Front Page Update
by Crowe (Admin) - published: June 11, 2004
Word Count: 318 Word Bytes: 1731 Viewed: 1348 times
Category - Lit.Org
© Copyright by Crowe

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Lit.Org has been growing lately, and by leaps and bounds. Not too long ago we updated the system to double the amount of submissions validated daily and it just wasn't enough. Poetry has been growing the most. Jessica did a wonderful job trying to keep it all straight and lately I've been trying to do so to no avail. The number of submissions is 3-4 times the number of items validated daily which means the queue doesn't get much smaller. It's been hovering at around 120 items in the queue per day.

Now, I could validate more, but that would have meant you would have been on the front page for about 6 hours before you were bumped. Not good! I've been trying to give each piece 2 days on the front page.

Some of the other categories are slower so what I've done is combine the News & Features into one channel and moved stories up beside it. Second up is Poetry, which is now 2 columns wide! We can now validated between 40-60 per day! This is a huge jump from just 20. Last, I also doubled the amount of comments on the front page. If we need to, I'll also nudge a few more in there as needed.

Hopefully this will help clear out the backlog. In the future we may have no choice but to build alternate pages for each of the "major" categories, but I think this will work for a while to come.

This only leaves one problem. There are a few people who are FLOODING the queue with multiple submissions. In the very near future I will be adding code to limit the number of items in the queue to one time to somewhere between 3-4. This should solve that problem as well. You should remove all but 3-4 of your items now as I'll be adding this code soon.

------
Chrispian H. Burks
Creator and Editor
http://www.Lit.Org

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Comments

The following comments are for "Front Page Update"
by Crowe

Good
Good show Chris, good show. Looks great. :D

~Jessica

( Posted by: Jessicanm [Member] On: June 11, 2004 )

re: thanks!
And thank you for keeping me in line ;) As always, I'm sure there is wiggle room for improvement so suggestions are welcome.

Later this weekend I'll spend some time making it look a little better so the different sections are more clearly defined since things moved around a bit.

( Posted by: crowe [Admin] On: June 11, 2004 )

here's hoping
Currently, like the last time you changed the site, the background is a very dark grey while the print is black. I'm hoping that it is temporary and will return to normal.

( Posted by: Penelope [Member] On: June 11, 2004 )

re: dark
Pen, I didn't change any design stuff. If I remember right, last time you had to hit shift + refresh. The only thing I changed was the words on the page, not the styles or anything. That's very odd that this happened to you again. Let me know if it clears up when you hit shift + refresh. If that doesn't work, try clearing your cache (let me know if you need help with that).

( Posted by: crowe [Admin] On: June 12, 2004 )

memory
You aren't remembering correctly. I didn't hit shift & refresh. The problem just worked it's way out in some magical way.

( Posted by: Penelope [Member] On: June 12, 2004 )

poetry
Chris,

I know I am new to the site, but I think you have the balance right. I like to look at every poetry submission on the front page. Like most people, I have to borrow the time and if there are a lot of submissions or they move away quickly, I miss them.

As, for submitting items, I feel that having to wait a few days before being published, gives me time to catch up on reading others work and in reallity make you appreciate the work you all do for us more. I can see no reason why we should be able to submit more than one piece at a time. Only yesterday I submitted a poem that was validated the same day, I think I lost the pleasure of 'waiting' for it to appear.

Your comments section on the front page is a stoke of genious, it allows me to follow the comments of authors I respect and leads me to more authors, I can then browse their entire collection and also read in categories I would not otherwise have seen.

Hats off to you and your team, this is a brilliant site and well managed.

Ivor

( Posted by: ivordavies [Member] On: June 12, 2004 )

Thanks!
With the patient help of Chris/Crowe .. I am now back into the normality of LitOrg.

( Posted by: Penelope [Member] On: June 12, 2004 )

Looks good
Looks good, Crowe. I actually think it looks a lot 'cleaner' if that makes sense. Thanks for your hard work.

( Posted by: Elphaba [Member] On: June 13, 2004 )

lay-outs
I think you are doing a great job with the design and lay-out. I also want to complement your sensitivity about keeping pieces posted for a spell before they hit the archives. Although I don't have much to do with poetry, I appreciate its right to exist, so you did what you had to do.
Not here or there, but I will be contributing eventually, since I am so aware that servers aren't free. Thanks for the format.

( Posted by: brickhouse [Member] On: June 13, 2004 )

Can I??
make a suggestion? Make this post stand out more from the rest. I think lots are overlooking the fact that its here and if you really want to clear up the queue you're going to have to draw more attention to this. Plus I'm not sure a lot of members here of late know how to go and delete their own stuff, it might be helpful to post that too.

Just my two yen as Bart would say.

~Jessica

( Posted by: Jessicanm [Member] On: June 13, 2004 )

overdue
This is the best change to lit.org since the new layout! Great job, Chris.

I'd like to donate, but due to PayPal's questionable ethics, I cannot. At least via that portal. I'd love to send you a MO.. Email me your address if you think that works, too :)

One more thing .. I've been wondering if a point system for commenting and voting might work. Such as, you get 1 point for a comment, 1 point for a vote (the user whose piece you voted on would also recieve a point). User titles like on the forums could be interesting ;) Custom title when you hit like 10,000 points or something...

Food for thought ;) Figured I'd bring it up here so other peeps can mull it over.

Keep it rollin', amigo!

( Posted by: rogan [Member] On: June 13, 2004 )

point system
Rogan's suggestion is a good one. It might encourage more of the posters here to get into commenting on other submissions. When you compare the number of members to the number of commenters, there is an imbalance. Although this might encourage more fluff comments it still has some merit.

( Posted by: Penelope [Member] On: June 13, 2004 )

I disagree
Nah, the points system is going to end up as more work for Chris and staff. And truthfully the man has a lot on his plate as it is. There's a rating system that he wants to do and that's been on the to-do list for awhile. I don't see it as beneficial either, there isn't any real gain for doing it that way. In my opinion. I don't know, guess it's just personal opinion, but I think competition like that around the site could back fire in the wrong hands.
~Jessica

( Posted by: Jessicanm [Member] On: June 14, 2004 )

Breeding Familiarity: Pop Quiz
It strikes me that the points suggestion is intended to prompt more participation from members, most particularly, the culling of a friendly kind of familiarity between writers that makes for better critical commentary and craft-focused conversation. I have a somewhat insane suggestion which may be completely unworkable, but I'd like to throw it out there.

What if there were a game? A trivia game matching obscure fragments of member's work with their authors? Members could submit a limited number of words from their least-viewed or most unlike-themselves work (with the requirement that it is currently published on this site) during the week and a kind of pop-quiz format could be built of up to 30 snippetts and a multiple choice list of members beneath. The quiz-taker with the most correct answers (A Pop Star! A Busy Bee!) and the item-submitter with the least number of correct identifications (A Slippery Devil! A Sly Fox!) could both be acknowledged as the prior week's winners on the front page when the quiz is refreshed. A prize could be given in granting a top spot of whichever appropriate column to both winners for their submissions the following week.

Having said all this, I'm shaking my head at myself because I realize the idea would entail a lot of work. I present it, here, though, because it would be an interesting way to motivate members to read a greater cross-section of work, expose more unread and/or new-to-the-site authors to a wide audience (in snippets like appetizers) and simultaneously an amusing way to soften the blow of having a published entry with no rating, no comments and very little in the way of viewership -- one could always mutter out an aside in this case "Well, at any rate, I've got winner's material for the next pop quiz"

( Posted by: hazelfaern [Member] On: June 14, 2004 )

ps Crowe
The site, as always, looks better and better. I like the new double columns for poetry and comments. I really, really can't-express-it-in-words-and-that's-something appreciate the comment-delay being turned off. I honestly believe this makes for better communication even if it does leave the site vulnerable to that occasional spark of irritation which from time to time leads to messy verbal conflagration. Hopefully, we'll all mind our p's and q's and drop our comments with level-headed consideration -- if so, I'll be beaming widely for some time to come.

( Posted by: hazelfaern [Member] On: June 14, 2004 )

re: changes
Thanks for everyone's input. Jessica, as always, has the pulse of the situation. It was her prodding me that made these changes come about!

A point system has been thrown about a bit here and there and frankly, alot of the point recording is alread in place. The hard part is finding a way to make the points meaningful without hurting the system, which works fairly well.

I have a pretty large list of items I want to add to the site, among the first is improved profile pages and author/story alerts (like you get at fanfiction.net, for those who visit there). We have a lot of cool features planned and I hope to do something with a point system down the road. Perhaps this coming weekend I'll post the Lit.Org to do list to let everyone see what we've got in mind.

Keep the comments coming and thanks for the compliments and support!

( Posted by: crowe [Admin] On: June 14, 2004 )

"Update"
I feel you're managing lit.org just right.

A point system sounds like too much needless competition.

Thumbs down to a "point system."

Just keep it simple, daddy-o.

( Posted by: gomarsoap [Member] On: June 15, 2004 )

long time
damn its been a long time since i visited....have some catching up to do...
good to see everything is working around here... :D

( Posted by: northerain [Member] On: June 15, 2004 )

glad to see
It's amazing (and refreshing) to see the way that this site has grown. I'm so glad that 've been a part of this community...it's wonderful.

Chris, thanks for all of the hard work that goes into this website. You have helped me (and I'm sure many others) more than you could understand. =D

( Posted by: Darkshine Raven [Member] On: June 16, 2004 )

Hi Chrispian
I am relatively new here and I am glad to have stumbled upon this article, and the following comments. In regards to deleting our own submissions, what would be a good place to start.
Is there a number of submissions that we each should have on Lit.org, as a limit? Any suggestions would be fine. I have been trying not to submit lots as I first was, but now maybe every several days I put on a couple of things. I will put in less submissions myself. I am glad to be a part of the "Family" here. I want to read SO much, but haven't all the time. I am making time for it though, each and every day. I love this site!!!

( Posted by: Dareva [Member] On: June 16, 2004 )

I love it here...
Lit.org has been a Godsend for me. I love it here. Love the writers. You are doing a wonderful job Chris. Thought the comments on the first page was a stroke of genius. I too follow comments from writers I respect. Thank you.

Nae

( Posted by: nae411 [Moderator] On: June 17, 2004 )

for shizzle
Ew. The front page looks so crappy and confusing. Err, wait. Nah, only joking. I love it.

Best website on the web for writers, seriously, and the extra space for poetry submissions and comments is really great. Tankie.

( Posted by: die_daily [Member] On: June 17, 2004 )

hey.
It'd be cool if we could see who's favorite author list we are on. Just a thought.

( Posted by: die_daily [Member] On: June 24, 2004 )

saved from the crabby monster
just when i was about to get ornery about my most recent poem getting bumped off the front page so quickly, you revamped things. so i am pleased, and forgiving, and awfully glad the site exists at all. thank you, thank you, crowe. your work is invaluable.

i've also had die_daily's thought.

ark

( Posted by: ark [Member] On: June 24, 2004 )

a message to you
Hopefully, you can get this message. What is involved in changing my handle? Do I have to drop the one in order to create the other?
Thanks,
mister E/BRICKHOUSE

( Posted by: brickhouse [Member] On: June 28, 2004 )

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