The BS going on.

The BS going on.
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Posted by SaneCynic on 09/01/10 - 23:09:08

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Happy Anniversary StorySite!

Nine years ago this month Mindy announced the permanent closure of Fictionmania, and said that she would not relent nor turn over the archive to anyone else to make it available. Apparently she had been hospitalized for a brief time and returned home to find dozens of complaints because no new stories had been posted while she was so ill. I suppose that it was the proverbial straw for someone who had been so very generous with her time and money. Mindy had been paying all the bills for Fictionmania on her own, and had been a major presence in the community since the old dial-up bulletin board days when you accessed available sites without going through an ISP.

We’re all grateful to Mindy for her incredible support, and for ultimately agreeing to turn over the equipment and huge archive of stories to the task force. It would have been terrible to lose that marvelous collection.

When I read her announcement I decided to help the community in any way that I could. I had just leased the StorySite URL name with the intention of setting up a personal archive. I was leasing space on a server and had far more disk space and bandwidth than I needed, so I announced that any authors who needed a home were welcome to join me. I never had any intentions of creating an archive. Back then there were a couple of dozen sites where TG stories were available. I expected that maybe a half dozen authors would want to join me. Within days of making my offer, requests for sharing my space began to come in. This was all well before Mindy relented in her intention to permanently close FM.

As the days passed, more and more requests came in and I increasingly moved from writing my own stories to posting stories for others. At first it was one or two each day, then three, four, five, and finally six every day. This was about the most that I could handle on a regular basis. I began spending ALL of my free time outside of work, posting stories and trying to improve the site. I usually didn’t get to bed before 1:00 in the morning.

In my haste to grow the site in ways that would make it more useful and enjoyable to visitors, I didn’t take time to plan its growth so that everything would work together. It became a collection of disparate scripts held together only with heavy doses of manual intervention on my part. To the casual visitor it might have seemed like a cohesive design because everything worked seamlessly, but I assure you it wasn’t, and still isn’t.

When Mindy relented, StorySite was already becoming an integral part of the community. And after she agreed to transfer the equipment and story collection, it was announced that FM wouldn’t resume posting new stories for a while. The server had to be shipped to a co-lo host and set-up. If my memory is accurate, new stories didn’t appear until about April. During that time new stories flooded into StorySite.

So here we are, nine years later.

_______________________________________________

It’s unfortunate that FM went down soon after I stopped posting new stories to work on the redesign of Storysite, but I’m glad that TSBC is continuing to satisfy the basic demand for new stories. I briefly considered suspending the redesign effort, but I’ve done that three times in the past when other events interceded, so I decided to continue without interruption this time. Only by completing the reprogramming effort will I ever be able to have volunteers help with the posting, and only with the help of volunteers will we ever return to the point of having new stories every day. I can no longer do all the work by myself and still have the site responsive to the needs of the community and the submitting authors.

I’ve just completed an important step in the effort. Months ago I wrote a script that would create a new filename for all stories. This was critical for proper functioning of the redesigned site as I envision it. Until recently an author submitting a story with the same title as one submitted by another author would overwrite the story and synopsis information of the first because I used only the first twenty characters of story title for the filename. I originally thought twenty characters would be sufficient. I thought that no author would want to name his or her story with a title already used. To help authors avoid this I long ago created an alphabetical index of all stories. I guess that some authors don’t care that their titles are the same, or that they simply don’t bother to check the available indices. In the past, when I caught it in time before it did damage, I simply changed the filename by adding a Roman numeral value to the filename to differentiate story files. This was okay for a manual system but couldn’t be used in the more automated system I envision. So I’ve established a filename format where the submitting author’s code is appended to the front of the full filename (up to forty characters. Twenty wasn’t nearly adequate to create a unique filename for some authors.) If fifty characters isn’t adequate to make a unique key, the author will HAVE to change the title because I’m not going to expand it further or manually adjust it.

When I began working with the new filenames I discovered that one prolific author had submitted two different stories with the same title. Also, a number of authors had used alternative titles when submitting titles for additional parts of the same story, and some simply misspelled the titles on some submission forms. Anyways, over the years I simply adjusted the filename manually without accessing the submitted synopsis record and performing the change there as well. Since the new system will use the synopsis record to create new author pages instead of the manual system I had been using, I had to go in and manually correct nine years of erroneous title entries.

I have now completed correcting the titles in the synopsis records for all 8,494 stories in the directory, and the new filename indexes have been created. The effort was time-consuming, but it was a necessary first step.

My next task is to write a script that will copy every story over to a new directory, with a new filename, where it can be accessed via that new filename. I don’t anticipate any problems and this shouldn’t take very long. The original directory will remain where it is, with all stories intact until the new system is in place and running in production for several months. Even once it’s removed, I have backups of backups. No stories will be lost if we suddenly find a major error a year down the road.

Step three is to create a new author information database. It will contain something the current database doesn’t presently have, a reference to every story the author has written or collaborated on. At present, when an author requests that their stories be removed from StorySite, it can be a major effort. With the new system, everything on which they were the sole author will disappear in a heartbeat. This has long been a sore point. I wanted to spend my time posting new stories, not searching through the server directories removing stories.

When the previous steps are complete, I’ll write a script that will generate all new author pages. This is necessary because all the links to the stories are being changed because of the new filenames. New author pages will cause other problems, but none that will interrupt the resumption of posting new stories.

With the completion of the previously mentioned step new stories will begin to be posted again. I WON’T do it before then because it will interrupt the current effort if I have to update old records manually again. I’m going to press ahead with the upgrade regardless of how many doom and gloom fools pronounce StorySite to be forever more dead.

The story queue will not clear up overnight! Volunteers will have to be trained and their initial efforts supervised so their work saves me time, not causes me headaches to resolve. A lot of that will depend on the scripts I write to coordinate the efforts of multiple posters. But once the system is going, there should be new stories daily again.

Initially, there will be very little evidence of all the backroom efforts. Only once the new system is running flawlessly will I begin to introduce new features that I’ve thought about for a long time. Some people have requested that authors be allowed to upload their own stories, but this is not being considered. At present I’m more or less responsible for all content, except what’s posted on the CyberBoard, the Polling Place, or what appears in the comment system. I use various controls to limit what can be posted, and I’m not about to give up that control completely. Volunteers will be responsible for what they post, and their access can be curtailed immediately if they post something illegal. If I let just anyone post, what’s to stop someone from posting kiddie porn? Although it’ll be removed as soon as I become aware of it, the damage to the site will already be done if the authorities hear of it first. StorySite could be fined, shutdown, or ever worse punishments imposed if it’s believed I didn’t practice due diligence. I both work and go to school so I can’t be watching all the time.

In addition to posters who know HTML, I’ll need other help. During the first year and half, I didn’t require submission forms. Authors sent me their stories via email, along with a brief synopsis. When I first created the story information database, I created a placeholder record for all stories for which one didn’t then exist. All it has in it is the title of the story, and whatever basic data I was about to properly parse from the author’s page(s). Most don’t have synopsis information because that was hard-coded into the HTML page that listed the author’s stories, and the author pages didn’t follow a fixed format. If I can find volunteers willing to do the tedious cut and paste work between an author’s page and a form I can create, we can get the info into the database. If not I’ll have to do it myself, which will delay future efforts. IT WILL NOT DELAY POSTING NEW STORIES. Initially, the new author pages will only show a title for most stories posted before April 2001. A few might show age, categories, and keywords where I was able to parse that info, but most of the synopsis card will be blank.

Okay, I guess that’s mostly it. I’ll post a notice when the work is done and stories are about to appear, but I WON’T be posting weekly updates. This is all I’m going to post so pass the word to others. My time is better spent doing the work than talking about it.

Happy Holidays,
Crystal

For Further Reading

Re: The BS going on. - Karon, 09/02/10 - 05:43:25

Re: The BS going on. - lauren, 09/02/10 - 10:30:22

Re: The BS going on. - Guianne , 09/02/10 - 12:05:53

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Message: (Smilies) or use table at bottom of page	: Happy Anniversary StorySite! : Nine years ago this month Mindy announced the permanent closure of Fictionmania, and said that she would not relent nor turn over the archive to anyone else to make it available. Apparently she had been hospitalized for a brief time and returned home to find dozens of complaints because no new stories had been posted while she was so ill. I suppose that it was the proverbial straw for someone who had been so very generous with her time and money. Mindy had been paying all the bills for Fictionmania on her own, and had been a major presence in the community since the old dial-up bulletin board days when you accessed available sites without going through an ISP. : We’re all grateful to Mindy for her incredible support, and for ultimately agreeing to turn over the equipment and huge archive of stories to the task force. It would have been terrible to lose that marvelous collection. : When I read her announcement I decided to help the community in any way that I could. I had just leased the StorySite URL name with the intention of setting up a personal archive. I was leasing space on a server and had far more disk space and bandwidth than I needed, so I announced that any authors who needed a home were welcome to join me. I never had any intentions of creating an archive. Back then there were a couple of dozen sites where TG stories were available. I expected that maybe a half dozen authors would want to join me. Within days of making my offer, requests for sharing my space began to come in. This was all well before Mindy relented in her intention to permanently close FM. : As the days passed, more and more requests came in and I increasingly moved from writing my own stories to posting stories for others. At first it was one or two each day, then three, four, five, and finally six every day. This was about the most that I could handle on a regular basis. I began spending ALL of my free time outside of work, posting stories and trying to improve the site. I usually didn’t get to bed before 1:00 in the morning. : In my haste to grow the site in ways that would make it more useful and enjoyable to visitors, I didn’t take time to plan its growth so that everything would work together. It became a collection of disparate scripts held together only with heavy doses of manual intervention on my part. To the casual visitor it might have seemed like a cohesive design because everything worked seamlessly, but I assure you it wasn’t, and still isn’t. : When Mindy relented, StorySite was already becoming an integral part of the community. And after she agreed to transfer the equipment and story collection, it was announced that FM wouldn’t resume posting new stories for a while. The server had to be shipped to a co-lo host and set-up. If my memory is accurate, new stories didn’t appear until about April. During that time new stories flooded into StorySite. : So here we are, nine years later. :) : _______________________________________________ : It’s unfortunate that FM went down soon after I stopped posting new stories to work on the redesign of Storysite, but I’m glad that TSBC is continuing to satisfy the basic demand for new stories. I briefly considered suspending the redesign effort, but I’ve done that three times in the past when other events interceded, so I decided to continue without interruption this time. Only by completing the reprogramming effort will I ever be able to have volunteers help with the posting, and only with the help of volunteers will we ever return to the point of having new stories every day. I can no longer do all the work by myself and still have the site responsive to the needs of the community and the submitting authors. : I’ve just completed an important step in the effort. Months ago I wrote a script that would create a new filename for all stories. This was critical for proper functioning of the redesigned site as I envision it. Until recently an author submitting a story with the same title as one submitted by another author would overwrite the story and synopsis information of the first because I used only the first twenty characters of story title for the filename. I originally thought twenty characters would be sufficient. I thought that no author would want to name his or her story with a title already used. To help authors avoid this I long ago created an alphabetical index of all stories. I guess that some authors don’t care that their titles are the same, or that they simply don’t bother to check the available indices. In the past, when I caught it in time before it did damage, I simply changed the filename by adding a Roman numeral value to the filename to differentiate story files. This was okay for a manual system but couldn’t be used in the more automated system I envision. So I’ve established a filename format where the submitting author’s code is appended to the front of the full filename (up to forty characters. Twenty wasn’t nearly adequate to create a unique filename for some authors.) If fifty characters isn’t adequate to make a unique key, the author will HAVE to change the title because I’m not going to expand it further or manually adjust it. (rolleyes) : When I began working with the new filenames I discovered that one prolific author had submitted two different stories with the same title. Also, a number of authors had used alternative titles when submitting titles for additional parts of the same story, and some simply misspelled the titles on some submission forms. Anyways, over the years I simply adjusted the filename manually without accessing the submitted synopsis record and performing the change there as well. Since the new system will use the synopsis record to create new author pages instead of the manual system I had been using, I had to go in and manually correct nine years of erroneous title entries. : I have now completed correcting the titles in the synopsis records for all 8,494 stories in the directory, and the new filename indexes have been created. The effort was time-consuming, but it was a necessary first step. : My next task is to write a script that will copy every story over to a new directory, with a new filename, where it can be accessed via that new filename. I don’t anticipate any problems and this shouldn’t take very long. The original directory will remain where it is, with all stories intact until the new system is in place and running in production for several months. Even once it’s removed, I have backups of backups. No stories will be lost if we suddenly find a major error a year down the road. : Step three is to create a new author information database. It will contain something the current database doesn’t presently have, a reference to every story the author has written or collaborated on. At present, when an author requests that their stories be removed from StorySite, it can be a major effort. With the new system, everything on which they were the sole author will disappear in a heartbeat. This has long been a sore point. I wanted to spend my time posting new stories, not searching through the server directories removing stories. : When the previous steps are complete, I’ll write a script that will generate all new author pages. This is necessary because all the links to the stories are being changed because of the new filenames. New author pages will cause other problems, but none that will interrupt the resumption of posting new stories. : With the completion of the previously mentioned step new stories will begin to be posted again. I WON’T do it before then because it will interrupt the current effort if I have to update old records manually again. I’m going to press ahead with the upgrade regardless of how many doom and gloom fools pronounce StorySite to be forever more dead. : The story queue will not clear up overnight! Volunteers will have to be trained and their initial efforts supervised so their work saves me time, not causes me headaches to resolve. A lot of that will depend on the scripts I write to coordinate the efforts of multiple posters. But once the system is going, there should be new stories daily again. : Initially, there will be very little evidence of all the backroom efforts. Only once the new system is running flawlessly will I begin to introduce new features that I’ve thought about for a long time. Some people have requested that authors be allowed to upload their own stories, but this is not being considered. At present I’m more or less responsible for all content, except what’s posted on the CyberBoard, the Polling Place, or what appears in the comment system. I use various controls to limit what can be posted, and I’m not about to give up that control completely. Volunteers will be responsible for what they post, and their access can be curtailed immediately if they post something illegal. If I let just anyone post, what’s to stop someone from posting kiddie porn? Although it’ll be removed as soon as I become aware of it, the damage to the site will already be done if the authorities hear of it first. StorySite could be fined, shutdown, or ever worse punishments imposed if it’s believed I didn’t practice due diligence. I both work and go to school so I can’t be watching all the time. : In addition to posters who know HTML, I’ll need other help. During the first year and half, I didn’t require submission forms. Authors sent me their stories via email, along with a brief synopsis. When I first created the story information database, I created a placeholder record for all stories for which one didn’t then exist. All it has in it is the title of the story, and whatever basic data I was about to properly parse from the author’s page(s). Most don’t have synopsis information because that was hard-coded into the HTML page that listed the author’s stories, and the author pages didn’t follow a fixed format. If I can find volunteers willing to do the tedious cut and paste work between an author’s page and a form I can create, we can get the info into the database. If not I’ll have to do it myself, which will delay future efforts. IT WILL NOT DELAY POSTING NEW STORIES. Initially, the new author pages will only show a title for most stories posted before April 2001. A few might show age, categories, and keywords where I was able to parse that info, but most of the synopsis card will be blank. : Okay, I guess that’s mostly it. I’ll post a notice when the work is done and stories are about to appear, but I WON’T be posting weekly updates. This is all I’m going to post so pass the word to others. My time is better spent doing the work than talking about it. : Happy Holidays, : Crystal : (wave)

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