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Post by nyquil on Jun 29, 2005 1:14:04 GMT
Has anyone else received this email, and if so, is there any truth to it? Dear fellow fanfiction writers & readers,
All right...a lot of you probably already know who we are (Nef and Imbecamiel ;-), since you're either friends, reviewers, or both :-) If you don't know who we are well...then what's wrong with you?! Just kidding. If we know you, but you don't know us, then we're some of the secret admirers of your stories (who have not yet found the time to write you all the raving reviews you deserve *g*).
Ok, we know you're all pretty busy so we'll try not take up too much of your time. The reason we're writing is that we're really, really mad at fanfiction.net (surprise!). You've probably heard about it's new "no reviewer responses" rule. We thought it was just a rumor - until they decided to temporarily ban one of our friends, Linuvial Greenleaf, and forbid her to write any responses in the future. Needless to say...we were not exactly happy about that.
We don't know about you, but for us reviews, and reviewer responses are vital. They're half the fun of fanfiction. Right now they don't seem to be cracking down on every author, but we don't think it will be long before they are. We don't want to see that happen, and we really don't want to see anymore friends leave FF.net.
Well, if you're still with us, here's the best battle plan we could come up with :-) If as many people as we can recruit write letters to the staff (we're sending ours to every e-mail adress they've provided, in the hopes it will reach at least one person. In the past, many people who have written them have never gotten any response whatsoever.), hopefully they'll start to pay attention. So please, write a letter to them protesting their ban on reviewer responses. And please keep it respectful and polite. You don't like flamers, I'm sure they don't either ;-)
Thank you for your help! Hopefully, we'll make a difference. If you decide to help us, we'd appreciate it if you'd send just a short note back, letting us know that you'll be writing to them. We'd just like to know about how many people are behind us :-)
Thanks!
- Nefhiriel & Imbecamiel
I can't find anywhere on ff.net where it states what can and can't be posted there. I looked through the TOS... Anyway, if this is true, then I think it's ridiculous. quil
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Post by lindahoyland on Jun 29, 2005 3:36:02 GMT
I've had this same e mail sent by a writer who claimed her story was removed because of her reviewer responses. The rules state you can put brief author's notes at the beginning and end of stories. I admit I do it each chapter and cross my fingers ! From what I know the stories that have been removed have had as much space devoted to the responses as the stories. I have not heard of anyone having trouble if only a small amount of space is devoted to notes or responses. I suppose one way round it is to post responses as a review of your own story !
I just hope I can continue to answer my readers's questions and say thank you.
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Post by Rosie on Jun 29, 2005 7:21:50 GMT
Has anyone else received this email, and if so, is there any truth to it? Dear fellow fanfiction writers & readers,
All right...a lot of you probably already know who we are (Nef and Imbecamiel ;-), since you're either friends, reviewers, or both :-) If you don't know who we are well...then what's wrong with you?! Just kidding. If we know you, but you don't know us, then we're some of the secret admirers of your stories (who have not yet found the time to write you all the raving reviews you deserve *g*).
Ok, we know you're all pretty busy so we'll try not take up too much of your time. The reason we're writing is that we're really, really mad at fanfiction.net (surprise!). You've probably heard about it's new "no reviewer responses" rule. We thought it was just a rumor - until they decided to temporarily ban one of our friends, Linuvial Greenleaf, and forbid her to write any responses in the future. Needless to say...we were not exactly happy about that.
We don't know about you, but for us reviews, and reviewer responses are vital. They're half the fun of fanfiction. Right now they don't seem to be cracking down on every author, but we don't think it will be long before they are. We don't want to see that happen, and we really don't want to see anymore friends leave FF.net.
Well, if you're still with us, here's the best battle plan we could come up with :-) If as many people as we can recruit write letters to the staff (we're sending ours to every e-mail adress they've provided, in the hopes it will reach at least one person. In the past, many people who have written them have never gotten any response whatsoever.), hopefully they'll start to pay attention. So please, write a letter to them protesting their ban on reviewer responses. And please keep it respectful and polite. You don't like flamers, I'm sure they don't either ;-)
Thank you for your help! Hopefully, we'll make a difference. If you decide to help us, we'd appreciate it if you'd send just a short note back, letting us know that you'll be writing to them. We'd just like to know about how many people are behind us :-)
Thanks!
- Nefhiriel & Imbecamiel
I can't find anywhere on ff.net where it states what can and can't be posted there. I looked through the TOS... Anyway, if this is true, then I think it's ridiculous. quil It is ridiculous, and I don't understand where ff.net are coming from half the time with all their rules - some of which are obviously logical, but others not so. I really really don't like the way they disregard their members - if that isn't the case, then apologies to them, but it certainly seems that way because I don't know anyone who has ever received a reply to an email. I'd like to know exactly why people shouldn't put responses at the beginning or end of their stories, and why script form is not permissable. If there's a good reason, then fine - but it should be explained. They seem to treat us like naughty children to do just do as we're told, without explanation - not unlike bad parenting.
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Post by shieldmaiden on Jun 30, 2005 2:36:06 GMT
I just looked at the news update page on ff.net, and could find nothing about reviewer responses being illegal now. I know in the past they've had announcements on their front page regarding things like the songfic and script-form bannings. So hopefully it's just a rumor. At least, I really hope so, because I'll be quite upset if I can't respond to people anymore.
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Post by lindahoyland on Jun 30, 2005 4:26:41 GMT
I heard that both Cassia and Linuviel Greenleaf had stories removed because of responses.From what I remember both tended to have almost as much space devoted to the responses as the actual story so maybe that was the problem ? I would hate not to be able to answer my reviewers questions though I've never posted individual responses. These sites drive you crazy,either refusing to take your stories or deleting them ! I have as a backup osted on Open scrolls and Council of Elrond(those that were accepted ) I also post at Naice a Nilme but that only takes stories in which Legolas and or Aragorn suffer in some way.
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Post by Rosie on Jun 30, 2005 6:42:21 GMT
Does anyone get this message after they've left a review?
Story Not Found -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story is not part of the archive and cannot be reviewed.
Linda, I just got this when I reviewed Burden of Guilt - it's happened before, and the review does actually show on the page eventually, so it doesn't appear to be a real problem, just an annoyance.
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Post by lindahoyland on Jun 30, 2005 22:27:23 GMT
No, I've not had this message.Thanks for your kind review, Rosie, I hope the chapter didn't come across as too spicy as Aragorn was on top of the covers but thought I'd give Eomer another excuse to rage if I needed it !
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Post by eggowaffles on Jul 1, 2005 18:53:00 GMT
I haven't gotten this e-mail as of yet, but, after my own little run-in with ff.net, I'm not surprised. It's ridiculous, all the meglomaniacal processes that go on within fanfic archives– this is supposed to be fun and creative recreational writing, not a business firm, right? If you don't like reader responses, skip them! If you don't like scriptfics, don't read them! That way, the people who do enjoy them can continue enjoying them, nothing needs to be deleted, and everybody's happy! What's so hard about this?
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Post by lindahoyland on Jul 15, 2005 1:46:25 GMT
On the subject of fanfic.net,for those of you with stats counters,does anyone else notice the figures vary between chapters ? For example I had 574 hits for chapter 28 and 654 for chapter 29 !You would expect it to be the other way round ! My first chapter had 13375 hits while the later ones are averaging around 500 when everyone has caught up.38 has 251 so far in 24 hours. Are these figures average ?I just admit to being nosy on the subject !
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Post by eggowaffles on Jul 15, 2005 2:00:04 GMT
On the subject of fanfic.net,for those of you with stats counters,does anyone else notice the figures vary between chapters ? For example I had 574 hits for chapter 28 and 654 for chapter 29 !You would expect it to be the other way round ! My first chapter had 13375 hits while the later ones are averaging around 500 when everyone has caught up.38 has 251 so far in 24 hours. Are these figures average ?I just admit to being nosy on the subject ! Wow, those are some whopping figures! With the new hit counters (we with free accounts just got them), I think I get about a hundred hits a day for my multi-chaptered stories... which means that there's an awful lot of rereading going on, or I've got a lot of people who don't like reviewing...
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Post by lindahoyland on Jul 15, 2005 2:09:40 GMT
That is great 100 hits a day for older stories!I estimate that only about 20 in every 500 regular readers will bother to leave a review ! My maths is not good enough to work out the percentage.Have you any ideas for my story title(In the support thread)?
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Post by lindahoyland on Aug 20, 2005 20:35:41 GMT
I could not find "Burden of Guilt" listed at all yesterday unless I looked under characters and my reviews are very down for the last chapter so I wonder if they've started hiding our stories now ? Of course lots of people are away and it could be a boring chapter but usually a story update shows up on the main site within 24 hours !
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Post by Raksha on Aug 20, 2005 21:54:34 GMT
Hmm, I had no trouble finding Burden of Guilt yesterday. But I don't remember how I got to it; sometimes it was through my browser history. Of course, I get notified by ff.net when a new chapter appears....
RAKSHA
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Post by lindahoyland on Aug 20, 2005 22:22:47 GMT
I could find it easily enough via the alert they send when you post or by searching for Aragorn and Faramir but not on the site.I just looked again and it is number 69,so maybe lots of stories were posted at once.
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Post by shieldmaiden on Aug 28, 2005 1:19:15 GMT
Bringing this up again... I got the following email today:
> Subject: FF.net support > Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 17:28:36 -0500 > > Dear Writers and Readers on Fanfiction.net: > > I'm writing to inform you about a new rule the > Webmaster of fanfiction.net has imposed: they've > forbidden us to anwer the reviews. Yep, > you're reading correctly. > > At first, it was believed that this was just a > rumor, > but some days ago a writer friend was punished > because she answered her reviews in the chapters > of the fic. > > Many people think this is very unfair because > that's the only way we have to communicate > with our readers. It's the only way they can know we > read their > reviews; we read new opinions and make friends. > We don't like this new rule, and we're writing to > ask your help. > > It's very easy. We're making a list of people who > are against this new prohibition. To colaborate, > you just have to add you fanfiction.net user name > and email address > so that they'll be sure we haven't written up > unknown names just to fill up the space. > > Easy, isn't it? If you agree with us, add your user > name and e-mail down below. Then send this to all > your friends at Fanfiction.net until it reaches 200. > When it has 200 names, send it to > support@fanfiction.net > (and to ghani-chan@hotmail.com, please! just to know > how many people supports us) > > Thanks for your help! Together we'll hopefully > made a change at fanfiction.net, because this is a > web site for > fans who are looking to have fun, reading and > writing, and a part of that is the reviews and > the answers, right? > > If you've already receieved this, please forgive.
I still can't find any indication on their front page that this is, in fact, a rule now. And I think I remember that they actually had something posted back when the songfics were banned-- does anyone know if this is true or not?
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Post by lindahoyland on Aug 28, 2005 1:38:19 GMT
The only review responses that I know for certain were banned were 2 girls who had more responses than story who were not on good terms as one claimed(Wrongly in my view) that the other borrowed her story. One of them who got into trouble over the responses said fanfic.net claimed she was writing an interactive story but she had about 25 reviewers and wrote the equivalent of an e mail to each.
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Post by eggowaffles on Aug 28, 2005 16:45:51 GMT
I still can't find any indication on their front page that this is, in fact, a rule now. And I think I remember that they actually had something posted back when the songfics were banned-- does anyone know if this is true or not? I've gotten at least five seperate e-mail petitions about the reader responses, but I haven't signed any of them. There are hundreds of stories I've read with reader responses that haven't been deleted/banned, so I don't know exactly where they're getting their information.
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Post by lindahoyland on Aug 28, 2005 23:50:04 GMT
I think a lot depends on how many responses there are and if anyone complains.I have seen writers still breaking the song lyrics rule and as yet getting away with it. I just want to keep my stories safe but be free to answer questions and say thank you to reviewers !
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Post by lucidity on Oct 23, 2005 11:52:30 GMT
I know this is an old thread but these rumors also reached the Harry Potter community of writers. It is absolutely true. I had a friend who got sick of hearing rumors and emailed the moderators directly. I copied the email that she sent me and here is the text:
Subject: Review Responses a no-no??
Hi Lisa,
I heard back from Xing, here was his response:
"You are not allowed to use chapters as messageboards for reviewers. If you need to respond to reviews, email the reviewer."
So I guess I'll stop doing that, LOL. Even though it bugs me - they don't exactly make it an easy process to get an e-mail, it isn't like I can just click no something, and ta-da - no, I have to go to their profile, click on the e-mail, decipher the bot-proof thing, then open my e-mail program and hand-type the thing in... I do have other thing to do in life, LOL. Sycophant hex and fictionalley allow you to respond to reviews directly with a simple click. Wouldn't that be nice... And putting something like that in the terms-of-service so people don't get booted for breaking rules they don't know about would be nice too...
As far as I know it was never put in the TOS, but it has been some time ago. Since then they have been swamped with the whole songfic scandal, LOL!
As for me, I went back and painstakingly removed everything that was not a simple Author's Note. I didn't want to take any chances.
I doubt that things would be taken down willy-nilly, but only if there was a complaint.
FF.net gets fics to a lot of folks, but you do have to occasionally put up with some total @%**!
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Post by lindahoyland on Oct 23, 2005 19:19:47 GMT
The whole thing is absurd !Surely it would encourage more people to use their site if they allowed author feedback ? I have to admit though,the only people I heard of having stories deleted,gave more space to the responses than the story and were on bad terms with each other ! I try to answer any questions as author's notes and have one sentence thanking everyone. SOA is the best site for allowing you to respond to reviewers. Linda
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