Ask a Moderator - Part 16

[Magical Maeve]

Sandy, shortsighted doesn't even come into it. A situation has been thrust upon the remaining moderators and we are working through it. The action log requires time. If we had time we would not have closed the queue. Time is a precious resource at MNFF at the moment. I suggest if you wish to prolong this debate you do so via PM with one of us.

Bottom line is we are doing our best for our authors. Nothing has been deliberate or malicious or with any intent to do anything but keep the site running. We are still modding and still maintaining the forums and when the site is fully operational we can visit questions regarding images in bios.

[MissyQuill]

Jan, I'm sorry about this and I know you mods are extremely busy doing what you can but you have to admit that this has never happened before on MNFF or any given fanfiction site (at least not as far as my knowledge is concerned).

And it does greatly concern me that we now have to go through a mod to edit/delete our own stories. Call me shallow but I like knowing that I can do what I like with what I write (as in, post it on a site, take it down from a site, edit it, etc).

And now, we have to go through already very busy mods to achieve this. As you pointed out, mods are already short on time and it will only bother them, not to mention even intimidate certain authors to the point that they would not approach a mod.

I am not looking for a debate or trouble, merely expressing my concern as this has greatly disturbed me. Also, the fact that a fair few stories have been deleted from the archives in the last few days coupled with this uncannily timed coincidence has put my mind ill at ease.

[Magical Maeve]

Can you give examples of stories that have been deleted? If stories have been deleted without authorisation then we have an issue and need to address it.

The 8th October is less than a month away. I would seldom call anyone shallow... not really sure what shallow has to do with it... but if a site I trusted told me they had problems and needed to shut down for a few weeks and during that time I would be unable to edit my stories, I wouldn't have a problem. I would have even less of a problem if they also told me that I could contact them if I needed anything urgently.

Doesn't bother me at all if someone wants their story editing. And I think we have made it plain that we are more than approachable. MNFF as never been, and never will be, intimidating. We would hope you would consider minor edits something that could wait, I know I have the odd story with run on sentences I have been meaning to address for a few years. But we need to be sensible.

If any author wants their story editing then contact a mod and we will do it happily. My email is jan@fanfiction.mugglenet.com

MissyQuill, I hope that sets your mind at ease.

Nicole's edit: I'm here for anyone who would like to adjust important story issues as well. My e-mail here is Nikki@fanfiction.com or my other one is in my profile if it's on a weekday.

[leahsm2]

I was working on my character exploration Task 4, and was trying to use color, which never did work, but what was odd was what I had typed was not what saved. It had left out a lot of what I already had. I should have saved it, but I think I over rode it. My problem is that over half of my reply , which was showing in "edit post" mode, was missing in "Preview" or "Save" and it wasn't a terribly long post, but I did cite an outside site, and an MNFF thread which is the only thing I mightn't have done in the same post before, so I thought I'd mention it as it was disturbing, being as I'd barely touched my coffee.

[SeverusSempra]

I am not looking for a debate or trouble, merely expressing my concern as this has greatly disturbed me. Also, the fact that a fair few stories have been deleted from the archives in the last few days coupled with this uncannily timed coincidence has put my mind ill at ease

.

I'm not looking for a debate or trouble either, but MissyQuill is right. We have had a few long-term Ravenclaws bid us goodbye on the forums in the last few days, and then I have found their stories deleted-- just after A) the queue closed and B) we were told that a few mods have had to leave.

I know real life intervenes and so forth, but all at once and in this manner? And then the "Manage Stories" feature disappears, which apparently has never happened before. Personally, all of it worries me, and I'm thinking of moving my stories somewhere else-- ideally somewhere with no annoying ads that slow down the page loading and distract from reading the stories. I had never looked at other fanfic sites before the last few days, but we seem to be the exception rather than the rule in having ads. Anyway, it's depressing watching something unknown and seemingly unhappy occurring to what used to be a good community.

Anya

[Marauder by Midnight]

leahsm2 - Double-check your coding to make sure you don't have any unclosed brackets. That's really the only thing I can think of that would make an entire half of a post disappear :/

SeverusSempra - No, their stories were deleted on their own accord by themselves before the queue closed. I won't deny that their leaving the site contributed to the sudden closure of the queue. Even with the recently retired moderators, we were short on staff. Closing the queue now will give the remaining few moderators a chance to unclutter the queue. As I explained before, the Manage Stories function disappearing is something new to our system (as you may recall, we updated our very outdated system recently). You can expect the Manage Stories function to disappear when we close the queue from now on. I apologize for not warning you ahead of time since I didn't know myself (though that is no excuse). We promise you that we are working on the ads situation, though if you should feel like your stories must be deleted and moved to another fanfiction site, we're not going to stop you.

Oh, and I ask that you not underestimate the power of real life over how MNFF is run. Despite what you may think, a lot of stuff can pile on a moderator all at once. I know that for a fact.

The Ask a Moderator thread is for questions only. It is not the place to voice thinly veiled assumptions or accusations. We've explained the Manage Stories situation as best we can. We've explained why the queue is closed. And we're going to respect the privacy of ex-moderators by not publicly announcing the reasons behind their departure. Anymore questions/problems about the queue closure can be directed to me privately via PM or email.

[Marauder by Midnight]

Double-posting with an edit.

I've managed to play around with the codes so that Manage Stories is now visible again. However, the only option available will be the delete button for those who feel the need to delete their stories sometime within the next three weeks. The rest of the options will be made available again when the queue opens. I do offer my apologies for not letting everyone know beforehand or announcing it after I found out that Manage Stories would be hidden. I hope this is an acceptable compromise for most of you.

[Roxy Black]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to add my two cents in here.

The main reason the Manage Stories function was removed is that the way our queue works has changed with the recent update to the system. This meant that when we closed the queue this time, we found that people could bypass the closure without our being aware. Whilst we wish we could keep the queue open, I'm sure you'll all understand why we do need to close occasionally just to sort ourselves out and make the site work faster for you.

I'm working really hard on getting the ads worked into the pages more so that it causes less disruption to your reading and the queue closure helps me do this as I can focus on solving that problem during this time.

We are always open to your ideas, suggestions and complaints and it's actually a credit to you guys that you brought this to our attention. I'm really sorry that I didn't mention the loss of this feature during my news announcement. Like I said, it is a new problem that we've found and it only came to light after the announcement was made. I ask for your forgiveness on this feature.

However, I would like to point out that we are here to work for you. We only do what helps to run the site and we wouldn't do anything that was against the best interests of everyone here. We never force anyone to do anything and we never delete anyone's fictions without their permission except for rejections in the queue.

We are very sorry to see our moderators leave, especially when they leave around the same time. Please remember that these people are our friends and collegues and that moderators have a right to the privacy of our work.

We take on a lot so that you guys don't have to deal with it. We try to involve you in as much as this as possible, after all the site is for you, but sometimes this is not possible for various reasons. We hope that you will respect our decisions and agree that we always do what is best for the site.

We endevour to keep your stories as safe as possible and everything that we do is to that end.

We try our hardest and I'm afraid, we can do no more than that.
~ Roxy

[butter_beer_drinker]

I was wondering, since the results for QSQ ( ) until December, are the submissions threads going to be reopened? Since I usually don't have time to read (because I am frantically trying to get out my next chapter ) and the que closure will give me some breathing time, I will have time to read some more stories and thus I might find some that I think should be nominated.

[Marauder by Midnight]

butter_beer_drinker - I do believe you mean the QSQs, not the QWC xD Since deliberations have already begun, it wouldn't be fair for me to reopen nominations and pile more readings on committee members. However, I will ask the committee members to see if they're willing to read late nominations