2012-06-04

Um, I suppose you guys were all tired of FFN now, but I just noticed this update

Today when I log on FFN, I found a new feature called "Image Manager". There are currently 2 tabs:

Infor/guide:

Images serve as book covers for your stories and identity logos for your forums and communities. Using images will give your content a special visual identity and act as an agent to attract more readers/members.

You can use the Image Manager to Upload, Edit, and Replace your collection of images.

You can re-use an Image for multple items. No need to upload the same image muliple times for different items.

The limit on the number of images you can have is: 10 + Number of Stories Published.

Image Guidelines:

All the Site Guidelines apply.

Posting adult/provactive images are not allowed will result in the immediate removal of your account

Posting purposefully distracting, "blinding" images are not allowed, i.e. images with solid neon colors.

You must have the required permission and rights to use the image that you upload.

Manage(upload)
Warning: Posting adult/provactive images are not allowed and will result in the immediate removal of your account.

Please see the Image Guide for more info and guidelines.

Privacy Note: In this age of limited online privacy, we highly recommend our members not to submit personal photographs.

Supported image file formats: .jpeg, .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, .tiff.

Important: For maximum image clarity we recommend images with a 6/9 width to height ratio with dimensions of 300x450 or larger.

There is a maximum limit of images allowed equal to 10 + Number of Stories Published.

Changes can take up to 24 hours but often shorter to be relected on the public facing site.

I did post some picture in there and it worked, but those pictures still sat there because they haven't updated the feature to stick the pictures to stories yet.

This message appeared a while later:

Public Announcement

Image Manager feature is now rolling out for the entire site and is currently pre-activated for Forums. Communities and Stories will be activated next once we confirm the feature is stable with the Forums.

In the meantime, you can get ready by uploading your existing story covers and community logos.

I suppose after messing up unnecessary things like forum outline and review button, they made something good for once, but it's still half done. :/ I really wanna try this though.

Oh, and I guess we would have to be very careful to use this because something like picture copyright is quite a tender subject.

The new story area

It sucks. Enough said.

(no subject)

I like how on the "edit story" page it says images are totally optional, but it makes you pick one anyway. (either your avatar or another image). Nice, guys, really nice.

Captcha Issues?

Okay, so after reading one of the previous posts on here about how FFDN is purging stories because of an aggressive group of organized prudes (EEK!), I tried to log into my account.

Five times I tried. Five times I was told the captcha was wrong.

Um... Que? How can anyone get those captchas wrong? They're four distinct letters; even if you had to use the audio, I still can't imagine anyone having too much difficulty figuring it out the first time.

I checked my stories and they're still there, with no negative reviews or flags or anything (never have I been more glad to fly under the radar than now). So I can rule that particular issue out. And also, I know my login. It was correct, and the site said I'd entered the captcha incorrectly; I'm pretty sure if it had been my login or my password, it would have come up. The only other thing I can think of is that I haven't updated my stories for a few months, due to college and my hard drive dying and then having to wait six weeks for the OS discs to come my way, but considering the number of deadfics on the site, I can't bring myself to believe that's the issue, either.

I've emailed support, but is anyone else having this problem? And is there a way around it?

ETA: Okay, it let me log in after a bit. *breathes deep* Phew. But still... FFDNet is getting curiouser and curiouser.

AO3 invites available

I have five available if anyone wants them. PM me with your e-mail address.

IMHO, FanFiction.net has committed a major public relations blunder. There's no reason, except sheer laziness, for them to not have a section for MA fics, accessible only to registered members who confirm by clicking on a link that they are over eighteen and wish to read the material. Fiction encompasses a lot of subjects that are unpalatable to many, but readers should have the option of choosing what they want to read.

I heard that they originally disallowed MA fics to kowtow to advertisers who don't want their banner ad appearing over a story that's PWP or excessively smutty. If this is true, fine. There's a way to keep ads from appearing on those pages, but they refuse to do the necessary coding. Several fans have apparently contacted these advertisers directly, saying they refuse to buy a product or service advertised on a site that's run this way, and gotten responses from company reps who had no idea this was going on.

I refuse to deal with them. AO3 is my haven of choice, and despite its frequent outages, it's truly a site for the imaginative fan.

(no subject)

I just wanted to point out, for anyone moving to AO3, they have an official LJ account at

otw_news. You can keep up with announcements, news, and other fandom-y things (they post a lot of fandom-related articles and events over there), and if you have any questions, just ask on one of the posts over there. I've asked a few things before and I've always received a response within 24 hours.

ERRATUM : number of deleted stories on ffnet

It seems that I made a big mistake in my previous table, comparing the figures coming from the categories's pages and others who are from each fandom's page.

I didn't use the page category to assess the current number of stories because I attributed the difference to a delay in updating. However, if the update is not immediate, the difference was due mostly to another reason: the categories page has also attached to the fandom crossovers (seriously, you knew that?).

The number of missing fics, was therefore added that of the fandoms's crossovers. This explains the result for Buffy and Dr Who.

In short, the previous picture is completely false. (mea culpa, mea culpa)

In case your confidence in my statistics has not completely disappeared...

It turns out that I had made a recovery of categories' pages on the May 30. When the result is compared to that of pages retrieved May 28 (published on wikipedia), you get this:

So, good news, few stories have actually disappeared (which does not alter the fact that it is unpleasant for authors and readers concerned).

Downloader stopped working

The program that I always use to download stories from fanfiction.net has stopped working. (http://fanfictionloader.appspot.com/) It still works with other sites, but the one I need it to work with. I tried it with several stories, but every single one comes up as nothing to download. Which means, now I have to go back to copying each file into word individually and then using Calibre to convert them to Mobi format. It's bad enough that any of my favorite stories could disappear at any time thinks to this stupid purge, but now I don't have a way to back them up. (And there is no other program I can use, because the security system on my computer blocks all the other programs that got mentioned in the thread.)

Right now, I should have gone to bed about half an hour ago, but I'm not going to be able to relax until I find another way to save any story I might want to read. (I mean, I'm still trying to figure out how to find the story I most want to read when no one is writing it--except for me, but I can't satisfy myself with my own story.)

Image feature-A warning to everyone who have stories up on FFN

Apparently, the image feature is up and running. I't just a small picture (like1/3 our avatar), but it's not a problem. The biggest problem is: They automatically cropped your AVATAR to make it cover to all of your stories. If your avatar is copyrighted image, immediately go to FFN and replace them with something safe, blank image or anything.

To replace image:
-Go to image manager, upload something.
-Go to Publish>Manage stories> Change image.

I'm fearing for my favorite old fics now. Most of those authors are no longer active. If this lead to the deletion of those stories I would curse FFN forever.

And it's funny that there were no copyright rule on avatar, so they didn't even have the right to blame us for not following rules on that >_>

If your friends have FFN account, spear the words to them. Better safe than sorry.

Downloading fics on iPod

I was wondering if anyone knew of an app or program you can use on your iPod that allows you to download fanfics easily from FF.net, i'm unable to access to my computer for a while so i'm backing up my favorite ones on notes but it's friggin' annoying, i'm not even halfway of them and i already want to throw the damned device away. I really need the name of any! It's kinda urgent

EDIT : thanks a lot, it really worked and now my favorite stories are safe on it :D