wallwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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personalapocalypse2015-04-25 08:59 pm
wallwalker) wrote in personalapocalypse2015-04-25 08:59 pm
impressions on ff.net after a long absence
After a lot of talk about AO3 and its various weaknesses, along with ff.net and its (apparent?) relative strengths, I decided that if I was going to comment on ff.net that I needed to take a look back at it. This will be posted and updated over a few days; I'm going to post a few fics there, some of which I haven't already posted on AO3, and see what I think of the process. (Also I'll see if they actually get more attention than my fics generally do on AO3.)
Login/Looking Around:
- A captcha just to log in? Really, ff.net? Really? (Yeah, this is picky, but I'm sorry. I must be part robot because I have a very hard time reading captchas. They literally hurt my head.)
- Looking at the list of Games fandoms to check on something. First thought: How the hell is this sorted? (Turns out it was by number of fics, which is honestly a pretty crappy way of sorting things. I don't *know* how many fics are in a given fandom, okay? And I don't *care.* If I'm looking for something in particular, I want to be able to find it easily, and if I'm not... well, honestly, why would I be looking for fic for fandoms I don't care about, no matter how popular they are?)
- An old and relatively minor gripe:
Final Fantasy I-VI is still one category? STILL?
After all of the times I know that people have written in to try to have it split, and I know because I've tried and I know several other people who've tried back in the day, you're still lumping six discrete games together for no apparent reason? You have several fandoms with just one or two stories! Your "Each game doesn't have enough stories to justify its own category" excuse is no longer valid, and how the fuck are people going to find the game they want in a single category with at least 3200 stories!?
Is there seriously no way to make the old category read-only and make new categories for the separate games?? If people don't want to or can't edit things, fine! They can keep their stuff in the old category, and the rest of us can actually upload our fics into a category where people can fucking find them!
...yes, I'm done. This is just something I got pretty unhappy about back in the day, since FFVI and FFIV in particular are huge fandoms for me and I don't like having them lumped into one category so that potential readers have to sift through other fandoms they may not even care about just to find them. And it's disappointing to see that they still haven't changed it; at this point, they most likely never will. It's not quite a dealbreaker, but it's pretty damn close.
- I still get so many forum post notifications. I can't find where I'm supposed to delete them. Do I have to go to each forum individually to unsubscribe? That's kind of frustrating, and I don't really want to bother, but I really should unclutter my e-mails from the site.
Uploading, part 1:
- Oh, right. This is the system with the unnecessary steps that seem to have no real purpose. Ugh.
- If DocX files can't be converted into stories, then what, pray tell, is the point? (Serious question.)
- At least they have a text field now... the last time I seriously used this site, they didn't even have that. You had to copy your text and paste it into Notepad or whatever, then upload the document. This is a slight step up....
- you have not read and agreed to our content guidelines.... I've had an account on this site for almost twenty years, and you're going to bother me with this bullshit? (Yes, I know, legal stuff, blah blah blah, I'm being cranky. Besides, they haven't changed a bit from what I can tell.)
- Meh. Still have some issues with their genre listings. I know it'll never be inclusive enough for everyone, though.
- ...Cover image? What a waste of server space, IMO.
- And another captcha to create a story. Why don't more sites use the kind of captchas that DW uses, the kind that's easy to read and difficult for a computer to answer?
- Okay, Story #1 posted. [QfG genfic.] That took me a lot longer than it would on DW or AO3 or any other archive. Why do they make this so complicated? That's another serious question. Is there some rationale behind slowing the process this much?
- Attempting to copy and paste directly from DW for this one led to ugly gray text on a white background. Hitting "Strip Formatting" or whatever that was called stripped out everything, including the italics. *sigh* I mean, I guess I could've skipped that step, since the site says everything will be posted in black and white; I'll test that next time.
- There IS no category in Movies for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You have to choose Comics, go to whatever category you want to use, then select Movies from the Worlds dropdown menu when you're actually posting the story. Again, seems clunky to me.
(My general impression at the moment is that ff.net is actually harder to use now than AO3. There's some meta in that, but I need to stop for now.)
- Story 2 posted (Iron Man/MCU m/m fic, Tony/Rhodey.) Wanted to post something in a less-tiny fandom too.
- As of eight hours later: Fifteen views for the MCU fic, two views and one fave for the QfG fic. (Hey, another Sierra fan. Sweet. I might have to send them a message.) No feedback.
- Uploaded several ficlets in a collection here. [FFVI, m/f, Kefka/Terra] It's really confusing how many characters there are, which is inevitable considering that it's six fandoms in one category.
I mean. I know that AO3 has been fucking up a lot with engaging anime and JRPG fans in general, okay? I've ranted about it before as much as anyone. But nothing feels more like an erasure of a fandom than not having it acknowledged as its own fandom. Maybe it's just me, but it still sucks.)
- Yes, copy-pasting from DW still gave me ugly grey and white text, but the colors were stripped out when I saved it, so no problem.
- One thing I'm happier about that they've changed: You can have more than two characters on a story now. I should post some polyfic during this trial, just because I can tag it appropriately now. (I'm somehow missing the way you filter by characters though, at least for this fandom.)
- I do really miss freeform tags, though, because I feel really, really awkward not having tags describing these stories in greater detail. I have them tagged with Romance/Drama, and I mentioned that they were in a unhealthy-but-consensual-relationship in the summary. I'm just afraid someone's going to miss that somehow. :p
- Uploaded a new chapter to Haven (a collection of FFVII B/T ficlets) because I wanted to see how that looks too. It's fairly easy, at least. I wish stories were easier to edit after posting, instead of having to edit the document and then re-upload it.
- ...how does someone view the first and last chapter of something, but not the second? I'm confused.
Okay. I'm done with this for the day... let's see if I end up getting any feedback at all.
Login/Looking Around:
- A captcha just to log in? Really, ff.net? Really? (Yeah, this is picky, but I'm sorry. I must be part robot because I have a very hard time reading captchas. They literally hurt my head.)
- Looking at the list of Games fandoms to check on something. First thought: How the hell is this sorted? (Turns out it was by number of fics, which is honestly a pretty crappy way of sorting things. I don't *know* how many fics are in a given fandom, okay? And I don't *care.* If I'm looking for something in particular, I want to be able to find it easily, and if I'm not... well, honestly, why would I be looking for fic for fandoms I don't care about, no matter how popular they are?)
- An old and relatively minor gripe:
Final Fantasy I-VI is still one category? STILL?
After all of the times I know that people have written in to try to have it split, and I know because I've tried and I know several other people who've tried back in the day, you're still lumping six discrete games together for no apparent reason? You have several fandoms with just one or two stories! Your "Each game doesn't have enough stories to justify its own category" excuse is no longer valid, and how the fuck are people going to find the game they want in a single category with at least 3200 stories!?
Is there seriously no way to make the old category read-only and make new categories for the separate games?? If people don't want to or can't edit things, fine! They can keep their stuff in the old category, and the rest of us can actually upload our fics into a category where people can fucking find them!
...yes, I'm done. This is just something I got pretty unhappy about back in the day, since FFVI and FFIV in particular are huge fandoms for me and I don't like having them lumped into one category so that potential readers have to sift through other fandoms they may not even care about just to find them. And it's disappointing to see that they still haven't changed it; at this point, they most likely never will. It's not quite a dealbreaker, but it's pretty damn close.
- I still get so many forum post notifications. I can't find where I'm supposed to delete them. Do I have to go to each forum individually to unsubscribe? That's kind of frustrating, and I don't really want to bother, but I really should unclutter my e-mails from the site.
Uploading, part 1:
- Oh, right. This is the system with the unnecessary steps that seem to have no real purpose. Ugh.
- If DocX files can't be converted into stories, then what, pray tell, is the point? (Serious question.)
- At least they have a text field now... the last time I seriously used this site, they didn't even have that. You had to copy your text and paste it into Notepad or whatever, then upload the document. This is a slight step up....
- you have not read and agreed to our content guidelines.... I've had an account on this site for almost twenty years, and you're going to bother me with this bullshit? (Yes, I know, legal stuff, blah blah blah, I'm being cranky. Besides, they haven't changed a bit from what I can tell.)
- Meh. Still have some issues with their genre listings. I know it'll never be inclusive enough for everyone, though.
- ...Cover image? What a waste of server space, IMO.
- And another captcha to create a story. Why don't more sites use the kind of captchas that DW uses, the kind that's easy to read and difficult for a computer to answer?
- Okay, Story #1 posted. [QfG genfic.] That took me a lot longer than it would on DW or AO3 or any other archive. Why do they make this so complicated? That's another serious question. Is there some rationale behind slowing the process this much?
- Attempting to copy and paste directly from DW for this one led to ugly gray text on a white background. Hitting "Strip Formatting" or whatever that was called stripped out everything, including the italics. *sigh* I mean, I guess I could've skipped that step, since the site says everything will be posted in black and white; I'll test that next time.
- There IS no category in Movies for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You have to choose Comics, go to whatever category you want to use, then select Movies from the Worlds dropdown menu when you're actually posting the story. Again, seems clunky to me.
(My general impression at the moment is that ff.net is actually harder to use now than AO3. There's some meta in that, but I need to stop for now.)
- Story 2 posted (Iron Man/MCU m/m fic, Tony/Rhodey.) Wanted to post something in a less-tiny fandom too.
- As of eight hours later: Fifteen views for the MCU fic, two views and one fave for the QfG fic. (Hey, another Sierra fan. Sweet. I might have to send them a message.) No feedback.
- Uploaded several ficlets in a collection here. [FFVI, m/f, Kefka/Terra] It's really confusing how many characters there are, which is inevitable considering that it's six fandoms in one category.
I mean. I know that AO3 has been fucking up a lot with engaging anime and JRPG fans in general, okay? I've ranted about it before as much as anyone. But nothing feels more like an erasure of a fandom than not having it acknowledged as its own fandom. Maybe it's just me, but it still sucks.)
- Yes, copy-pasting from DW still gave me ugly grey and white text, but the colors were stripped out when I saved it, so no problem.
- One thing I'm happier about that they've changed: You can have more than two characters on a story now. I should post some polyfic during this trial, just because I can tag it appropriately now. (I'm somehow missing the way you filter by characters though, at least for this fandom.)
- I do really miss freeform tags, though, because I feel really, really awkward not having tags describing these stories in greater detail. I have them tagged with Romance/Drama, and I mentioned that they were in a unhealthy-but-consensual-relationship in the summary. I'm just afraid someone's going to miss that somehow. :p
- Uploaded a new chapter to Haven (a collection of FFVII B/T ficlets) because I wanted to see how that looks too. It's fairly easy, at least. I wish stories were easier to edit after posting, instead of having to edit the document and then re-upload it.
- ...how does someone view the first and last chapter of something, but not the second? I'm confused.
Okay. I'm done with this for the day... let's see if I end up getting any feedback at all.
no subject
FFN's uploading system is just the worst. It makes editing drafts a total chore. I typically don't bother with editing on FFN unless there are egregious errors.
Feedback culture in general seems to be in decline. From my observations, comments have become increasingly rare all across the board, but I think in general the culture is stronger on FFN than on AO3. (I would chalk that up to some authors having larger fanbases on FFN though, and readers being more subscription-happy on FFN than on AO3. I myself tend to get roughly the same amount of feedback on FFN and AO3 nowadays.)
no subject
For presumably anti-spam reasons, they'll strip out a lot of formatting without notice - I couldn't include "find me at AO3.org" in the text of one of my stories when I got fed up with uploading chapters to FF.net and decided to only put them on AO3. Not that it matters, because despite my clear notification that I won't be uploading that WIP at FF.net anymore I still get subscriptions. So people are probably going to miss your warning, but I don't know if they have the same expectation of warnings at FF.net, either.