Should there be a limit?

no.... definitely not.. but maybe there should be a limit as to how many you can post at once... *puffs and pants through last ten entered list*

We did consider this at the outset but our feeling still is that if an author feels his/her work is worthy of a public airing and if our systems can cope with the bulk then let's leave it all up there. It helps people see how they have developed personally. It's also fun when someone, who shall remain nameless, comes back on to the site after a three month absence and finds themselves a star - it's a real ego boost. So, I think we'll just leave them all up there for all eternity. For now at least!

i don't think there should be a limit ... although perhaps members could be encouraged to be sensitive to the number of pieces they upload in one go ... i know my own heart sinks when i see the last 10 or 20 full of one person's work ... the other consideration too is that uploading 10 or 20 pieces at once reduces each piece's chance of getting read ... think if someone offers you a plate of 20 buns ... (mmm there's a thought) you will be choosy even if you are hungry ... but if the plate has one or two delicious looking buns on you might scoff them both ... i think it might impact too on getting cherried ... a piece sitting in a flurry of others might not have the same chance ... (could be wrong there) ... but i have NEVER seen a string of cherried pieces by the same writer side by side ... and SOME writers do appear to get cherried a lot when they submit pieces individually ... i think i am not alone in regularly de-cluttering my sets and so i am self limiting in a way ... i know that others do this too ... if i like a person's work i will be more inclined to read through the rest of it if there are two or three nice neat sets to choose from ... seeing 8 or 10 sometimes puts me off ...

Interesting! On the point of flurries, even though I am a member of a glorious total of 3-4 days now, I 'create' in flurries - they have been little tiny rhymes. I think of one, I think of the next.. and so on - it's not deliberate. and when I write it, I have to put it on-line! forgive me, it's childish I know. and then I come back and change it , and again. Do they call this 'premature publication'? e-griff

A plate with a couple of delicious buns on it eh! And a cherry too? *just going for a cold shower*

Please, please, no more 20 poem bursts by people. If you groan when you see them in last ten entered, I have to read them all. Even if you're a good poet, 20 in one go is too much. If you have 20 poems, submit them over a fortnight and its much more likely they'll get read. The only person I remember cherrying everything of in one burst is Tom Saunders, but Tom is a very, very, exceptional writer. And he writes prose, which is not as prevalent as poetry here.

oh,Andrew, Although I only did an 8 (6-8line) poem (rhyme) burst, does that mean you missed me? Go Back - Go Back! egriff

Hi egriff, some of those vast collections are not by people who have been here a long time either. I remember one weekend a few months ago when a new writer to the site uploaded something like 70 pieces over two days. Don't know about you but there is no way I am going to read more than a few by one writer in any one session. With regard to flurries it is possible that every writer gets these from time to time but it is usually best to sit on your little newborns for a few days, unless it is an exercise, before posting. This can be very frustrating but I have found it to be sound advice since the writing often does not look quite so good when reviwed with a fresh eye and you can then edit away before posting. Others will say this is bollocks of course and others will continue to post 10 items at a time despite what is said in here. Have fun.

I think there is a very important point lurking at the back of all this. When I first wrote my sci fi novel SIRAT, which is a few years ago now, I put it on the fantasy and sci fi site Elfwood.com because it was the only site I knew about that would take stuff like that. The site itself was quite new then and hadn't very much on it. I got an amazing number of hits and loads of feedback, on something that was 60,000 words long! But as time went by and more and more material went on to the site the number of people reading SIRAT diminished rapidly, hitting zero about a year ago. The same applies to all sites as they get bigger: the chances of any individual item being read diminish exponentially. You can see it happening on this site, and on Storymania.com. When an item is first posted it gets picked up in the "new" list and has a few hits. Then the hits stop coming. Similarly if an item is chosen as story of the day, there will be perhaps fifty to seventy hits on that one day, but a few days later the rate of hits is back to near zero. If we just let the site grow and grow until there are tens of thousands of items on it, the chances of any particular item getting read will diminish to almost zero. The simple fact is that although the site can grow very rapidly the number of readers out there doesn't grow at anything like the same rate, and a point will come when it won't be worth posting stuff here anymore because the site has become choked with material. I think Stories.com has already reached that point. I would be in favour of a limit of some kind. If I draw an arbitrary number out of the air, let's say each writer was allowed twenty stories. Now it wouldn't have to be the same twenty all the time, and stories could be revived after having been taken off for a while, but it would impose some kind of rational limit on the growth of the site. Sorry if this heresy. I'm just trying to be realistic.

I don't think it's realistic to expect people to read everything that comes into the site a day anymore, though I know some people try and yes, as the site gets bigger the chances of an individual piece being read decreases (but the number of potential readers goes up). I hope that people try to dip in to see what's around and if they find an author they like, they read a few more by that author - just like a bookshop in fact. E-griff, no I haven't missed your pieces. I read everything that comes in (together with Tess, the other editor), I'm just pointing out that I wouldn't sit and read in one sitting a collection by Plath or Auden or Cope, so after eight poems by the same author, the ninth is going to have to be pretty amazing to get a cherry.

my name is martin and i sent a lot of poems to abc in one go. the reasons: I had a large collection of poems that i felt worthy of some kind of publication I needed to get them all out as i had no idea which of them were likely to be enjoyed ( i am always wrong about that ) Now posted, i feel obliged to create new works, and yes, the feedback does become part of that process I did not expect people to read them all in one go, in fact i put them there so that if anybody should ask about my work i could point them in the direction of the collection I thought that was the point of this site, to be able to present work with as little regulations as possible, other than the need to prevent genuinely offensive material being given a home I find the process of posting work here easier in one rush than in repeated cut and paste and edit and title and format tasks I got carried away I won't do it again but I would preserve the right of people to post in quantities that they feel suits their need Suggestions; perhaps instead of all the work submitted appearing in the gallery, perhaps two could appear there with an obvious link to the remaining collection of that author, so that on the basis of two pieces, the reader could decide to check out the other works all i can say is, today i will not send fifty five poems into abctales.com, you never stop being a prolific poster, you just put it off one day at a time.

I thought sirat's views were carefully considered and well though through. I believe people should think about what he say as at a bit more length. I things 'regulations' would only apply if the site started interfering with teh work itself. By the way Andrew, I was joking! BUT given I submitted 8 pieces, each only had an average of less than 60 words (480 words in all), so it wasn't as if I uploaded 2,000 word short stories, or even ONE short story. I was sort of trying to fill in my abc's! Why do people cheat with these, by the way? I thought it was quite an imagination -jogger, even though its just the title. I sympathise with reviewing problem. I have done many minor edits (line spacing, which is unpredictable in rtf, and adding a 'Please Rate Me!' (ref: other massages) . I presume each time, the items pops back on the latest 10' list. I would be happy to opt for a 'place back on site without appearing on the latest 10 ' button (although a snappier title might suit!)

I've got A LOT on here because my printers conked out and my computer refuses to save anything (I think both are protesting as would rather work in an office) and this is the only place the stuff exists. Apart from it being dead boring for anyone who keeps coming up against it if they do a long random button session I can't see what's bad about it? I know lots of it's drivelous, but it's become kind of like a diary to me now ALSO when GOOD writers like Ivory, Liana, Dogstar, Robert etc etc take most of their work off IT IS VERY CROSS MAKING cos its useful to get an injection of quality before you start writing your own stuff yours sincerely the imperfectionist

ok.. have been thinking about this for while... (i know who you are miss!) and i will be putting a lot of stuff back on soon... promise i wont put it all on at once though.. i promise...

ooops ... sorry fey ... i am tending to store stuff on thoughtcafe and use ABC for new stuff ...

I do ADMIRE you lot, being able to hone your sets. If you saw my room (or even our house - hoarding runs in the family, (or at least it WOULD if it didn't fall over something the minute it moved) we never throw ANYTHING away. Dad has been trying to get my brother to move his until recently two wheeled mini for AGES. H has got it back up to four wheels, but wondered if Dad had any ideas where he could get a new petrol tank from. Dad was able to offer a choice of two defunct lawnmower ones and a merry tiller...the car we use won't go in the garage cos of a thirty year old fridge and two washing machines (one of which was got from next door EVEN THOUGH NOT WORKING AT THE TIME, and STILL not working and the gaps between THEM are filled with old jam jars, sandwhich toaster, useful cardboard boxes, and STUFF. My Rooom is knee deep in paper from before the printer broke this is where spiders come on their HOLIDAYS, to relax

So my back log of 243 poems and 292 short stories will take me ....lets see..... at my current posting rate of um.... 1 in December 2000.......1 in March 2001......that's 2 in 14 months.....243 + 292 = 537.......multiplied by 7 = 3759 mths.....divided by 12 = 313yrs 3mths! Well that should be ok, I aint gonna upset no one at that rate! Or am I?

Nothing wrong with posting 50 stories in a month, just not 20 in one day. And it happens and nothing awful happens to the authors who do it, they just get one or two hits spread across 20 stories, rather than 10 or 11 hits for each of two stories. There should definitely be a ban on posting more than one story about Minnows (though that was possibly an accident)

Now wait just ONE minute, now. Just what do you have against minnows, that's what I'd like to know.

Were you not here last week for the sixty versions of the same piece ? Go to times read and hit previous page about twenty times, you'll see em. By the way Don - I have a question about America. This is me being very thick, but I had it in my head that Salt Lake City was in Utah, which I thought was near Arizona, Nevada - hence deserty. How come the Winter Olympics is there ? I thought you had snow in Vermont and New England generally. Have I misplaced S.L.City or is it just high up in mountains ?

Yes, Utah is above Arizona and beside Nevada. It is of high elevation, so it's cooler because of that. (When I went to the Grand Canyon several years back, in Northern Arizona, we had a snowstorm in summer). There are many, many skiing locales in the American West (And a helluva lot more mountains). Some of the best ones are in Colorado, the state next door. I think all the prestigious skiing locations are in Vermont though (but mostly Switzerland). But you're right, it snows more in New England. I have some pretty wicked digital pictures of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which are in the same chain. I've already sent one to Emily, but I've more if you want them. (They're quite picturesque). (Oh, and I did see the minnows! >)))*} )

I visited Colorado and Utah a couple of years ago, and they're both stunningly beautiful, although Salt Lake is somewhat lacking on the alcohol front...