compile ever fic done in one post.

It could look like:

*Misha*
Wittynameoffichere/authors name/completed fic/link
Sillynameandstuffoffic/authors name/completed fic/link
*Shizune*
Shinynameofdoomfichere/authors name/completed fic/link

And so on...

Having this stickied would certainly make it easier to find specific fics and to see whats new and what isnt. Only issue is that this must be kept up to date and be unbiased. If someone can do that, i foresee this being very handy.

So, from reading you guys posts, I assume you would like me to start a fic collection not just including Misha? I'm willing to expand this to a list of fics for every character if that's what it takes to keep the topic.

However if this isn't necessary I will keep this as a Misha collection.

Comrade wrote:I think that there is more potential in this then just a link thread, it could be a way for beginner writers to draw attention to their works, possibly.

This must be done. If we can get some permission we should get some people with free time together (I'd do it) and start getting to it. What would be out organization for each fic though. Obviously we'd need a Lily and Rin and all the other girls sections but in what order? And then we'd need misc areas and crack fic areas (those that aren't worth forgetting) This requires more thought.

Sea wrote:This must be done. If we can get some permission we should get some people with free time together (I'd do it) and start getting to it. What would be out organization for each fic though. Obviously we'd need a Lily and Rin and all the other girls sections but in what order? And then we'd need misc areas and crack fic areas (those that aren't worth forgetting) This requires more thought.

On order, Each of the girls could be listed in alphabetical order and then the following section could be for "pseudo-routes"/OC fan fics.

Well the way i see it, rather than have a rather *grey area* of what is deemed good or not (since that is entirely subjective), I would imagine having it list every fic, by character category done on this forum also stating if its completed, in progress or dead fic and a link to the front page of each fic. Pages that link to other websites like pastebin should not be included, only show whats on this forum.

You could quite easily compile ever fic done in one post.

Wouldn't that kind of recreate the problem that was mentioned earlier...namely the fact that the "jewels buried somewhere on the Nth page" now become "jewels buried in a list of 80 entries or more"? What exactly WOULD be the purpose of an archive thread?

Guest Poster wrote:

Well the way i see it, rather than have a rather *grey area* of what is deemed good or not (since that is entirely subjective), I would imagine having it list every fic, by character category done on this forum also stating if its completed, in progress or dead fic and a link to the front page of each fic. Pages that link to other websites like pastebin should not be included, only show whats on this forum.

You could quite easily compile ever fic done in one post.

Wouldn't that kind of recreate the problem that was mentioned earlier...namely the fact that the "jewels buried somewhere on the Nth page" now become "jewels buried in a list of 80 entries or more"? What exactly WOULD be the purpose of an archive thread?

Ctrl+f , then you could search for let's say "misha route". I also think that every entry will have A short description (written by the author) so that If the title is somewhat vauge, people could still see whats it about. Also by no means should it be a one man's effort, every one who is willing to help and have time should be able to help, at least untill we decide to choose specific people who run it, we could do some sort of elections every month or something.
The list should include every fanfic, not only routes, there are a lot of great fics that are not route, the fics can be sorted by genre or types, and the search feature on your computer could be used to find anything specific.

I'm a little puzzled as to why this wouldn't be allowed, but in any event archives have already been done. A particularly good example can be found here.

Let's say you are someone who just found out about KS, you've read the whole think and then you decide to come here and look for some fanfics. Would you really go to paste in first? I have absolutely no idea, before coming to the fourms I didn't know what it is! I'm still not sure...
Anyway as I have said, it could and should be more then an index, it should be a way to encourage more people to write and to improve new writers, a thing that I have noticed is emphasized by the community here