Some thinky thoughts on DW and maybe some cranky thoughts

[amalthia]

Yesterday evening I had a startling realization (hope that's the right word)

Right now, at DW they say the character posting limit with spaces is 300,000 thousand, for comments it's 10,000 characters. I did some math and opened a few stories in MS Word to use the word count feature, 300,000 characters with spaces is roughly 50k words a person can post at once.

Now, when DW first came about and I saw this I was VERY HAPPY. I think I was unrealisticly optomisitc or stupid. I thought that authors would see that this is better than what's offered from LJ. (and maybe they do...)

So far during the closed beta, what I've seen is a lot of authors cross posting, and yesterday I ran across a story that's supposed to be 100,000k plus words but the author is posting it over the next few weeks and I think at the end it's going to be 14 chapters. Luckily she said she'll provide a single file when it's done getting posted. However, that's not the problem.

I ended up writing to ask why is she posting the story in such small chapters at DW since technically the limit should be around 50k words...I found out she's cross posting to LJ and well as everyone knows LJ has a 10k word limit (give or take a few hundred words) Not going to go into a whole other rant of authors that have completed stories (or so they say) but don't post it at once for a variety of reaons that only sound good to them. Truly if your story is still in editing mode it's not complete so please don't lie and say it's complete, I find that highly annoying. Be honest, it's a wip. And if it's completely complete post the damned story already! This dragging out stories by posting 4k word at a time for a 100,000 word story is annoying and if you're a so-so writer chances are your story really isn't good enough to convince people to come back for the rest later. If you're a good author you drive people like me to want to pull a Kathy Bates in Misery on your ass. No I'm not picking on any one particular author because lets face it too many have done this by now (including some of my favorite authors ever). And well truly I think all my real friends know this is my biggest pet peeve ever in the history of fandom.

Moving back on topic....

This is problematic. If everyone posting stories via DW but cross posting to LJ then they are kind of downgrading to LJ limitiations, so then what's the point of even moving to DW then???

I do hope communities move over to DW because really I could not have been the only one overwhelmed with Master Posts at the Big Bang Challenges where there are 20 plus chapters because the LJ posting limit is so small that anyone that wrote over 100,000 words really had a lot of chapters.

After last night I figured maybe it's not a bad idea to take a break from fandom for awhile because I got rather upset (more so than I actually expected) and I thought I did rather well on keeping my anger in check and not take it out on the poor author who had the misfortune to be the last straw on this camel's back. I think I'm tired of merging stories to read. I can't read at work (LJ is blocked) I don't have the energy or time to open 40 chapters and save them (okay I could but I really don't feel I should have to just thinking of it makes me want to cry) So anytime I see a story that's over 3 posts I just don't even want to go there anymore. At this point it's less work converting OCR novels from IRC to ebook format than fan fiction. Hell, at this point I'm revisiting HP because they have these lovely places called archives where I can get a 300,000 word story into a single post with a click of a button. I'm also reading more Doctor Who fan fiction because it seems like a much bigger fandom when you see how many fics are archived at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind

I think I was getting tired of LJ as an archiving community long before DW came out and when I found out that DW had increased posting limits, I think I got my hopes up high so it kind of hurt worse when they were dashed.

I've been a fan fiction writer and reader so I think I can kind of see both sides, but for this issue I'm coming at it as a reader that just wants long stories in single files. I know it's a lot to ask and I shouldn't feel entitled to it but it's one of my biggest wishes.

Basically, in my head I feel like I have two seperate issues mixed up together but ultimately I think I'm burning out, between work, school, converting stories for the Ebook Library and it's making it harder to feel reasonable when I see 100,000 word stories posted in 10 plus chaptered posts.

One last thing before I stop talking and dig myself a deeper hole...

Does anyone have a single file version of fleshflutter's Someone you might have been ??? She said she was working on creating one but it's been a month and at 39 chapters...I haven't had the time to even open all the chapters and save them. Also I know she's busy working on her Big Bang.

Comments

[concernedlily]

I did not know this! (I knew comment limits were higher but not that post limits were so much higher.) But that's great... if, as you say, people will take advantage of it, I'm sorry it's depressing you that they might not.

Now I know, I'll probably post things in one post here because I also prefer one long file, but then there are some people who are adamant they don't want to leave lj even to come over and comment, so there's the possibility of losing readers - but it doesn't seem like that much more work to me to make one long post here and post separately in parts at lj, since all the work is posting multi-part stories is pretty much in going back and linking them through.

[amalthia]

If I wrote, and I plan on doing it again someday! I'd probably post the long fic to DW and just add the header post with links at LJ, JF, and IJ. It seems like a lot less work than splitting a story up and adding links to all the chapters.

I still think the readers will follow the authors. readers didn't just show up at LJ and say here we are! so the authors could come to them! :) People started posting fic to LJ and the readers found out and came running.

DW does have some advantages the other LJ clones didn't have, so I'm cautiously optomistic. sholio brought up a good point that while DW is still in beta to not expect much because very few people would only post to DW since not all their friends have accounts at DW.

[elf]

I'm hoping some of them will eventually do the "long post at DW, headers-only post at LJ with a redirect for comments." And I expect more comms & fests will archive at DW than individual people.

I expect a lot of people to get a DW account pretty much just to make a few comments, and they'll post here for a while, but then give up on real activity here. They'll continue to crosspost because it's easy, but they'll be annoyed when comments happen here instead of LJ. And eventually, a lot of them will stop crossposting and maintain their presence on LJ.

That's what happened on IJ, and while DW offers a lot more nifty features, the code issues aren't what drove people away; the siren song of the 1400-person active community did.

[amalthia]

Well technically if we can get the writers, icon makers, and community maintainers to move over the rest will follow. However, I have no clue how to accomplish that. I know for me if I ran a fic community I'd want to move over because it seems like it would make my life easier if we only had to tag a story as it was posted and not all the chapters as well.

is it possible to import communities?

I also don't know how the DW experiment will go but so far I'm liking it. (It's not blocked at work yet so that's a big plus) :)

I also hope more authors post their long stories here and add the header post to LJ. I would think it would be less work to do that than splitting longer works up into multiple chapters and creating links for them.

[merrin]

I had no idea the limit was so high, that's pretty exciting. I don't see myself ever writing anything longer than 50k, so I should be able to fit it all on one page, which is flippin' sweet.

The only time I've done a serial, I didn't have it finished when I started, and it was kind of part of the concept anyway, that it happen over 12 days, but yeah. I ALSO LOATHE waiting for stories, especially when the stories are from mediocre authors. And let's face it, most of the people doing that are pretty mediocre. The ones I've run across anyway. Mostly I just see those shenanigans and turn tail.

[amalthia]

lol, I didn't want to point that out myself. But truly the really good writers I think have the confidence to just post their complete story at once because they know if it's good people will comment.

But what most weaker writers don't realize is that if you don't have to think about hitting the next link, or worse yet have to remember to come back the next day, most people will continue reading until the end of the story. I know I got through some weaker stories because I had the whole thing in my hand and some of them did get better later, but if I had an out earlier on in the story I would have taken it. And to me making your reader wait a day or a week to read the next part is giving them an easy escape route.

[merrin]

Dude, nothing, and I mean NOTHING, pisses me off more than blithely following a story along and waiting for new bits only to get those bits and have them SUCK DONKEY BALLS. I'm serious. If I had it all in my hand to start with, for some reason that makes it about a million times less annoying. But the waiting and the anticipation? Forget about it. That happened just recently with someone I really love and it BROKE MY FREAKING HEART. Because the ONE TIME I finally lift the no wips rule, that shit happens.

But I have totally plowed through things that weren't that bad, because it doesn't take any effort. Tracking it would have taken effort.

[amalthia]

this wouldn't by any chance be Dodger Winslow's Skin Deep story would it??? I've also ignored my no wip rule and she hasn't updated in ages. :(

I also agree, if you have to wait and the new chapters sucks it's worse somehow. I felt the same way when Robert Jordan posted his new books and after waiting for 2 years! I had very high expectations...His books after Lords of Chaos were never quite that good if you have to wait 2 years between each one. But read all at the same time...they sort of work.

[merrin]

Hahaha, it's not. I'll email you about which one it was, because I feel kind of bad now for the donkey balls comment. There are slight extenuating circumstances as to why this pissed me off so hard core, but still. Not a good ending.

I've never read the Jordan books for JUST THAT REASON. And then he DIED WITHOUT FINISHING THEM.

[amalthia]

Man, I had no clue he'd die before finishing his series back when I started reading them in 1995! I really thought it would be fished at least by book 8 but then he kept introducing more and more characters! it was crazy!

[merrin]

Haha, it sounds like it. :p