Young Writers Society

Okay, I like the notifying-the-author idea. Three day's was the wrong time anyway. It'd have gone best as a week (or so) or a smaller time.

Nate wrote:Slight algorithm change for the Literary Spotlight.

Instead of ranking based on the number of likes a work has received in the past 3 days, it now looks only at the past 24 hours. This should hopefully lead to more variety for the spotlight.

This makes me so happy, ilu Nate.

Haha, thanks Skins.


Everyone ->> I'd really like to update the algorithm further for choosing what goes in the Literary Spotlight, but unfortunately, there's just enough data! If you read something, use the Like button if you like the work.

Also, underneath a user's avatar when they review and in their profile, you'll see a new link to "Donate." This has been a requested feature for some time, and someone finally gave me a prod to do it! So, enjoy

And yes, just like with gifts, you can donate yourself points (although, it would be self-defeating).

Last but not least, I'm exploring ways to change the way the literary section is laid out:
browse_new.php

What will probably end up happening is that there'll be an option to use the above forum-esque view instead of the default list view.

A couple changes to the sidebar on the front page!

The first shows up underneath you avatar, letting you know how many reviews until your next star. This should hopefully help people with understanding the review star system a little more.

The second is a little block telling people how to add a new work and how much it currently costs to post a new work (along with a short explanation as to why it can change). As with the other change, this should hopefully lessen confusion.

Nate wrote:
The first shows up underneath you avatar, letting you know how many reviews until your next star. This should hopefully help people with understanding the review star system a little more.

Ahh, I like this!

A little suggestion, if you ever felt like it, would be to have different commentary on how many reviews until your next star depending on how many reviews you have left. Like, currently, I have eleven reviews left- how fun would it be if I got to ten reviews and it said something like, "Only ten left! So close, keep going!" I don't know, something encouraging

But that's just a little thing that can wait. I really like this though!

I've decided to dump Cloudflare.

For those unfamiliar with it, Cloudflare is a content delivery network, meaning that it caches your website's content around the world to ensure the fastest possible page load times. More than that, it also offers a lot of protections for websites, ensuring that your website cannot be hacked.

As of late, though, Cloudflare has not been doing so well. A small but significant number of people in southwest England have been unable to access the site consistently for over a month now, and Cloudflare has been no help in resolving this. In the DC area where I live, they've had a lot of problems with their data servers. So much so that page load times have been significantly higher for me.

So, I'm dumping Cloudflare. Security wise, it shouldn't be a problem since access to most parts of the server is granted only to my specific IP address. Where this is not possible, you need two factor authentication to access the server. Plus, that's probably overboard anyways -- security isn't a huge concern for a small site like YWS.

Speed wise, I'm not sure how much people will notice as I've now installed other tools that should hopefully boost server response time. But, if you notice a slower site, please let me know. Likewise, if you notice a faster site, please let me know.

tl;dr YWS has dumped Cloudflare, which should hopefully result in improved access for a number of people.

Considering they banned me that one time from my Review Team I have no complaints

New members no longer have automatic access to the chatbar -- you now need at least 5 reviews before seeing it. This change was made to prevent abuse of the chatbar.

This change applies only going forward; it does not apply retroactively. But, if you've been a member for more than a week and haven't done 5 reviews... why not!?

On a not-quite-related note, would it be possible to make everyone subscribed to this thread, like the new members automatically get into YWS Club and followed by BB?
Everyone not wanting it could easily unsubscribe, but it'd show the new members that there's a place where all the new things are announced and opinions asked c:

It's currently 3:15 a.m. on the east coast of the United States, which can only mean one thing: YWS updates.

These updates began as a simple addition of a reviews button in the header area, but morphed into something much more. They include:

- Reviews button in the sidebar area

- Points button in the sidebar area

- Clicking the points button takes you to the "My points" page, showing you how you earned your points over the past 90 days. You can also get a summary of your review activity on the same page.

- In the forums, you can now see how many points and reviews a poster has

- In the literary area, a follow link has been added for authors and reviewers. For authors, how many points they have has been added. For reviewers, how many points & reviews they've made has been added.

- Also in the literary area, review stars now show up for authors and reviewers.

- In profiles, the amount of points someone holds has been added.

- Also added in profiles are the review stars.

Overall, this should give a more consistent look to avatars around the site as now the only main area where the review stars do not show up is in the People tab, where they can't be shown due to space constraints. Also, now that reviews and points are showing up in more places, I'm hoping this will provide more incentive to review by magnifying the bragging points you get from reviewing!

Edit

Forgot that I changed the layout of the literary areas as well. The new layout is supposed to make it cleaner and less confusing, although if you don't like it, definitely say so.

The new layout will stick around for at least a few days, and then I'm going to take a look and see what effect it has had reviewing. If reviews go down, the layout returns to the previous one. If reviews go up, the layout stays. If reviews stay the same, then I guess I'll flip a coin.

Thank you to everyone who was patient about the trophies for the June Review Day, Secret Santa, and the July Review Day! All trophies have now gone out. These are:

- Team Fire Flower trophy
- Team Dory trophy
- June 2013 Review Day reviews trophy
- July 2013 Review Day reviews trophy
- Secret Santa trophy

If you did not receive one of these trophies and should've, let me know. Likewise, if you mistakenly received one, please let me know (or... stay quiet. My seventh grade teacher would say, "Happy groundhog day!").

Aria ->> I'm sorry I didn't respond to your post last night. Anyhow, I like the idea a lot, but I worry that the Apollo Updates thread is often times just me babbling.

However, it could definitely be useful for a welcome thread. That could really help with getting new members acclimated to YWS.

A couple of updates.

At the suggestion of @beckiw, I've added notifications for when someone likes a comment/review you made in the literary area. If there's enough demand, it wouldn't be difficult to extend this to posts in the forums as well.

With regards to liking reviews, please do it more often! Long ago, I tried setting up a reviews leaderboard based on how many likes a review received, but it turned out to be meaningless as almost no reviews get more than 3 likes. But if more people use the like button, then this could be done. In fact, use the like button more often wherever you see it on the site!

The second change is actually a new feature: a forum just for links. You'll find the new Links forum as a subforum to The Lounge in the forums area. When you go to write a new topic in the links forum, you'll be asked only to fill out the title and the link address. And when browsing the links forum, each link is actually a link (if that makes sense).

I'm hoping the Links forum will be used to share content that's interesting to young writers from around the web. I've been frustrated myself a couple times that it wasn't easy to share a link that could be of interest to YWS, and the Links forum solves that.

As to what goes in the Links forum... anything you think that's interesting. Could be an image, an article about Nintendo, etc. The forum is an experiment for now, but if it does well, I could add more like it for specific interests. On the other hand, if it does poorly, expect to see it disappear within a few weeks!

@Nate does that also mean you'll get a notification when someone replies to your review/comment in the literary area? If not could that happen also, because I never actually realise when people reply to reviews, and I'd like to get a notification about that

ArcticMonkey wrote:@Nate does that also mean you'll get a notification when someone replies to your review/comment in the literary area? If not could that happen also, because I never actually realise when people reply to reviews, and I'd like to get a notification about that

This is actually a bug. It should be working, and when I test it, it is working, but it's obviously not working all the time. I took another look last night, but I haven't been able to track down the issue.