Comments on the up again?

Howdy Folks:

I finally broke the 100 mark on comments. Looks like a 3.7 to 1. RK.

Of course such a statement means you are willing to volunteer your services .. LOL. Just send a popup to Flopsy and if she needs you or anyone else who wants to volunteer I am sure she will let them know.

CS

No, there are several of us validaters here, but we don't always post regularly in the forums. It seems that my name is showing as author, yet I am a validater as well.


We try to do our best to keep up with the number of latest additions, but we do have other responsibilities and commitments in our "real lives" in addition to the time spent volunteering here. I know Flopsy has made numerous "recruitment" attempts in the past, but it is difficult to find a corps of volunteers who can consistently validate the stories. And validating is not as easy a task as you may think!

Fixed.

If you want more validaters, I'd probably be willing to volunteer, depending on the workload expectations.For what it's worth, now I see Janine as a validater but not an author anymore.

She is def both! (and good at both)

I do understand your stance, Janine, and feel sure that there is much more to validation than may meet the eye. I do want to praise and congratulate the validaters for the excellent job they do and only wish I had the time available to help out, sadly, I don't. Hopefully, others will step up.

I suspect this has been suggested before, but just in case, is there any way authors could be allowed to put tentative labels on their stories, that would of course be checked/fixed by the validaters but would in the meantime give potential readers at least an idea what they might find inside?

From my professional life, I know that sometimes fixing inexpert labelings like this can be easier than labeling from scratch, and sometimes it can be harder. It's hard to know which would be the case here, but my instinct is "easier".

RosieRad's suggestion makes a lot of sense to me. I can enjoy just about any spanking orientation (M/F, F/M, etc.), but folks who have a strong preference one way or another would benefit from having the tags visible at the time the story is initially posted. The tags for things such as age, gender, etc. are straightforward enough that it's unlikely that the validater would have to change them. The sexual content tag is more subjective, but with that one I've often wondered if there may be some differences in the way the individual validaters assign that particular tag.

Building on RosieRad's suggestion, it might even be worth considering allowing the authors to include a synopsis each submission. In my mind, this would be beneficial in two ways - It will help readers focus on the stories that are of most interest to them and it may help save some time for the validaters.

Once we have caught up on the current backlog (not much of a backlog at all compared to the early days when we had thousands!) the stories tend to get validated within a few days, and given the fact there are 26,000 stories in the library, surely folks can divert their attention to some of those if they can't wait for the icons to be assigned on the newest batch.


Actually, they're not as straightforward as you might think, and we work to our own set of guidelines to try and ensure consistency. Some authors send their stuff in with incompatible tags that we don't use, so we disregard them and leave it to the validaters to assign at the time they write the synopsis.
What would really save a lot of time would be if authors looked at the author guide to make sure that what they send in is error free and has been proofread, and their email clearly states whether the item is a single stand alone story, or a serial part, or an ordered series etc.
We have toyed with the idea of developing some software which would allow authors to enter pertinent details at the time they submit, but such a project would be complicated and time consuming for Februs, and the submitted data would still require a lot of checking at this end.
So what we are looking for are a core of reliable people with an eye for detail, an understanding of grammar and punctuation and the necessary editorial skills - and who are prepared to devote their time every week for what is basically a mainly thankless task. If we had more helpers, then we wouldn't have a backlog.
But in the meantime, I'd suggest people make more use of the site - use the search function, browse the bookcases, visit favourite author pages, drop into the Lucky Dip etc. The latest loaded pages were set up as a management tool for admin, but now we find people camp out on there without bothering to look elsewhere on the site at all those thousands of items that have been validated already...