New feature coming: Story Versioning

[Bramblethorn]

Any rewrites at all will have to include another review by Laurel, slowing down the process for all submitting, won't they? Otherwise, an author could initially submit a story that was mild and later make it unacceptable here by minor adding and changing in a self-editing process.

Absolutely, but vetting an edit should be a lot faster than vetting a new story if the system's set up sensibly.

For instance, if somebody edits the Wikipedia article on Offenbach, I don't have to read through the whole article closely to see what's changed. I can get a view that highlights the edits, presented in context, like this:



So for an edit that's just fixing a few typos, it should be very easy for Laurel to look at the comparison, confirm that they're not changing an "18" to a "13" or similar, and approve it.

It's not foolproof; an inventive author could make changes which depend on context elsewhere in the story. But that kind of thing can easily get missed even on the initial posting with no later edits required.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Given how long edits often take, I'm inclined to believe that they do not currently have a simple method for comparing versions.

There's nothing I've seen over the years that suggests the site scrutinises versions. I think it's, "Scan the new file to make nothing contra-policy has been snuck in, then dump the old text, replace with the new."

It takes a while because it's low priority, not because there's any version checking going on.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

There is an important question about the potential abuse of this option. When the new version of the story gets approved, where will the story appear? Will it appear in the new list, or in the category list of new stories? If that is the case, I can already see Laurel being swarmed with minuscule editing requests just so the stories could get a new life with version two, three, five...
Even if such stories don't get to appear in the new list, it's not hard to imagine that many authors will do some rewriting on their early stories, and again, there will be the problem of dealing with so many requests.

I think they should keep this option for story games exclusively and find some other way to deal with legit requests to edit some minor spelling/grammar/style mistakes.