Hello people, for once I've an intelligent and feasible idea.

Author Notice Board Forum
I was thinking about merging, renaming and removing some of my fics. But if I do then it'll cause problems for anyone who might have been following my work. (I don't have too many readers but it'd apply more to other, better authors.) So my thinking is that there should be a forum set aside where authors can start topics and use them to announce news like 'Such-and-such a story renamed to 'Whatever.' Or 'I have removed this fic. Because …'

There would have to be a couple of strict rules about this forum so it would need new mods or present mods would have to be assigned. For instance it shouldn't be used as a way of promoting new chapters or getting peoples opinions because it would turn into spam. But as a way for authors to talk to their readers in general it would be a pretty good idea. IMO at least.

If people want more explanation as to what the hell I'm talking about then PM me and I'll do my best to explain things better.

EDIT JULY 8 2008: Please read this for the method we recommend.


ORIG POST ON DEC 2004:




Ankh, I understand that the intention here is to allow authors



What I've seen some authors do is one or more of the following actions:


Post a notice in their profile pages' "author bio" fields.
Example:



Delete the story's chapter/s, but leave a note in the summary. Example:



Leave a note in their stories' recommendation thread.
(Although all of the cases I've seen had the authors replying AFTER we readers contacted them, to ask where the fic had gone. ) Example:


So there are existing means by which authors can inform their readers on their story's disappearance. I wish authors would pro-actively announce such changes on their Rec threads, though. We Recs and Fic Hunts Mods often get alerted by the readers, rather than the writers, to these changes. In my 15 months of Mod-ing, I can recall only one instance where the writer himself told me (in my capacity as Rec Mod) that he was taking down his story.


Thanks nonetheless for bringing that up. Others must be wondering about that too.

Unfortunately this wouldn't work because not every story is in the Recs... I believe and would be quite pleased if whenEVER a story is posted on PORTKEY that it automatically has a forum thread started for it... giving it a place for discussion of the story... All the reviews could be posted there and even those could be discussed... I know that sounds like what FictionAlley does with their reviews... but I like that... I have really enjoyed having the ability to reply to my reviewers by way of the Review response, however - When I have recieved a review response from another writer, I can't respond back to that individual regarding what THEY wrote to me...

If we could have Forum threads opened upon just the Starting of the story and then have it automatically let the post of the thread show what chapter it is in regards to (not separate threads for each chapter mind you) then it can offer a much more communitive way of discussing and/or announcing the stories....

Just another writer's desire to communicate with her readers...

Gal-texter - Okay, thanks for the closure. The problem I was trying to pick up on is that even though authors do have ways of saying that a fic. has moved / changed there isn't a standard way of doing it. It all seems a bit of a muddle. But then that's probably me just hyper-analysing everything.

- Ankh

Ankh, that's all right. Often these analyses turn up good ideas or valuable insights, even if the end results are different from those originally proposed.

Muirnin, my co-Mods and I will need to think that over. I'll caution you though that it might take us a few weeks or months to give a definitive response, due to so many tasks going on here in Portkey and in RL.

Our sincere thanks nonetheless to you two.

How about implementing a simple news script for the author pages? Furthermore it might be interesting to let the author attach notes to deleted stories/chapters which are shown when you surf to a deleted story/chapter. So instead of just "Story/Chapter does not exist" you would see the note from the author.

I hope this post brings this issue nearer to a close. Sorry for the long delay -- many PK and RL matters got in the way. While I agree that there is no standard way of doing these, I think it's a good thing to have several methods. But both authors and readers have to be aware of those. I hope this FAQ helps raise that level of awareness.

Muirnin - sorry, Mods believe that particular suggestion would raise too many logistical problems. Plus it would lead to unnecessary duplication of the Recs/Discussion forums threads. Thanks nonetheless for making that suggestion.


Gaheris - sorry, I personally don't understand the technicalese. The Admins will have to decide on that. As for attaching notes to deleted chapters, authors can upload notes as "chapters". It sounds rather similar to the "Delete the story's chapter/s, but leave a note in the summary" method.

Just wanted to add this:

IMO, the best way for authors to notify readers about stories they took down from PK is for authors to upload an author's note as a chapter.

I'm not sure, but I think if they want to keep all reviews, then they have to upload a dummy file to replace each posted chapter. I think the reviews are "attached" or "associated" with the chapter ID numbers, hence if a chapter's deleted, then so does its ID number and the reviews associated with it.

Please read this related post as well for other methods.

Authors: beware of the Remove Chapter and Remove Story items in your Author Options menu!

Using those features would remove reviews and statistics about the reviews and hits for those chapters (all chapters if you use Remove Story). There'd be no way for us to restore them.

Please reconsider your decision to remove your Portkey-compliant stories. You never know when you'd want to go over them again. Your readers would very likely miss them, as evidenced by many pleas in our lost and found fics board. Please give yourself at least a month to think over your decision to remove PK-appropriate fics.

You can do either of the following should you
-- proceed with removing your fic OR
-- be advised by PK staff that your story doesn't conform with Portkey's policies:


OPTION A: Put up revised chapter/s that does fit Portkey's policies. In that same chapter, you can put an author's note that gives the URL to the original version, which you've posted in another site. Actual examples here.


OR

OPTION B: Replace each chapter with author notes explaining the situation. These "dummy chapters" can contain the alternate URLs where your readers can find the story as you've written them.


PROCEDURES FOR BOTH: How to edit a chapter without deleting reviews

Semi-Technical Explanation here
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HOWEVER the fic team reserves the right to suspend stories or author privileges in cases where they believe that the writer has acted with malice.