We were having issues with plagiarism, where someone would start dummy accounts to gain WbA access. The five post limit puts a speed bump in their way that helps us to identify non-genuine members. It increases the "cost" of dummy accounts.

You seem to think that you're entitled to WbA access, even without being a member who gives feedback on stories.

The content that our authors upload to ffnet is "published", whereas the content that we have in the WbA is in draft stage only. It's filled with works in progress which are not yet fit for publication. That's why they're in our WbA subforum.

The WbA is designed for authors to get feedback and do group beta reading before they finalise and publish their fics. It is absolutely not for anyone to start reading like the Library. It's for us to give feedback so that the story or chapter can be improved.

You need a minimum of five posts to gain access to the Work by Author subforum. Ideally, your posts should demonstrate that you're willing to participate in the community, partake in conversations, give feedback to fics in the Library subforum, etc.

If you can't demonstrate competence, then you're vanishingly unlikely to be giving good feedback on WbA fics. If you can't give the feedback that WbA needs, then you don't need access.

EDIT: I wouldn't normally comment on it, but if anyone's wondering why I've marked recko with the Excrement Extraordinaire tag, it was because three minutes after he made his post here he dropped a three-word shitpost in another thread. I guess he really wants that WbA access.

 

Wait, do you have to have reviewed stories before getting WbA access?

Welp, time to procrastinate posting my manuscript some more!

 

No, you only need 5 non-shitty posts. You've got 66 posts. You're fine.

Edit: I find it odd that a member who has never reviewed fics here since joining months ago would protest about not yet having WbA access. If he's not reviewing, then what does he even need access to drafts for?

Compare that with two members who have joined in the last couple of days and both have great posts in the Library: Senna and Avery

Now, if the complaint had come from Avery, who only has three posts under her belt, then it would have far more weight. Cases like hers are ones where I wish we didn't have the 5-post limit and members could have WbA access immediately again.

Unfortunately, we have to compromise. Making it more "expensive" to use dummy accounts to plagiarise WbA has the side effect of restricting access to people who could benefit us all. We keep the expense fairly small so that genuine members can still easily access the WbA. Five posts isn't asking a lot.

This restriction had a follow-on effect where new signups who weren't plagiarising were leaving rubbish posts in the forum to try and circumvent our "genuine-member-or-plagiarist-dummy-account?" test. These people weren't the intended targets, but seeing as they've demonstrated a willingness to lower the general quality of the forum, thus disrespecting the community, my regard for them is lessened. If they haven't demonstrated any desire to review stories, then that's fine, but it makes their desire to gain WbA access appear to be purely a selfish one. Combine the two, and I find it difficult to feel much sympathy for them.

There are always exceptions, such as people who give feedback outside of our forum threads (via PM, email, IRC, etc.), or who are writing great reviews here but aren't yet at five posts. To those members I'd suggest that they have patience with us and reach that five-post limit. It wasn't our intent to restrict them, but we've tried to keep the obstacle to a minimum while still reducing the number of incidents where our authors have to waste time taking down plagiarist accounts on FFnet.

 

Yeah, let's have a look at the "How did you find DLP"-thread and guess together

 

On the subject of WBA, if I may interject, is it possible to tweak the coding a step further to enforce that whole "it's not the Library, help the author out with feedback" thing that I've seen appear first from Lord Ravenclaw and now you, Yak? If it were possible to limit the amount of threads a user could open in the WBA until they offered a post in one of the previously opened WBA threads I think that it would motivate more users to actually fulfill that duty. Think a story you opened is riddled with flaws? Than actually tell the author what you see wrong so that they can fix it. Think its good? Thumbed the post? That's nice, but tell the author what it was they did right and why you think they did instead of ghosting away into the night.

I just feel that the number of hits-to-replies is skewered. People may see the line about commenting but especially as it is now with the 5-post limitation in place, they're just going to feel rewarded by gaining access to the WBA and be even less motivated to offer any meaningful posts for the authors, doubly so those who view the WBA as a place to get early eyes on a story that hasn't updated elsewhere.

EDIT: On reflection, no.

 

Often I'll open up a WBA thread, read the summary, maybe some reviews, then close it again.

In fact, that's actually what I almost always do. If you take away my ability to open threads in the WBA, I'd probably just give up on it entirely. Not sure if that's something you want to incentivise.

 

Something similar was discussed in this thread back in 2011. Here. While it begins talking about thread ratings in the WbA and Library, it's all in aim of increasing the number and quality of reviews. Various technological solutions and their drawbacks are considered.

I think that restricting WbA access in that exact manner would have a number of unintended side-effects. Most obviously a large number of people would be compelled to post minimal content feedback [not just shitpost tier, but not a whole lot better either] to keep reading. Maybe that's an okay trade-off.

You'd also find people less likely to take a chance on fics by unknown authors, odd fandoms, low ratings, or low replies. If their "number of threads I can read before I'm forced to write a decent post" currency is limited, then they're going to naturally by stingy with how they spend it. They'll shy away from using it on threads that aren't immediately appealing and save it for those that are.

It's hard to place restrictions without making the cure worse than the disease. There will always be side-effects that impinge on the enjoyment of some of our members. Even the low 5-post limit has probably stopped a new member author or two from posting their fic straight to the WbA and stopped other new members who could've given great feedback from ever reading new fic updates and doing so.

I'd say more about the unintended side effects, but Innomine's post illustrates it perfectly. Here's a user that gave WbA feedback just last month, but would be likely to give fewer reviews with the suggested restrictions in place. I would have run afoul of the rule myself during some years, albeit for different reasons.

We don't all approach the WbA subforum content the same way. That's why I'd be cautious about adding more limits that stem from a "correct way to use the WbA" school of thought.

That isn't to say that readers shouldn't be subtly encouraged to behave better. I'd be in favour of encouraging people to change their behaviour, perhaps with a reminder pop-up after reading x WbA threads, or reading WbA for x months without having posted a critique, or name and shame [probably not this], or employing guilt, or using achievements, or having a WbA threads you've read vs. posts made counter that only you can see, or other social game techniques to change the non-critiquing reader's relationship with the WbA.

I think that DLPers who understand behaviour modification and similar voodoo could have valuable insights into changing online crowd behaviour. Anyone?

 

You could address this specific problem by tying it to "thumbs-up's" instead. This would just mean people stop thumbsing, of course.

But even if there was a technical way to do it, and there probably is, I don't agree with Zenzao's idea. I have a pretty low read-to-review ratio (and a lower hit-to-read), which I am apologetic about. But I don't think a restriction would alter that. Often by the time I get into a thread, what I want to say has been covered, and better than I could have. I rarely have time to do a line-by-line analysis, so all I have to offer is my gut reaction - which normally feels wishy-washy, unhelpful and non-substantive, especially I'm not a writer myself. I've started many reviews only to delete them on those grounds.

Anyway, my point is basically this

I aim to provide feedback where I can. I don't do it as often as I should, sometimes for bad reasons, but normally for good ones. But I don't think this would motivate anything more from me than low quality "reaction posts", and I suspect I would often just close those tabs with a shitty response, and forego WBA.

Edit: Basically, this post:

Except I put less time aside for/take more time to post substantive reviews, so my reviews are fewer and farther between. I mean, if shitty one line reviews are what you want, than you'll get more. But I doubt it'll really help, and it'll just make me feel more crappy.

 

Appreciate the extensive feedback guys. In light of that I'm withdrawing what I said, I'd rather have the occasional post than, as with Innomine/Quiddity's case, nothing at all. Turning more posters away from the WBA is the last thing desired.

 

My mistake. It sounds like there's no problem then. Readers are already critiquing at a decent rate. So, the way to gain more WbA reviews is to get more readers.

2011's Yak sucks. Why did he even care about rating WbA threads? Thank god we got rid of that douche.

 

Eh, the message still stands.

 

Suggestion: Remove the "Old Thread Warning" from The Library. Library threads are supposed to be posted in, and that warning probably scares away some reviewers who are unfamiliar with the site rules.

 

Not sure if this has been mentioned before but why not something similar to HPFF.com where we have our own house and common rooms? We can have competitions (which would incline more people to write), our own award 'trophies', house point system (winning house gets their colours across DLP) and new user ranks.

Obviously, this would need to be somehow balanced. If too many people choose to belong to one particular house, then the balance goes poof. We can always experiment and see what happens when we allow users to pick their own, but if it doesn't work then we can think of a sorting system.

I'm new still, but I'm getting a small idea now of how this community works. If people felt like they belonged somewhere from the get-go, they might be more inclined to stay.

This is just a thought that struck me, so I'd like to hear your ideas (feel free to smack me if the idea has been rejected before, not read much of this thread).

 

How about ... a Sorting Hat?

For the record, we had great monthly competitions which produced some quality stories. They stopped for whatever reason, my guess would be the lack of participants, but I thoroughly enjoyed most of the resulting stories.

You can find them in the Story Showcase subforum.

 

To answer your question we have to look at a bit of history of HP communities. DLP in its inception and its development shears itself away from cutesy and role-playing that other forums indulged in. So this sort of House system reminds the vets of the touchy-feely crap we found at other places and escaped from to DLP.

Now that said, many years have passed, and as DLP has moved beyond its knee-jerk Ginny hate, we can relook at something like you're suggesting. As to the title system, we have our own, and have had discussions and have implemented new titles this very year. I like that we have something that is birthed of DLP rather than transferred over from HPFF.

Regarding a House system helping you feel like you belong. I belong to the DLP zeitgeist, something that you can belong to as well by spending more time here than the couple of months you have. Like any other place, interact, contribute to the forums, stop by IRC, learn the culture, and you're in. No house system will suddenly remove the requirement to do what I've suggested. Even if you were 'sorted' you would have to interact and put yourself out there.

To your suggestion of writing competitions: those have have energized the board in the past. I do agree that maybe we need to bring them back. And I'm not totally dismissing the house idea either, in its spirit at least, of fomenting participation.

 

I understand what you mean. I was curious as to why you guys haven't adopted such a thing - was it simply to be unique? To not jump the bandwagon of the other forums?

The 'feel like you belong' vibe was more of a welcome incentive. You guys can be quite intimidating, especially to new users .

But as I said, I understand why such an idea would be undesirable. You guys seem like the constructive, talk-it-out bunch rather than a bunch of kiddies in a cosplay scenario. I believe that if it was implemented correctly though, in a way that it's optional and is more of an extra user group thing, it could work. The house point system was more of an extra idea, where something like that could go.

Once again, though, I see how that can seem a little 'meh'.