The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 09

[NotWise]

I believe that you shouldn't depend on typography, but the center tag issue wasn't a typographical problem. It removed text, not just formatting. Each time it occurred, two full lines, one with text and one without, were struck from the piece. Had it just been a broken tag with the text inside the tag still extant on the page, it wouldn't have caused so much confusion.


Could be. The toplist score and the score on the category page, series page and dashboard track each other; it's just that the toplist has been consistently 0.04 lower for the last month at least with the same number of ratings.

I have a very low-votes story where I was able to track all of the votes as they came in. There were months when the score shown by the site was higher than the score I calculated. I never understood why, but the difference eventually went away.

There be a few demons in the woodwork, and there always have been.

 

[NotWise]

That was not the case that I had. I (and many others include Wanda) had simply centered our section breaks (for me a series of +'s).

Some of the section breaks disappeared when stepping page by page through a story. Reloading the page brought them back. My complaint is not a visual one. The section breaks were wholy omitted from the rendered story, making changes in place and time unclear. This is not a case of typography. This is a case of the site not rendering text that is part of the story. Completely omitting pieces. As far as I can tell from the bug, it could just have easily been omitting italicized words at random from a story (not as the bug manifested, but a closely related bug).

They have the authority to change the typography of stories. Omitting text from the story is one hundred percent unacceptable and is where I draw the line.

It continues to be hard to get the idea across to writers. If you hadn't used centering to start with, you wouldn't have a problem.

I don't know why you have an on-going problem when I don't. There's nothing that you can do about it now, but you can avoid it in the future.

 

[iwatchus]

So I used a feature that the site says works to make my story look better. And they shit the bed unrelievedly badly and somehow this is my fault? It would have been fine if they simply ignored the center tag. I would have grumbled but the story stays readable. Dropping pieces of text from a story is beyond the pale unacceptable. This is THE one thing the site should get correct. Everything else is peanuts. Drop the formatting if you can't get it right sure. If that was my complaint, I would agree with you. But they actually deleted text from my story. Not for editorial reasons. Through sheer utter incompetence and unprofessionalism.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

So when you say don't rely on typography, do you mean don't use html tags? If so, does that mean you also don't use bold or itallic? Or do you literally mean no typography other than characters, spaces and line breaks? Like you won't have chapter headlines or some kind of separator between sections?

Genuine question, just trying to gauge what the advice is.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Have I ever told you guys I don't like cold weather? I don't. In the middle of the night, our heat and air unit went down. I'm here waiting on them to show up and make work again. Fortunately, it warmed a bit today. Still, I have every little hater we have turned on, two in my office. The other one is in the living room. It's 58 outside today. But it was down at 30ish when it went out last night. Irish coffee, anyone?

 

[NotWise]

So I used a feature that the site says works to make my story look better. And they shit the bed unrelievedly badly and somehow this is my fault? It would have been fine if they simply ignored the center tag. I would have grumbled but the story stays readable. Dropping pieces of text from a story is beyond the pale unacceptable. This is THE one thing the site should get correct. Everything else is peanuts. Drop the formatting if you can't get it right sure. If that was my complaint, I would agree with you. But they actually deleted text from my story. Not for editorial reasons. Through sheer utter incompetence and unprofessionalism.

It isn't your fault, but it's a problem you can avoid. There have always been problems with the site rendering some html tags. KeithD's advice to avoid typography was in part because using typography is a cheap trick that can be used in place of better writing, and in part because knowing the tags that can be used and getting those tags rendered correctly are long standing, on and off problem that you can avoid by not using them.

It would not be within the site's intent to drop any text from a published story. I can't say that with authority, but I can say it with a little familiarity with the site. Doing so was a mistake that I imagine they'll correct when they understand the problem and have time to fix it.

I can't tell from here what their task list is, how they prioritize it, or how much time/effort/staff they can commit to solving your problem. Neither can you. You can fix the problem by submitting an edit, or you can wait.

Complaining is the new most-popular thing to do on AH.

 

[iwatchus]

I disagree that centering a section divider is a "cheap trick that can be used in place of better writing"

I generally try to avoid the complaining (I have been called a cheerleader for the site). My lone continuous complaint is the poor communication from Laurel and Manu. But this bug is fundamentally different in my mind. And I honestly cannot understand any author who would disagree. Faithfully rendering ll the text in the story is their only sacred responsibility as a publisher.

It's been the better part of a week with at least hundreds (and probably far far more) stories being incorrectly rendered. Not just typography wise, but omitting necessary text. No communication from the site, no apparent progress on the bug. If this were a minimally competently technical staff, they would be using some form of source code control, but I suspect there is none. So that even though we know relatively precisely when the bug was introduced (early last week), there is no way to back out of a catastrophic push to the site. I'm really amazed by that simple lack of even minimal good engineering practice. It is not particularly time consuming, I simple mark the lack as laziness or unconscionable ignorance, either to the point of negligence.

Laurel kept my stories here by pushing through an emergency edit I submitted to remove the center tags. Has she not done that I would be screaming that everyone should pull all there stories down from every rooftop I could find in here. Simply pseudo-randomly deleting parts of stories being displayed is an unforgivable sin in many ways for a publisher, which is what this site is.

 

[NotWise]

So when you say don't rely on typography, do you mean don't use html tags? If so, does that mean you also don't use bold or itallic? Or do you literally mean no typography other than characters, spaces and line breaks? Like you won't have chapter headlines or some kind of separator between sections?

Genuine question, just trying to gauge what the advice is.

I don't think I used anything but plain ascii in my first stories. It worked.

Since then I've found that html entities work and the <i></i> or <em></em> and <b></b> tags work. They even worked in the story where the blockquote and center tags didn't work. Other tags are kindof a risk, even if there's documentation that they should work. If an approved tag doesn't work now, then it's a matter of time before it works again.

I think html entities carry through to the text unchanged. I use them for em dash and ellipsis to keep the site from substituting ascii equivalents. It seems like the approved tags should also carry through unchanged, but for some reason now they aren't. There have been problems before.

I used bold text for chapter headings. I use a line of three to five asterisks to break text. Other characters ("~" for instance) can be used. These do not require any formatting help.

 

[iwatchus]

I don't think I used anything but plain ascii in my first stories. It worked.

Since then I've found that html entities work and the <i></i> or <em></em> and <b></b> tags work. They even worked in the story where the blockquote and center tags didn't work. Other tags are kindof a risk, even if there's documentation that they should work. If an approved tag doesn't work now, then it's a matter of time before it works again.

I think html entities carry through to the text unchanged. I use them for em dash and ellipsis to keep the site from substituting ascii equivalents. It seems like the approved tags should also carry through unchanged, but for some reason now they aren't. There have been problems before.

I used bold text for chapter headings. I use a line of three to five asterisks to break text. Other characters ("~" for instance) can be used. These do not require any formatting help.

First off, you do realize that this is not limited to doing this with html tags. If you centered something in word and uploaded a .docx, the same thing happens.

How would you feel if half of your chapter headings disappeared? It's no different.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I don't think I used anything but plain ascii in my first stories. It worked.

Since then I've found that html entities work and the <i></i> or <em></em> and <b></b> tags work. They even worked in the story where the blockquote and center tags didn't work. Other tags are kindof a risk, even if there's documentation that they should work. If an approved tag doesn't work now, then it's a matter of time before it works again.

I think html entities carry through to the text unchanged. I use them for em dash and ellipsis to keep the site from substituting ascii equivalents. It seems like the approved tags should also carry through unchanged, but for some reason now they aren't. There have been problems before.

I used bold text for chapter headings. I use a line of three to five asterisks to break text. Other characters ("~" for instance) can be used. These do not require any formatting help.

Thanks, that basically matches what my plan ended up being after reading in AH about people's formatting going wonky. Luckily I didn't use anything fancy for my first story - although it seems like using a single <i> for more than one paragraph (or across line breaks I suppose) is a bit wonky, probably the other two as well.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

It looks like the attacks on the Romance toplist might be underway again. @Candy_Kane54, have you seen it in LS, too?

It never stopped. Whoever is doing it doesn't want any story to be higher than 4.85 and whenever it does, it gets hammered until it's not.

 

[iwatchus]

This is one of the really frustrating second tier problems on the site. One I have no idea how to fix. The N&N top list a few days ago had two stories above 4.85 (and who knows how many hundreds of stories at 4.85) There really is no meaning ordering of stories above 4.8 or so. I'm realizing that your stories will do better long term if they hit 100 votes just below 4.85 than above, which is a perverse incentive for us writers.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

This is one of the really frustrating second tier problems on the site. One I have no idea how to fix. The N&N top list a few days ago had two stories above 4.85 (and who knows how many hundreds of stories at 4.85) There really is no meaning ordering of stories above 4.8 or so. I'm realizing that your stories will do better long term if they hit 100 votes just below 4.85 than above, which is a perverse incentive for us writers.

I guess you could experiment with not putting anything new on the list for a longer time. That would make it require more work for saboteurs to find the ones they want to downvote and let them accumulate more votes first, thus being more resistant. But it would also make those stories less visible so they would get less votes, so I'm not sure it would actually accomplish anything.

 

[NotWise]

First off, you do realize that this is not limited to doing this with html tags. If you centered something in word and uploaded a .docx, the same thing happens.

How would you feel if half of your chapter headings disappeared? It's no different.

The site would translate the docx to html, so it's probably the same problem either way.

I had a very trusted beta reader who complained that I shouldn't use chapter headings. Since then I've just used numbers. Bold. Left Justfied.

When I did have a presentation problem it was actually my fault. Laurel was very quick to replace the original document with a fixed document, and I had to stop her from apologizing for the problem I caused.

 

[NotWise]

First off, you do realize that this is not limited to doing this with html tags. If you centered something in word and uploaded a .docx, the same thing happens.

How would you feel if half of your chapter headings disappeared? It's no different.

The site would translate the docx to html, so it's probably the same problem either way.

I had a very trusted beta reader who complained that I shouldn't use chapter headings. Since then I've just used numbers. Bold. Left Justfied. I've also used section breaks more and chapter breaks less.

When I did have a presentation problem it was actually my fault. Laurel was very quick to replace the original document with a fixed document, and I had to stop her from apologizing for the problem I caused.

 

[NotWise]

It never stopped. Whoever is doing it doesn't want any story to be higher than 4.85 and whenever it does, it gets hammered until it's not.

The problem in Romance was episodic, and then it seemed to stop last spring. It may have started again.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks, that basically matches what my plan ended up being after reading in AH about people's formatting going wonky. Luckily I didn't use anything fancy for my first story - although it seems like using a single <i> for more than one paragraph (or across line breaks I suppose) is a bit wonky, probably the other two as well.

That use hiccups badly when you get to a page break - which we authors cannot predict. I learned that the hard way when the entire second page flipped to italics. You've got to close every paragraph with </i>, which gets really tedious. As a consequence, I've since reduced the use of italics and bold to the absolute minimum, and for section breaks

*****

is (so far) fool proof.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

That use hiccups badly when you get to a page break - which we authors cannot predict. I learned that the hard way when the entire second page flipped to italics. You've got to close every paragraph with </i>, which gets really tedious. As a consequence, I've since reduced the use of italics and bold to the absolute minimum, and for section breaks

*****

is (so far) fool proof.

Oh damn, I was actually lucky then. Mine just closed the bracket prematurely until reloading the page. But yeah I've only used it for pre- and postscript so far.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I've only once lost a sentence and a half because of <em> </em>. Everything between one instance of it and the next in the same paragraph just poof gone. I still need to submit a fix for it, but no one seems to have noticed so maybe it's not all that important.

 

[ColtonWrites]

Spiked a 102.5 fever with a pulse of 108. Waiting to hear back from the surgeon but I think theyre gonna send me to urgent care/the ER.

I feel like crap and the idea of sitting for ages at the ER is not appealing.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Spiked a 102.5 fever with a pulse of 108. Waiting to hear back from the surgeon but I think theyre gonna send me to urgent care/the ER.

I feel like crap and the idea of sitting for ages at the ER is not appealing.

Maybe they'll have a nurse waiting to rush you through to a room.

 

[NotWise]

Spiked a 102.5 fever with a pulse of 108. Waiting to hear back from the surgeon but I think theyre gonna send me to urgent care/the ER.

I feel like crap and the idea of sitting for ages at the ER is not appealing.

Best of luck. Antibiotics are bad. IV antibiotics are worse.

 

[NotWise]

I've only once lost a sentence and a half because of <em> </em>. Everything between one instance of it and the next in the same paragraph just poof gone. I still need to submit a fix for it, but no one seems to have noticed so maybe it's not all that important.

The readers don't notice a lot, or at least don't comment on it. I left an editing mark (square brackets around a comment) in the middle of my last story and there's been not a peep.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Sorry to hear this, positive thoughts, all my best wishes, and sending prayers (if you believe or don't, I'm unsure, but certain it can't hurt), your way.

Spiked a 102.5 fever with a pulse of 108. Waiting to hear back from the surgeon but I think theyre gonna send me to urgent care/the ER.

I feel like crap and the idea of sitting for ages at the ER is not appealing.

 

[NotWise]

1926 photo of Louise Brooks by Edward Thayer Monroe. Too hot to touch.



The soft focus thing seemed very popular back then. I don't get it.