ways_back_room | (no subject)

Either of them is fine with me, except for that I have a really Really REALLY strong preference for individual posts, as opposed to one post per day with summaries in the comments. For people like me who can never remember when something happened, it's much easier to just go to the community and search on a name to find the text that refers to that name, even if it then ends up going behind a cut tag. With all the summaries in comments, there would be no way to just, say, search for everything that mentions Aziraphael, for example.

Well, to be fair, that problem is solved very quickly by using your browser's "find" function.

But with clicking on every day's post? What I'm saying is, if I don't know what day something happened, but I know that it involved, say, Raph, then in a community, I could do a find on "Raph" and find all of the posts that referred to him, as opposed to going to each day and then doing the same thing. :-)

Ah, okay, gotcha. Hmm... this IS a pickle. It's really difficult to find a middle ground that appeals to everyone.

Yeah, actually. When they did the post-a-day for self-summarizers at millichannel I always forgot to post. I'd rather have a community where you can post individual summaries, that way you can even write a "this is what ____ has been up to all day" summary post. *shrug*

(deleted comment)

You mean 'This is what happened this week' with links to all the minisummaries?

That sounds good, actually!

Yes, something like that! *shakes fist at all deleted posts, but agrees whole-heartedly*

OK, here's my take, which I know I'm in the minority for, but:

I used Millichannel for two things:
One, catching up if something important's happened (and as a side note, seeing if people think my threads are important)
Two, searching for those important events my loading the Millichannel community and ctrl-F ing on the page.

The first one would be happily fulfilled by more summaries in the back room, and I like the current summaries, adn think there should be more.
The second is in no way fulfilled by the self summaries in comments option. When Millichannel did it, I just didn't go back and read the comments. So I have no idea what went on that week.

Self-summaries in comments are useless to me. I'd rather have self-summaries in the back room or in the main bar posts, so I can search the communities for events and not have to dive into all day posts.

That's my take, and may I say I loved Millichannel, and am sorry to see it go.

I think the summary comm would be much easier/more convenient, but apart from that, I honestly think more people would use a dedicated summary comm than back room summaries, which might tend to be for big plot stuff.

'Course, we could do both. Daily self-summaries in the summary comm, and then for plots that last >1 day, a back room summary.

What if...

So many what ifs. The community's grown too big for doing it the old way. Trust me, we went through SO many options.

What if, at the end of a week's time, someone (whoever posted the marker, obviously) went through and copied all those comments of self-summary into the main post? It wouldn't be there right away, but it would be there eventually.

It's kind of a compromise. It doesn't put all the work on any one (or two) people.

*agrees, again, for the record*

I think this is the best compromise I've heard. Yep. Right on.

I will agree here as well. It would work well.

I see the problem that some folks are saying about comments inna subthread = bad for searching. So I am all for the idea of the new comm, with editing of the daily placeholder to include all the stuff that people put below. Those who came up with that, you rule.

YESYES!

I like the idea that was going on for a bit in MilliChannel when they were on 'Hiatus' that there was a post which anyone who thought that their post should/needed to be/might be fun if read by other people could link to those posts in the comments. This took the dtrain off one, or a handfull of people and put the responsibility on those who wanted their posts to be read. This also saves on people getting their feelings hurt when a summarizer misses a post and they think that they have been snubbed, which we all know is not the case.

My two cents.

~Cheers

Maybe it's just me, but if everyone gets in the habit of self summarizing their post within the original post, I don't really see a need for special posts in the back room for an indivudual post summary. One can just look over the bar for summaries.

In the case of a plot, however, I do see the need.

The need, as I see it, is that if you're looking for a thread, and you know what day it happened on, it helps to have a place where things are organized by day. There's the archive of the community itself, of course, but that doesn't tell you anything more than who posted it and the subject line, if there is one. So, having a place where threads are organized by day and you can tell what happened in them just by scanning a single post or thread is, in my opinion, a good thing to have.

If you go to day-view, you can see all entrance posts, including summaries.

The current layout doesn't include poster on that view, unfortunately, but I usually go to day veiw and search for names for threads.

Yeah, the lack of poster's name is something I find annoying. So, basically, there's various ways of dealing with it, but I just find having a community dedicated to summaries to be the best. *shrug*

I try to make an effort to self-summarize in my posts as much as possible. Summarizing in the Back Room's fine, I've seen people do it. Does make things easier especially if your pup's got a lot of plot and threads.

I'm thinking.

Self-summaries in the bar proper are still love. So is having a single post where you can find out what's been going on that day/week/month/threadzilla.

I know I'm behind (May and June will be posted as one in early July), but what if other canons did monthly plot summaries? (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=pee_jee&keyword=Stevie%27s+Knight+Rider+Summary&filter=all) Or weekly, or bi-monthly. Heaven knows we have enough satellite communities that the individual fandoms should be able to keep track of themselves voluntarily, and then post something for the rest of us. It would be a little bit time-consuming, say true, and it might be tough to find a volunteer in each fandom. And there are the pups who are sort of off by themselves... The idea needs polishing, but it would keep folk up on plot highlights.

We could even still use

millichannel for it.

The idea needs polishing, yes, I'll readily admit that, but it's easier for people to understand plots within their own fandoms, and post them so that outsiders can understand.

Actually, the muns at

24_ways have done and will resume doing summaries of the 24 pups in bar. :)

*nods* ANd I've done it for Knight Rider at

open_high_ways-- I'm WAY late for May, but I wound up swamped with RL. This is not terrible, as plots coincide for the two months, a lot.

The more I think about it, the more an idea coalesces.

Canons with large numbers of charactes (or, as with Knight Rider, most or all of the main characters) in the bar find a volunteer to post for them. Volunteer need not mun in the fandom, just follow it and follow it well. Self-summaries inna bar continue, because that's the best thing ever, even when I'm just memorying my own posts. And. Um.

Still coalescing.

Once a week or once a month, the canon's volunteer posts a summary of that canon's activities in and out of the bar. If something huge is going down, that might warrant a special post. But there's some kind of schedule. Loose, possibly self-imposed, but a schedule. Because I kind of like schedules.

I'm still trying to figure out what might be needed for smaller fandoms. Possibly there need to be people handling Just Plots.

... I... may, in some back, dim corner of my mind, be trying to restructure Millichannel less as a newsletter and more as a newspaper. With reporters in the field. And specialties. Possibly late-breaking plot.

This is what happens when I let myself think.

Is it at all doable that way?

Just poking head in to say you'll need a new comm. :)

millichannel is closed and I don't want it mutating at all. But it all sounds good to me.

Ahh. Gotcha, and totally understandable.

... Also, and randomly, who is cooking what that smells so delectably of fried onions at three-thirty in the morning? Damn.

Sorry. Sometimes such things must be said. Ahem.

Are you on AIM? I think I might have a workable rough outline... *should not be allowed to get bored, clearly*

*pets* The onion monster. :)

I'm not, unfortunately. *curses moving* Email address is kenovay @ gmail.com

Thanks. I'll pass along what I've got, then.

I've been summarising most of the Rent threads on a whenever-they-pile-up-enough-to-merit-it basis. Could possibly be poked into making it a more strictly regular thing than that, if you needed as such for... whatever you sort out.
'Course, if the current system works well enough, I'll stick with it.