Anyone played with the Series (BETA) yet?

[NightPorter]

Looks like the automated system of grouping stories into a series has gotten an overall to give authors more control. Anyone played with it yet?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm wondering if it's browser intolerant. I can't see it yet. Having read the FAQs, I can see it would be useful.

Bit dubious about the cover art option though - I can picture heaps of really badly drawn renderings and dodgy Photoshop manipulations. Hopefully there'll be an option to turn it all off...

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

Yes and it looks good so far. All of my named series have been grouped. I have created two more new series where the connection is not that obvious and added a couple of stories to existing series where the names didn't match but they fit the overall theme.

Only issue is I have a 2-part story that I want to include under a wider umbrella. I have successfully deleted them from the automatically created series and added them to a new one I created, but now cannot seemingly delete the empty series.

But assuming the changes will be accepted, looks like a very nice addition.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

And just as an aside to this, I have had a massive surge in views on two chapters of multi-part stories in the last two days. One is part 4 of 11, and is over 5 years old. It gained over 2,000 views in that time when all other chapters are in single figures. That accounts for 10% of its views in two days.

Another part 1 of 3 went up by 700 when parts 2 and 3 barely moved.

Coincidence or anyone else seeing strange results?

 

[Voboy]

It still duplicates my series. That same old glitch from the older interface.

 

[NightPorter]

I'm going to play with it later. A short description and a series introduction sounds like a nice mini writing project for after dinner. I also need to find a copywrite free/public domain image I can use. Anyone had an luck AI generated images? I find them humorious and kind of creepy, more than anything.

 

[LesLumens]

It still duplicates my series. That same old glitch from the older interface.

That's the old BIO page. The new bio page should eliminate that glitch when it goes live. Likewise, the new series created with the Beta interface probably won't show up on the existing bio page.

Just put together my Magic of the Wood series with this, and I'm delighted with the interface. I originally couldn't see it on this profile, while I could as Dark and RR. Try refreshing your member page if you don't see the Series Beta option in the left toolbar. That worked for me.

One addition I would like to see is the ability to differentiate between a group of connected stories and a chapter story.

It could also be quite critical once contests begin allowing only complete works to compete, IOW when the "completed" radio box has been checked. A series of stories like mine are all each complete, but I'd like to still use the series function to group them together without disqualifying them from monthly/annual awards. It's an open ended collection of stories, and thus would never be complete even though each individual tale is.

 

[Voboy]

That's the old BIO page.

No, I’m talking about the new beta. there are two entries for my Dry, No Lube series.

 

[RejectReality]

Ahhh... okay. Well, you should be able to nuke one of them with the interface, switch the other to manual, and solve that. I was going to check to see if my duplicated LST3K series showed up that way as Dark, but apparently that was fixed while I wasn't looking, because I no longer have the duplicate entries on my works page.

 

[Voboy]

Ahhh... okay. Well, you should be able to nuke one of them with the interface, switch the other to manual, and solve that. I was going to check to see if my duplicated LST3K series showed up that way as Dark, but apparently that was fixed while I wasn't looking, because I no longer have the duplicate entries on my works page.

You’ve got more faith in my tech abilities than I do, alas. I’ll need to explore this new functionality quite a bit before I “nuke” anything, lol.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

I'm going to play with it later. A short description and a series introduction sounds like a nice mini writing project for after dinner. I also need to find a copywrite free/public domain image I can use. Anyone had an luck AI generated images? I find them humorious and kind of creepy, more than anything.

As an artist I find AI art to be unethical. The ai generators are trained on the entirety of Google images so the ai learns artists names and styles without the artist themselves ever giving consent to their name or images being fed to the bot.

If you want good public domain/royalty free images, every picture on Wikipedia is public domain so taking images from there and popping them into photoshop or MS paint is a viable option.

 

[RejectReality]

You’ve got more faith in my tech abilities than I do, alas. I’ll need to explore this new functionality quite a bit before I “nuke” anything, lol.

Yeah, I would save that until the beta testing is over as well. And I really should have reversed the order of that suggestion anyway. Set the one with the most stories to manual, fill in everything, make sure it looks good, and then see about deleting the extraneous one.

 

[Darkniciad]

If you still have the double listings for a series that was caused by the glitch in the old series code, it may get fixed in time. It looks as if there's an automated process running that's converting the old series to a form that will work with the new code, and it may not have gotten to you yet.

It's not perfect. The old code had grouped my Danica: Epilogue final chapter with the series originally, but after the process ran through, it lost that chapter. Just converted it to manual management, updated the rest of the new data, marked it complete, and added the final chapter back in.

Easy peasy. I'm really enjoying this interface and the promise it has once the rest of the pages are set up to display all the new information.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Just had a play to link three of my stories. They could all stand alone, but I thought I'd try the new system. It works on the PC, not on the iPad, which may be due to the caching issue EB had. I like the option of adding a description for the whole series.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

Works on android by the looks of things

 

[NightPorter]

Does anyone have an example of a picture being approved? My text edit on the series introduction got approved but I don't see the picture I uploaded. In fact I don't seem to see any pictures anywhere.

It's an interesting update. It would be cool to see a rating system implemented for a series as a whole, the way that stories are currently voted on.

 

[RejectReality]

Does anyone have an example of a picture being approved? My text edit on the series introduction got approved but I don't see the picture I uploaded. In fact I don't seem to see any pictures anywhere.

It's an interesting update. It would be cool to see a rating system implemented for a series as a whole, the way that stories are currently voted on.

Both of mine that I've done say the edits were approved. There's currently nowhere to actually see those cover images on the site, as the code doesn't display them yet. ( Except on the series beta. If you don't see it there, upload the cover again and save. Look for a message that says the image was uploaded and is awaiting moderation. )

According to Laurel, the rating of a series for the purposes of the toplists will be the highest rated chapter in the series. A series will appear once in that position, rather than once for each chapter that qualifies the way it is now. In the display on the series page, the score is an average, I believe. The one I looked up wasn't my highest score, and the displayed score looks about right for an average without actually doing all the math. All other stats on the series page appear to be cumulative for the whole series. ( views, votes, favorites, comments )

No word on how the score would be determined for monthly/annual contests as of yet.

 

[Duleigh]

And just as an aside to this, I have had a massive surge in views on two chapters of multi-part stories in the last two days. One is part 4 of 11, and is over 5 years old. It gained over 2,000 views in that time when all other chapters are in single figures. That accounts for 10% of its views in two days.

Another part 1 of 3 went up by 700 when parts 2 and 3 barely moved.

Coincidence or anyone else seeing strange results?

Yes, I have one series story with 10 chapters that currently saw a large uptick in pageviews. Chapter 1 has received the most pageviews. Another series which isn't titled as chapters has gotten a surge. I also had a reader go through and favorite all seven stories in that series, but the next day he removed every story from his favorites. Ever since we had 3 sweeps in one day it's gotten a bit weird

 

[Voboy]

Both of mine that I've done say the edits were approved. There's currently nowhere to actually see those cover images on the site, as the code doesn't display them yet. ( Except on the series beta. If you don't see it there, upload the cover again and save. Look for a message that says the image was uploaded and is awaiting moderation. )

According to Laurel, the rating of a series for the purposes of the toplists will be the highest rated chapter in the series. A series will appear once in that position, rather than once for each chapter that qualifies the way it is now. In the display on the series page, the score is an average, I believe. The one I looked up wasn't my highest score, and the displayed score looks about right for an average without actually doing all the math. All other stats on the series page appear to be cumulative for the whole series. ( views, votes, favorites, comments )

No word on how the score would be determined for monthly/annual contests as of yet.

Where’s the series toplist?

I can never seem to find anything on this site…

 

[NotWise]

Where’s the series toplist?

I can never seem to find anything on this site…

There's no separate top list for series. The series tool that's in beta now is the first step of several changes to the way series will be handled. None of the other changes are out yet.

When it's done, the toplists will contain a single entry for a series, rather than (as it is now) several chapters from one series taking up space on the list. That will make a big difference to the ranking of stories that are fairly far down in the top lists, and it will put more stories on the list. In some cases there will be a lot of new stories on the list.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I haven't even had time to work on my stories since I set up the basic outline. so sad! I hope to get to my series soonish.

 

[SimonDoom]

What do people see as the best features of the new system? I have two series that have been set up and it looks like I have the option to add an overall series introduction -- where would that show up?

 

[Duleigh]

I eventually found the Series list here
https://www.literotica.com/series/
But if this is what they're talking about, I'm not sure what all the hoopla is about

 

[stickygirl]

I'm really pleased we finally have this because my 'Under ....' series had become unmanageable. I can now delete the cumbersome guide I'd included in my signature/options. Everything now in the correct order which updated overnight

 

[Voboy]

Hmm

is there some sort of tutorial for this beta? I feel like I missed a memo in terms of what I should know how to do…