Last Author post and locking

M

Mythantor

Heya new to the forums and noticing an irritation.

People posting in Threads that have been abandoned by the author for years. Looking for fictions, finds one that has posts from today only to find the actual story was abandoned years ago.

Shouldnt some of the "dead" threads be locked at some point?
 
Mythantor said:
Heya new to the forums and noticing an irritation.

People posting in Threads that have been abandoned by the author for years. Looking for fictions, finds one that has posts from today only to find the actual story was abandoned years ago.

Shouldnt some of the "dead" threads be locked at some point?
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That's not a thing we do; our view is that if people want to talk about a story, they can talk about the story, regardless of when the last post was.
 
Even if such a tag were created, I would be leery of the consequences of automatically adding it to dormant threads. Sounds like a good way to offend authors, possibly to the point of convincing them to delay or cancel updates.
 
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I mean, I've certainly not updated a fic for more than three years lol. :V

Stuff happens. Just because authors don't write doesn't mean we don't think about it.
 
Mythantor said:
Hiatus doesn't mean dead, maybe a tag would prompt some authors to stop procrastinating? 😀
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Authors don't owe you updates, tovarisch. I will rephrase a previous point: attempts to prod an author to update in such a manner are just as likely to provoke spite in said author as motivation. I, at least, don't want that.
 
Yeah. A thoughtful comment on the fic, showing what you liked, that you put a good deal of thought into it, etc. That's much more likely to engage the author than automatically putting their thread on hiatus when there's so many possible reasons for not posting. From lack of motivation, lack of time, lack of ability, writers block and so many more.
 
What about new authors? Who struggle to have their work found when the front pages are filled with stories that haven't been updated in years?
 
I'm not sure if I quite count as a new author anymore, with a Quest approaching first birthday, but I don't think works without current updates but with ongoing discussion in their thread are a very significant contributor to the front pages being 'clogged'; just the fact that there are so many ongoing stories will do that. If one wants to get new readers from the front page, one needs a lively thread and some luck, and there's no real substitute for that. Any measure of kicking other stuff off the front page strong enough to matter in any large-scale way would be monstrously draconian, I think.
 
Mythantor said:
when the front pages are filled with stories that haven't been updated in years?
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Can you show actual evidence of a significant period of time where everything (or even 50% of things) on page 1 of User Fiction was user discussion of stories that hadn't had a new chapter for years?
 
grommile said:
Can you show actual evidence of a significant period of time where everything (or even 50% of things) on page 1 of User Fiction was user discussion of stories that hadn't had a new chapter for years?
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I have neither the time, skills or inclination to conduct an in depth survey as to the ratio of inactive to active fictions presented to the casuals reader.
My sole point when opening this thread was to vent about my irritation upon checking out multiple threads that claimed to be updated recently, only to find the story Itself hadn't been updated in years.
 
Forums like SV and SB have the exact opposite problem to this - the actual issue is that by and large people just discover stuff on the front page and old fics are forgotten about because the forum structure isn't really set up for discoverability and browsing.
 
Mythantor said:
My sole point when opening this thread was to vent about my irritation upon checking out multiple threads that claimed to be updated recently, only to find the story Itself hadn't been updated in years.
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All my threads have been updated in the last two weeks if you're looking for something to read. We've got hot polygamous lesbians in YOUR area, and they want you to read THEIR stories.
 
If you're looking for recently updated stories, rather than recently discussed stories, go to the Filters dropdown (just above the thread list on the far right) and choose "Last threadmark" in the "sort by" section. This sort is pretty efficient for following a bunch of stories at once or for finding hot ones.

If you're looking to discover old stories, instead sort by thread reaction score or word count, or sort by first message ascending and skip to the pages representing the time span you're interested in.

You can do all of that without interfering with omake activity or new discussions of old stories.
 
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