If you could, what would you improve about ABCtales?

persistent offending accounts can be e-mailed inviting them to desist and, if push comes to shove, deleted. YES. And we could do this through IP tracing, which although not perfect, is probably the only workable solution. Now do you see what I am saying?

Could we not have a comprehensive survey on this, maybe on the front page? I'm sure most people who submit work have opinions on what they'd like to keep/scrap/introduce . Talking it out like this on a forum tends to produce a "yes it is" "no it's not" effect. I think anon posting should definitely be allowed. Introduce any sort of moderation and the whole spirit will be lost. Having a language filter is nuisansical enough! I agree about scrapping the low star rating. I would like to see ratings like *excellent/good/fair/needs tweaking* I like the idea of showing people's comments alongside a piece but it can be so inane. Some stuff I used to have on thoughtscafe attracted a sympathy which was wasteful and embarrassing , eg "I hope you can sort the situation out, sheesh I know just how you feel etc" , considering the fact that my poems were describing fictional situations. I think it would be nice if everyone could have an image slot in the description section where you have your name, location etc. You could put a pic of yourself, a drawing or anything you feel would atmosphere to your work (like having a book cover), and change it according to whim. Rather this than being allowed to upload images to illustrate a poem or story. I love seeing writing and visuals combined but I'd prefer it if people did their combining on their own website (I do) and advertised the URL here. There are definitely new areas which could be introduced on the front page though I DO like the existing simplicity.

well, if anybody's free to post on the forums, then deleting an account isn't going to keep a troll from its 'work'. whereas if you can only post on the forums through a viable account, then if a troll's account has been deleted it will have to create a new account if it wants to keep on trolling. makes the troll have to work harder. i do agree IP tracing would be good. perhaps we can have both?

As I understand it the message that ABC gives out to its users is one of almost complete lack of censorship, an oasis in a manipulated world. There have been times when editorial intervention has taken place and whole threads removed, the most notorious being the 'Torturing Tanya' thread, but I know Tony has a strong belief in free speech and I applaud him. Paul's obsession with what he sees as cyber-violence is an example of someone becoming increasingly forceful to get his own way, partly because he can't accept that otheres views are as relevant as his own. In short, he hopes to achieve change on this site by using his own variety of bullying, i.e. if he shouts loud enough and long enough he will get his way. He also thinks that I am dismissive of his claims regarding the damage done to individuals. A few people here (I mean on the site, not necessarily on this thread) have become close friends and are aware of some of the detail of my life. For those that aren't I can tell you that I have been a victim of bullying in it's various guises, on and off most of my life. In one period when in my forties I was subjected to four years of bullying by three individuals at work ending in a violent attack in which I lost some teeth and spent a day in hospital. In the same period I was attacked in my own home on two separate ocassions. On one of these I was punched, kicked, verbally abused and beaten over the head with a broom. On the other I was attacked with a heavy pressure cooker lid that broke two fingers and then repeatedly stabbed on the back and neck with a steak fork. On none of these ocassions did I defend myself. Not because I'm a wimp or a coward but because, in spite of what some of you may think, I abhor violence and would probably make more effort to defend someone else than myself. I have been more of a victim than most people I know, but I still retain my sense of perspective. Paul, I don't need your lectures on the results of bullying, I've lived it. With regard to the 'lists' on the site, I would say that nobody has to use them, but perhaps they could be added to, and a searchlist given it's own page to make it easier to select search criteria. I also feel that anybody determined to read anything in particular will find it without too much effort.

First of all I would like to thank you all who have contributed to this debate so far and welcome more comment. Some of it is new to me - and that is great! I love the idea of a list of recently uploaded stories and poems going on lists on the front page - I will get the techies to look at this at once and come up with an idea of how it can be done. I also hear much of what you all say. I hate bullies too Paul but I am not sure that it is possible to stop it. I do write to trolls when they become abusive and ask them to desist in no uncertain terms. I do try to 'police' the forums in a gentle way but it is true that occasionally things do get out of hand and I get very depressed when they do. It upsets people no end and that is not our intention. We want to be warm and empowering, we want to encourage new writers who dip their toes, quivering, into the cold water at the edge of creative passion. I will mull all of this over and come up with some answers if possible. We will never charge for use of the site. Be assured of that. Your 'Friends' cheques really do help though! I will keep reading through this thread and make a list of all the suggestions. We will then go through them systematically and take a number of them up. Thankyou all for caring enough to make the effort!

What a cantankerous and imaginative lot you are. I love it! We will be having the major meltdown of all your ideas, see what we want, what we can afford, when we can do them etc. early next week. From then on, things will move swiftly. Thankyou all.

as far as i can see, the html 'title' for the home page is currently 'ABCtales.com - Welcome!'. could this be changed to 'ABCtales.com - Creative Writing Web Site', or something similar? that way, if you search for creative writing web sites on google, you're more likely to pick abc up, as google goes quite strongly on titles, i think. currently, i suspect abc is quite hard to find via search engine if you don't already know the name of the site.

'yes, i like all of Rokkit's suggestions' Including my final one about raising my profile being beneficial to the site as a whole? Chant, you old charmer you. ;) 'making a hit system is a good idea in theory, but I dont think it would work in practise... if you dont believe that people would do that, go look at the most read piece on the site' Liana, surely all that proves is that, as the system stands, certain pieces are getting a ridiculously disproportionate number of hits. If the reforms I suggested came into place, that would no longer happen, because navigation would be far easier and accessing a wide variety of quality pieces would be more straightforward. I think most of your - entirely legitimate - concerns about rating a piece via hits would be assuaged by altering the system so that hits better reflect the popularity of a piece. Charts on the front page are much more enticing to first-timers... they would increase the 'stickiness' of the site and encourage people to return. It's up to individual authors to decide whether being toppermost of the poppermost is a sine qua non of their submitting to the site. For me, I'm pleased if my work reaches a small audience who get something from it, but climbing the hits ladder would mean little to me. That isn't to say it wouldn't be a brilliant way of getting more stories read. Surely a little healthy competition's no crime?

Well, I'm up for the IP tracer AND the login - like Chant. We give out the message: you wanna troll, you're gonna have to work damn hard at it. Of course we'll never stop it. But we can reduce it. Current message: Trolling is a fact of life Suggested new message: We give trolls a hard time Again, I'm not being po-faced about the jokey trolling. I'm talking about the really nasty persistent stuff. It's a nonsense you're not aloud to say sh.it without putting a dot in it - yet someone can receive an anonymous profane personal attack, and he have nothing in place to find out who it is and tackle it. Not censorship: accountability.

I've been following the part of this thread about trolling. Being the new techie on the block I'm still learning the lingo for these things, so correct me if I'm wrong here. Trolling is when an excuse for life, perhaps a bit harsh, just attacks people in a textual sense being rude and flaming them for no apparent reason? Is so we can stop this, although the saying "Rome wasn't built in a day" comes to mind, it is not that hard. This ph stores a hell of a lot that the eye does not see... :-)

Paul, We can use an IP and FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) tracer to find out where they come from. If we see big similarities with other (named) posters of the ph, how about a name and shame policy?? ;-)

Thank you Elfyn! See, your techie thinks it can be stopped (not reduced, stopped!) - who's going to claim they know more than him? I fear it's cultural, institutional obstacles I'm up against, more than technical ones...

yes, i like the sound of that Elfyn. name and shame policy sounds good to me. hm. would be interesting if this could be done historically too - i mean, if troll posts from threads that are now history could be traced to their 'owners'.

I wonder if your words have caused a few pairs of brown underpants in the troll community, Chant. Heh heh.

;-)

Paul... please dont get me wrong, but this is exactly what i have been talking about - forgive me, but do i not explain myself fully? I feel like i am banging my head against a brick wall here..

...and i hate to point out the obvious, but it STILL wont STOP it!!!!

Liana, I'm not really arguing with you. Not at the moment. In the past, you've given out what I believe to be the wrong messages, but I think your IP route is the way to go (but why not login as well?) Currently, it's Missi's hey-rookie-this-is-how-things-are-round-here attitude I object to.

...and I hate to point out the obvious, but it WILL make things BETTER!!! ...even in as only far as giving out the RIGHT messages... and Elfyn actually thinks you can stop it. So there!

Elfyn, said the same as me... apart from the name and shame thing, which i think is ludicrously toryish. The tracing I have said over and over about - then it can be sent back to the owner, and they are asked to desist. Still cant make them, however. You can block that IP, they just get another. Use a different pc. Fact of life. Elfyn, is saying the same as me.. I repeat. next?

Well, I'd get rid of that Effyn Elfyn Flyppyn Kwyk.

but i like Elfyn's name and shame idea. i don't think it's toryish. i think site members have a right to know these things - it's just freeing up the information. and Tony is a great believer in freedom. *smiles dreamily*

Ok, I have read the whole thing now (Brrrr). There have been a lot of very good new ideas and a lot of improvements that we can make. I've come up with a list of things: New/Improved Features: 1. Upgrade the phorum: Keep the same look and order threads by popularity with an optional date order. 2. New ratings system: Ranging from good, very good, excellent. When rating work you have to comment too(?). Display statistics about the user's who rated you eg., how many said your piece was excellent, (?)in place of the 'times read' thing(?). User's can only rate their own stories once(?), and rate other's stories once in a specified time period, say one hour. 3. Comments on Stories/Poems/Reviews/Other: On all (user submitted) content have a comments box where registered user's can add their comments. Comments are checked and must have a minumum of say five words to filter out the "nice work" and "that sucks" kind of acknowledgements(?). Comments are only viewable by the author(?). Also deleteable by the author(?). 4. Work Submittal: When submitting work have an option where the author can preview before submitting. On the edit-before-submitting thing could someone give me an example? From what I can see when you edit a piece of work it's edited not re-submitted. 5. Gallery Tweaking: When displaying a gallery (be it story or poetry) list pieces of work by (creation) date, eg. newest to oldest(?). Add an option to list by popularity. 6. Phorum: New category to discuss writing inspirations and different approaches(?). When the phorum is upgraded make it so that you can only be logged in once to aid in stopping the trolling (this way if two identities are detected that contradict each other posts will not be allowed(?). Add a link "Discuss this piece" on stories and poems, which automatically takes you to the phorum with the title (subject) filled in, if a thread already exists append to it. 7. Top 100: Change the "Top 100" to use a monthly scheme. having archives of the past top 100's or a (parhaps) better idea would be to just archive the top 10. 8. The All Mighty Evil: When a new story or poem get's spiked on (new) submittal, if approved by an editor, it will go to the latest 10. 9. ABCs (Sets): In the set listing display, if a story has been cherried display a cherry beside the (content) rating. 10. Last 10: Change the current listing format to "Brief" and a second option to to change the listing format to "Detailed" containing description, genre, cherry status and word count etc. Points marked with a '(?)' still need a bit of discussion. Sorry if I've missed anyone's thoughts, reading and keeping track of this has been a challenge to my eyes. :-0

I know where you live.

It wont happen though... :o)

oops.. to chant, not elfyn !!

Well, Liana, Chant and Paul are all in the same boat as me then. Like Paul says: not censorhip, accountability. It won't stop instances of bullying completely, but it stops cowardly sniping. They can still be funny if they like. As to the rest - I'm not sure about the 'times read.' Certainly, the list beginning with the 'most read' is silly, and I wish it didn't count me as a 'reader' when I check over my work to see if it's uploaded properly. The general concept of knowing how many times a piece has been read is something I could live with or without - I don't like the element of competition it brings, but like Chant, I tend to use it as an inverse guide - reading things that no one else has checked out yet. Yes to recently uploaded pieces on the front. Yes to searching via individual categories, so I can see the most recent poems on their own, or the most recent stories. Don't like the idea of a 'cherry' category. Cherries can be a hot point, as we know, and I'm wary of anything that sets them aside too exclusively. How about a category for 'novel extracts' or 'work in progress', Tony? So people can follow the progress of bigger projects? I'm not sure, for example, whether I want to follow Chant's PAPR:KUT as it unfolds, or wait til it's all done. I keep catching odd bits of it, and forgetting what point we're at.

Elfyn 8 & 9 are excellent. hens last, also excellent. Apart from that, id like to see the admin section working properly, instead of being constantly frustrated when trying to do the work I do. Forums can bloody well wait. Oh and elfyn, id like to see the greyed cherry symbol on the unread section, moved further away from the title clicked on to access it. id also like the edit and regrade facility to work from the admin. Etc. Etc. But I know mark is asking you nicely too, and Im sure it's on your list.

Indeed those are on the list, Liana. Mark is in Ipswich today learning all about mass marketing on the internet or some such stuff - hence his lack of response on here. Hang on to your horses, Elfyn. We need to discuss all of this before we put it into operation. Much of it is excellent and we will do it but have to look at such things as cost and desirability first!

Sorry Liana, I didn't mean to repeat what you were saying, and re-cover old ground. I've only been here a month and this is the first time it's come up (for me). On stopping the trollage, it can be done, but we need to upgrade the software behind the ph first. The backend that stores all of the information for the ph stores the network number, subnetwork mask, I.P. address, FQDN, name and e-mail address of all posters. As well as this, in the newer version, it also has the ability to search for "Textual Trends" and match them to user(s). Once we have all of this information we are able to to see what networks (ISPs) people are coming from, what I.P. ranges they are using, what proxy or caching server they are using and quite a bit more that I shan't go into detail over as I may have already given troll's a 10th of my recipe. ;-) The jist of it is: We can stop trolling, but it will take time.

Sorry Tony, I just wanted to make sure that I interpreted everything correctly and clarify that was whats wanted. There were loads of different opinions on different things, and to tell the truth I probably got confused after reading it all! :-)

I see.. and you can stop them logging on from work, or cyber cafes, or a friends house? Aha... now you see what I mean? i know tracing and banning can be done, my point was (and still is) we can only make it more difficult, we cant, alas stop it..) Tony - I have asked Mark to stay on the train and get off near me for wine and whinges, but he says you work him too hard, and he cant :o))

Glad to hear it - we need the boy back for tomorrow bright and early!

*salutes Elfyn*

hey Elfyn, i like what you're saying and i like the way you're saying it. there's a shiny six pence for you, my lad, if you do a bit of private detective work for me. :-)))))))

Then the policy has to be Once done, banned for eternity. We can block entire networks of computers if we had to. If a blocked network tries to post we can moderate the post and decide whether or not to let it pass or block it. I understand you disbelief, and sure they can go to another physical location to continue on the tollage journey, but once done...When we have it working you'll certainly notice the difference. On the admin front I'm getting through that gradually. If you want to mail me privately to discuss this (elfyn@abctales.com) because I'm only aware of the spike issue.

How about introducing an ABCtales miniatures option designed for, say, six line poems and 60 word stories. This has at least six attractions: 1. it's a good discipline for all writers, especially new ones, to try to convey the maximum amount of meaning in the minimum number of words. 2. it is a sad fact of life that people nowadays have much shorter attention spans and lower boredom thresholds. Shorter pieces seem less forbidding and might be more attractive, especially to newcomers to the site. 3. the miniature pieces might serve as a good counterbalance to some of the longer, more self-indulgent works that many writers (myself included) have been guilty of producing. 4. The best examples of ABCtales miniatures could be run in their entirety on the front page (perhaps changed weekly), serving as a good shop window for the site. 5. in terms of merchandising, a book of ABCtales miniatures, I believe, could be a highly readable and therefore marketable publication. 6. and finally, on a more practical note, it will be easier (quicker) for the editors to review the miniature works. The idea here is not to replace the existing longer pieces, but to add another option that could be integrated into the site, alongside the existing poems and stories. Perhaps it could be run as an experiment.

Sorry Chant, I'm bound to contract. ;-)

Elfyn - i have no disbelief. I am no tech moron, I do know enough to get by and understand.. my point IS *weeps in utter frustration* that unless you are willing to block whole swathes of towns, cities at one fell swoop, trolls can STILL find a way to post.. am i any clearer? lol....

Chant, dont be a creep. That goes for you too greco. Just kidding.

What if you had to register a computer - and its IP etc - with your login before you can use it to post on the forums. That would mean a troll would have to create a new identity with an email account they don't care about and - here's the best bit - on a computer they are not likely to use again under their own login. Hee hee hee. Trollin'd be a nightmare! Though trolls may not be "casual", as Liana says, people aren't that bothered about calling someone a f**king nasty little rat/sex pest that they'll go to those measures.

Sorry - I think I've sort of repeated what others are saying... Ah well.

I like the middle ground option, Liana - Elfyn says you can *moderate* posts from entire towns, cities etc. From the sounds of it, you can pretty soon track down a troll's stomping ground, and keep an eye on them, Big Brother style. If they post something deliberately nasty, under a false name, it will never get through. They'll soon learn the pointlessness of trying. You can have your very own 'black list' - they'd have to get in contact with you directly to get off it. You can make it very difficult for them - trolling would have repurcussions that make it very undesirable. Meanwhile, those of us who, under our recognised names, post proper messages, have no restrictions at all.

yes hen.. I see what you mean, and I like it. however, your last sentance has a fatal flaw - it doesnt stop the bullying from registered users... and there has been absolutely hideous stuff. Maybe three strikes and youre out policy?

We have enough on the trolling debate now folks. It's the rest of the ideas, like Bruce's, that I want!

Not sure I see the point of these draconian anti-troll policies. I'm not sure people posting on forums fake names is really a huge problem. If people, using either real or troll names, were threatening violence or spouting racism or other nasty isms that I'd support action to stop it but otherwise it doesn't really bother me and needless restrictions to the general freedom of this site would bother me more. I think Elfyn's talents would be better employed improving other stuff.

I agree, 100000%

LOL! Nice to meet you, E Flyn.

Didn't I just close this debate? That's bloody freedom for you!

*gives tony a stress relieving shoulder massage*