Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

Most authors do post in their blog if there's an update but that's not realy sufficient to trace all updates you're interested in.

I'm not one of them. If it's just converting a double space between words to a single space, adding a missing double quote, or converting a comma to a full stop say, I don't bother. It comes across as excessively self-promotional.

I agree with the OP - I wish there was an automatic way for revisions to be notified to readers, particularly if they have a story in their library.

AJ

I don't think authors will post in their blog for such trivial fixes. It's about more extensive fixes that will possibly invite a re-read.

I agree. On occasion, I will make changes to a chapter's content and note that the chapter is changed. In the post, I will typically let my readers know what the changes addressed and whether I think it is worth rereading the chapter.

While I am not sure of the best way to implement what the OP seems to be requesting, there is an issue worth mentioning. How to differentiate between a revision to correct errors and a revision that affects the content of the story. The only person who really knows the degree of update is the author, so a modification to the posting algorithm could provide the necessary input to identify a major revision. The decision to identify an update as a major revision is subjective for authors may be of the opinion that any change is worth a reread of the chapter. However, the means of conveying that a major update has occurred to the site's reader would be more complex.

An alternative would be an addition to a blog post to let readers know that the blog entry contain information about a major revision. A number of authors don't do blogs and make infrequent blog entries; a means would also be needed to let readers know that the author made an important blog entry. So that may not be a good method.

Personally, I don't think there is enough gain to justify the expenditure of Lazeez's time and effort; he is already over extended. But that is Lazeez's call to make, not mine.

The result is that very small revisions would not make it to the list but a 'real' revision would.

There's still a difference between revision and correction.

An author could fix a ton of typos and show up in the revision list. Would the author expect someone to reread it simply because of the typo corrections? Whereas a small revision with a large impact, especially to future chapters, would go unnoticed.

I don't think it's possible to make a 'small' revision with such an impact.

I did in "Matilda and the Assassin." I originally intended Matilda, at the end, to be an assassin and write a series about that. I created a character named Crash whose only purpose was to be Matilda's driver in the series since she was too young to drive. But I got to like Matilda too much and wanted a better life for her. So instead of her driver as an assassin, Crash became a love interest at the end (and they lived happily ever after).

I had to go back and make minor revisions to the Crash character for that to work. It was a small change, but an important one. I didn't need the revision capability because I finish the story before posting any of it, but if I had posted a chapter at a time while writing it I would have had to repost the earlier chapter with the small change (and flag it as a revision if the feature was available).

In my current novel, I had to go back to an earlier chapter to make a change so that a character had two children rather than one. It's an important change that I didn't realize I needed until reading the novel from beginning to end.

I often go back and make changes for later parts to work because I don't do a detailed outline. That's why I finish it before posting any of it.

typos nake it more difficult for me to read or appreciate a story - so even if the oly change

This brought a smile to my lips. Please understand I'm not pointing a finger. We all make those mistakes. This one was simply cute. :)

nice if the site used 'revised' rather than 'updated'

To reiterate my prior comment, you are asking for an additional level of complexity to the SOL software. You are also asking every SOL author to conform to a specific set of definitions, which they may not agree with and which may be subjective.

For example, assume that update is used to mean grammatical changes (corrections), and revised means alterations to the story line (changes). Based on these definitions, if I as an author alter one sentence in my story so it agrees with earlier content, then I would consider that to be a correction. But according to your post, you would consider it to be a change.

There is also the issue of do numerous corrections made over the posting period of a story constitute a change to the story. I would say no; but according to your post, you would say yes.

The 'more info' page for a story reports the original posting date for each chapter, and also (where applicable) when that chapter was last updated. If the word 'updated' was replaced in these pages by 'revised', then this would distinguish this kind of change from the alteration of a story by the addition of one or more chapters. The date a story was concluded or last updated (eg, extended) is reported on the home page, the listing of stories by an author, etc, and I am not suggesting any changes here.

When you visit an individual chapter it shows the date the chapter was first posted and if a change was made to that chapter it shows the date that change was made, regardless of what or why the change was made. The pages that show the whole story shows the date the story was first posted and the date the last chapter or story status was posted. In each case the use of the word updated is the correct word to use as applied to the story or chapter involved. The issue about what it means to an individual varies due to how they understand the word and the system. However, there is no automated way to tell the difference between when an author has made a revision to the story or when they've made a minor change to the story, as defined below.

Author minor story change: this can be anything from the correction of a corrupted display of the story or a chapter, like a bad multi-page split, to the correction of a typo or other type of correction which has no or little effect on how the story reads.

Author story revision: this is most often when an author has added words or changed word orders within a story or chapter to make it easier to read. However, it may also include changes to minor plot aspects or the addition of more scenes. It may also include the removal of words and scenes with the intent to make the story easier to read.

Naturally, which is which in the above is a personal opinion of the author and may not match what a reader feels it applies to.

While a case can be made for an automated way to decide which is which, it would be an extremely difficult program to write and would use a huge amount of processing power to do, and thus not worth the effort for Lazeez to do as the actual return for it is not justified when the authors can simply tell you which is which in their blogs.

Would 'edited' be more acceptable to you, if I had used it instead of revised in all my posts on this topic? I am looking for a word that could be used by the site engine in place of updated when reporting the time of last alteration of a chapter, regardless of the scale of the change. 'altered', perhaps?

While edited would be a much better term for what happens what an author makes minor changes like typos etc and it can be applied to more significant changes, it still leaves you with using the same word (whatever word it is) to display on the page when you have a change to the chapter or story status being the same regardless of what the change is because you can't effectively automate the system to tell the difference between the types of chapter / story changes.

The best I can see happening is to have the displayed term differ on certain pages, despite the information not always matching what the term being used is. This is because the most common type of story / chapter change is a story update as a new chapter is added to the story, and it will display that way on all of the pages when the new chapter is added. It's only later when a change is made to an already posted chapter that you get some pages displaying a new date and some pages don't.

The only way i can think of that Lazeez may be able to provide you with some of the information you want is to include an extra column on the Details for Story X page which shows the story details above a chart of the chapters, their names, the posted date, the updated date, and size. If Lazeez add the chapter version number for each chapter, like it's currently displayed on my author individual story stats page, you can see at a glance how often any chapter of that story had been edited / amended / updated / etc. This would require you to keep a note of the dates of the last change you read, which could be done by keeping a screen capture for that story and comparing them at a later date. A lot would depend on how much effort adding the column to that report would take, and if Lazeez had the time to do it.

ETA: Personally I'm not really interested in the semantics between 'update' and 'revision'. I'm interested in even a single typo fix and would like an easier way to track these.

Download and save the file as a .txt file then use a word processing program to run a compare on the old copy as against the new copy to show where the two copies vary.

I'm interested in even a single typo fix and would like an easier way to track these.

I can understand that. As an author, if someone likes one of my stories enough to download it so they can re-read it, I'd like them to have the best version possible if any changes are trivial.

AJ

Part of the confusion in this thread is caused by the definitions of update and revised. Evidently you want to use Revised as a minor alteration (i.e. a correction) and Update as an alteration to the storyline (i.e., a change). I reviewed the definitions of the two words and based on what I found, the words can be used interchangeably. So to use your definitions:

I am not asking anything of authors.

You obviously are oblivious to what you are asking the authors to do. Who do you think will make the decision as to whether an alteration to a chapter is a revision or an update? That decision is based on the degree of alteration made to the storyline. Furthermore, minor changes to several chapters can add up to a major change. That means the author must evaluate the overall impact of their alterations, and then by some means convey their decision to the administrators.

If the word 'updated' was replaced in these pages by 'revised', then this would distinguish this kind of change from the alteration of a story by the addition of one or more chapters.

An author can incorporate a large volume of text into an existing chapter, split it between consecutive chapters, or use it to create a new chapter. According to you, the manner in which the author chooses to make this alteration is what should determine whether it is a revision or an update; however the alteration to the storyline will be the same. Authors make that determination on how the alteration affects the storyline. To an author, if the storyline is not changed then it is a revision, and if it is changed/modified, it is an update. The are two problems with this:

1. An alteration can have a very minor change to the storyline that most readers would consider unimportant. Identifying such a change as an update will upset most of those readers.

Keep in mind that some authors complete their stories before they start to post them. If such an author decides to make a major update to what is written, it can affect both the posted and unposted portions of the story. However, the author will categorize all alterations as part of the overall update. Once that alteration has been completed, the author will have to post changes to the posted portion of the story, and those postings would be categorized as updates. A reader won't understand why that change is being made for it does not affect the posted portion of the storyline. Identifying those updates as revisions will upset the readers because they will reread the altered chapter(s) and fail to see the significance of the alteration(s); that assumes they notice what was changed. In a worst case scenario, the reader would believe the author is wasting their time and the reader will abandon the story. Yes the author could explain why and what they changed in their blog. But some authors don't have blogs and many readers don't read the blogs of authors who have them.

2. Regardless of what you want them to do, most authors will identify their alterations as revisions (i.e., corrections), regardless of the impact to the storyline. This will defeat your intent of determining if there have been minor changes to the storyline.

a single typo fix in a single file story is listed as '(Reposted Story)'.

Yes that is accurate, and at the same time misleading. A reader assumes the author had the option of posting the typo correction as an update/revision. Since the story was Reposted, they assume the reason was to make a change to the storyline.

The author does have two options:

1. Make a blog post to explain why the story is reposted. The blogs of most authors aren't read by most of the readers.

2. Add a Note at the start of the story stating that the story is reposted to correct typos. An inconvenience to the reader.

Perhaps Lazeez should add an Update/Revised option to the posting algorithm.

One of the things the OP asked for.

Not exactly. The OP is asking for a means of differentiating between reposts that change the storyline and those that just correct errors. Update is currently used to mean both things regardless of the reason the author reposted the chapter/story.

There are currently 4 posting options: submit a new story, add a new chapter to an existing story, repost a story, and repost a chapter.

I was referring to adding an option for reposting a single file stories that contains basically edits to correct grammar errors.

Repost a story applies to both single and multichapter stories. This would typically be done for multi-chapter stories when the author changes the story's storyline, and it would also apply to single-file stories with changed storylines.

Repost a chapter in typically done to correct grammatical errors in a chapter. Readers would probably not be interested in rereading the chapter.

There is no option that implies that a single file story is being reposted to just correct errors. That means the reader needs to reread the story to determine what changed. The reader would likely be upset to find out the repost was made to correct typos if the author did not think to add a clarifying note at the start of the story.

without a difference between single file and multi chapter stories.

While I acknowledge that it may be possible to develop a system that treats a multi-chapter story the same as a single chapter/file story, doing so would create even more problems than treating them in different ways. Such a system would report a change to the storyline of a story without identifying the portion of the story that was changed (i.e., the system would not say Chapter 12 was changed or that Page 3 of a single file story was changed).

Personally, I doubt that it is possible to treat a a multi-file/chapter story exactly the same way as single file story. Correcting an error in a single-file story is done by reposting the entire story. That means if you were to treat a multi-chapter story in the same way, you would have to repost the entire story.

Imagine a reader who wants to stay current on the storyline of Arlene and Jeff. Your system would say that Roustwriter changed the storyline in the story without defining the chapter that was changed. The current story, Book 3, has 588 chapters. A reader may have to read all 588 chapters to find the change, and if it is just a minor change, they may never locate it.

It sounds as if you want to reread any chapter/story that has been changed regardless of whether the change was as simple as adding, deleting, or moving a comma. Of course you may be wanting to differentiate between correcting a comma versus changing the storyline, so you will only have to read changes to the storyline.

You obviously see a benefit in what you are asking for. However, you will only receive that benefit if the authors select the proper updated/revised selection. From what I have observed in this Forum, many authors do not identify story codes as they should. They don't edit or spellcheck their stories as they should. There are several story descriptions in which an author tells his potential readers the story is riddled with errors so don't tell me about them for I don't care.

You are assuming that authors will properly categorize the reason for a change to a story, that is not true. Authors are likely to not differentiate between Update and Revised and just use one selection for any and all changes. They are likely to say it is an insignificant change to the storyline and just mark it as a typo correction. I have posted blog entries to let my readers know that I had posted minor changes to the storyline in certain chapters, but did not believe the changes were significant enough for my readers to reread the chapter. You are probably one of the readers who wouldn't care and reread the chapters anyway.

I have said about all that I have to say on this topic, so I will bow out of further participation on this topic.

It sounds as if you want to reread any chapter/story that has been changed regardless of whether the change was as simple as adding, deleting, or moving a comma.

This is not about reading really. It's about collecting. A collector doesn't need to read the latest version, but they would like to keep their collection as up-to-date as possible. So a system that allows them to get the latest version of any part of any story in their collection is valuable.