NEWS

[Silvertongue]

I often feel like asking her! I told one person at work what I thought and she snorted with laughter and said she agreed so it's not just my imagination.

[Kitty279]

Oh, that has to be creepy to share your office with someone like this! Hopefully she's at least not as nasty and cruel?

[Silvertongue]

No, she seems really sweet but...*shudders* it's just too much sometimes. Too sweet, voice too high, laugh too girls and she looks so much like her. At least I'm kind of hidden from here where I sit. She hasn't learned my name yet either.

[Kitty279]

Oh well, that's at least something ... has to be really strange to share a room with someone like that. And there's probably no chance of switching rooms with someone who doesn't know HP and has no problem with her looking like the pink toad?

[Silvertongue]

LOL no. There are 7 of us in the room (it's very big and open, not a double office sort of thing) and I've only just been moved there. I'm the lowest employee they have apart from the cleaners basically so I get moved around a lot, but this is probably my last move until my contract runs out at the end of the month, which means I won't have to see the Toad look alike for much longer.

[Kitty279]

Good on the Umbridge twin, but sad on the job. I hope you get something else soon!

[Silvertongue]

Thanks but it's not so bad. It will be a year by then and it was only supposed to be a weeks unpaid work experience so I think I got a good deal out of it! ;D

[Kitty279]

Oh, that is much better!

[ShotgunWilly]

Be sure to ask her on your way out if you get a chance.

[codygotkilld]

Seems like the admins of ff.net are being even more incompetent than they were before. I have read on a few forums that they are deleting "M" rated fics that contain no drug use, rape, or sex. The only thing that these fics supposedly had that made them "M" rated was action violence, references to drugs/sex, and swearing. Arn't those terms under their "M" rating?

It looks like the admins have finally obtained a conscious but it is misguided. If they don't browse the fic for guidelines/TOS violation's then ff.net shouldn't delete them. That just shows they are lazy tools who don't care about their fans and would rather commit this social suicide. Another thing that tick's me off is why doesn't the admins send a 1-2 week warning to the authors so that they can edit their fics to follow the rules? It makes me wonder how important this site is to them that they would not even extend a peace offering before they delete accounts/fics.

[Serena R. Snape]

Or tell the Anonymous group to hack them and restore the fanfictions that were deleted if they can. XD

[ShotgunWilly]

I'm 99.9% sure that those fanfictions were irreversibly wiped, soo... yea. >_>

[G. Novella]

Jun 5, 2012 16:13:38 GMT -5 codygotkilld said:

It looks like the admins have finally obtained a conscious but it is misguided. If they don't browse the fic for guidelines/TOS violation's then ff.net shouldn't delete them. That just shows they are lazy tools who don't care about their fans and would rather commit this social suicide. Another thing that tick's me off is why doesn't the admins send a 1-2 week warning to the authors so that they can edit their fics to follow the rules? It makes me wonder how important this site is to them that they would not even extend a peace offering before they delete accounts/fics.

See, this is the question, why now? I mean, there is no law being passed anywhere as far as I can tell that would force them to make that decision. The complaints must have been streamrolling in if the flamers united or whatever rubbish critic group has been operating for a while. So what suddenly motivated them to become all uppity? It's plain ridiculous that I almost feel like they are trying to commit suicide. That or some prude, really old, extremely religious grandmother took over the site and is making all the decisions now.

[codygotkilld]

What in the world happened to the page format on ff.net? It looks like it has been unzoomed and it is difficult to read the story summaries.

[mountaingirl777]

I know. It changed in the middle of me reading a story. I read one chapter in one format and then when I went onto the next chapter, it changed to the text being centered in the screen and crap! I was like "What the heck!", I wasn't expecting it. What are they trying to do? This isn't really a good thing to do, throwing all this crap on us all at once! Maybe this is why they have been neglecting everything else (emails, deleting stories that go against guidlines). I've been wondering if they've been too busy working out all this crap that they are now adding.

BTW, when the heck was there ever an MA rating? in the drop list for ratings it only goes up to M.

[Deleted]

It appears that they had an MA-rating untill 2002. 'Officially', but it seems now they are cleaning house. And you are right, at least in my view it is quiet among deletions.

[codygotkilld]

Monkeymail is thinking of putting their fic, Back in Time, on here if the story is deleted. If you haven't read this fic yet, I recommend that you do soon. It is a really good "HP Reads" fic that features Harry and Ron going back in time before Harry's trial in the fifth book as they try to track down the future Dolohov. In between their search, the two read OotP with the order.

[suzannesnape]

I've been a member of ffn since 2001 and a reader since 2000. Prior to 2002 the site had the ratings "G" all the way up to "NC-17" Granted, yes things were a bit explicit at that point... but the real problem was the PARENTS not watching their kids. This "Flamers" group is doing nothing more than censoring things they really shouldn't be. What ffn should do is talk with the authors first, let us know what we are doing wrong according to their rules.

It was while typing this that a thought occurred to me. Maybe this self proclaimed "Flamers" group really is the admins of ffn and they're trying to be sneaky about this...

Either way this is a mess

[mountaingirl777]

Jun 6, 2012 5:35:05 GMT -5 suzannesnape said:

It was while typing this that a thought occurred to me. Maybe this self proclaimed "Flamers" group really is the admins of ffn and they're trying to be sneaky about this...
[/quote

That thought has crossed my mind as well. I doubt we will ever find out what is really going on though. It looks like we can only assume things.

[ShotgunWilly]

Looking back on it, the situation on FFN with how the staff interacts with the users has always been a powderkeg just waiting to explode. I'm also willing to bet that by the end of the month, all of this drama will have died down and the deletions will stop for another period of complete silence from the admins/mods, but we won't forget and FFN will probably never be the same. Whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing for them remains to be seen

[DoodleJanus]

Jun 6, 2012 4:07:28 GMT -5 mountaingirl777 said:

I know. It changed in the middle of me reading a story. I read one chapter in one format and then when I went onto the next chapter, it changed to the text being centered in the screen and crap! I was like "What the heck!", I wasn't expecting it.

I agree. I woke up, opened a fic, and there it was, in small impossible to read print in the middle of the page. Of course, I already had it at the largest font, so it was kind of annoying and weirdening(?).

[ShotgunWilly]

Jun 6, 2012 13:41:39 GMT -5 DoodleJanus said:

Jun 6, 2012 4:07:28 GMT -5 mountaingirl777 said:

I know. It changed in the middle of me reading a story. I read one chapter in one format and then when I went onto the next chapter, it changed to the text being centered in the screen and crap! I was like "What the heck!", I wasn't expecting it.

I agree. I woke up, opened a fic, and there it was, in small impossible to read print in the middle of the page. Of course, I already had it at the largest font, so it was kind of annoying and weirdening(?).

The word you're looking for is "weird"

anyway, I don't know what you're talking about with small print. The print wasn't too hard for me to read, and then you can just click the button to increase font size underneath the author's profile pic.

I think I like this most recent change, though. There have been a number of times where I wished I had the complete details at the top of a chapter like we do now

[Silvertongue]

I don't like the latest change. When I'm at work I like to have a small internet window open, otherwise people will notice it, and before the change that worked well as I didn't have to use the side scroll but now I do and that's SOOOO annoying. Resorted to just having to minimise it everytime someone walks past.

[blackroses77]

I hate it! I have to have the zoom down to 125 in order for everything to fit on the screen, anything higher (I usually have it on 200) and I have to scroll side to side in order to read. It's horrible!

[blackroses77]

There is no reason why they can't add MA to their rating list, if they're so concerned all of a sudden they can add an age verification page for MA stories. Personally I don't think kids should be reading fanfiction anyway, some things should just be for adults (like R rated movies and video games). I mean seriously when was the last time you read a fanfic geared towards someone under the age of say sixteen? But still fanfic sites have no more responsibility to stop kids from reading the stories than a book store or library that sells/lends romance novels. Are they going to ban romance novels from stores/libraries due to the explicit sex scenes because someone under age might buy the book? I mean think about it there is no age restriction on those books and they are just as if not more explicit than the stories on FFN. I know I was reading those books at 15 and so where my friends. It is the same principle for online stories as far as I'm concerned. It is the parents job to police what their kids do, just because there are so many parents who aren't up for the job doesn't mean the rest of society should be denied some harmless entertainment and stress relief.

[codygotkilld]

Jun 6, 2012 15:49:50 GMT -5 blackroses77 said:

I hate it! I have to have the zoom down to 125 in order for everything to fit on the screen, anything higher (I usually have it on 200) and I have to scroll side to side in order to read. It's horrible!

Same with me on my laptop. Tried my regular computer and everything looked a little better, but I do not like how they centered everything on the pages. Maybe this is for the side notes feature ff.net is putting out soon?

[DoodleJanus]

Jun 6, 2012 16:07:35 GMT -5 codygotkilld said:

Jun 6, 2012 15:49:50 GMT -5 blackroses77 said:

I hate it! I have to have the zoom down to 125 in order for everything to fit on the screen, anything higher (I usually have it on 200) and I have to scroll side to side in order to read. It's horrible!

Same with me on my laptop. Tried my regular computer and everything looked a little better, but I do not like how they centered everything on the pages. Maybe this is for the side notes feature ff.net is putting out soon?

Ooooo, maybe the Notes feature is supposed to replace Authors Notes in-story?

[ShotgunWilly]

Eh... I still think it looks fine to me; I'm on a laptop using Google Chrome to browse, black background, 3/4 width (was 1/2 until the switch, now it doesn't look right at 1/2), Verdana font, default font size, and default line spacing.

I dunno what's so different about mine.

Also, blackroses77, I heard recently, and it makes sense, that the reason they banned Rating MA was because advertisers refused to advertise on a site which allowed adult material. Now, FFnet, as near as I can tell, doesn't take in any income except through hosting ads, and if they take donations, I can't find the page to donate through.

Anyway, so put yourselves back in their shoes back in 2002 when MA was banned, you aren't getting enough donations and you can get advertisers because you host adult material, what would you do?

There's only one real blank spot? Why not take donations? Well, I can only imagine there must be some sort of legal issue, but I don't know what would prevent that... *sigh* who the hell knows, really. lol

[blackroses77]

I guess I can see that, about the sponsors, but if that's the case and there is no chance of keeping fics with an M or MA rating on FFN why don't more authors use adultfanfictiondotnet. It seems like that would be the easiest thing to do. Instead of fighting a losing battle with FFN and all the prudes that are running around reporting stories on the site why doesn't everyone just move over to AdultFanFictiondotnet. It is basically the same setup as FFN so should be just as easy for authors to use. It's a good site it just needs more stories on it as it has nowhere near the number of stories as FFN and that way we get the good stories, FFN gets their sponsors and the prudes get to live in perpetual frustration as they would have nothing to complain about. This of course won't help with our CR problem on FFN but we have this site for those stories and that new yourfanficiondotnet.

[ShotgunWilly]

AFFN is good, but I don't like their lack of an alert feature. I've talked to one of the mods and they'll implement it eventually, but they'll need to rewrite the archive code. Until that happens, I don't plan to use it more than I have to. That being said, there are lots of other archives that allow MA material. Ficwad, HPfanficarchive (For HP), AO3 (if you can get an invite), etc. etc.