Muse's Success

This isn’t really a big deal, but I was just poking around and saw a user and I wanted to see what that user had written (if anything), but it doesn’t seem there’s a way to tie a story to a username in that manner, which might be a cool feature later on. :)

That’s been in the plans since the beginning.

Problem is the best way to ensure a user is whom they say they are. I can have them upload a file to their webhost and check that, but that doesn’t work for the many peopleo on WordPress or Blogger. I can make them post a hidden tag on their page, but again I can’t ensure they’ll be able to do that either.

I could do it manually I guess.

It will definintly come in one way or another, eventually. Since you’ve suggested it, I’ll raise it’s priority.

I’ve decided on implementing this next month. I’m looking for suggestions on how to best verify an author is whom they say they are.

The easiest method to implement, but the most time consuming in the long run would have the author submit a claim request, and I or someone else, would send an email to the official contact address on the stories homepage.

Another method would be to generate a string of text, and have it embedded in a post or the code temporarily. The drawback of this though is that it may be exploited by a non-author member if a comments are displayed on the page that we check, and it clutters up an authors story page. The code embedding doesn’t do this, but that wouldn’t be pratical for authors whom use a host they can’t control like WordPress.

I could ask you upload a file with a random one time string to the domain the site is hosted on, but again this creates problems for the many authors on specialised blog hosting and similer.

I guess out of these options, the best would be to check for an email address and email the author for verification. I can’t automate this though unless we go through every listing and record the email address if there is one. So it would be manual, and take probably up to 48 hours to be verified.

Any suggestions for verifications?

While I’m here, I may as well go over the ideas for the feature. They may or may not make it into the initial feature release.

- Stories written by member - either a profile box or a new tab on the profile
- Listings would link to the author profile. I’d continue to link to the authors homepage though.
- Authors should be able to enter the planned number of chapters or for those completed, the number of chapters the book has in total. I should probably make the chapters thing available to normal members. This is to get rid of the ?? marks in bookshelves.
- Authors should be able to announce new chapters. Notifications would be sent to Twitter as well. Update would be limited 1 time per day, or 4 times per week to prevent spamming. More upon request I guess. Could also easily allow members to subscribe for updates.
- [Maybe] Authors may be able to crosspost their chapters to a tab on their listing. Might be automated as say a WordPress plugin or those providing full feeds, I could just check the feed each day. As an incentive to authors, I could easily allow you to replace our ads with your own adsense ads or Amazon Affiliate ads. Anyone interested?
- Authors will be able to enable the listing specific forum for their listing.

That is all. What to do you think?

I’m sorry about the various grammatical and spelling errors - its late, and I should be sleeping. I’ll fix those tomorrow.

Was this ultimately implemented, because I’d love to be able to link my story to my profile.

I’m not sure how they check on Web Fiction Guide that you are who you’re saying you are, I think when you’re submitted you just check a box saying whether or not you’re the author. I guess I just find it weird to think someone would try impersonate an author particularly on a directory site where there isn’t much user-to-user interaction.

Definite ixnay on the code embedding/file uploading: I know a lot of authors (myself included) who used hosts they can’t control.

The best is the email verification thing, not sure how to make it work though.

Could we not just try have a little faith in humanity? It might be easier for you to track down imposters than verify each one.

As for your features:

I think the stories should just be as a profile box (few people would click on a tab, having it on the first page makes it more visible).

Don’t link to author profiles.

Definitely get rid of the ?? marks on chapters however you can! They’re annoying!

Instead of having authors announce updates, why don’t you take those listings that have RSS feeds and somehow put them on the front page of MS? Would that work? I’m not a genius at this stuff so I don’t know.

I think cross posting would just take too much time - I for one wouldn’t do it.

hope my comments helped!
That is all. What to do you think?

It’s just over half-way done. I expect sometime in September. I should have a break, well not a break, but a time when no assignments are due for a few weeks then, so you can expect me to give the code a lot of attention (relatively to the last two months) in that time.

My current uni subjects this study period and next require a lot of non-Muse coding (and time), so I haven’t desired to spend much more time in a text editor then I already am which has meant progress has been slow.

The current verification system implemented in the development version of Muse has the author claiming the listing, and then I email the author using whatever email address or contact form they have on their page. I wait for a reply, and once received, approve the claim (or I could send a link further automating it).

I would love to make the process of editing the site easier. It’s not that I don’t generally think the web fiction community could handle it (ie. not vandelising each others profiles), it’s the spammers / bots. Early on after opening the rating system to guests, we had a lot of trouble with Google and other search engines, well their bot somehow went through and rated everything 0. I now check a list of known bots, and blocked the rating script in robots.txt.

RSS is easy. I tried indexing them for the seach engine, but getting the feeds was a bit slowwer then I would like. For using them for updating the chapter count, it’s possible, just not everyone whom has a feed has a feed with only their chapters. Generally, all WordPress users do, but Blogger does not.

For cross-posting, I don’t think I’ve considered that other then a method of updating the chapter count without getting approved each time. I have considered allowing approved authors post a sample chapter though.

I agree that the ?? in general is annoying. I recently added the chapter box to the adding/editing forms (Number of Chapters field). ?? is meant to indicate we don’t know how many chapters the novel will ultimately have. I’ve slowly been going through those marked as completed, and setting the field. If the target number is known though (or the novel is completed), people should feel free to set it. Even if we take your suggestion (and I probably will for those that have feeds with only chapters) of using RSS feeds for this, an initial (the current number) needs to be set.

Thank you for the comments. Your input is definitly taken into account.

This is unrelated: I posted in a comment on Novelr.com that I was considering making a content management system aimed at Web Fiction authors (so rather then creating a category and posts, you’d be able to create a novel and chapters). I will make a post here later specifically for it, but I am looking for input, and suggestions from web fiction authors. Your input as an author would be appreciated.

On the web fiction CMS: something easy to install and skin!

I looked at efiction, but so many installation instructions and do this and do that and blah.  Plug and play, people, plug and play!

I made a post about it in Writers Discussion. Install would be in a nutshell:

- Upload
- Run install.php script
- Enter site name, your name, and email.
- Enter database information (looking at supporting a flat file database aswell which would make it even easier - as close to plugin and play a script/CMS could get)
- Login and start editing in the admin control panel.