I know! I remember when the forum updated a few years back (May '06, or something like that), and thinking the smartest thing that MNFF could have done at the time was to remove the Department of Mysteries category.

Maybe we need something like that now, but on a lesser scale. Like getting rid of classes. Maybe fanart. Stuff that either doesn't pertain to fanfic writing or is too much to deal with.

The only suggestion I would have is keeping the houses. You get rid of those and people might just leave and not come back.

Agreed on all counts. I'd keep the Houses too - they might as well be original anyway. Assuming I don't have early onset dementia, they were implemented only about 6-ish months after MNFF opened.

*sigh* I hope this calms down, one way or another.

And SPEW. SPEW is useful, too.

Indeed it is. I've always had a soft spot for SPEW. Plus, it isn't even operated by staff so it's a non-issue. I was thinking more of the things that the mods are concerning themselves with, in place of concerning themselves (and myself, too, when I was there) with the actual stories/authors.

Getting rid of classes? *snif* They were supposed to be all about better fanfic and better writing... As it is, there are far fewer this term than usual. We just need to delete the old forums one of these days -- like, 2/3 of what's currently up.

Oh well. As usual, I've ducked 99% of the drama. The book is supposed to be a) making better writers, as people requested when surveyed, and b) supporting other things around the site that people also were gung-ho about when surveyed and which ad revenue won't cover. If nobody likes the results of surveys, maybe we need more voter turnout in the first place: Ye Olde Democracy Problemme. As it is, yes, the site is cluttered with things that someone or other thought was a great idea at the time, keeping the site going now that the series is over and membership took a SERIOUS hit, and every single one of those bits of clutter has someone willing to go to the mat for it. Sometimes several someones.

I absolutely positively cannot think of a single solitary time that queue time was NOT a complaint at MNFF. Not even when the thing had a three-day average. Nor, for that matter, can I think of a time rejection rates weren't a matter for whining on both sides of the issue. ("You let too much crap through!" "You didn't let MY crap through!!!") As posted in my own LJ, the drama at MNFF is excellent training for the rest of the world, presents the world of the writer in microcosm, and is probably not to be taken all that seriously by anyone.

The non-MNFF site I had in mind? Actually had a thread on "How to flounce out." One of the submitted letters was to the effect of "I've had it. I'm never coming back here again because nobody respects my genius and it's all petty-minded bickering. PS Please disable my account so I don't come back for the tenth time." I laughed so hard over that thread I nearly did myself an injury. If we weren't touchy about the written word, confident in our own opinions, capable of seeing the drama in every ordinary thing, and verbose, we wouldn't be in this mess, now would we? ;)

The site needs to return to its roots. Screw the bells and whistles. Forget the challenges, the contests, the House points, the 84573475978 guilds and clubs and cliques. Forget it all. When shit's this bad, shit's got to return to its origins. And the origins of MNFF were, plain and simple, quality stories modded in a timely manner by quality mods.

I could not have said it better. Houses should stay... and SPEW and the SBBC, since they aren't run by mods, but just, all this effort directed toward groups and clubs and challenges and house points and whatever is so fucking pointless. They try so hard to come up with all these challenges, don't have time to moderate the queue, and then wonder why people are losing interest. Just. I don't get how so many people are failing to see this.

Wow. I'm kind of puzzled as to why everyone's complaining about the forum activities. I haven't been on MNFF for a while, but last time I was there I distinctly remember all these activities being for the authors, and I remember the authors enjoying them.


I agree with VV - the queue waits have always been a problem, especially during the summer, especially when a few mods leave the site at once.


Speaking from my own personal experience, when I was spending truckloads of my time working on Gauntlet and classes, and this and that and the other it didn't mean I was taking away from my modding time. Because truthfully there's only so much time you can spend on the Queue before your need a break. In fact working on the other activities is what helped me stay with the site. If it had been just modding the Queue with no forums I wouldn't have stuck around for nearly as long as I did.

Also, this whole "keep this, but get rid of that" attitude sounds to me like people just deciding to keep the parts of the clubs they personally found useful. I for one, never understood the point of SPEW. I got much more meaningful and consistent reviews from normal users than SPEWers and it felt like it meant more because they weren't doing it just to keep their membership in the club...they were doing because they enjoyed the story and really felt like commenting. It always felt like an exclusive club to me. But would I have ever advocated getting rid of it? No.


My point is that every challenge/group on MNFF originated to help the authors write better fiction and there are some users who would miss each one of those groups/activities. So I don't getting rid of them would help at all.


And you know what, I think now that the last book has come out and plain disappointed alot of fans the forums and challenges are probably the only thing keeping some people in the fandom.


But that's just me. And it probably has something to do with the fact that I was in some way involved in starting half the clubs and challenges people are saying to get rid of. >.>

Now house points. If I hadn't feared being attacked by a large mod of angry authors I would have suggested getting rid of those AGES ago. I've always found the point system completely useless and a source of drama.


Regardless, the drama this time is just insane and I still haven't figured out what the hell the problem is. Someone wrote a book and advertised it on MNFF, you don't like it. OK. So don't buy it. End of story. Why dredge up all the stupid drama for this?


*sigh* Well, it's good to know that the awesome people on my f-list are all discussing this rationally and - for the most part - are as puzzled as I am about what's going on.

I definitely am, still, pretty puzzled, which as you say is probably a good thing. In any case, I suppose we just had different experiences. In mine, the various challenges and clubs proved a distraction to many (though, granted, far from all) of the mods. I distinctly recall it getting to the point that mods were asking permission to quit their work in the queue, but be allowed to stick around on staff so that they could continue to run various other things. So that at one time, we had like 20+ mods on staff, but only 13 were actual mods in the truest sense of the word. As in, modding stories and whatnot.

I also remember at least two separate debates (occurring years apart) concerning quotas. Both times, various mods were requesting lower quota requirements on the grounds that they were too demanding considering all of the things they did outside of the queue, and they cited various extracurricular clubs/challenges as their examples. We all relented and lowered the quota both times, by pretty substantial margins. Those were pretty concrete changes that directly resulted in extracurriculars being prioritized at the expense of the queue - a decision that was clearly popular at the time, and perhaps rightly so. Like I said, I genuinely loveeeeee those things. All of them. Not just for the fun of them, but also because they did serve some practical purpose in garnering quality activity and more users. So I don't intend to demonize them in the slightest, or even to dispute their value... merely the idea that they are absolutely indispensable, or the groundwork of the site and thus sacred. In my humble opinion, I don't think that they are either.

Honestly, I've got no idea what's going on behind the scenes at MNFF - but if the situation is really, truly as bad as it's appearing to those on the outside, then yes, my friendly recommendation remains a more "return to the roots" approach. Everything's got its time and its place. Maybe some (and I'm in no position to determine which) of those activities have seen their heyday and so if it could possibly help the site to retire them, why not? And if, for most mods, the need to maintain all the extras is distracting them from their primary duties (like if, for example, weekly quotas are being lowered on the grounds of needing to keep up with them) then I do think a little stripping down might be worthy of consideration.

You were always one of the few people capable of truly multitasking. You and Erika both, really, so it's no surprise that the "back to basics" suggestion rubs you the wrong way. Why should you have to accept the premise of that suggestion when it was never applicable to you in the first place? For you two, and a few others, juggling queue duties with other things was never an issue. You never let one go by the wayside in favor of the other. But many, many others (myself included) were not as talented. In my personal experience, the reality was that you were an anomaly. By and large, the juggling act wasn't something most of us learned to master, and so it was just my spur-of-the-moment thought that perhaps they should stop bending over backwards to try. Assuming I'm not horribly misjudging anything, it doesn't seem to be working, after nearly 5 years of trying our/their damnedest.

Though you know, I will say this: it is entirely possible that I've misdiagnosed the issue here. Like I said, I'm not there, so I have a hard time telling. So if I've stumbled across a heart attack but have labeled it a stroke, then this is all admittedly pretty moot.

Either way, though, stop hoarding all the multitasking skillz. Sharing is caring.

Wow. Ok, I actually didn't know quotas were lowered specifically for that reason. It must have happened when I wasn't a mod or when I was too distracted from the debate doing those other activities...*wink*


I can kind of see your point if it was so obviously affecting queue time in terms of being used as a reason to change quotas! I'll stop myself before I start suggesting strategies and compromises and ways to fix it, because we're both not there anymore! Just wanted to say I can kind of see where you're coming from although I'm still attached to said activities.


As you said, we're both not really there and we still don't know what's actually going on, so all we can do is speculate as to what the problems are and how to fix them... and sigh about the good ol days, of course!

Am I allowed to comment?

The most ridiculous thing that has come out of this whole LJ craziness the last few days is the fact that two thirds of the people commenting have no idea what the queue is actually like at the moment.

May I remind people what month it is? It's July. That means exams finished last week. We've had a lot of mods struggling through their exam period at the same time as attempting to mod and it's tough, but no tougher than it used to be.

We had a few categories that went to 20 days because people went MIA and the other mods simply didn't have time to cover them. As far as I'm aware, there have been one or two of the weekly competitions in the Three Broomsticks that have suffered from this as well, though I must point out that none of the admins were alerted to any competitions going unmarked until this whole drama on LJ.

As for everything else, the site is actually really strong at the moment. Sure, I still haven't had the time to recode the skins since the problems with the ads, but as people specifically requested that they either be fixed or taken down, I don't see why this is my fault? They will go up again once I work out how to code the ads into the designs properly which I should hopefully have time to do next week. This is what I've always promised, I'm sorry that it's taken this long.

I know that I was never the best mod. The queue wasn't my strong point, but that was because of my RL problems more than the forums. I did too much at home and then needed a distraction so I threw myself into forum life which helped because it was fun. I tried my best to meet quota, it was hit and miss, I know. You know the struggles I had Elysa because I simply couldn't make myself leave.

But I honestly don't know why the book has sparked this debate so much. Everyone's saying that we should be focussing on the writing again? The book is a guide to writing and I tried to show you it before I released it Elysa... you told me to tell Andrew so that he could post it on MN. He's agreed to do that as soon as I manage to write up a news post, but I've been so put off by all this stupidity on LJ that I actually dislike my own book now and can't think what to write. How shit is that? The book was supposed to be a really positive thing, and loads of people on the site like it. It was written to their specifications... hell you were even there when we first suggested the idea and you said you liked it! Now we're supposed to be going "Back to Basics" just because no one has a clue what they're talking about?

Thanks to moderators returning to us, after exam periods and in the case of Marie, just returning, there is currently not one fiction in the queue that is older than 8 days. We promise that every fiction will be modded in 10. Where's the problem?

There may be challenges that have not been judged, but until people tell me what these are I can't help them. I don't run any challenges. Writing my book didn't distract me from judging anything.

It seems that everyone is still mad about Twitternet - an april fools joke that didn't take much to organise - and the QSQs - which fell apart because people left and we literally couldn't do any faster. Both of these are in the past and at this moment, MNFF is absolutely fine, so can we all just stop speculating about when we're going to self-destruct?

(This isn't meant to be a rant at you Elysa, I've just had a very tough week (Oop, Self-indulgent. Gotta stop that.) Can I just say that the site is fine and let that be that?)

A friendly suggestion (and I mean that - this isn't meant to be biting wit): pick and choose your battles, or rather, with whom you battle. You've had a really rough time of it the last couple of weeks, and because of that you're naturally defensive. I can't blame you, as I'd probably react similarly. So this is just me trying to shine some objective light onto your current situation, and I'm doing that by suggesting you take a step back and remember who your friends are.

You read into this post too much and responded to it a bit too strongly. There wasn't one stitch of your recent book drama in this post. The book drama got me thinking again about MNFF as a whole, so it served as my own internal catalyst for reflection. But I wasn't referring to you, or your book, at all. I stand by what I said in the beginning: the book was a good idea because it is revisiting the origins of the site: the writing, the stories, the authors. So if anything, this post should have been interpreted as a vague defensive of your book. Please don't lose sight of who you're talking to, dear. I'm not going to stab you in the back. I say what I mean. If I was in any way criticizing or otherwise commenting on your book/the situation at large, I would've said so. But in fact, I specifically said that I wasn't doing that. "I'm declining to comment..."

In any case, a week or so has passed since this all went down... I really hope it's blown over for you. I still think you should write up a news post for the main site. You can't allow anyone to dictate your feelings to you. If you think it's a good book with a good purpose, that's your judgment and you have every right to it. So don't shy away from action. Get out there and advertise! Or if you're just too wary still, let me know and I'll do the news post for you.

We have to talk, though, about semi-unrelated matters. I've got some information to pass on. Hopefully I'll catch you on AIM at some point... but if not, my email address is elysamontfort@gmail.com

Hang in there.