The Pub Discussion Board

the anticipation till now will only make it that much sweeter

If my last reviewer doesn't get off his ass, you might get your wish.

Eric Storm

Okay.  I'll release it in February.

Of 2020.



You said you'd enjoy it, anyway... 




Eric Storm

Eric, we would enjoy it anyway, of course. Wouldn´t you StoryJunkie? Although we would certainly hate the intervening time.   Still my suggestion was for you to publish it already so you are able to relax and stop worrying about when the last reviewer will get back to you. You know, avoid stress and all that.  

BTW Eric, if you need another reviewer, I volunteer for it. And if you like it I could even send you suggestions with track changes, or a similar function, so as to make it easier for you to do  the editing.

Augur: My reviewers are not "editors" or "proofreaders", thus "track changes" is not something that would make any sense for doing that job.  (Not to mention that my stories are written in HTML, not in some word processor.)  My reviewers are basically beta-readers: they are there to catch things that don't seem to make sense, or that they think could work better some other way.  It's more macro- than micro-commentary.  Oh, sure, they LOVE to point out when I make a typo (because I catch most of them long before they see the story), but for the most part, it's not the mechanics of it that I'm worried about.  It's the story I want them to comment on. 

Not to sound too arrogant, but the truth is that, from what I've seen, I have a better grasp of the mechanics of writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation) than most other people, so taking someone else's advice on that isn't something I really want to do.  Yes, I make mistakes, but what good is it to me if I have to look up every correction my editor suggests, to figure out which one of us is right?

StoryJunkie: As reviewers are required to submit a review, if you didn't say anything, you wouldn't be a reviewer for very long...  (And no, "Great chapter!" does not qualify as a review.)

firewing: I'll keep that in mind.  Right now, I have a sufficient number of reviewers.  That is until I fire this last one for not doing his job...  grrrrrr....

Eric Storm

Eric>   Understood. But you have to get the commentary somehow. Track changes, or comments on a text part is a great tool to be more precise about it.  Also there is always copy and paste. You can get text from an HTML source to word/libreoffice work on it and get the comments back to the author. Anyway my offer stands if you ever have a vacancy on your review board.

Last edited by Augur (2018-01-23 18:54:56)

StoryJunkie: I've been meaning to join Procrastinators Anonymous, myself... but they keep changing the day of the meeting.

Augur: most reviewers just say, "At the point where you <insert scene here>, it was cool that..." or "When you had <person> do <thing>, I didn't understand why they..." etc.  I am planning something more elaborate for the next version of Reviewer Central (The website I built for people to do reviews), when all interaction will be in an on-site WYSIWYG editor, but for the moment, it's all just plain text.

Josh: I'll give your keyboard a break:  I've received the final review, but I will most likely not post the chapter until sometime on the 25th.  Reason is that I have errands to run tomorrow that will prevent me from sitting down to proofread it (it's 20,000 words: that's several hours of proofreading.)  So you can give your keyboard/mouse/browser a breather for 24 hours or so.

Eric Storm

Not a matter of setting rules, it's a matter of the technologies being employed.  The reviewers get an HTML version of the story, and are submitting their reviews via an HTML form.  I do not possess Microslut Word anymore, and while I do have OpenOrifice, I don't particularly like it, and almost never use Writer.  (I use Calc for a few budgetary things, little else.)

Reviewer Central version 2.0 will use a TinyMCE-based WYSIWYG editor for reviews, where a reviewer will be able to mark a spot in the chapter and attach their comment there, but that is (apparently) a long time in coming, if my luck developing the new version of the site is any indication.  I have been using this same editor to write my stories for well over a year now, privately.  It does everything a fiction writer needs it to do, without all the crap inside full-fledged word processors that never gets used for writing.

Of course, the biggest feature of Reviewer Central 2.0 will be that it will be available to authors other than me.


Eric Storm

Good idea Peace2300. Although in the end it´s not much of a difference. Reviewing can be done even with plain text as Eric says it´s being done now. What matters is that Eric needs to feel comfortable with the way it is being done. I suggested Word, or Libre Office, because It´s what I use (together with Trados and Wordfast) for my translation work, so it´s what I´m familiar with. But as long as you can write and submit comments it´s not a big deal either way.

I'm about as likely to give Google control over my stories as I am to gnaw off my own dick.  No, I don't trust them in the slightest.  This is the same company that has routinely done shit that is only in their interest, and not anyone else's.  An example:

As a website developer, I have a private webserver on my own computer.  To make life easier, when developing sites, I used a .dev domain name (so, for instance, wolfpub.dev).  I could then set my Windows hosts file to direct that URL back to my private webserver, and everything was hunky-dory.  This is a practice that has been used by tens of thousands of developers worldwide, using .dev (for "development") as their pseudo-URL for this purpose.  It is a practice that has existed for many years, and is well-established.

Enter Google.

Google gained control of the .dev top-level domain.  As a major Internet corporation, they had the resources to make this happen.  They use .dev for some nebulous internal functions of their own;  .dev is NOT available to be registered by the general public.  (Apparently Google does have plans to offer it, but at this time, it is not available.)

Now, this shouldn't matter, as the Windows hosts file is supposed to override any other lookup to a website, so it should still go to my private webserver.  Oh, but wait.  My browser was written... BY GOOGLE.

It tries to access my webserver, all right, but because Chrome is hard-coded to accept only HTTPS connections from the .dev top-level domain, it will not display my personal webserver sites, because they are only HTTP, not HTTPS.  There is no way around this in Chrome browser.  The only way I've found to get around it is to return to Firefox.  This is just one of many instances where Google, and companies like it, are doing exactly what they promised NOT to do as they asked us to help them build their businesses: acting like Microsoft and Apple.

I use Google's search function because there are few alternatives that match its quality.  Its primary competitor, Bing, is owned by Microsoft.  Which do you prefer, the demon, or Satan Himself?  (I'll let you pick which company is Satan...)  I use Windows because the software I need to run to do my 3D artwork requires it.  I do my best not to use either of these companies any more than I have to.  Neither of them has shown themselves trustworthy.

***

Now that I'm done with my rant, a far more practical reason not to use Google Drive:  By using the editor I'm using, I end up with a file that is already in the final format (limited HTML) that I need it in when posting it.  There is no worry about whether the conversion will screw something up, because there is no conversion.  When version 2.0 is fully up and operational, any author using Reviewer Central will, after having gotten their chapter to a place where they are ready to post it, simply click a button, and it will immediately be a live chapter, available to the public.  No converting, not even any uploading.  It will just be there.

In version 2.0 of the website, the editor will be just one piece of the author tools available on the site.  I plan on building (and have been building, for my own use) an entire authoring tool.  It will include the editor, plus tools for creating character sheets, outlines, story calendars, story notes, random name generators, and other such helpful utilities.  In other words, as an author, you will be able, if you wish, to plan out and write your entire story right here on the website.  Then, when you're ready to post a piece of it, you just click a couple buttons, and poof!  It's posted.  Want to post it somewhere else?  Click a different button, and the site will give you a ZIP file with your story in it, ready to be uploaded somewhere else.  There is no means by which Google Drive can compete with that kind of thing.

Not to mention, having these utilities right on the site vastly simplifies adding and removing reviewers, and keeping track of how well your reviewers are doing.  (I grade my reviewers.  I don't know if they know that, but I literally have a 0-100 scale, also marked A-F, just like a report card, based on the quality and timeliness of reviews.)  When this tool is available to every author on the site, it needs to be as easy as possible for them to add in a reviewer, or remove one who's not pulling their weight.  (Have I "fired" reviewers before?  Yes.  I have a list of six or seven who used to be reviewers, but aren't now.)

This is why Google Docs, or any external tool, really, is unacceptable to me.

Eric Storm

Update for January 26, 2018:

The Woodward Academy, Year 7, Chapter 8: January has been posted to PRM.
The Woodward Academy, Year 7, Chapter 2: July has been made public.
The Woodward Academy, Year 7, Chapter 9: February will be finished within the next day or two.

WAY7-9 will most likely be posted March 1st.  It's so close to the end of the month that I will just hold it until then.  I am so close to the end of the chapter that I cannot fathom not being able to finish it in time.  (I know, I have just jinxed myself...)

As of right now, I have written nearly a quarter as many words as I wrote in all of last year.

Eric Storm

WAY7 - Chapter 8: January is brilliant! So worth the wait.

Update for January 27, 2018:

The Woodward Academy, Year 7, Chapter 9: February is finished, and is with the reviewers.

WAY7-10 will be started tomorrow or the next day.

Eric Storm