i know it's been said before..

Thanks a lot andrew. I've been looking at your work today and it is really good. I liked that piece called 'Mind the gap'... thought it was wicked. And that story about the alcoholic knife thrower was really well written. Really enjoyed that piece man, very entertaining, was a good read. enuf respect

hey chant I liked that piece you wrote called ' A room of my own.' I really got a feel of Italy from that one. And I read 'prologue' too, Some good visuals there. The story about going out to a club and the bottle incident was good too.

thanks, seagull. had been planning to end it all last night after i came home to find no milk in my fridge. i'd even adapted a Smiths song to go along with it - 'The boy with no milk in his fridge.' lucky i didn't.

All very good and eloquently put points, Chant and I'm sure most of us agree with you. Trouble is (as you also mentioned) we've been banging on about this one for months...

I don't know - the email is not a bad way of telling someone how you felt about a piece. There are occasional clowns on the site who think they are very amusing, who might paste stupid comments up on someone's story - and then they stay there for a while. I would like a way that allowed people to check their ratings without adding to hits - I'll ask Emily, but I suspect the problem is techie, rather than lack of will. Now that the site is so big, it is easy for a piece to slip through and hardly get the reads it deserves. We are trying to give even more stories and poems a plug on the front page to help out with this, but the final answer is, the more all of the writers on the site read of other peoples work, the more hits everyone gets... You don't need to be massively in-depth or personal on an email. A one-line "I liked this because...." is such a boost to a writer.

Andrew, One way to give newly submitted pieces a bit more breathing room is to increase to 20 from 10 the number of pieces diplayed in "the most recent" category. Even making it 30 would be better. That way, just about every new piece would be on view in the "newly submitted" section for a whole day, maybe a little more, and the chances of just completely missing a new piece would fall almost to zero, provided one looks at that section once per day. My understanding is that this software is a canned package which allows for some customizing of the look and feel as well as various option choices. If a change is part of an option menu, then it should be a very simple matter to change. If it is not part of an option menu, then we might as well forget it. As for the person who took his story off the site: Do we really know for sure the reason he took it off is that he only got a 4 instead of a 5? I am pleased when anyone even looks at my stuff, much less bothers to rate it.

I think it is better to e-mail someone and tell them what you think about a piece rather than have comments underneath. I like the way it is at the moment. To me it reminds me of an art gallery. Where you can walk around and see each artists work on display. I think its cool. It would spoil it if evryones works of art had criticisms underneath good or bad. Most writers are cool so I doubt they would be annoyed to recieve an e-mail off a stranger offering advice or praising something they wrote. i am sure they'd b dead chuffed that someone took the time to read it. I think e-mail is better as well because if you want to say something about the piece that you didn't like then the writer can then view this criticism in privacy, rather than having it displayed for everyone else to see. Most of us writers are sensitive folk, thats why we are writers. About getting to see other peoples stuff. I have found if you click on random story, then you pretty much get to see lots of different writers work. If you like something you have read then you just click on their name and you can see all their current abcs and peruse all the other pieces they have written. Its pretty smart I think. A really good idea for a web-site. Everyone who I have shown this site to says it is banging! A really positive way to use the internet and technology. Theos bless

Dunno, Thyme, sometimes people submit 15 - 20 pieces a time (no pun intended) - which is their perogative (spelling?)of course, but most of them are poems, which means us poor story writers have a hard time of it. Still think it would be better if there was a separate 'top 10' for poetry and stories. Still what do I know, eh? 'Ere, Em, can't you get a spelling check on this thing, too...sigh.

It starts PR Andrea. You can go further back into the 'last ten entered' to the point where you get all those entered that day.

I like email from strangers. if it is positive it somehow has more 'clout' than from someone you know who already likes your work. should it be negative you can ignore it if you want. should it be negeative but constructive you should perhaps listen and not go into defensive mode thus avoiding "long personal dialogue". getoutthere have a comments box for each piece on their site. I don't go there very often but it mainly seems to consist of 'nice story' comments. the commentator is identified so that perhaps stops too many negatives getting through which rather defeats the point. I'm not sure, chant, that the 1 star voters would necessarily explain themselves. bt also have a rating system from 1 to 10 but apparently this has been abused - surprise, surprise - and they have recently kicked someone off for logging on under multiple alias' and voting their own work into no. 1 in the charts that they run. E-mail 'is' a good way Andrew. but how many people here would e-mail someone and say "didn't like it mate for these reasons........" ? I suspect that unless you actually ask for a critique you will only ever receive positive unsolicitated comments.

I'm always chuffed to get mail from fellow ABC'ers...the first I ever got was from Fish. I naively asked her "Have you got any work on ABC?" Can open - worms everywhere. I don't mind at all if someone says "I saw this, and had to say, did you think of perhaps doing it this way...blah blah" It makes me think about things, the way I'm writing, whether it would work better if altered. If I dont agree, I'll write back and tell the person why, and thank them for taking the time to write to me, or if I do, I'll explain how they helped, and thank them for taking the trouble. When I recently asked for help on another thread, I was astonished at the amount of people that bothered to give me a hand. I've met tons of people this way, and mostly through ABC. Some you continue to correspond with, and some you don't. It's brilliant.

justyn - ABCtales isn't part of a package - it's a bespoke system designed using Perl. The forums and e-mail are part of a package though. However, tweaks can be made. Andrea: Spell-check! Think that would be a bit too complex! Re: separate top 10 for stories and poems, that's really hard. However, you can view the story gallery and poetry gallery by 'date entered' so that's one way to get round the problem. Have chatted with techy and changing most recent to last 20 rather than 10 would be fine (30 would take a long time to load because it's a database call and the more info you want, the longer it takes to load) With the comments, either e-mail or the discussion forums are the only options, I'm afraid, as it would be a *very* major change to add. Also, some people may not like comments underneath their work and some people might put up less-than-constructive criticism. The 'Discuss work from ABCtales' forum has seemed a tad quiet recently, so more threads about work on the site would be great! Also on e-mail, people do choose whether or not to allow their e-mail address to be viewed when they register, so if they don't want to be contacted, they probably wouldn't let their e-mail address be viewed (I guess!) Re: adding to times read, displaying times read in the list of stories (the obvious solution) would mean another database call and add a lot of time added to the loading. You can view stories by times read but that would mean a lot of clicking now there are over 8,500 pieces of work on the site (unless your work is very well read) Phew! Hard questions for this time of night! Cheers Em

I would just like to add that, despite it's faults - which abc generously allow us to publicly air - not only is abc probably the easiest site to navigate and use, it also has the best laid out forum format I've come across. (in my time here I've been one of the big critics so it's only fair to dish out praise when due, hopefully without seeming to be *too* spagmotional) speaking of critics, don't know if everyone spotted the toby clements inthread reply to lisa mangan's letter but it's lurking under older topics. anyway, there was a gracious retraction by toby in the telegraph last weekend together with a plug for abc winning the yell award.

Emily, Sorry for the mistake. I thought for sure I had read a comment from someone on another thread some weeks ago stating that it was a canned package. Either my memory is faulty or the reference was to a different product.

Thanks for the tip Stormy. This is under Righting a wrong in Older Topics in the General Discussion thread and is worth reading. I wouldn't email someone and say I hated their piece - I might email them and say, I liked this, but maybe if you did so and so with this bit, it might work better. They are of course free to ignore me. I don't think I'd like to see comments - it would distract me, like my unpleasant tendency to read the back jacket of a book while I'm reading it, just to compare what blurb says with what I'm actually reading.

Couldn't you use the same system as with the 'do you want your email address displayed' and 'do you want to be rated'? Then the authors could choose themselves whether they wanted comments/critique or not... Or am I just being daft? I'm not very technical, that's for sure...

hey I've just discovered a way to see how many times your stories have been read without clicking on them. If you go to public gallery and click on the letter of the alphabet for your username, then keep clicking till your name comes up on the screen, you will see all your pieces of writing together. Underneath the title, It shows you how many times your stories have been read. Then all you have to do to save future clicking is bookmark the page. Then just click on that bookmark every time you want to check on how many times your pieces have been read. You probably know about this already, but I thought I would share it just in case. Saves a load of hassle having to do a database call and add time to loading etc.

that's correct seagull but it doesn't help chant with his wanting to see ratings without making a hit.

yeah I see what you mean... maybe the best way round it is for people to check their pieces once a month or something... forgive me for saying this and I know its been said before.. but maybe its best not to get so obsessed with checking ratings. I mean evryone is at first, but I am trieing to get out of that frame of mind, cos I feel like it can spoil the enjoyment of reading and writing. When you write a piece and want it to be well-rated, you try too hard and it all becomes an ego thing and you lose that child-like quality that just wants to create for the fun of it. PLease don't anybody take offense, I don't mean to offend anyone. Also the other thing that would spoil it if you could see ratings under the title. Is someone might see a piece of writing and then see it has a low rating and won't bother to read it. But the thing is we all like different types of stuff. So what might be bad to one person might be really good to another. We all have different perceptions of what is good and bad. I am getting into the habit of reading other peoples work like Andrew was saying. It makes the whole abc thing a lot more of a richer expereince. I try and read 5- 10 stories or poems a day (if I am at home and not out doing other things that is). and I hope as I get better at reading I will be able to read more than 5 - 10. Its a real buzz man cause the amazing thing I have noticed about writing is no two writers are the same. Everyone has their own unique style and way of describing things. I know some of the stories are really long. But maybe if you have a printer you could print them out and read them at leisure and if you want to rate it you could log back on and give it a rating even e-mail the person. I know I am saying stuff that has already been said, jus I reckon if evryone did a random story a day, or chose a story from a genre that they like, then evrybody would eventually get read by evrybody and the ratings and amount of times a story has been read would soar. Please nobody take offense, jus saying what i think, I am as guilty as evrybody else for the ego thang, but reading other peoples stuff as much as you can and getting interested in other peoples writing is a real cure for that ego, and also fuel for you inner fire when you sit back down at your desk to write. Theos bless da funk

It also doesn't help (being one of the newer people here) when some of the writing is listed as a "Story" when it's actually a poem. I don't know if there's many more examples of that here, but I seem to have stumbled onto two on my first visit...

i agree, Seagull, reading other people's work is very conducive to writing yourself - it immediately puts you in the mood. that said, it is interesting to see what other people think of your work, just interesting, not something to get obsessed about. on other literary web sites, the number of hits and comments have been built in as private functions, viewable only by the author of the piece. a design of this kind prevents the 'oh look, this one's got a 1 rating, can't be worth reading' syndrome that you mention. and yes, Hinton, the story/poem category error was one of the first things i stumbled across when i stumbled across the site. someone, perhaps Andrea, has been calling for a clear category demarcation for ages. what a lot of voices crying out in the wilderness we are!

surely it is up to the individual writer to ensure their work is categorised properly?

This is, as Stumpet Metal said earlier, is one of the best sites around for showcasing work. Easy to navigate, simple to use. Stop whining. Email people if you want comments, or ask on the crits section. Simple.

I'm starting to like Funky Seagull a lot - and his work is damn fine too. He posted a story about a statue this week called Midnight Mystery which was really impressive.

I'll 'ave you know, I wasn't whining! Was just an observation, that's all. Gorblimey, you can't even voice an opinion these days without someone jumpin' down yer froat... (had to get that in before the 8pm shutdown) What am I going to do for a whole hour??? Have to pick me nose.