Stream the site into categories

I think that yes, its a great idea actually, and i am sure that nobody would disagree with you at all. Its a money thing, i would guess... Funny you should say that you were disappointed with getting 6 poetry pieces... for me its the total opposite - often when i open a piece and its a story, i close it after the first few paras - it has to be good to hold you. At least if a poem is crap, its a brief thing. A good story is a joy, as is a good poem.

No, I like the way everything is all mangled up together, it's more like reading a magazine!

I totally agree Neill and Liana. As with any other library (which is what this site is essentially) the better it is organized the pleasanter it is to use and the more efficient use you can make of your time. The trouble is, design needs to happen at the outset, it's very difficult to take something that's up and running and has nearly twenty thousand entries and reorganize it retrospectively. I think the design of this site could be improved in a lot of ways, and certainly many more categories would be one of them. You can in fact search ONLY for poetry or ONLY for prose using the search options on the front page, but if you are looking through the new stuff arriving, the only thing the list tells you is whether or not a piece has been cherry-picked, not whether it is poetry or prose or anything else about it such as its word length. Of course if you're lucky you may get a few words of introduction from the author that will give you a clue. Within the categories of prose and poetry it is also possible to break down your search into these sub-categories: Other Fiction Other Non-fiction Love Travel Crime (Auto)Biography Horror Spiritual Children's Humour Western Erotica Sci-Fi Opinion Reviews Jokes Diary/Journal These categories remain the same whether you're doing a poetry search or a prose search. Thus in theory you could search for someything called "Travel Poetry" or "Opinion Poetry", but not romantic poetry or narrative poetry or song lyrics. Within the prose category such obvious categories as "supernatural" or "detective" or "fantasy" or "religious" or "war" fiction are all missed out, so they have to go into "other fiction" or the nearest category into which they can be squeezed. From other discussions I gather that the cgi programs here have been set up by a firm of professionmal web designers and that major changes would cost serious money. It's a pity they can't just let one of us amateur code-writers loose on it. Come to think of maybe it's just as well!

It all sounds great guys, but who does the extra work? I'll say it again, I think we're pretty luck to get what we do now for free.

well some of us get it for free.. others pay £20.. how is that going i wonder? I know Sirat has paid, i have paid.... you have paid Vicky.... maybe we should ALL pay, and then we might have some right to whinge a tad about the site not being entirely what we want, but 'til then... *raises eyebrow*

It's still a handsome site compared to many others.

Yes on the surface it appears that an insignificant proportion of users have coughed up, but it may be there are a lot more who asked not to be included on the list. It wouldn't do any harm to state the total number of subscribers at the bottom of the list.

Or perhaps if we could refine and narrow our searches, i.e. search by cherry picked AND genre, or Letter And most recent.

All of these things are in our minds but for the moment we shall stay as we are becasue finances dictate that it must be so. In any case, you can dive into just poetry or just stories by going to the Poetry Gallery or the Story Gallery on the front page! As for the roll of honour there are only two people who have asked not to be included.

I think Jeffrey (Archer) and Lord Lucan were wise, Tony..who knows what could ensue....

Point taken re selecting poetry or stories. Thanks

Oi! Hang on a minute. What does neilwills mean? Bleatings?

baa. etc.

I like to get my daily fix of bleatings, gives me the strength and courage to read people who spend a long time churning out loads of word , formed into sentences which tell stories properly.

or sadly, that dont. As the case so often is..