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[The Founder]

Please post all suggestions related to storycrafter.com and the direction you feel it should take in the future.

Time permitting we will start some poles to determine (based on members opinions) what are the most sought after changes and create a plan to begin implementing them.

David

[Shanna]

Good afternoon, Founder!  :)

1.  Different setup for arranging the picture archive, and a submission committee.  IE - Pictures arranged in catagories (no crossover), and a committee to examine prospective pics and send them through (by committee, I mean a couple of people, not necessarily having to vote! :).

[argyle2001]

[Scattercat]

Although then what would you do about new logins?  Many people already use those.

Anyway, I heartily endorse a better method of sorting the picture files.  A tagging system of some kind, with a search function.  Either that or the renewal of the ability to post our own.  The collection we have now is rather heavily weighted towards young, hot, white actors and actresses.

[argyle2001]

Although then what would you do about new logins?  Many people already use those.

Happens on ebay, too.  But anyone who's *so* bad as to dump his ID and start again has either learned his lesson or hasn't (those pretty much being the only two choices).  If he's learned his lesson, fine.  New lease on what passes for life around here.  If he hasn't, he'll be rated badly again, and have to ditch his ID again... and will probably give up and go bother some other people on some other site.

[Shanna]

! Mod Hat On !

Gentlepeoples, I think it's a good idea to limit discussion in this thread.  Please keep it to suggestions for now, unless the Founder states he wants to discuss things here.  This is a good place for a list of suggestions, and we don't want him wading through ten pages of discussion on a single topic.

This is not to say these topics should not be discussed!  Simply make another thread to talk about them.

[Alhaja]

If it's possible it would be nice to see some of the bugs fixed. The one that comes up the most is the one that involves posts ending up in the wrong story or act when the last act viewed is not the one you intended to post in. I believe it's possible to do the same thing when submitting characters to a story.

Since we're not going to be discussing why a rating system might result in a wank explosion, um... :-P

I'd like to see some new site themes, and possibility an edit/reimagination of the "Dwarven Castle" theme. For some reason, that's always bothered me - I think it's the odd color combination, which reminds me of rocks and farm-stained jeans.  

This is, admittedly, a bit nitpicky, so I'll throw out a few other suggestions:

-A longer "Newly Added Stories" list might be nice, or some way to flag the stories that are actively looking for characters outside of the "Join the story" option which doesn't always mean anything.

-Perhaps deleting all the games that never started or are obviously dead might be included as part of a site-wide purge of deadwood and badly cropped images. It's not especially important, but dead titles bother me.

-And I mentioned this before in the first iteration of the forum, but I really don't like PayPal. For those of us who are fond of throwing money at random Internet people, an option (even if it was just a P.O. box) might be in order...

[Scattercat]

Hear, Hear!

I'd donate a few bucks, too, if I didn't firmly believe PayPal to be a security risk matched only by running an out-of-date IE browser and clicking on the random links sent by those nice folks over at hotmail who you've never heard of but who seem to want to make your penis larger.

Also, a hearty second to the "Better 'Seeking Players' list of stories" request.  It's very frustrating when a brilliant-looking game shows up and is then bumped off the front page in less than 8 hours by a flood of all-caps games ripping off the latest movie to hit the big screen.

[Alhaja]

My recent frustrations with pages in the forum not loading properly have reminded me of another change I'd personally welcome seeing. I use Firefox as my default internet browser and the Advanced Edit Control doesn't seem to work with Firefox. I just use html tags, but I've talked with people who find the lack of the Advanced Edit Control option annoying.

While we're making a wish list, I suppose I could add a Spellcheck feature to it. I have no idea if it's feasible, but it would certainly be nice to see.

I'd also like to second most of the things already mentioned, particularly the redo of the character image gallery.

[Koroenhe]

Advanced edit doesn't exist on any computer operating on a Mac OS, either, no matter what browser you use. I used to use IE, but now I'm using Safari. It's the same. For me, it's not much of an annoyance.

The annoyance comes when I try to edit someone else's posts, the ones that were made with the advanced edit controls on. Suffice to say that it's a nightmare to wade through that much code.

[Alhaja]

The annoyance comes when I try to edit someone else's posts, the ones that were made with the advanced edit controls on. Suffice to say that it's a nightmare to wade through that much code.

I haven't had that come up much, but it makes sense.

Sort of related would be the way extra paragraph breaks are added when you go back and edit something with the Basic Edit Control. I suppose it might not do that if I used the html code for breaks instead of pressing enter twice, but pressing enter is a lot more intuitive than html. This is definitely one of the more annoying things, particularly when I'm editing something with a lot of paragraph breaks.

[Liberty]

Personal Suggestions for storycrafter.com:

1) Longer "New Stories" list  (just repeating)

2) A Voting system for stories

3) A Voting system for players (just repeating)

I've been told voting systems are stupid and pointless, so I don't expect to see much development in that department, but I think they make great tools.  Everyone loves being acknowledged -- everyone loves praise -- and we especially love it when it comes from someone outside of our "circle".  I recently had a lurker for a story of mine featured here on storycrafter send me a message that compared our collaborative writing effort to something along the lines of Larry Niven -- which was a tremendous compliment.

I think a voting system, done correctly, could prove extremely useful.

It compliments people who are doing an excellent job, and makes them feel their hard work is paying off -- they are receiving some kind of recognition.  It also encourages people to improve themselves -- to strive towards better posts and more coherent stories.  It creates community participation.

There are many pros and cons, no doubt, but I feel very strongly about the benefits of such a system.

As for players overwhelming the site with new accounts, well, there's an obvious drawback there:  new accounts are harder to trust.  If you have an account for a long time, you can accumulate quite a few votes.  That delegates a certain amount of respect.  Yes, you'll get those rare few who abuse the system and just generate new accounts after terribly long negative spells -- but certainly not the majority of people.  Most people will react to negative/poor votes by seeking to improve their own skills - or not worrying about the voting system to begin with.

I think a voting system will help cultivate the talents of everyone on the site, draw recognition towards those already superbly talented individuals, and create an even deeper sensation of quality writing available ONLY on storycrafter.com (as, I think we all agree, storycrafter has a higher ratio of quality writers over any other site).

4) Revamp picture uploader, with submission/approval requirement. (just repeating)

[Liberty]

Another Suggestion:

Switch from the current "Site Admin owns all works" style of TOU to the more flexible, user-oriented Creative Commons License.

With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit -- and only on the conditions you specify here.

The one which works best for a site like storycrafter (in my opinion) is this one:

 
Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)



Choose by-nc-sa license

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

-------------------------
So what exactly does this mean?

The originating author (i.e., the storycrafter) retains the copyright for his/her original concept, can alter it as he/she sees fit, and can use it for commercial gain.  Others are welcome as well to use/alter/create derivatives (in the case of storycrafter, this allows for contributors to participate in a story) -- and they retain copyright over their individual contributions, provided they attribute the origin of the piece to the original author (the storycrafter).  They cannot take a story and claim it solely as their own, nor can they profit from it.  The originating author also cannot take the newly created piece (what develops via shared writing) and profit from it solely -- he/she can ONLY profit commercially from the original concept, before any outside contributions/alterations.

This prevents a person from putting together a group of writers, then taking the whole finished work and attempting to sell it for personal gain.  Not that that's likely to happen -- I've only heard of one story every going commercial, and that was on the originating website (http://www.cityofif.com)

It also prohibits anyone who is either participating in the story or just passing by it from taking it and selling it.

The biggest reason for this change would be to allow the storycrafter to retain copyright over HIS/HER work, and all contributing writers/players to retain copyright over THEIR works.

I understand WHY the TOU is as it is -- to protect storycrafter.com from lawsuits -- but the creative commons license would circumvent that and protect everyone using the website.

[cczero]

One thing I would like to see is a bit of transperancy when it comes to the cost of running and the amount of donations that are made to Storycrafter.  Sure some will make the argument that if people see that the cost of running the server is paid up for a month they may not donate...but lets get real here  anyone who says that wasn't going to donate in the first place.

On the other hand I would be willing to toss the proverbial 10 bucks in every once in a while when I actually had money if I saw the amount of money going in and how it was going out/being used.  And no I do not believe anyone is growing rich off donations....it's just good form to show how donations are going to be used if they are collected.

Another thing...would an affiliate program be possible?  You know like how SC has a link to Amazon.com and they get a portion of the sale coming from SC's link.  I don't think it would ever amount to much but one never knows.  I'd definately be willing to use it when mking purchases for people who make use of my computer skills.