AdvisoryBoard

HI, I think you'll find this interesting.  The Plan, in Short  and  The Bottom Line  

Hi, I'm sure you guys are inundated with concerns about Eclipse -- my major ones, however, are less about the new appearance of the place than whether this update will include fixes for several very long-term and outstanding problems writers face here on dA:

1. We can't post poetry in the multiline box in chat without extensive manual fiddling, because otherwise it doesn't recognise line breaks with a direct cut-and-paste from texts that have a space after the line ends. It's --maddening-- and makes discussion and critique of poetry difficult. 

2. Our prose gallery is ---inundated-- with fetish writing , a great deal of which is severely in breach of dA's posting policies regarding pornography. Fetish porn sometimes takes up 3/4 or more of the front page of 'Prose', and it's just ridiculous to try to  browse prose because of it. I would like to see 'Fetish' have it own category so it's not in "Prose" at all, and maybe the serious, commercially-minded and professional authors we used to have here could be tempted back from the hills to which they've run, screaming. 

It's an embarrassment, to put it bluntly, to direct writers here to view literature. And it's just not good enough. 

We can't even --report-- some of the worst cases, as when you try to report it, a thing pops up and says it's already been reviewed by staff -or- has the mature filter on, and the option to report it goes away. The former is just plain horrifying to contemplate, god help us if staff think these hardcore images with crappy poems stuck in the description are fine and dandy -- and the latter really solves nothing. 

3. It'd be great if we writers could sell our art too.

We pay for subs and support this site just like everyone else -- with half the support and functionality. Frankly, I am very fed up with Lit being dA's red-headed stepkid, so how about some discussion of pdf e-book sales and the like, or maybe a print book option? 

4. The removal of the 'news' pages means we can't get our news out site-wide anymore so hosting contests and doing features are much, much harder now. Groups have already splintered the Lit community into a shadow of its former self, and lack of news is another nail in that coffin. The new 'journal' category isn't as good, by a very long shot, for promoting Literature events and the like.

Can we please, please have the News pages back? 

I'd rather dA's resources were thrown at these issues than at yet --another-- cosmetic update of stuff that isn't actually broken. Just saying.

IMO, the "future" looks terrible with Eclipse. Please don't do it. Anyone can find reasons why all over the literature pages. Maybe art, too.

A secret group? Interesting...