Is the Story Hour Forum on Life Support?

[pogre]

pogre, you have many good points... To be honest I think my total number of posts in this forum now stands at five.

I spend most of my time in the PbP forums. Mostly cause its fun, at least for me, but its also what I consider myself a true moderator of, I have this forum under my belt basically cause the guy I replaced had it.

I don’t lack the time to read story hours its more of a matter of patience, I have ADD and I also dislike reading large volumes of text on the screen at once. I tried printing a story hour or two out on paper but it was limited successful for me.

Long post short… I don’t know a whole lot about the etiquette of SH so realize my suggestions where from an outsider looking in and also from a person/moderator who’s not sure he’s the right one for archive SH.

I was not aware one moderator was mostly in charge of the SH forum. There are six listed at the bottom. I read pretty much all of the story hours here and have only seen one shut down in the last couple of years. Basically, the group broke up over character portrayals in the SH and it got too nasty and personal. Anyway, this has got to be one of the lowest maintenance areas of ENWorld for moderating.

Thanks for your honesty and your efforts in any case.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

I was not aware one moderator was mostly in charge of the SH forum.

If there is it isn't me...

I read pretty much all of the story hours here and have only seen one shut down in the last couple of years. Basically, the group broke up over character portrayals in the SH and it got too nasty and personal.

Yeah I was the one to closed it. (After a request to take it off of the board had gone unheeded and Insight said he was through with it anyhow.)

but it was sad to see the players feel like their creations where mistreated.

Anyway, this has got to be one of the lowest maintenance areas of ENWorld for moderating.

It is, it was a long time before I realized I was a moderator in this forum too...

Thanks for your honesty and your efforts in any case.

As always, and your welcome.

 

[Greylock]

From my perspective allow these threads to continue to float with constant bumping on the first page - it will send a loud and clear message to the authors that their work is still appreciated. My other fear about moving these threads is selfish. Another forum might divide traffic. I think a fair amount of folks head to the SH page looking for a PC update and seeing none, might try another SH.

True, true, and true. But the fact remains that ACTIVE authors get dropped to the third page or worse so folks can talk about life, jobs, gossip, pets, etc. There should be some sort of polite "Enough is enough" from someone now and then.

JMHO and all that. I'm as guilty as some of bumps, I just try not to be reckless about it...

 

[Mortepierre]

PC,

To be clear, I wasn’t suggesting a new method of archiving old threads. What I was proposing was that threads that enjoy enormous popularity (say, 20,000+ views? More?) AND are either closed (because the author is done) OR haven’t been updated in a long while (say, 3-5 months?) be moved to a “Hall of Legends” forum (or something like that) which would regroup the best of the best. Ideally, a thread’s author would be the only person allowed to post on such forum.

This would insure that:
a) they are never lost to page 4 (or beyond), thus removing the need to bump them constantly (there aren’t that many of those, are they?)
b) readers and prospective authors would have one easy-to-find place to look if they wished to immerse themselves in the kind of stories that moved hundreds (if not thousands) of people to log in daily to ENWorld just to see if their favorite author had finally posted an update

Active threads belonging to this category could stay on the current board because, being updated regularly, they wouldn’t need the constant bumping anyway.

I foresee only two problems with my proposal:
1) some people might be tempted to check their own SH multiple times 24/7 just to insure it ends up with the other ‘best of the best’
2) it creates yet another forum to visit (although a link at the top of the current SH board could solve that easily enough)

Folks will eventually catch up to great new authors like Mortepierre and Herreman the Wise et al - they just need to be patient

You just know how to motivate me to keep on writing, don't you?

 

[Spider_Jerusalem]

My tuppence...

Well, I was floating around on these boards... uh... about four years ago. And been swanning in and out up until now.

When i started out there weren't many story hours at all, which meant plenty of attention was gained by an author who managed to make it past that tricky 4 updates hurdle...

(ps. hello to anyone I know here.. i think i saw Enkhidu somewhere)

Anyway. Now that I'm back (and rewriting and reposting and all that jazz), these boards have turned from the old-school trading town to a jumped up (trans)metropolitan city. It's daunting coming back into it. I have no idea who 90% of you are (hello, by the way!), and the sheer bulk of stories I want to look into is gonna set me back some time (screw anything with more than 100 replies for now - gotta be realistic).

What the hell am I talking about? this is just an internal monologue, not a rational point at all.

In summary:

It has changed. More people, more stories, more choice and probably more talent. Which means some writing will sink without being read. Tragic, really. That's it.

Spider.

 

[Krafus]

Hmmm. You know, we could conceivably do this if people thought it would be useful. It would mean moving any storyhour that hadn't been updated by the author in (say) three months into a "Finished Storyhour" archive forum. People could still post in there, but it would leave this forum for active story hours. Any "finished" author who then posts again could easily get it switched back over.

Useful, or added complexity?

If anyone cares, I also think it would be useful. Frequently-bumped SHs would be in a less-crowded forum where bumping would become unnecessary (or at least less frequent), and up-and-coming SHs might well attract more readers. And if this archive forum doesn't work for some reason, we go back to the way things currently are.

 

[Spider_Jerusalem]

Useful, or added complexity?

Useful. Finished story hours should be collected into a seperate forum, but only once the author has agreed to this (creative control etc).

Spider

 

[Lazybones]

What would really be useful is a way of determining when an author has posted to a thread, as opposed to just a bump. Sort of a special subscription. At the moment some authors do edit the thread title to reflect an update.

But for the current discussion, I'm not opposed to the idea of an "emeritus authors" subforum. We do have a storage site for complete stories to be archived, but to be honest I found that so difficult to use (different PW than the main site, which I forgot to write down and thus promptly forgot, plus very limited storage space, so I could not upload my complete story anyway), I never really got much use out of it.

 

[Shemeska]

What would really be useful is a way of determining when an author has posted to a thread, as opposed to just a bump. Sort of a special subscription. At the moment some authors do edit the thread title to reflect an update.

Well I edit the 1st post to reflect the addition of an update on the thread title. Most folks seem to do that to, or were you suggesting something else?

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

JMHO and all that. I'm as guilty as some of bumps, I just try not to be reckless about it...

Sure, you can always use the report button and I, or someone else, can start dropping warnings in the thread.