The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Examples:

many, many Harry Potter fanfics

Wouln't the existence of the Discord have an effect on our number of Board posts?

I'm in favor of more adults in the room, for the record.

... Don't think you're getting part of my Barony, though. *eyes askance*

~Neshomeh

With the big influx of people from TVTropes, we saw a huge shift in the community away from actual fanfic writers. We had pretty much this discussion back then, too. And yep, we had to change the Constitution, and the Permission process (the old style is a lot harder when you can't just look at someone's FF.net profile!), we went through years of everyone being constantly told to put things on pre-existing threads... oh, it's been a wild time.

In conclusion, in line with this viewpoint, I propose that we kick out everyone who's joined the PPC since 2010, and get back to the proper old community we had before we got all publicised. Who's with me? :D :D :D

-- the point I'm making is, yes, new people bring changes. Some of those changes are bad (we're a writing community with a steadily declining proportion of writers). Some of them are good (the Constitution is better now, and still improving). Some of them depend entirely on your point of view (personally I would love it if everyone was still an LotR fan). But without them, the community fades, and shrinks, and slows.

In January 2015, the PPC Board received approximately 1243 posts. In 2016, 1726. Last year, 2017, we saw 812. And this year we're down to 598.

... back in a minute.

Right, I've just gone and graphed this. The early numbers are estimates, extrapolated up from the nearest page of subject lines preserved in the archives, but this is how it looks:



2018 is literally the quietest year for the PPC Board since we were founded. In '04 and '05, I estimate we had well over 2500 posts in a month. Now, we can't even crack 600.

Tell me again how we're not running out of newbies?

hS

You can’t drag the hermit out of his cosy tiny corner in Castle Arkive and make him rule a barony when he hasn’t done any knightly services yet.

I don’t deserve that honor. I barely recovered from getting Permission when I didn’t feel ready to ask for it. I still have to show that I can write a decent mission, or actually anything that’s longer than about two thousand words. (Okay, Ticket to Ride may count, although it’s intentionally bad, but not bad enough for the badfic games?)

My "reviewing" is mostly just proofreading, covering the lack of thought with one friendly sentence about how I liked the story – but I’m barely able to tell what I liked and why. (Proofreading is important, and I’m proud on my ability to help out there – and looking back through my archive of everything I posted ever, I actually did better reviews in the earlier years and may be able to get back to that.) Every studious person can get the technicalities right. When it comes to what really requires talent, like keeping characterization consistent while showing character development, I’m not so sure I can do that or see it or the lack of it in others’ works.

Never being embroiled in a scandal or drama should actually speak against me. Despite occasionally voicing an intent to change that habit, I have a record of cowardly cautiously staying away from potential trouble, only showing up to join the majority when my voice doesn’t matter anymore. Actually, the essence of my life is that I never ever wanted to be a decision maker, and I may not be prepared to start now.

Giving Permission to a writer who is not obviously perfect? I’m scared of creating a new [redacted].

Denying Permission to a writer who is not quite there, and then having to explain how they could improve (which is in important part of denying Permission)? I’m even more scared.

Can’t you foresee that, whenever an actual permission request shows up, I’ll just hide in a hole until somebody else made the decision? Accepting the PG hat when I’ll probably never use it might be dishonest.

But know what? I’m a Slytherin, because Pottermore said so; honesty is not on my character sheet. I’ll take that shiny hat, put it on my hatstand, decorate it with my shiny gold medal for being able to write English better than most Americans, and then we’ll see what happens.

HG, not promising anything

* Loud House

No Such Luck fics, with very few exceptions. The sisters are written as complete monsters who don't care about their brother.

* Mario

Only playtesting with savestates. I hate it when creators forget that Kaizo was meant to be done without savestates.

P.S. Neshomeh, can you unblock me from the wiki?

Cue epic music: https://youtu.be/QaJsqJ_oV2g

Akrinor has been made an official Discord moderator!



Let joy be unconfined and celebration ring throughout the electronic streets.

What's up, auty? That's right, it's me, Deadpool! And two very sharp knives, yep, and that's a gun. Well spotted!

Now, we're not about to have a problem, are we, autocorrect? Because, trust me, I'm not the guy you want to mess with. Now, that Sue, on the other hand--her you can mess with. Before I kill--yes, kill, not Mom--her and those Orcs, that is. We cool? Great!

...halfway through?

I think I want my money back. Did I pay for this? Doesn't matter, I still want it back.

Can I at least kill the Sue? I'm going to Mom the Sue. And some Orcs. That's what you guys do around here for fun, right?

Deadpool, the PPC's Next Top Agent. He's so great he recruited himself! *applause* *applause*

This is the kind of Walker that involves wandering through the woods for months to return some jewelry.

This is not the kind of Walker that wanders through cities biting people.

This is also not the kind of Walker that has awesome ice powers.

This is also also not Walker, Texas Ranger.

I just want to be clear on what you're signing up for.

-Phobos

I was reading the SV thread and thought we'd have a version here.

I'll start.

* WH40k.
Death Korps protagonists who don't act like Kreigers.
They're supposed to be deeply mentally scarred, fanatical almost-automatons, not edgy Cadians.

* Fics in general.
Having protagonists from grimdark settings do reprehensible stuff during the fic. Yeah, I get it that a tech-priest wouldn't have a problem with vivisecting Xenos children; don't have him kill Asari kids during your fic. That's an easy way to kill any sympathy for your protagonist.

The PPC always struck me as a community where its smallness and tightness was one of its most important parts. At least, to the extent that if we started publicising it, attracting heaps of people, we'd need to change a lot about it to make it work, and, well, that theoretical community is just very different from what we have now, ay?

Need to change the site, change how we deal with issues that pop up (probably a bit harder voting for such things and being all loosey-goosey with it if you've got a thousand people spattering out their thoughts!), maybe even change the permission system, and so on and so forth.

I mean, I dunno, I'm sure it'd still be a nice enough place, but I quite like it as is, too, ay? And we're hardly in danger of running out of newbies or such.

And, yeah, trolls, attacks, so on so forth. There'll certainly be a lot more kookiness with new people, for sure.

(Dangit, it doesn't look like anyone's done any pranking or even a running joke like last year, so I probably can't pull my idea on y'all.)

But anyway, below my signature is a link to an article on Snopes about all the April Fools' Day jokes that have been spread around and subsequently fallen for this year. Hope you enjoy!

-Twistey
https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/04/01/2018-april-fools-day-roundup/

Shouldn't we talk about this? You could be opening us up to terrible stuff!

-Twistey ;)