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Helens (helens78) wrote in porn_battle,
@ 2008-06-12 09:09:00

Entry tags:

mod post, round four

"The!"
Hi hi! There's been some confusion about where prompts are located in cases where the full title of a fandom does not get sorted into the same letter category as the short-form name of a fandom.

All fandoms whose full titles start with "The" are alphabetized under T.

Narnia = The Chronicles of Narnia
Riddick = The Chronicles of Riddick
Dresden Files = The Dresden Files
Hitchhiker's Guide = The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Check the S-Z post if you can't find prompts and your fandom's full title starts with "The"!

And please bear in mind that we ask for full titles of a fandom to aid in consistency -- some people are going to call the fandom one thing, some will be calling it another. Generally, if you spell out the whole entire thing, the only inconsistencies you get are in punctuation (Stargate: SG-1 vs. Stargate SG-1 vs. Stargate: SG1 vs. Stargate SG1), which will more or less sort into the proper order anyway. But we don't want people to have to search the A-J post AND the I-R post AND the S-Z post for "Chronicles", "Narnia", and "The"!

(Post a new comment)

dorrie6
2008-06-13 07:36 pm UTC (link)

Hi, I have a mod question. Previously, I've always been able to keep my stories here to the one-comment-field limit, but I've been working on one prompt for the past few days, and I've come to the sad conclusion that there is just no way I can cut what have down to the required size, and still tell the story in any coherent fashion. In a case like this, would you prefer I did not post it, or that I posted in multiple comments?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

helens78
2008-06-13 08:47 pm UTC (link)

We've been talking about this and will probably be making a change to the rules *officially* next battle. However, for now, please go ahead and post it as multiple comments -- but please leave part 2 as a reply to part 1, part 3 as a reply to part 2, and so on (see here for an example)! This way, even if someone's posting at the exact same time you are, your story won't be interrupted by someone else's story. :)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	dorrie6 2008-06-13 08:50 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, thank you! I will post it! :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	chichirinoda 2008-06-16 03:41 am UTC (link)
	OH THANK GOD. Because, er, almost all of the stories I've written for this round are multi-parters cries It's a bit belated, but I noticed that many of the Saiunkoku Monogatari prompts are duplicated o.o (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

chichirinoda
2008-06-16 03:44 am UTC (link)

Oh, and as a suggestion for next round... Instead of alphabetizing 'the' under 'T', I contend that it makes sense to alphabetize those fandoms under the first letter of the word after 'the'. That way if opinions differ about whether the word 'the' is ACTUALLY part of the title or not, they can still find it in one go.

So 'The Chronicles of Narnia' under 'C', etc.

/badgering the kind modperson

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

helens78
2008-06-16 04:41 am UTC (link)

Does it make sense? Yes! Can we do it that way? No! Sorry! :(

To explain a bit, there isn't any way to automate the kind of sort you're talking about. The programs your mods use to sort prompts do not ignore articles when alphabetizing; we would have to do it manually. And you really can't use a simple search-and-replace to get rid of "a", "an", and "the", especially not in a challenge where song lyrics and quotes are allowed as parts of the prompts!

Bear in mind that we are alphabetizing over TWO THOUSAND prompts now, and the numbers are only getting bigger! Doing it that way would mean we'd have to comb through 2000+ prompts by hand and re-sort things line-by-line. We'd be introducing a huge potential for human error into the process, and vastly increasing the amount of time we'd need to spend on the sorting process -- both of which are dealbreakers for us. It already takes hours to edit the prompts for consistency, which is why we ask people to use the full fandom name, write out pairings in alphabetical order, and use commas -- consistency is our best friend when it comes to editing and sorting our prompts!

We appreciate your input, and understand your reasoning! This just isn't something we can do.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	chichirinoda 2008-06-16 04:48 am UTC (link)
	ooooh, that makes total and complete sense. Forget the unhelpful suggestion! \o/ (Reply to this) (Parent)

	telesilla 2008-06-17 07:14 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, some prompts got duplicated because I was in a bit of a rush to post. Ooops. :-/ (Reply to this) (Parent)

eider
2008-06-17 03:00 pm UTC (link)

Hi! I have a mod question. I was wondering if it might be possible, in the future, to have the "this is the list of all the prompts" posts be separate from the "this is the post to which you should comment with your fic" posts.

If these two kinds of post were distinct, it would really cut down on the amount of scrolling we have to do: commenting to a fic comment and watching the entire page reload, or moving to page 2 of the comments and watching the entire list of prompts reload again, every time. It's just a thought! Brought about (as I'm sure you can guess) by my personal experience working on my very old, tired computer.

If this isn't possible or feasible, I certainly respect that; I just thought I'd ask. I'd also like to thank all of you for your work in putting this together-- after all, you actually had to wrangle these two thousand odd prompts into shape; all I've had to do is look at them (a lot!). :)

Thanks so much for making this possible; I've had a lot of fun.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	helens78 2008-06-17 03:23 pm UTC (link)
	It is totally doable, but let me check in with the other mods so we can get a good consensus on what exactly we wanna do/put out there for voting on, before I commit us to anything -- we've got a couple of other ideas about prompts as well. :) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	eider 2008-06-17 03:28 pm UTC (link)
	Hey, great! Thanks for considering it. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

briar_pipe
2008-06-18 01:12 am UTC (link)

Dunno if this would actually help you guys or make more work, but I'd like to reiterate my offer to help with the Japanese media fandoms. I don't think tossing a list at

telesilla is actually the most effective solution (for one, I clearly missed a couple posts in my skimming) but I do know it can be a headache to sort through short versions, Japanese versions, and official and unofficial English versions if you're not familiar with the fandoms. (Or even if you are...)

Please let me know if I can make this easier for y'all in any way.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	helens78 2008-06-18 11:01 pm UTC (link)
	We would love to have your help. Can you send me an email (helens78@gmail.com) when you get a chance? many thanks and <3s! (Reply to this) (Parent)