Questions for the list

[kellifer]

2 things that I have been wondering about... considering I'm never particularly up with the online etiquette and value opinions...

1. For the writers - do you post stories to multiple communities? I usually pick one and my journal or just my journal and that's it but I'm seriously considering cutting back the number of communities I'm a member of because it seems lately I'm scrolling through five or six entries of the same story over and over again... I have a non-community filter but I *like* finding new authors to read but this is just defeating me...

2. Why do people put for their story summaries like - "I would summarise but it will spoil the story" *or* "I suck at summaries. Just read." I'm paraphrasing... ;) I put an excerpt because that's what I like to see, but sometime it's like, help me out and give me an idea of what your story is. Otherwise, I just skip right over it.

What's people's preferred method?

Comments

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

#1 I don't write a lot of fic, but I do read heaps and I'm a member of loads of comms for that purpose. In general, I post get annoyed when the same fic comes up more than twice on my friends list...sometimes up to six times...in a row.

I think two comms, maybe a specific comm and a general comm is plenty of postage. Also, I think it's not only good manners, but makes it more likely for people to see your fic, if you wait a few hours of even a few days between posting to different comms. That way, you can post to as many as you want and not spam people's friends list adn people logging on at different times will notice your fic. That makes everyone happy...no?

#2 Yeah, I tend to avoid fic with no summaries. I don't mind if they give an excerpt or a summary, but it gives an idea of whether it's something I want to read.

For my own fic, I use a summary or an excerpt depending on the story and my mood. :D

Anyway, as you well know, I've taken to friending people with good fic, so that I'm not always sifting through the comms, but it is fun to find new authors and every now and then I'm surprised by something that seems to come out of no where. I do love reading good fic. *big grin*

Cheers
Lizzie

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

if you wait a few hours of even a few days between posting to different comms.

See, that kind of weirds me out too... I keep seeing stories posted, and then a few days later they turn up again... and then another day and they turn up again. They confuse me because I usually read backwards from the most recent entries until I hit something familiar (I know, it's probably an odd way to read your friends list) and I'll hit one of these stories and think "Hmm, seen that before so I can stop paging back" but then the entries underneath it I haven't seen.

That's probably just me. I'd love if there was a way to tag the most recent entry on your friends list, so when you come back to livejournal a day or two days later you can go back to that tagged entry and start reading from there...

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Each to their own I guess. It's what they keep recommending on sga_noticeboard and so that's what I do. I generally don't click too far back on my friends list or check it that often (except for the real people), so it's never bothered me much.