Submission oddities

I usually go through several, sometimes many, edits before submitting a story. I start in MS Word, but when a story is approaching doneness, I paste it into the story form here, in part to see how it's going to look.

And, of course, as several other people have already commented, ALL of the formatting disappears in the cut-and-paste. No italics, no bolding, even the vertical line spacing gets screwed up. Not helpful.

The story submission process still seems…wonky. Every time I save a story in draft, ALL of the tags disappear, as well as the Series title for a new series. And I can't figure out how to link stories within a series. There doesn't seem to be a button for that that I can see.

And I've noticed what Kistin, above, has said – so many of the stories, perhaps all of them, have these enormous white spaces at the bottom for no reason. I used to be able to gauge where I was in a story by how far down the pull-slide button on the RHS was – now that's useless as I have no idea how much white space there is. And Kis' other point, about comments, is also well-founded. FINDING where the comments are is much more difficult now. You keep scrolling farther and farther down the page, and they still don't appear.

In the story I've had published so far, the number of comments has dropped to about a tenth of what it usually is.

Part of that is because of the white space (people can't be bothered), but it's also the "Like" button. People think that liking a story is equivalent to commenting on it. As an author, I don't find them equivalent at all.

So, the story submission / publication / presentation / comment process is still wonky, and not particularly supportive of authors.

Quote by JamesLlewellyn

I usually go through several, sometimes many, edits before submitting a story. I start in MS Word, but when a story is approaching doneness, I paste it into the story form here, in part to see how it's going to look.

And, of course, as several other people have already commented, ALL of the formatting disappears in the cut-and-paste. No italics, no bolding, even the vertical line spacing gets screwed up. Not helpful.

The story submission process still seems…wonky. Every time I save a story in draft, ALL of the tags disappear, as well as the Series title for a new series. And I can't figure out how to link stories within a series. There doesn't seem to be a button for that that I can see.

And I've noticed what Kistin, above, has said – so many of the stories, perhaps all of them, have these enormous white spaces at the bottom for no reason. I used to be able to gauge where I was in a story by how far down the pull-slide button on the RHS was – now that's useless as I have no idea how much white space there is. And Kis' other point, about comments, is also well-founded. FINDING where the comments are is much more difficult now. You keep scrolling farther and farther down the page, and they still don't appear.

In the story I've had published so far, the number of comments has dropped to about a tenth of what it usually is.

Part of that is because of the white space (people can't be bothered), but it's also the "Like" button. People think that liking a story is equivalent to commenting on it. As an author, I don't find them equivalent at all.

So, the story submission / publication / presentation / comment process is still wonky, and not particularly supportive of authors.

I too find the "LIKE" button a bit of an oddity. What does it actually do? As far as I can see, nothing. I've had people discover me, go through many of my stories giving them a like. Yes, it's nice to know someone likes my stories but it's not very helpful in getting a story ranked. Wouldn't it be easier if we just had a thumbs up, thumbs down button. Unless Lush uses the like button to rank stories, what's the point of having it? What would happen if I entered a comp, got 30 votes but a million likes?

Likes make sense for forum posts. For stories, I'm on the fence.

As far as I can figure, stories here should have either likes or a score. Not both. Trouble is, if we ditch scores and just go with likes - as has been suggested many times in the past because the voting system is subjective at best and scores in the lower numbers shouldn't get past moderation - people who live and die by numeric popularity will be disappointed.

But if we keep scores then Likes don't seem to add much. And, if anything, dilute the rating space.

It's a tough one.

As to your question, votes (and presumably likes) will still only play a small part in the competition process. The story quality and how it fits the theme are the overriding factors. Whether likes are taken into account or not for shortlisting, I have no idea.

There was a rollout today to address the word count and blank space issue. Please let me know if there are still issues with it, other than the usual discrepancies that always exist in counters around the treatment of some special characters and page dividers etc.

Quote by Jen

There was a rollout today to address the word count and blank space issue. Please let me know if there are still issues with it, other than the usual discrepancies that always exist in counters around the treatment of some special characters and page dividers etc.

I have to add that it feels funny when your readers know you've posted a story before you do. I really miss being able to thank the mod involved.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Likes make sense for forum posts. For stories, I'm on the fence.

As far as I can figure, stories here should have either likes or a score. Not both. Trouble is, if we ditch scores and just go with likes - as has been suggested many times in the past because the voting system is subjective at best and scores in the lower numbers shouldn't get past moderation - people who live and die by numeric popularity will be disappointed.

But if we keep scores then Likes don't seem to add much. And, if anything, dilute the rating space.

It's a tough one.

As to your question, votes (and presumably likes) will still only play a small part in the competition process. The story quality and how it fits the theme are the overriding factors. Whether likes are taken into account or not for shortlisting, I have no idea.

By now I expect that virtually all of the data from Lush 1.0 has been transferred – but my Favorite Stories (now called "Liked Stories") list is empty!

I'm not sure I can find all of those stories again, and some, like those belonging to Sprite, I can find on her stories list, but it will take a lot of real digging because she is so prolific.

Are we going to get our "Favourites" lists back?

Thanks.

And I've just submitted a story too — and it did not seem like before.

I usually get a message saying it has been submitted and is waiting to be verified. As far as I can see, it has completely vanished!

Quote by LucaByDesign

And I've just submitted a story too — and it did not seem like before.

I usually get a message saying it has been submitted and is waiting to be verified. As far as I can see, it has completely vanished!

It's in the queue fine. Stories awaiting verification usually drop to the bottom of your published list awaiting a published date, at which point they will return to the top. Check on page 8 and it will hopefully be there

Quote by Jen

Quote by LucaByDesign

And I've just submitted a story too — and it did not seem like before.

I usually get a message saying it has been submitted and is waiting to be verified. As far as I can see, it has completely vanished!

It's in the queue fine. Stories awaiting verification usually drop to the bottom of your published list awaiting a published date, at which point they will return to the top. Check on page 8 and it will hopefully be there

Quote by Jen

There was a rollout today to address the word count and blank space issue. Please let me know if there are still issues with it, other than the usual discrepancies that always exist in counters around the treatment of some special characters and page dividers etc.

Quote by naughtyannie

Quote by Jen

Quote by LucaByDesign

And I've just submitted a story too — and it did not seem like before.

I usually get a message saying it has been submitted and is waiting to be verified. As far as I can see, it has completely vanished!

It's in the queue fine. Stories awaiting verification usually drop to the bottom of your published list awaiting a published date, at which point they will return to the top. Check on page 8 and it will hopefully be there

Just a quickie related to this - I have 16 pages of stories, and currently you have to click through them one page at a time to get to the end. It would be helpful to be able to scroll through them all on one page.

On a PC, at the bottom of the partial list, it says 'Page x of y' 

You can actually overtype the 'x' with the page number you want. Then hit Enter. 

Hardly perfect, but it might save you some time.

First, I'm glad that we are at least getting notifications of stories published by authors we folllow. Big improvement over not getting them at all!

But notifications are not an ideal way to get this information. First, because they are quirky, and not well behaved. Sometimes a notification won't go away, and I keep being told I have it, even though I've already either clicked it, or clicked "Clear All"

Other times, I click on one notification of a series, and they all vanish.

So, from a stories-published point of view, notifications are evanscent – they vanish like the morning fog – and if I'm not in a position to click on that specific notification at that precise moment, I may never find it again.

Is there somewhere that I can scroll back over notifications?

Quote by JamesLlewellyn

Are we going to get our "Favourites" lists back?

Thanks.

Quote by JamesLlewellyn

Is there somewhere that I can scroll back over notifications?

Quote by kistinspencil

Once again, I am having considerable maddness submitting a story. It is, surprise, a Micro. I composed it in UltraEdit as pure plain text. The word count was 100 and I counted it manually just to be sure. Pasted into Lush, it showed at 115. Okay, fine. I added a cautionary note to the Mods about the count and submitted. When the story showed, it had a full paragraph inserted after the first line, 10 lines of blank paragraph code entered after, and the word count was over 140.

I can live with the wacky word count, but the paragraph is not happening -- it's my story, not some damn algorithm's. And last time, I got emails from people who didn't bother to leave comments or vote because there were five screens of blank following. I don't get many comments as it is, never even broke 20 after 155 tries. It hurts enough without this.

Quote by dlcalguy

Quote by naughtyannie

Quote by Jen

Quote by LucaByDesign

And I've just submitted a story too — and it did not seem like before.

I usually get a message saying it has been submitted and is waiting to be verified. As far as I can see, it has completely vanished!

It's in the queue fine. Stories awaiting verification usually drop to the bottom of your published list awaiting a published date, at which point they will return to the top. Check on page 8 and it will hopefully be there

Just a quickie related to this - I have 16 pages of stories, and currently you have to click through them one page at a time to get to the end. It would be helpful to be able to scroll through them all on one page.

On a PC, at the bottom of the partial list, it says 'Page x of y' 

You can actually overtype the 'x' with the page number you want. Then hit Enter. 

Hardly perfect, but it might save you some time.

I just submitted on Stories Space and maybe I need to try it here, but I found it went pretty smoothly now. The two are supposed to be roughly in lockstep in terms of development of features like stories and forums that are shared.

Quote by LakeShoreLimited

Ideally, the stories with the moderator should be at the top, like they used to be, not at the end. But we'll have to see if that issue is eventually resolved.

Quote by NewLushSeeker

I just submitted on Stories Space and maybe I need to try it here, but I found it went pretty smoothly now. The two are supposed to be roughly in lockstep in terms of development of features like stories and forums that are shared.

Quote by LakeShoreLimited

Ideally, the stories with the moderator should be at the top, like they used to be, not at the end. But we'll have to see if that issue is eventually resolved.

Meh. As long as it is consistent. On the old site I had weirdness where a new story I was editing was stuck somewhere in the middle rather than being at top or bottom. Having the unapproved stories at the bottom and the unpublished ones in their own area seems much better than what we had before.

Hey, I thought the site was going to fix all that white space that appears under a story when it's in "preview mode" or whatever that is called. I thought that stage was supposed to show what the story will look like when it's published. Is that white space going to be there or not? I haven't seen it in the published stories I have looked at so far, 

Quote by naughtyannie

Quote by Jen

There was a rollout today to address the word count and blank space issue. Please let me know if there are still issues with it, other than the usual discrepancies that always exist in counters around the treatment of some special characters and page dividers etc.

My "Nude Beach Lesbians" story still has the white space issue. 

The white space in Nude Beach Lesbians has now been fixed.  We have attempting to fix it in as many places as possible, but unfortunately the format of the white space is different depending on which browser the story was written in.

Please report any stories you find with large amounts of white space.

The new editor should go live in the next week or 2 which should prevent this happening to any more stories.

I'm putting story submission on hold until these various bugs are sorted out. It's good to hear that there will be a new story editor soon.

Dan here is a recent one with the white space issue. It only happened to one of mine and I edited it out myself.

Two things that are really needed that the old Lush had but new Lush doesn't are (a) a real wysiwig previewer (b) the 'source' editor so you could actually see under the hood and look at the html code and remove any surplus  <p> <br> etc.

I hope that the ability to link related stories will be restored. I know you can set up a series but that doesn't work for one of mine when I wrote a followup to a comp entry, because comp entries can't be part of a series. And that's something I am likely to want todo again. Maybe that rule could be tweaked to allow a comp entry to be the first in a series?

NicolasBelvoir:  Thanks for linking that story, I have just fixed it.

WYSWIYG preview:  In terms of stories there shouldn't really be a need as it will look the same as in the editor, with forum posts the external media look different however these are previewed when added.

Source editor:  I would imagine that anyone capable of reading and writing HTML would also know how to use the browser developer tools?  Having said that outside of the current white space bug I can't see a need to edit the HTML directly.

We are currently planning to stick with using series to link stories as having multiple ways generates confusion.  In terms of comp entries, I would have to check with the powers that be.... but I can't see any reason you couldn't add it to a series after the competition has closed?  Using the new series management page you can then re-order the stories any way you would like.

Quote by danadmin

NicolasBelvoir:  Thanks for linking that story, I have just fixed it.

WYSWIYG preview:  In terms of stories there shouldn't really be a need as it will look the same as in the editor, with forum posts the external media look different however these are previewed when added.

Source editor:  I would imagine that anyone capable of reading and writing HTML would also know how to use the browser developer tools?  Having said that outside of the current white space bug I can't see a need to edit the HTML directly.

We are currently planning to stick with using series to link stories as having multiple ways generates confusion.  In terms of comp entries, I would have to check with the powers that be.... but I can't see any reason you couldn't add it to a series after the competition has closed?  Using the new series management page you can then re-order the stories any way you would like.

I do know some HTML, and on another site I put it in manually. There are only about three I really use: italics, bold, and links (to other stories on the site). The browser development tools? I usually do this in Chrome, and I don't see why I would ever use those inside of Lush. I don't think I have ever needed to use them anywhere.

The new series management page? I didn't even know it existed. Is it pretty easy to find, I assume?

I've submitted two stories under Lush 2.0, and am working on a third. I'm having two, massive problems with the process.

I write my stories in MS Word until they are in semi-final form, then copy and paste them into Lush's story entry thing. The problems are:

The vertical line spacing does not work. If I simply cut and paste, I get an irregular mishmash of single and double spacing. I have had to go back into the Lush story editor, and manually delete and re-enter EVERY SINGLE CARRIAGE RETURN. This is particularly true with dialogue, which the most recent two stories have in abundance.

The other problem is that neither bolding nor italicizing transfer from Word to Lush, which, again, means I have to go back and re-do every single instance of such.

These are both major pains in the ass, and I would very much appreciate it if they were fixed.

Thanks

I have it on good authority that a revised editor toolbar is in the works and should be hitting the shelves next week, all being well.

Quote by JamesLlewellyn

I've submitted two stories under Lush 2.0, and am working on a third. I'm having two, massive problems with the process.

I write my stories in MS Word until they are in semi-final form, then copy and paste them into Lush's story entry thing. The problems are:

The vertical line spacing does not work. If I simply cut and paste, I get an irregular mishmash of single and double spacing. I have had to go back into the Lush story editor, and manually delete and re-enter EVERY SINGLE CARRIAGE RETURN. This is particularly true with dialogue, which the most recent two stories have in abundance.

The other problem is that neither bolding nor italicizing transfer from Word to Lush, which, again, means I have to go back and re-do every single instance of such.

These are both major pains in the ass, and I would very much appreciate it if they were fixed.

Thanks

Quote by LakeShoreLimited

Quote by danadmin

NicolasBelvoir:  Thanks for linking that story, I have just fixed it.

WYSWIYG preview:  In terms of stories there shouldn't really be a need as it will look the same as in the editor, with forum posts the external media look different however these are previewed when added.

Source editor:  I would imagine that anyone capable of reading and writing HTML would also know how to use the browser developer tools?  Having said that outside of the current white space bug I can't see a need to edit the HTML directly.

We are currently planning to stick with using series to link stories as having multiple ways generates confusion.  In terms of comp entries, I would have to check with the powers that be.... but I can't see any reason you couldn't add it to a series after the competition has closed?  Using the new series management page you can then re-order the stories any way you would like.

Thanks Dan, I sort of get most of what you are talking about.  The WYSWIYG preview on my drafts mode still shows the white space, so I guess I should hold off submitting it for a week or two until that bug is fixed?

I do know some HTML, and on another site I put it in manually. There are only about three I really use: italics, bold, and links (to other stories on the site). The browser development tools? I usually do this in Chrome, and I don't see why I would ever use those inside of Lush. I don't think I have ever needed to use them anywhere.

The new series management page? I didn't even know it existed. Is it pretty easy to find, I assume?

Quote by LakeShoreLimited

Oh, I just saw the new series management page. It has a little icon next to the series name. Should it be the newest at the top or the oldest? I guess that is my call. Now, if they could only deal with that white space under the story problem.

First story in the series at the top, flowing to the final story at the bottom.  When you link up a new one, it will always move to the bottom.  You can then move it as necessary from series management to put it in the proper chronological place.  A nice improvement over what we had.

Now, if only someone could tell me why some existing stories/chapters go straight through without moderation, while others go into the queue, when I'm doing the exact same thing to all of them — adding the series designation, and nothing else.

As a matter of fact, I've actually edited the moderator section on a few of them that went through without moderation, while I didn't change that section ( it still had an old moderator note saying I'm linking them as chapters that serves the purpose ) on some, and those hit the queue.

Baffling.

Not that this is new.  It happened when I was linking chapters under the old system as well.

I'm trying to wait at least a few hours after one goes into the queue and the minor change gets approved.  I have to click the new ( author ) series button once I submit each change to see if it went through or got stuck in the queue, because there's no difference in the prompt.  Thankfully, there's a "in review" notation on those that hit the queue within the series management, so I don't have to dig back through my story list to check.