ratherastory | A small favour

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A small favour

Dear flist, can I ask a quick favour?

I am having a completely random and trivial bout of wibbling over how my Master List of fic is organized. Specifically, I'm wondering if that post has become too big and unwieldy -even with the handy html that takes you from section to section- and if I should split it into two or something. My concern is that splitting it might actually make things worse in terms of accessibility.

So if you have half a second, would you mind taking a look and then making with the clicky in this handy-dandy poll?

Thank you!

[Poll #1726303]

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Possibly split it into Supernatural fic and then another list for everything else. As long as they link to and fro I find that to be more accessible.

That's what I was thinking, except that there's so much SPN fic that I'm not sure the post wouldn't just stay really unwieldy. There would definitely be links back and forth, though.

The pro is that you have a lot to read so that is a v. good thing. I am not really sure... have you thought about using something like delicious instead? Or set up a master list for master lists so you could have universes, one-shots, longer fic?

Someone else mentioned delicious which hadn't occurred to me. It's an interesting idea, though with the recent scare of delicious shutting down I'd have to have a back-up somewhere...

A master list of master lists could be interesting. That way the other posts wouldn't have to be "stickied" at the top of my LJ... *ponders*

I am currently using delicious because I was worried about hitting the LJ character limit for a post... eventually. =D Dotfic and Velvetine01 also use delicious for their masterlists and I find them to be super helpful, especially for Dot's work because she's been writing for so long and writes in several fandoms. Delicious lets me sort for things v. quickly. I am pretty sure delicious is safe now that Google is looking at buying it (you can even make a new account and sign into it under your gmail address, which I just love), but Diigo allows you to import and export delicious bookmarks. I am thinking about using it as a "just in case" back-up as well.

I think Halfshellvenus uses a master post of master posts which I found really helpful, again, for sorting via fandom, etc.

I don't think you can go wrong as long as you have something up, you know? I am reading this incredible writer at the moment who has been writing fan fic for a decade and she only has her fic organized by tag. It's a lot more difficult to follow and locate things. :/

Interesting. I already have a delicious account, do you know if I'd have to sign up with a different one in order to organize only my own fic? Or can I create, I don't know, an affiliated list that would work the same way?

If you want one just for your fic and nothing else, you'd need a new account. I do know some folks bookmark their own fic and filter it via their username in order to avoid having another account.

I have two: one for my fic that is my "master list" and the other is for fan fic that I save, picspams... anything fandom-related that is not mine.

Okay, thank you! I'll probably open one with my gmail account, in that case. My other one I already have for, like you, fandom-related links that aren't mine.

I find that a lot of the information provided in the list is unnecessary for my use, so my option would be to get rid of that info, and make a tighter, tidier list. That is, when I'm looking for a story by a specific author, all I need is title, summary, and link. Either I've read it before and I just need the summary reminder, or I'm browsing the author's complete list and...all I need is a summary to decide whether or not to read it.

If you like having that information for yourself, you might consider keeping that list for yourself, and having another master list for readers which has just the minimum amount of necessary information.

Yeah, it's a fine balance. Some people have said they really like having that information, and others like you find that it's not really necessary. I may go through it more thoroughly when I have time to try and pare it down a little bit.

Well the thing is, a lot of that info is on the story itself - so if they really want to see it, they can find it there. But, yeah, everyone's different and IDIC and all that. There's no one good way to do anything. :->

I dislike it when people split master posts because then it makes searching them way more difficult. I say keep it all on one post unless you hit LJ's character limit for the post.

The one thing that always throws me off about your Masterlist is how it's organized as a chart all split up by length. I get how that's useful, but the chart always alarms me until I remember that if I just click on the sucker anywhere at all, it takes me to the complete list of everything and I can just scroll around. I tend to be more interested in titles and descriptions.

Hm. Good point. I may try to put a more explicit set of instructions/reminders if people find that confusing.

I rather like the way it's organized. But then, I like to know all the details (length, notes, warnings, etc) before I click into a fic. It's kinda like the same way I want to know all the spoilers before an episode, but not really.

Your organization/list works for me. I like it.

I checked "split", but I mainly mean to split in different fandoms. For example a Supernatual Masterlist, an H50 Masterlist etc. I do not think your list isn't yet too big, but at your pace it will probably be soon?

If you want it to look shorter maybe you could get rid of some of the information, for example the Date Posted, Warnings and Characters, since people mostly looks at the Summary and the length of the story (and that other information is listed inside the story anyway).

You are just so ~~damn~~ wonderfully prolific!

I like it as is. But I also often find myself wanting to volunteer to set up a delicious reference for all your fic, so it would be searchable by one or more tags (e.g. when set, when posted, word count, characters, type of injury *g*, verse-if-applicable, gen/het/slash, etc.). But then I tell myself not to volunteer until I actually have time, just in case you'd say yes. And that won't be until I either withdraw from

spn_j2_bigbang or finish it! (I'm so slow...)

Hee! I would totally take you up on that, if you ever have the time. :D

That icon is inspiring! I would definitely volunteer, then. But probably not until after

spn_j2_bigbang...

I hear you. Everything is on hold until

spn_j2_bigbang.

The only thing I might change would be to make a separate list of all SPN fics because there are a lot by now, right? But other than that, I think it's pretty good. You could also only link to longer 'verses like Fusion, instead of listing all the stories, that would make the master post a little smaller as well.

But yeah, mostly I think it's pretty well organised.

I do find it long and complicated when I'm looking for a particular non-verse fic of yours, but I can't think of any useful solution to it.

Yeah, unless you remember roughly how long it was, it's not super useful that way. I can't really divide it by genre, though, because 80% of it is gen h/c, so that doesn't simplify things at all. If I list things alphabetically that also doesn't work because sometimes people don't remember the title of a fic, and it would unbalance the list because certain letters would be used way more than others.

Meh.

Maybe I should look into including a search function, not that I know how to code that...

Most browsers have a find-in-page function already. I use that to navigate your fic master list.

True, my browsers all have that (Firefox at home, IE elsewhere...).

You could divide by hurt!Dean and hurt!Sam, I guess. Except you have so many that are both (and I applaud this -- I hate the people who get all up in arms about anyone else having pain in their X-focused h/c.

The more whump the better, if you ask me. ;)

But then, I'm solidly bi-bro with a side-order of Cas, so I'm not exactly representative of the fannish masses.

wave_obscura has organized her tags by type of injury/illness on top of everything else, and I'm kind of envious.

You'd have to have whole subclassifications for respiratory distress Sam. It would be like the Library of Congress.

That's true.

Respiratory distress -asthma
Respiratory distress -bronchitis
Respiratory distress -choking/strangulation
Respiratory distress -complications
Respiratory distress -other
Respiratory distress -pneumonia
Respiratory distress -smoke inhalation

*looks askance at list*

I really have a problem, don't I?

I might have to implement something like the Dewey Decimal System...

But it's a GOOD problem.

I think it's canon's fault. All that choked!Sam in the first seasons. It's like concussed!Dean; he just gets flung into walls so much, it's irresistible.

"Sam's being choked. Must be Thursday."

And yeah, concussed!Dean is so many kinds of win, all groggy and loopy and pukey. ♥

...

I really need help...

I seem to recall someone writing a meta-piece about how the scary things always go for Sam's throat and Dean's heart, and extrapolating a whole bunch of stuff from that, based partly on chakra theory. It was kind of cool, symbollically.

But they go for Dean's head, too, don't they?

Dean mostly lands on his head/shoulder when he gets tossed by the scary things.

The scary thing went for Sam's heart in the pilot, and I only remember something going for Dean's heart in "Faith," although my memory is likely faulty.

If you ever find that meta I'd be interested to see it. :)

Praise Google! http://meret.livejournal.com/851603.html

I really need to start a Delicious or something, so I can actually keep track of these things :)

Heh. I was just discussing the whole delicious option in a thread further up.

Thanks for the link!

If I am looking for a particular fic, I can just hit ctrl-F and do a page search for the title or summary. (Like rereading all the asthma!Sam fics...)

I would:

- Split it into SPN and other, with links back & forth.
- Link only the masterpost for 'verses.

- possibly consider sorting by genre rather than length? IDK. If the "Gen H/C" category is too large, maybe sub-sort if by something else - length, year of posting, etc. Or maybe by who's hurt? IDK.

You realize if you were less awesome, you wouldn't have this problem :)

LOL

I shall endeavour to be less awesome, then... ;)

I'm thinking that I will take your advice and only link to the master post for 'verses, with the last date I updated. That should clear up some space and maybe make it easier to navigate.

I almost clicked "it's fine the way it is," but the comments got me thinking. I would sticky one master post that links to a "Supernatural & CW RPS master list" and one "[each thing that isn't Supernatural nor CW RPS, w/ commas] master list." If you made it that brief, you wouldn't need to cut it, so the links would be accessible from the front of your journal.

At some point later if the SPN/CW list grows a lot (yes, please! yum), you might want to link from your SPN master list to a separate master list for each 'verse and a separate master list for podfics. For the links to the 'verses I would include an overall summary of the 'verse (& maybe overall warnings) in the main SPN list.

Just my two cents, I would also be fine using the current list. Well, except for the fact that I'll never ever ever finish everything! :)

Jackie

I vote for one Supernatural masterlist and one for everything else... or one for each fandom.

The only thing is that the table with your fics organized by length confuses me every. single. time. Mainly because I don't care about how long a fic is and word count is the last thing I remember about any fic. I remember plot points, who was hurt, the genre, etc... but word count? I once wanted to reread a fic you'd written as a fill for me and it took me a while to find because I couldn't remember how long it was.

But that's just me... maybe do something with genre instead of word count since it'll be defaulting to what people usually remember / want to know -- I don't mean more information than what's in your summary but rather organizing by it. (ie - WEE!DEAN, Fusion, etc.)

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A small favour

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No split!

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