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I got carried away.

I posted Wildcats Prequel Chapter 4 last week and got so excited on how neat it looked that I posted Wildcats Prequel 5. I thought it would be cool to give the readers a “Two For One” to celebrate Memorial Day.

I didn’t realize a BigCloset rule is that’s a no-no. I talked to Erin and she tried to intervene but the Rule God’s won.

So, half the readers missed chapter four. I feel bad. Ant suggestions besides, “Give me a break, just get over it!”

Comments

hoped it would do the trick

when we were doing Wildcats last year, Dawn was loading and had a snafu (blame me please)

it was ironic how the world kept spinning and life when on, but hundreds went to bed without reading the chapter

hate hungry; hate waiting

Everyone is so different. I know someone who opens one present at a time at Christmas. Or how about the person that eats all their beans, then all their mashed potatoes, and finally all their beets

Publishing Kerfunkle

My heart hears you. I've got 12,000 words almost ready to publish, and had thought to publish it in two 6K installments. I'm thinking I'll wait a week between installments, but I would rather just do both at once. Pretty sure that 12K is too much at once.

Best

Gwen

Size of Posts

Usually, I thought a couple thousand words was a good read. I did Portrait in 1,500 words maximums. I think too much is more than a mouthful. But, when you're on a roll, you like to get it out.

I'd be interested in how many people read the solo stories from front to back.

4 & 5 availible on FM?

Not me Leslie, I pounced on 4 as soon as you posted it.
But what's the rule? Haven't others posted multiple chapters at once ? Or 2 or more in a week? I used to post 2 a week before it was a burden.
Why not just post 4?
Karen

I wonder if the system can be "tricked"

Post two parts to a story the wrong way round (ie, 5 before 4)

"books" go by weighting then pure alphabetically so that bit will be ordered fine

and it looks like (from watching the effect) the system for the front page takes off the "older" one first

so by posting the first chapter of what you're posting last, people get the next chapter, then a surprise at the end of a whole other chapter that day

guess it depends on exactly how the backend handles that

It's manual

erin's picture

I've never bothered to program it to be automatic because doing it manually gives us flexibility. Like on a slow posting day, I can relax the rule a bit like I did for Leslie.

But it is mostly done by my volunteers who know that more than one chapter of a series on the front page is basically a Rule 1&3 violation. There is a second layer to this rule, no more than five series chapters on the front page at one time by the same person.

The rules are necessary to share the scarce resource of front page space more equitably. And yeah, I implemented this rule about ten years ago when some authors were posting two or three chapters a day and five or six different series in a week. Really short chapters, most of them. Half of the front page was all one or two people. Other authors and even some non-authors did complain.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

but then

why take stories off that way round?

if there's more than one of the same thing in a day, wouldn't leaving the first in order up and taking off the rest reduce people missing chapters (I can see people not noticing the next chapter on the next page link, but not to the same extent as leslie reported at the start of this thread)

I get the restricting space on the front page, but for multiple posts on the same day leaving it as just the last in the sequence seems sub-optimal

Try operating the site with both variants

erin's picture

The rule that always works is last posted stays up, the other rule has to have exceptions and decisions at each instance. It's not a rule then, instead of reducing work, it makes more work.

The other thing is that with this rule there is a reason NOT to violate it for the author. Again, making less work for me. I spend 20 to 40 hours a week running the site already. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Rules

Never been good with them, rules that is. But, when it comes to my babies, I try not to leave them unattended in a hot car. So, I made a mistake once and hopefully won't repeat it.

Need to clarify the rules

You can post as many chapters as often as you want but only the latest chapter is allowed on the front page. This is to be fair to other authors whose stories would be prematurely pushed off the front page. The earlier chapters are there, just not on the front page.

Commentator
Visit my Caption Blog: Dawn's Girly Site

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Monthly

mountaindrake's picture

If you check the monthly story list it has all the postings for that month. Have a good day and enjoy life,

Have a good day and enjoy life.

A Good Reason why

Thank you, Commentator (Dawn),

I appreciate you taking the time to explain the reason behind the rule. It makes a lot of sense. I will wait for another day to pass before I post each chapter.