Young Writers Society

Storybooks have really taken off this month! We're only 2/3 through June, and there's already been more storybook posts made this month than in the whole of May.

Reviews are also doing great; they're currently running at about 10% above May, which was the heaviest reviewing month this year so far, at this point. The real X factor is the Review Day because May had a great one. But, I'm hoping that the June 30 Review Day will have 750 reviews, which would be the best since the June 2012 Review Day.

Also added a new feature: view Chat Bar History. You can access it from the Settings Dashboard in the Profile tab. When viewing a conversation, you can also choose to report it, which sends a copy of the transcript to Big Brother. Keep in mind that conversations are only saved for a max of 48 hours though (sometimes only 24 hours).

Nate wrote:I'm hoping that the June 30 Review Day will have 750 reviews

I am determined for there to be 750 reviews written this review day, even if I have to single handedly write them all myself

Well, let's see... that's 750 reviews in 24 hours or in 1,440 minutes. That's about 30 seconds for reading the work and another 85 seconds for writing the review. A minimum of 250 characters per review, or roughly 50 words. So that's a typing speed of about 33 words per minute. In other words, definitely doable.

Challenge accepted.

XD, nice Skins. Maybe doubling we could do a hundred . . . just remember: Quality over quantity

Sadly Nate I've gotta a mania for no reviews under 300 words (about 1200 characters - though I usually do them along the lines of four or five thousand), and will only guarantee 10+ reviews. :9

750 reviews is a LOT of reviews.

Yesterday, we had a review to work ratio of 13.5 to 1! Amazing! Unfortunately, it was because only 4 works were posted during the entire day.

So, I've reduced the cost to post a new literary piece from 300 to 250. It may stay at 250 or go back to 300 depending on how things go, but it almost certainly will not drop any further.

If every single person comes on here and they do one review, we'll get over 26,000 reviews.

750 is big only if you let it be

Divided between me and Audy (epic show-down this review day - yeah) it is AQ.

Sounds like a goal Nate!

You two aren't the only ones to do reviews.

Please don't be so close minded, that's what makes it seem like so huge, because you're thinking only you are going to review. There were a total of about fourty or fifty people in Review Teams last Review Day. So, if they all do three reviews, that's 150 already.

BlackNether12 wrote:Divided between me and Audy (epic show-down this review day - yeah) it is AQ.

Sounds like a goal Nate!

And me! You forgot me.

. . . oh dear.

My totally awesome reputation will not allow me to back down. Here comes toast June. ^^ Check it out with the second ranker, Audy.

Nate, something I was wondering: You know the html-like codes that we use to do italics, bolds and all that in our posts? Well, I was wondering how many of these codes there are? Because it would just be totally one hundred percent awesome if we could write posts (if only SB posts) using line breaks, lists, self-made graphs and all those kinds of things. I know it would take work to learn to use all of them, and that it would be really hard for newbies especially, but still.

I, at least, could really use some more tools. I mean, if you could make it so we could do headings, lists, lines, boxes, background colors/pictures, and maybe a few other things just using codes then we'd have a lot more control of our posts . . . it'd make them look cooler . . . and who knows, we might actually learn something (I know I was able to skip a chapter in my html handbook because I already had learned everything in that chapter from YWS).

^^???

Changed the banner on the home page. Hopefully it looks much better, and makes the site seem a little more friendly. Also added a vapid slogan that's devoid of any actual meaning: "Think Big. Aim Higher. See Beyond." I like it.

BlackNether12 ->> The bbcodes you see when you use the Full Reply are pretty much it, but this goes more into them:
http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/faq.php?mode=bbcode

If you'd like to do a background-color, you could always try this:
█████████████████████████

Code: Select all

[color=red]█████████████████████████[/color]

You can also do icons and small graphics. See this topic for more info:
New icon bbcode tag!

A couple updates over the past week, but mostly stuff so minor that it's hardly worth mentioning.

The first update was just getting rid of the box shadows in two places: around posts and around the main content area. It's an extremely small change and I doubt anyone even notices the difference, but I like it.

The second update was removing the debate forum from the list of included forums on the front page and in the sidebar area. Because the debate forum is left open-ended, unpleasant topics often arise. The response of many sites is simply not to have a debate forum, but I think there's a very strong virtue in having one. But that doesn't mean that everyone needs to be forced to read the debate posts on the front page, and so they'll no longer show up there.

I didn't even notice they ever HAD shadows O.o

Thanks for the second one Debating is the highest form of writing!

A couple of big updates.

The first is the chatroom -- YWS has gone back to the chat we once had, which is different from all the other chats we once had and then had again. You know the one. It had flash, but it wasn't the blue flash chat. It was the greyish flash chat.

At any rate, it's the most popular chat we've ever used, and it comes with a wealth of features.


The second big update is the homepage -- the top half has been completely refurbished. The banner across the top is gone, and the Literary Spotlight is back on the front page.

At the moment, the images used for the Literary Spotlight are somewhat bland, although I did try to pick some neat looking non-generic ones. However, this situation shouldn't last long as the portfolio updates are on the way, which will include the ability to upload cover art. In fact, the Literary Spotlight is part of the portfolio update.

More stuff on the way!