Badge Project

While we do not need badges, we have heard a lot of enthusiasm for them over the last couple of weeks, and the wait is officially over. The observant visitor will surely have noticed by now an additional menu item across the top navigation bar labeled, oddly enough, “Badges.” This mouse-over menu drops down to the “I Write #FridayFlash” option. Once clicked, the sub-link will take you to a page with the badge, the explanation of the badge, instructions (very hastily written with some code) for adding the badge, and the beginnings of the list of authors that in fact will use the badge. Currently, it is blank.

For the time being, please add a comment on the Writing badge to get moved onto the list. We need your name, genres, and main web page link. I will go through and manually add them via techno-magic in a nice table. Eventually, we will add some sort of back end stuff to do most of it slightly more automatically, but this will suffice in the mean time.

Some may wonder why I would be asking for genres at this stage in the badge experiment, and the reasoning is simple. The entire purpose of the badges is to make finding stories easier for readers. Having genres on the table will give readers some direction initially, providing additional benefit to authors of specific genres. Also, this will make it easier to find, contact, and share the genre specific badges, if the experiment goes swimmingly. Further, I can eventually alter the I Write page’s table to have links for those genres that go to the genre specific badge page. From there, readers could navigate to stories they prefer.

Criticize Me Project

Thus, badge stuff is underway, and I move onto next project. The Criticize Me Project. We have seen a few people sign up already for it, but given the number of people that asked for it, I expected more requests. If you missed any earlier instructions, here’s the detailed run down.

If you have not registered here at FFDO, please do so now. Click the link up at the top that says “Sign Up.” Fill out the bits of information and get yourself an account. To participate in the Criticize Me group, you must be registered. Anonymous critiques will not be allowed in this group. This is a members-only area, and as such, your first publication rights to anything you post there will not be infringed.

After registering, make sure you are logged in. On the main page of FFDO, if at the top, it does not say “Log In,” then you are already logged in. If it says “Log In,” click it. Enter your user name and password and click “Log In.”

Once logged in, click the “Groups” option on the top navigation bar.

This takes you to the Groups Directory, where if you look through the list, you will find the “Criticize Me” group. Straight to the right of that group name should be a rounded button labeled “Request Membership.” If you click that button, the first available FFDO staff person to notice will take care of the request. Please allow up to 24 hours for this, but it should not take more than eight in most cases.

Once your membership is approved, go back to the Groups Directory and click the “Criticize Me” group name. That will take you to that group’s Home Page. Just below the group description, you should see several tabs, one of which is labeled “Forum.” When you click that tab, you will be taken to the “Criticize Me” group forum. From there, you can post, read, comment, and discuss everything about critiques of yours or other authors’ works to your heart’s content. Hopefully that clears up some of the mystery behind utilizing that group, and I look forward to reading some good stuff in there.

Question of the Week:

In a comment, answer the following question, “If you could make anything to assist other writers, what would it be and why?” Please, try to keep answers here shorter than 250 words. But if this question inspires you to write a full flash fiction story for #FridayFlash, be sure to share that here as well.

~ E. D. Johnson

Reader Badge!

First, thank you very much for the warm welcome to the staff of FFDO; I greatly appreciate it even if I could not express that to each of you during the discussion over the last week. In addition to my gratitude for that, I add that I was incredibly humbled by the sheer magnitude of responses! I expected a few ideas here and there, but you gave me and the team a flood of inspiration. Truly, you dear readers have proven that one has just but ask to receive, and as a way of showing how much we value your opinions, I have the distinct pleasure of revealing the great new features of the site.

Next, at least three people specifically mentioned critiques and critical reviews. The general practice has become to only comment on stories you like and not really provide any critical feedback. We have elected to open a group specifically for getting criticism of a harsher nature. This group has a forum where members can join, post, criticize, comment, and assist each other in improving what is notably already great work. Guidelines will be posted in this group’s forums, responses will be monitored, and anyone can join once they register on FFDO. Membership IS required, as anonymous posts would remove accountability for particularly scathing or insulting comments. Feel like getting started with this? Click the Groups link near the top, then find the Criticize Me group and join up (or request to join).

Writer Badge!

Also, we are releasing badges to participants of #FridayFlash. For now, we simply have the one general badge, but we will be gauging the effectiveness of these little graphic links to see if others may be good investments. For those unfamiliar with the badge idea, allow me to give a quick tutorial. We provide a link to a graphic and a link to a page about what the badge means, who has earned it, and links to websites with it on their page. Authors put the graphic on their page to show they are a participant. Readers can quickly get from one writer’s page to another writer’s pages through our landing page. The object here is to make it easier for readers to find stories. For posting the graphic, authors will receive a link back from the badge page, potentially increasing your reader base.

If the general badge test goes well, we have plans for genre badges, BOFF badges, and other special badges. Each badge will get its own page, and thus, the more badges one author has, the greater likelihood of more readers. Instructions will be added some time between now and next week.

As we all know, inspiration can be elusive, and as a way of providing that spark, we are currently working with the folks over at Write Anything to see what we can work out. While we do not have anything solid just yet, if you do utilize these prompts, please include their hash tag as well when you advertise your story. This will let them know that you used it, and you may attract readers from a different group. This is obviously an opt-in feature, as you do not need to use these prompts. I wanted to make them available on a semi-regular basis in the hopes that everyone will be able to find a starting place for a story every week.

Finally, I wanted to use a spin-off of an idea from the great discussion last week. I cannot in good confidence select only one or two of our terrific authors to invite to do posts on FFDO. While the idea has merit, I want such opportunities to be available to as many as possible. Thus, we will be opening a Spotlight post on Saturdays, which will feature a guest post by an #FF writer on a topic that will assist the community as a whole. More on this in the upcoming week as well, as we are still ironing out the details of opting into it.

That is pretty much everything we can reveal right now. We have other stuff in the works, but they are a bit more long-term. In the meantime, thank you again for your good wishes, readership, and/or companionship in this new endeavor, and hopefully we all get a little something cool out of all this. Also, special thanks to Angie for the badge samples thus far; I think they look awesome.

~ E. D. Johnson