Short Story Showcase feedback

[nicba]

Hi

I'm a new member of the sffworld forum. In fact this is my very first post

Before getting to the point let me just thank the sffworld staff for this superb site. Although this is my first post I've been lurking around here for quite some time and found it to be invaluable.

Well, to the point: I've submitted a short story to your short story showcase section and have some questions and comments regarding the showcase:

1) I think it would be nice if you added a feature to the 'Submit story' form to allow the story to be announced in the writing forum by checking a checkbox. For example: when I posted the story 'Last Resort' the software could automatically create a new topic with the subject "New Story: 'Last Resort' by Nicolai Buch-Andersen". The context of the post would be the short description provided. Furtermore the software would then replace the general link to the writing forum (the one at the end of the story, below the rating box) with a link directly to the automatically created topic. Perhaps this would encourage more people to leave a comment after reading a story.

2) I would also really like some feature to make it easier to update a story once it is posted. I mean, if one gets some good constructive comments (or find some embarrassing spelling mistakes) it would be nice to be able to edit it. I suppose you could fill out the submit form and just re-submit the whole thing and whoever administrates the showcase section would sort it out. But a 'Update story' form where you could submit a new version would be nice. Maybe this could even be automated so as to shorten the time for the update to appear (when updating, the story itself has already been 'cleared' as appropriate for sffworld).

OK that was it. I see now that the subject of commenting on short stories has already been discussed before. My suggestion seems simple in theory, but perhabs it's not so simple to implement in practise. If so I apologise for pressing the matter.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. After having registered as member of the sffworld forum a confirmation page with my login name and password where displayed. The password was displayed as plain text. It didn't really matter as I was sitting by myself using my private computer. But if I had been using a public computer anyone looking over my shoulder could have seen this information.
Also, anyone using the computer after me could have used the 'back' arrow to return to this page and read it. Maybe it's not such an important matter, but why show the password at all? Why not just use stars (*****) instead?

OK, now I'm finished. That's really it. I promise Thank you very much for a great site!

Regards

Nicolai Buch-Andersen

[Cadfael]

Nicba... Welcome to SFF World, and enjoy

I shall leave the responses about the short story showcase to those who understand it a lot better than I do...

The password confirmation is just what it says... confiming your password... you can then check to see it is exactly as you typed it, make changes as need, and then submit.

This is the only time your password will be diplayed as text... all other time it will be a series of asterix's. It could happen when you first enter a password, you miss-typed a key... and this would then make it hard for you to post... this function allows to check you have it right, before the problems start.

[nicba]

This is the only time your password will be diplayed as text... all other time it will be a series of asterix's. It could happen when you first enter a password, you miss-typed a key... and this would then make it hard for you to post... this function allows to check you have it right, before the problems start.

Ahh, but when you type the password in the registration form, you're asked to type it twice. So it has already been confirmed. Miss-typing the same key twice would be rather unlikely.

Regards

Nicolai Buch-Andersen

[daigoro]

Davs Nicolai

Great ideas you have there, and I'm the first to admit that this is the way it should have been, however the thing are that the technology that the site is built around doesn't allow me to do this in a easy way. I know exactly how it could have been done though, but that would mean I would have to use another server type and that again would cost a lot of money...

So the short answer is that things will have to stay the way they are at the moment