Prosfic Spoilers - up for discussion again - with a shiny new idea...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

ladymeander contacted me last night with what I think's a fabulous idea to help solve the issue of those-who-want-spoilers vs those-who-don't-want-spoilers, and I said I'd post about it today and see what other people thought. So...

What about setting up a Pros comm dedicated to spoilers for Prosfic? Prosficspoilers could be a place where anyone could go and find the spoiler information they needed. People who don't want spoiler information simply wouldn't go there! It could be used from CI5hq or any other comm, and even by people reading stories on the Circuit Archive, Hatstand, ProsLib or anywhere else that they worried didn't give them enough spoiler information.

People/contributors would simply post their spoiler information at the comm however they want to, and then tag the entry with the title of the story. The tags list would then show a long list of stories with spoiler information and simply clicking the title would bring that information up.

It would keep headers/trailers at all the Pros comms who wanted to use them nice and simple (no worrying about how to do coding of any kind):

Title:
Author:
Pairing: (the one piece of extra information that all but 2/c100 people polled said they wanted - and those 2 people didn't even care what fandom they were reading in *g*)
Story Information: Prosficspoilers [comm link]

And it could be used for new fic as well as reviews/recs, and also for stories where the authors/reccers don't believe in spoilers. For example, I'll never include spoiler information of any kind with one of my stories, but people who wanted that information could post it themselves over at Prosficspoilers and it could be found there.

What do you reckon? I can't believe no one's thought of it before! If people like the idea, then I could set up the comm with the appropriate settings, and then hand it over to anyone who volunteers to be a mod, and it'd be away - no muss, no fuss... *g*

Comments

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

Over at my LJ I've made an example for a post in Prosficspoilers:

http://firlefanzine.livejournal.com/11339.html

How about that? :-)

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

*Blinks* - that is thorough! *g*

Would just the middle section (the one headed CA, although I'm not sure what that means... "about", as in "About the story"?... guessing, mind) be compulsory for everyone who posted to the comm? I imagine the extra info could be added if people wanted to?

And an index post (or two or three) is an alternative to tagging, definitely.

Do you have the black on black code (http://community.livejournal.com/ci5hq/132122.html?thread=2271514#t2271514) from the other post?

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the black on black code! (I'm a bit in a hurry, and I couldn't find it!)

Yes the CA headed part should be compulsory. It's just an example and I thought the one from CA was very usefull.

(Ahem... I don't understand what do you mean with your 'about' question? )

"*Blinks* - that is thorough! *g*"
Well, WTF is something special... :-) Most stories would just have a tiny little header.

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

Oh I get it - CA = Circuit Archive (I was thinking maybe something in German)!

Well, WTF is something special... :-)

OK I have to giggle at that *g*.

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

Ups...! Sorry!
I'm so used to use CA for Circuit Archive.
(Now off to work...)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Bother - just as I got here. Looks like everyone's in favour of the idea, shall I set up the comm today so that we can experiment with things? (I'll be busy over the weekend, I'm afraid)

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

Yes, please do.

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

\o/ YAY!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

prosficspoilers

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oops, you might not see this down below. Right! Done it!

I've chosen the settings etc that seem to fit best (keeping the sidebar clear etc etc) and I made up a User Info page etc, obviously you can change it all to whatever you like once you're the mod instead of me... I'll stay on as mod just until you let me know you're happy to go it alone - I can answer questions etc that way, which will be harder if I can't see what I'm doing/suggesting to that particular set-up.

If you don't like the theme, then of course change it - I didn't have a banner or anything to put up, but we could do that with a different theme if you want (something along the lines of CI5hq's set up would work for that). Not all themes let you have banners or tag lists, so you need to be careful that the one you choose lets you do everything you want.

You might also want to do an introduction post (which you can edit any time, as mod) and link to it in the sidebar - I think this theme allows a links list as well as tags. Or you could actually put a brief post in the actual sidebar itself, because this theme lets you customise a component of the sidebar too.

Reply here to let me know when you've had a chance to join, and then I'll put you on as mod.

prosficspoilers

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

Done.
Looks good!
I can play a bit in the evening. :-)
Thank you!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Excellent - and you're now on as a "maintainer"

(Actually the term "mod" is incorrect when it applies to lj, I think it just came over from the old Lists. In lj the person who has control over design and everything of a comm is called a "maintainer" and a "moderator" is someone who can screen and unscreen comments etc, but that's all. So technically you're now a "maintainer", but you're what everyone calls a mod!)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Morning! Just commented to Firle, and I'm not sure if you're tracking... *g*

I'd really advise using tags instead of an index post though - the problem with an index post is that only the original author can edit it, so while it works in the long term it'd really mess things up if the author went off to other things/became tangled up in real life and couldn't keep up, etc...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Good morning!

That looks good to me, although I'm not someone who's fussed about spoilers, so... Nice to include lots of links to different sites with info too. Maybe you should make a post here at CI5hq showing people your idea, and asking if they'd like any other information? Perhaps show them a "more normal" example as well as the "special" WTF? *g*

Hmmn - just had another look at the post and at KWS's comments below, and I'm a bit confused. I started writing about the problems of using an index post rather than tags, but when I looked at your post again I don't think you suggested doing that - I think that was KWS! Anyway...

The only thing I would suggest (from experience of running comms!) is that if you use the index method it's alot of constant work for you as a mod. You see how far behind I get with various posts when it's all about editing an index/photograph/whatever post - and that's actually not laziness on my part, it's busy days, and other things needing attention, and even sometimes work! (*g*)

I think tagging would be a better way of doing it, for a few reasons:
1 - it's quicker to do for each entry
2 - you can either do it yourself via the comm settings, or you can have other mods doing it too, or you can have people tag their own entries as long as you keep the tagging rules simple. Again I'd advise keeping the tags simple - just the title of the fic, unless there are two fics with the same name, then add the author.
3 - in years time, if you move on or away from the fandom or lj or have real life issues taking up more time, someone else can take over easily. The problem with a single index post is that the author of that post is the only one who can ever edit it.

Actually what I *think* you meant is that if more than one person adds information for the same fic, you'd edit it into your original post - the problem there is that you could only edit it into your posts, so if someone else had posted spoilers for a story it wouldn't work.

If you simply tag each entry that adds spoilers, then when someone clicks on a story in the tag list, it would bring up all the posts/information about it - much less work for you!

I think maybe you meant people who added information via comments - but again that would only work if it was your own post they were commenting to. And do you think there would be so many comments that they would be difficult to read? I know that if I want information about something from a post, I always read the comments anyway - I think most people probably do.

But were you thinking of making all the spoiler posts yourself? I was assuming that any member of the community could make spoiler posts, and share the work that way?

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I really have to hurry to work.
I hope I find some time there to answer... ;-)

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

(I can't post here...)

Ahem... My example was just a 'quick shot' that came to my mind this morning.
So not very elaborated! :-) (And there are even far more infos about WTF... )
What do you mean with 'index method'?
It was indeed my intention to use a tag, maybe for each author one. Because a tag for every story could be maybe a bit overwhelming after a while?!

And no, I wasn't thinking of making all the spoiler posts myself!
In fact I'm hoping for many many participants!!!!!!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

The "index method" was something KWS brought up, not you, it turned out! It's when you make a post with links to all the other posts, giving them index names (like a story title or author or whatever). They can be great, but only the author can edit them, so they're less good for long-term use, I think.

Tags for authors vs titles - I guess it depends how hard/far you want people to have to search. If there are warnings for lots of Kitty Fisher stories, for example, then having a single Kitty Fisher tag would bring up lots of posts that the spoiler-wanter would have to search through to find the right information. Tagging the story titles would take people straight there. As long as the story titles are in alphabetical order, I think it would be okay...

I've just checked, and you can have up to 1000 tags in a basic account. There are alot of stories in Pros, but I think probably not 1000 that need warnings/spoilers of some sort!

Hmmn - maybe you could have a "No warnings" tag and then have a single post listing stories that don't have warnings? Even just listing the title etc as comments to an initial post that said "These stories do not need warnings"? Or you could edit the stories into that list, and then if anyone else took over they could make their own post and just give it the same tag. Again if the titles were alphabetical in the post, it'd be easy enough to find them.

How does that sound?! Easier to do than to describe, I think... *g*

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

" I've just checked, and you can have up to 1000 tags in a basic account. There are alot of stories in Pros, but I think probably not 1000 that need warnings/spoilers of some sort!
... Hmmn - maybe you could have a "No warnings" tag "

1000 is OK! :-)

But I thought we would agree to use warnings for all stories, even when there is only the comment 'no warning needed' so that nobody is spoiled by the bare appearance of the line 'Warnings:' ?! And every post gets that black on black field.
So there would be no need to separate that.

Plus I thought that this IS a spoiler community – so everybody who comes deliberately(!) along, agrees to be spoilered by all those further informations...!!!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, absolutely - I was just thinking it might avoid extra tags in the list, but I agree it'd be better to have tags for all the stories, so that people can see that there's no warnings (well, presumably just none of the normal ones - perhaps people with a phobia of oranges will still need to take care...? *g*)

And it'll take quite a while to get through 1000 tags, I'd think... *g*

Right - I think I have a chance now to create the comm, so I'll go and do that!