Hi, I know I'm little bit annoying but I just wondered if we could create a whole Fanfiction-forum.

See after the PortkeyReaderChoice award is voted and to end I wonder what you do with this forum?
I have an idea we have first a Forum for Fanfiction hunting, separated than we have a Fanfiction recommendation in H/HR forum and we have in Off Topic a beta-reader section. Now this a little bit strange that all this things a separated.

So I thought it would be the best if we bring this all together in the PortkeyReaderChoice award forum which isn't used now. This did indeed fit because its again about Fanfiction. Another thought is that there should be than a possible for us to debate some fanfics in this forum.
So that it looks like that:

H/Hr fanfics
D/G fanfics
L/J fanfics
R/Lu fanfics

I guess the ReaderChoice award is only once a year that say every year there will be than a section in this forum, where people did debate about fanfics, a thread for it.
To this comes now we have voted and have winners. I think it would do much if this fics did in the section where the fanfics are a symbol so that if someone read this fic knows its the winner.

Thats all if you has question or don't understand somethings just ask..

Thanks for the suggestions, phoenixwriter! Here are my inputs (NOT rulings, as we'll need to hear from the others):

I think we ought to MAINTAIN Fic Recs in EACH SHIPPING FORUM.
Hence, the H/H & L/J Fic Recs should remain in their respective places (as sub-forums in their respective shipping forums). Perhaps eventually, we can set up D/G & R/L Fic Recs sub-forums, as well.
This way, someone who likes only H/H need not go look over D/G or R/L fics. Ditto with the other shippers; they could zero in on the shipping fanfics they want.

FANFIC DISCUSSION & DEBATES
I've just answered your related post minutes ago, so I know you haven't read it yet. Thanks for letting us know of your confusion.

I find it more efficient to merge fanfic discussions --pro or anti-- with their existing recommendation threads. I'm following Thieving Magpie's example of hunting for posts (in various forums) made by other Portkey-ers, in which they casually endorsed fanfics. Thieving Magpie or I then open a Rec thread for that fic, with the note that says "this was originally recommended by xxx". We do our best to check that these fics do comply with our Rec Criteria.

I've been merging fanfic discussion threads with the recommendation threads. Those I can't merge, I cross-link. TO CLARIFY: anyone can post constructive criticisms in the recommendation threads.

Just look at the PoU thread. Lori (the author) herself appreciated both the positive and not-so-positive comments. She saw that the discussions were of the honest, no-holds-barred, one-reader-to-another-reader type. Most of the PoU comments were posted before she even heard of Portkey.

PUT DISCUSSIONS & DEBATES IN THE Readers' Choice Forum?
When the polls open, we could cast our votes, then post the link to the fanfic recommendation-cum-discussion thread. Nappa has just made it easy to copy and paste each post's global URL.

I will post on this after I've fiished off the last of my assignments. And have had a decent sleep.

Lots of good points, and I'm now honour bound to post what was supposed to be essentially hidden for a while... ^.^

This is what is happening in " Super Secret Project I " --- It's actually all these ideas a bit more. To the affect that It should be called " Super Secret Project I - IV "


I'm talking over with some people but the idea is to restructure the forums to a more intuitive format. Right now, a lot of people are under the impression if they ship H/Hr, they can only talk in H/Hr section. Which is also used for the Dan/Harry or Emma/Hermione related postings. THe matter is further complicated when people really do not know where to post new stuff. We have a general Discussion area. We have a OotP area. Basiclaly. It's confusing. And I'm the Admin who made all these ^.^ Even I'm finding it hard.


------- Category : FanFiction / Writing
---------- Recommendations
-------------- Harry/Hermione
-------------- Draco/Ginny
-------------- Lily/James
-------------- Ron/Luna
-------------- Non Breaking Fics
+ While the ships might be furthers divided up into Themed Lists [kudos to Xhale] and Alphabetical Lists
+ Non breaking is things like :: Ayla Pascals' Dark Fics. They do not have ships that break site rules, but they are wonderful to read none the less. I would like to see more of our readers exposed to also not just H/Hr, but other writing that are devoid of shipping. Though Portkey won't be hosting them... it would take simply too much resources, and we're doing 150Gb as it is...
---------- Beta Services [kudos to Theiving Magpie for getting this done]
-------------- Seeking
-------------- Providing
-------------- Exchange
---------- Writing Guides / Tips
-------------- Lots of "Articles" / Essays and things . Either linked to off sites or provided there. I think we got a bit of it done last time, when we had a "Authors giving tips to other authors on portkey.
---------- Discussion [kudos to Davis_517 and Somewhat phoenixwriter]
-------------- I am extremely reluctant to let this happen fully. The mod teams with the help of anyone else that is interested in seeing this forum made, will need to make up a set of rules and guidelines --- very akin to what we had for Pumpkin Army --- Especially since fics are always about personal preference.

While some might consider fic "X" brilliant, there will always be parts of ship that will conside it horrible in "Z" way. It's my view that you can't totally have a unbiased dicussion on this topic, but I've been wrong before. ^.^

I'll elborate more, but I'm running on coffee fumes. I'ts been 24 hours since I had my sleep ^.^ Will finsih the rest of the post later. See ya soon.

Thank you that is somehow I did imagine this.
I always did suspect that this "Top secret" -project was for once about OotP-forum and the PortkeyReaderChoice-forum. Looks like I wasn't that wrong.

About OotP-Forum its possible if we said there will be debatte about all 5 books, I mean chapters.

See I don't really know what you wanna do with it because we are now posting things about OotP in every Forum but in the same time we can't just delete this forum because there are some good topics. I guess if it comes all into general-debatte than it would work but Its kinda difficult and it was it from the beginning.

Good administrator are always willing to improve systems, even if it means overhauling the existing ones. *pats Nappa on the back* And more pats, for responding quickly, and for overhauling something YOU yourself put in place. *more pats until Nappa winces*

*pats phoenixwriter for the excellent suggestions*

To earn my keep, I'm presenting this summary. I inserted a few suggestions of my own.
Feel free to reject any or all of my inputs, or to ask for clarification.


Definitions
Related Info = basic info, discussion, and/or fic hunting

Basic Info = URL, title, author's name, summary, genre, length, other ships, warnings

Discussion = any comments on the story, positive or not; updates on chapters, sequels and related ficlets; author's thank you's and replies to readers.


Suggested Sections in the new "All About Fanfics" Forum

a. Fanfics grouped according to Portkey's ships
-- each fic must have its own discussion thread. Each thread MAY contain the fic's basic info.
Discussion of the fic may be appended to the "basic info" thread, or cross-linked to it.

b. Fanfics not centered on Portkey's ships
- each fic must have their own thread

c. Writing Tips - Let's put the "Polishing The Quill (writing tips and issues)" thread in this Fanfic place.
I stumbled upon it while doing a search days ago. Catark (the "Off Topic" forum mod) agreed to pin it up.
phoenixwriter - I saw your posts giving tips to aspiring writers. I merged them with this thread.
Nappa - If you want, I can split this "Polishing The Quill" thread into several topics.

d. Beta Hunting - perhaps transfer existing "Are You A Beta?" and "Fantastic Betas and Where to Find Them" threads (currently in Off-Topic forums)

e. Fanfic Hunting - move to this "All About Fanfics" Forum

f. Readers' Choice Awards - move to this "All About Fanfics" Forum


Suggested Guidelines for Fanfic Discussions

1. All posts must be PG-13 or below;
2. Use spoiler and quote tags when appropriate;
3. Limit discussion to the same fic and author. I.e., saying "I like Author X's Story II better than Story I" is fine,
   but "I like Author X's story better than Author Y's story" is not.
4. Each fanfic will have its own thread. Posts about that fic should be limited to that thread.
5. Discussions spanning several fics may have their own threads.
   E.g., the old "Best H/H First Kiss Scene in Fanfic Scene" will be retained as a separate thread, in the place for H/H fanfic discussion.
6. Fanfics that don't meet Portkey's Rec & Hosting Criteria may be discussed in a separate General Fanfic Discussion forum
   E.g, that "Draco Trilogy" thread we had

Other Suggestions
LOW TO MEDIUM PRIORITY

1. FANFIC SEARCHING - Can we improve the search features for fanfics? Say, if I want to hunt for one-shot humor fics, can I do that easily? Or can this be handled by the Themed Listings?

Maybe we could improve on pp.org's directory search feature, where one can do a search based on genre, author, title, length (one-shot or chaptered), keywords?

Nappa -- I'll volunteer to re-encode the fics' basic info, if it will make the searches easier. I'll work on this as long as I have Internet access!


2. OTHER SECTIONS -- canon discussion, grouped according to the books


My 0.02,

As a user I actually find Portkey one of the better ones in user friendliness. But if more restructure is needed to make it more user friendly, I would certainly welcome it with open hand. This is some areas where I thought Portkey could improve in.

Fanfiction hunting: I think that it really need to be improve. Currently everything is so messed up with some topics being pinned and some not. How about grouping the topics by ships.

Fanfic searching: I do agree with galtxtr but instead of doing it like pp.org, I suggest doing it like ff.net. It would look neater. I also suggest that Portkey enforced the rule for authors to properly put the status of their fics.

That's it I think for now. A better Portkey means a better shipper. LoL.

This has me thinking... A very good topic, hats off to phoenixwriter.

Now, I know this isn't the ship of the site, but couldn't there be a place to put a R/Hr fic/ficlet? I wrote one, and I put it into the H/Hr section, actually, it got good feedback, and apparently could be classified as H/Hr too.

It would just make it easier (I write lots of different things), and just somewhere to put ficlets with any relationship would really help.

Just adding new suggestions before they slip out of my brain:


Add a Writing Tips sub-forum. We can call it Polishing The Quill, after the existing thread about writing tips. I could split that thread back into several topics

Other topics:
Fanfiction Pet Peeves --> move it from Gen HP Discussion
Fanfiction Cliches --> I think it's also in Gen HP Disc. Would be more appropriate in All About Fanfics Forum

Move all ficlets/cookies & challenges sub-forums to All About Fanfics forum

which leaves us with no sub-forums in the shipping forums! Ha ha.
More ideas, people?

Have to say great job. I just love how the Beta-reader section looks now

Anyway about Fanfiction hunting. Thats difficult because like its said there are
mostly H/Hr fics.
But we could do it like with Recs. Just we let free what we don't know or for what the member search
So it would look like this:

Title:
Author:
Rating:
Genre:
Length(one-shot or chaptered):
Other Ships:
Location(URL):
Based upon book:
Warnings:
Summary(optional):

This would work even if there is 90% H/Hr. I suppose.

I think this is it.

Well, I think the problem arnina meant is not the style of the current template, but the look of the forum itself. If you open it in forum view, you'll see lots of pinned topics which indicate unfinished search requests. This leads to the fact that you can see the actual NEW topics not until you scrolled down all the pinned topics.

German Translation (So kann wenigstens einer verstehen, was ich gemeint habe)
Es sieht halt bescheiden aus, wenn man in der Foren Ansicht erst an zig gepinnten Themen vorbeiscrollen muss, bevor man die eigentlich NEUEN zu sehen bekommt.

How about once the fic is found, put the the necessary templates and transfer it to the Rec side?

What about a place for fics that aren't any of the ships losted, for instance, R/Hr...?

I know it goes against the ships on this site, but some are really well written, and then some slash ones, too... Would they all fit into the "other" section, or whatever it is to be called?

Portkey Won't EVER host R/Hr fics. We can't. We're a H/Hr site. We have changed the rules that allowed slight R/Hr in a D/G fics. We longer accept them. We won't ask the authors who have posted them already to remove them, but we won't allow that anymore.

Linking to D/G like that is more relaxed.

Unless :
Unless you are tlaking about parodies. Those are allowed. As long as they aren't too rude.

@Arnina :
About the Enfocing >>
Lots of the authors are no longer active in the fandom. They've gone off to some other fandom. They don't even use the same information for contact. BUT there is a plan to make it simpel for the authors to stat that that is the last chapter they are uploading. That would make things easier for the future ^.^

NAPPA

galtxtr :

You want to be able to filter as well as search the descriptions and things ? one the main site ? or in the forums ?

> Main Site :
==========
The ability to filter and then filter even more by keywords is coming. I'm at the moment trying to think of a way to do that. And deciding if the authors should be able to specify a few keywords for the chapters and then the sories and then the search engine will search in those in addition to the filter info. Or if we are going to just filter and use the summery as a keyword finding stories.

> Forums:
==========
Forums search engine is capable of very extensive search of the posts. You can search only in a forum. Between dates. And specify one keyword to look for in the post, but to also exclude another.


@Glaxtor :

Saw your post. Changing things around a bit ^.^

@ Mods in this thread >>
=================
Can you guys start working on the new sections ? There are some others. Including some subforums in the General Discussion area. BAsically there isa forum for each of the books. IF a issue is confined toone specific book, it shoudl be in that book's forums. IF something that involves more than one forum , it should be in the main forum. ^.^

I'll be taking two days off. Just resting. This recent set of problems has taken too much out of me. I feel drained.

If you guys need anything just send an email to James. Send oen too me too. If I'm online , I'll answer.

You guys are free to setup the rules and things. Tell me about them when I get back. I'll fix any rules if they need fixing.. ^.^



NAPPA
(reading smuttiness)

I'm stupid. Now honestly I wasn't often in the fanfiction-hunting section so I didn't know or was just too ignorant.
See you have already such a fomular and I didn't get it.
But anyway I want just say a big thank you to you because you listen to my strange words and try your best.
By the way I think galtxtr, you are a great mod. You have so many new ideas I'm still wondering.
Off course Thieving Magpie, you are great mod, too. Especially because you at least understand me.

But I really think as Fiction Mod you have much to do, that how I see it right now. Correct me if I'm wrong. Don't take too much on your shoulders.

So long...I'm lost for words

>> I am thinking of removing the forum sections of Book 1 - 4 in the general discussion area. Mostly because that is just too many forums. And if we don't have enough content to justify them, then they shouldn't be there.

Any feedback ?

Well, it's a good idea, unless they actually start getting topics. If they stay as they are, there's no point having them as subforums. Just a merge of them, and hope some people will actually post there.

NAPPA you right there are too manny forums. But thats not really the problem is rather how do you as member decide to open a thread in such a forum. See some or rather the most topics are about more as just one book. Off course things about Buckbeak belong to Forum-book3 but Its again too in book5. Or Sirius was in book3, 4 and 5. Where do you put this topic? Thats the problem.
So I would split in two forums. One about books which exist this say Book1 till5 and one for predictions for Book6 and 7.
There don't exist such a difficult for the member.