THE NEW CHYOO (with link)! Also, what features should be part of an updated CHYOO?

[Trugbild]

Analizing it:

- On the negative side we'd have less new stories by new users
- On the positive side we'd have more support to existing stories
- On the positive side we'd have less abandoned stories in general
- On the positive side we'd have less bad and spammy stories

Wait, I'm not conflicted. That's a big YES.

I disagree.

Let's see. A new user joins. At first he have to do some contributions. Ok. He isn't very good at writing. The story owner thinks OMG... and declines the story without a further word. Two contributions later the user would leave the site.

More people would read the (bad written) story and can give constructive comments in addition to bad ratings (i.e. "good idea, you have to work on your writing"). Bad writing doesn't mean bad ideas.

The user can try to get better in writing and can see improvement by ratings and comments.


A way to handle a flood of bad single-thread stories could be to blind out stories with worst ratings. (i.e. 10 ratings of 1 with an average of 2 or less)
Blind out stories should be accessible through the user profile and with a checkbox at the searchform.

 

[Kaitou1412]

I'm conflicted but I'd say I agree.
Analizing it:

- On the negative side we'd have less new stories by new users
- On the positive side we'd have more support to existing stories
- On the positive side we'd have less abandoned stories in general
- On the positive side we'd have less bad and spammy stories

Wait, I'm not conflicted. That's a big YES.

This is still likely to lead to two-thread stories for extended periods. Sometimes users get ideas and intend to work on them, but they have something taking up their time; like other stories, off-site projects, and real life. If the story has a proper introduction, then one or two threads are plenty for it to self-sustain, all the editor has to do is worry about the supplies of others. Some people still won't supply threads, but this usually goes to it being buried in a list, an unoriginal idea, or appeals to a specific, uncommon fetish.

Furthermore, even if DirtyTyke's proposition is taken, it shouldn't be "number of accepted threads" used to judge a user's ability to create. Some editors take what they can get and ignore quality completely while some writers recycle threads - changing one thread only slightly and submitting it to multiple storylines. (Thankfully there's no more auto-approve and auto-promote, or that would open a new problem in the form of exploitation.) The point is that "quality of a writer's threads" and "approval of a writer's threads" can be mutually exclusive. Therefore, it's not a very good standard.

I'd like to say "rating" is a good means for gauging quality, but that is still exploitable via multiple accounts, and apparently is still being used for hatred - even if we doubt the source of this (the one who believes he is without fault), the fact that someone down-rated this person is a clear indication this person had down-rated its usual suspects in revenge. Therefore, I'd recommend avoiding a rating's based system as well.

 

[Trugbild]

I'd like to say "rating" is a good means for gauging quality, but that is still exploitable via multiple accounts, and apparently is still being used for hatred - even if we doubt the source of this (the one who believes he is without fault), the fact that someone down-rated this person is a clear indication this person had down-rated its usual suspects in revenge. Therefore, I'd recommend avoiding a rating's based system as well.

I generally agree. But there are ways how rating exploits could be reduced. For this the value of a rating must be in relation to the positive ratings of the user who want to rate.

 

[GoodBoy741]

Basically, I feel that this is an amateur site and we should be allowed to be amateurs. Yes, that means there's going to be some lousy work floating around, but we all do some bad work in the process of learning to do good work. Trying too hard to avoid mistakes keeps people from learning at all.

It's easy enough to avoid stories that are only two threads deep. If it is still a problem for people, I think a better solution would be changing the search system to have a box for minimum depth. It can default to 1, but then users can change it to filter out overly short stories.

Is there some other place besides searches where overly short stories is a problem?

 

[Kaitou1412]

kaitou, with regards to "Some editors take what they can get and ignore quality completely" I'm kind of assuming these owners wouldn't have been approved to create new stories anyway. Over time I assume the existing authors in this category will either improve or leave of their own volition.

Not even remotely true. This is off-site, but a friend of mine with a firm grasp of writing still accepts submissions from inferior writers because his story theme (strip poker fan-fiction for anime and video games) doesn't attract a sizable amount of contributors - even with the inferior writers, I think he's pulling less than 10. As long as the addition doesn't cross to kiddie porn or bestiality, he's too happy to care.

The same would certainly apply here: some stories have a narrow appeal, and those with a broad appeal are usually thoroughly covered by others. There's several ways for a quality story to slip through the cracks and go generally ignored by everyone except inept writers who fall for the appeal. Besides the elation my friend feels, consider the origin of your argument: you choose to ignore a story if it's not deep enough, and I know you're not the only user who thinks like this. If there are people who think like that, then some editors who are preoccupied with off-site projects are going to want to artificially increase the depth of their stories for the sole purpose of attracting a larger audience, and from there quality contributors. That translates to accepting things they would normally find appalling for the sake of exposure - not an uncommon tactic in any field.

 

[Kaitou1412]

Kaitou, do you agree with the idea in principle, and just dislike my proposed implementation, or dislike the entire idea? If it's the latter, would you care to elaborate on why?

I agree with the idea, there's no contesting CHYOO and CHYOA are overrun with stories that are only half-decent, focus on a concept already supplied (with little-to-no change to the protagonist no less - something that would make me willing to ignore the multiple similarities), and are quickly abandoned. I think there's something to be said for wanting to minimize story-creation in the name of quality, but the approach is all wrong.

I'd like to believe the old system could work perfectly if the work is spread out between more than two people - which would allow the staff to really take the time to meditate on a user's ability - but even this makes me wonder.

 

[Airwrecker]

For those awaiting approval of threads, "awaiting approval" is used when others submit threads to your stories for your approval. Look under "my threads" to see all your threads including pending ones.

Strange I don't see any pending threads there either.

 

[Airwrecker]

I'm no longer editor of Farmer's Daughter, since I wasn't the creator.

I'm pretty certain that the original creator has been gone for many years, which is why I took it over.

Are you still moderator on the new CHYOA? I thought you had approved a couple of new threads I had written for Farmer's Daughter.

 

[Airwrecker]

At the moment only the owners / creators of the stories have access. With the update next week, however, the previous editors will get access too.

What's the ETA on this now?

Again, thanks for all the work on the new site! I completely understand it's still in beta and I won't complain at all about any missing features! What we have now is several times better than the old CHYOO!

 

[Menoetes]

All other concerns aside, if we are adding to a story long abandoned by it's original chyoo author (since the adoption of stories doesn't seem to have made the transfer), is there someone on chyoa that we can appeal to, to get it approved so we might continue adding whilst we still feel the momentum/inspired to do so.

On chyoo I could contact Torg or another Mod for help in this regard.

Maybe I am different to everyone else, being more of a sporadic writer only contributing when my fickle muse seizes me, but waiting several weeks to have a thread approved can cool the passion to write more on the same storyline and ultimately bring my contributions to a halt as my desire to continue gutters out in the waiting period over a series of weeks. Is there no longer a trusted status as I enjoyed on a few stories?

If an author isn't responding to the request to add a thread, who can we turn to for an appeal?

 

[Nilth]

Ehm, just to clarify.
When I'm thinking of bad stories\threads I don't mean everything that is not Shakespeare, I mean everything that is similar to a "one paragraph thread" or a "barely understandable text due to bad grammar".

Unless you are telling me that basically (even when the new system of approval will come up, if ever) everyone with the task of approving threads is a grammar nazi or similar, I see no harm in this.

I have at least FIFTY stories bookmarked and I've seen almost no updates in the last month. This has to stop, imo. It's good to have new stories don't get me wrong, but I'd like to see more support given to existing stories.
The beauty of this site in the interactivity of stories, and you have little to no interactivity with 5 threads - 2 deep stories.
If you agree on this feel free to post your idea to give a better support to existing stories. Maybe you have a better one.

 

[sammy_sludge]

How about e-mailing Chyoo members?

What's the ETA on this now?

Again, thanks for all the work on the new site! I completely understand it's still in beta and I won't complain at all about any missing features! What we have now is several times better than the old CHYOO!

I'm hoping for the same feature eventually, as I own one story and am editor of several others. However, I understand that we could easily overwhelm poor Friedman with our requests and demands, so I'll just have to be patient so he doesn't burn himself out.

Regarding the lack of authors, we could e-mail chyoo members to tell them about the new site. There isn't a visible list on the site showing all members, but you can generate a list of writers/editors, and sort it alphabetically, so I guess we could use that to send e-mails through chyoo to those people. It's a 573 page list, but many authors will show up multiple times.

 

[The_high_king]

I love the new site! Seriously, good work!

 

[Friedman]

If an author isn't responding to the request to add a thread, who can we turn to for an appeal?

The moderators of Chyoo are willing to stay moderators on Chyoa. But since some features for moderators aren't implemented yet you can always contact me.

What's the ETA on this now?

Sorry for the delay. I will release new features (including linking threads and the private messaging system) within the next weeks.

 

[DefiniteArticles]

Congrats & early suggestions

Nice job on getting this off the ground, team!

Suggestion #1 - Layout

The simplest thing to fix would be the font sizes, margins, and padding. The text is way too big, and there's too much white space.

Related CSS values I'd prefer, that can be easily fixed by just adding/modifying three lines of code:

h1 {font-size:18px!important}
h2 {font-size:16px!important}
.thread-content p {font-size:16px!important; margin-bottom:10px}

Your margins and padding are fine for left-to-right, but you've got some really funky CSS that's making top-to-bottom way too spaced out.

Suggestion #2 - Searching stories

One of my biggest frustrations with Chyoo has always been that you're limited to sorting by one drop-down. Even only adding the ability to sort by a mix of thread depth & newness (date created), or thread depth & freshness (update/new thread date) would be a huge improvement. Adding relevancy to either of those two-criteria searches would make me very happy.

Suggestion #3 - Allowing readers to suggest post tags & vote on their "appropriateness"

Rather than relying on authors to do the work of remembering and including every relevant tag for their posts, allowing users to suggest tags and upvote/downvote tags they do/don't think fit would make tag management easier and possibly more precise.

If you implement an up/down vote method, the up/down score for each tag would ideally be displayed next to the tag so that the community could get a sense for what tag are popular and/or appropriate (appropriate depending on the maturity levels of the users who are given access to tagging rights - I'd limit it to users who have written several threads for others' moderated stories, and had those threads approved).

Even better, if you keep a tag up/down count for all tags per post, you could then add up the values of every post tag (via a script, obviously) and have the results displayed as the story tag list. That would help users to know what they're getting into. After all, just because a story starts mostly vanilla doesn't mean it stays that way. A tag-count system would be much better than the current category system (due to the nature of Chyoo threads) or a tag-cloud system (due to the value of knowing the exact +/- score).


Those are my suggestions for what would make Chyoo ideal. Obviously, some are more difficult and resource-intensive than others.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with the site, and I'm wishing you all good luck!

Keep up the good work!

 

[Nilth]

We've build up a good amount of useful ideas\suggestions in the last weeks. Don't lose track on them

For now, however, I think the priority is to finish up the basics of the new site (text formatting, approval of threads system\rules, threads linking, an easy way for authors to track feedback, messaging, and the dedicated page on chyoa functioning\rules)
After that you could even trow away the beta stage, imo

PS: if you need general mods (to check on new threads, etc..) I might be available. PM me if you want

 

[Trugbild]

I think it would be good to have a public list (on chyoa) of:
- implemented features (this can help to reduce debug-requests)
- planned features
- rejected ideas

 

[jealco]

I'm getting an SSL error through Chrome for a non-CHYOA website. Says I'm being redirected. I find this rather odd. Recent happening. Is this just me or is anyone else getting this error?

 

[Friedman]

I'm getting an SSL error through Chrome.

Older browsers / operating systems don't support a SSL feature called SNI which may cause the problem. The most common combination is Windows XP and Internet Explorer. Every other / newer combination should be fine.

I've sent you a PM for further assistance.

 

[Menoetes]

The moderators of Chyoo are willing to stay moderators on Chyoa. But since some features for moderators aren't implemented yet you can always contact me.

Thanks Friedman and thanks again to all of you developing the site for your hard work. The site is great, I like how you feature a story on the front page too. It gives people a taste...

One more question; how do we tag our stories? I've been through 'manage stories' and editing etc but can't seem to find out how to do it?

If someone (not necessarily the developers) has the time, maybe they could do up a quick FAQ or Tutorial thread for some of these new features?

 

[Nilth]

Is there a way to delete a thread?

I've just added one in the wrong position, and (even if still pending) there is no way for me to do so.
I've edited the text and pointed that, but Idk if the author can do something about it (other than to not approve it)

 

[Nilth]

Sorry but is there a good way to have line breaks?

I wrote 2 threads directly on the site itself and when I needed a like break I obviously hit "enter". Then I save the thread, and my formatting is fucked up and I have to lose time editing a lot of lines.

thx

 

[Friedman]

Sorry but is there a good way to have line breaks?

I wrote 2 threads directly on the site itself and when I needed a like break I obviously hit "enter". Then I save the thread, and my formatting is fucked up and I have to lose time editing a lot of lines.

thx

Chyoa uses Markdown for text formatting. To separate paragraphs by line breaks you either end a line with two or more spaces, or insert two line breaks in the editor. More informationen here: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p

And I've deleted the pending thread.

 

[Nilth]

Thanks.
(yes I noticed )

 

[sammy_sludge]

Disappearing thread bug(?)

I've written four threads for stories I'm not the owner of, none of which are approved yet. I went to see if I could edit one of those today only to find that the one I was looking for was missing. There was no notification that it was decline, and I have my settings set to do that. Previously I had received notifications so I assume that works. I checked three other threads I have submitted that I know are not approved. Of those only one still shows in the Story map.

I happened to know what 'answer' I had used for one of the missing threads, and I managed to find it by typing that answer into the url. It exists but doesn't show in the story map or as a path option in the story.

Parent thread with the 'found' child:
https://chyoa.com/story/girlfriend/thread/you-try-to-help-her-without-her-knowing

Missing child thread for above parent:
https://chyoa.com/story/girlfriend/thread/Lindsay-calls-you-out-then-spikes-your-drink

Parent threads missing my addition:
https://chyoa.com/story/nanogirl/thread/as-expected
https://chyoa.com/story/nanogirl/thread/brett-cums

The last two were done yesterday, the one that worked and the one that I managed to find were done May 29.