@Wreybies From my perspective, it was a small show of appreciation for the wonderful community you guys have built here.
Can I just check Wrey do you want us to finish the last 4 months (may to feb 2012) or are you calling time on the project now we are sub 6k ?
Lounge unless chicken has already battered it into shape..... mmm Battered chicken.... [/homer simpson]
Stumbles out of the jungle into the sunlight, brushing off cobwebs and mumbling insanely about "how can i write book" threads and copyright violations. Joins @Tenderiser and @mashers by the camp fire ... "Dr Livingstone and Stanley, I presume ..... well met old friends, well met.... now pass me that flaggon of ale, lets get inebriated, while we wait for @Wreybies and the others to join us" We done it
I just found a few more .... my name's Pete and i'm an ETBaholic (incidentally thread count is now on 5904 :whoop: )
Final? I haven't completely my innings yet. Plowed/ploughed through another 25 pages or so yesterday and today, and picked up quite a few that can be moved. I've got back to June 2012. That means there's another 83 pages to review. The mods are probably sick of hearing me say it, but it'd be really helpful/appropriate/nice if we had a separate subforum, under Resources, maybe, for threads about writing orgs (not critique groups), courses, conferences, conventions, exterior contests, that kind of thing. Pretty please?
Sorry I forgot you were still lost in the jungle. You could probably stop at February 2012 where I did. 2006 to 2011 has been pretty thoroughly ploughed by @Tenderiser and @mashers . Resources is a something of a mess (IMO it has too many sub groups as is) - it may be one for team ETB to sort out, once we've hacked through the impenetrable jungle of the lounge (also I think I'm right in saying that Wrey can't create new forums in there or in the top quarter of the board, only Daniel can do that)
Only Daniel can do it, and he's not due another appearance until the next blue moon. While sorting, I started to think about a list of sticky threads that would be useful - some of the topics that come up frequently and have a definitive answer, rather than the common subjective questions about prologues, person, POV, etc. Maybe we can all chip in and produce a list, and then we can see if there are any volunteers to write stickies for each of them? Copyright Issues: Can I use song lyrics in my work? Can I mention real people and places? Can I include brand names like Coca Cola? Plagiarism and Protecting My Work: How can I protect my WIP when sharing it? (There's a current thread on this and I think the posts in there could be made into a sticky.) Word count: I've already done a sticky on this but I'm not sure it's in the right forum (publishing). Thoughts? Anything else?
People don't read the stickies ... that's a fact of forum life (not just here).. may be these could go in the forum Faq section or in resources ? That aside 2 common topics are getting started, not sure what to write about, my life isnt interesting etc and beating writers block
Oh, my experience is opposite - people do read stickies if they have an obvious title. But anyway, at least it would create a link we can post in each repetitive thread rather than typing out the info again and again. Neither of those has a definitive answer though, so a sticky could only give one person's views... which isn't very useful.
Agreed. Stickies are a waste of time for the most part. The best solution I have seen is on StackOverflow. As you’re typing the question title, it automatically searches for existing threads about that topic and shows them in a list. This discourages people from posting the same question over and over again. So if somebody started typing “how many words”, then threads would pop up about things like “how many words should be in a novel” etc. There might be a Xenforo plug-in to achieve a similar result. Of course this won’t help with people who use non-descript thread titles. I think that certain words, in isolation, should be blacklisted from thread titles. That way people won’t be able to post a thread with the title “help” or “question”. Perhaps even a minimum word count on thread titles would help to encourage people to write a meaningful title for their thread.
On pointing people to stickies , we'd have to check with @Wreybies but I suspect that that comes under the unfriendly heading along with telling people to use the search function. On the definitive answers - we'd need to be very careful about stating anything as an absolutely definitive answer .... for example on copyright giving a truly definitive answer really requires a specialist IP lawyer... doing so without being one leads to law suits I understand that that is going to be core functionality on Xenforo2 (which is in beta at the moment) , of course migrating to the new version of the software will be another thing that needs daniel.... we my have to go on a Daniel hunt... and anyway I'd suspect most admins will want to wait a while after release to ensure its not less stable than a celebrity marriage
Both could give some common answers - precised from the many many threads about them.... as i said above we can't give a truly definitive answer to most of the others either
I think I would agree if the person literally just said “read the stickies”. But if they said “just so you know, there is a sticky thread about this. Here’s a link”, then this should be fine. However, this doesn’t prevent forum clutter - the thread has still been created and is still visible in the list. So I think it would be better to take steps to prevent those threads from being posted in the first place. I’m glad they’ve incorporated it. It might be easier to install a plugin to the existing version, if such a plugin exists, even if this is a stopgap until XF2 is well and truly out of beta.
I was a member of a forum where the threads-with-similar-titles came up as you typed. It was really good!
Its available as a free plug in "Similar Threads v 5.3 " However again I think you'll find that only daniel has keys to the engine room, so wrey isnt able to add turbo and nitrous injection however much he might want to The only other downside is that it does lead to an increase in really old threads being Necroed
