Message Board

Authors, Please Read

We have updated the Submission Rules to include a few changes we've implemented recently.  One in particular that we want to draw your attention to involves the resubmission of rejected stories.  Please go and read here: http://www.thepetulantpoetess.com/rules.php

Dudes, we want to host your stories. We love the language, and we love writing, just like you. So, do us a favour and make an effort, okay? It works both ways. You make an effort with using proper English, and we will validate your story.

Here, it's never personal. You provide a clean chapter, we will validate it. You have unlimited amounts of mistakes, we will reject it. And be frustrated. Because we know you can do better.

Queue for the Next Days

Hi All,

It's that time of the year again when even the admins are reminded that life goes beyond fanfiction. Audacious, I know, but what can we say. :)

We've also had a wonderful response to our Yule 2008 Challenge and will be spending the next few days judging each one.

Therefore, if you have to wait longer than usual to have your chapter adminned, please be patient with us. If it's in the queue, we will get to it as soon as we can.

In the meantime, Happy Holidays and may creativity rain on you like a gentle rain on a spring day!

Yule 2008 Challenge

You asked for it, so... here it is. After talking to Southern_Witch_69, my partner in crime, we've come up with the following challenge. It's a bit different, but we're excited about it all the same.

Potter Place Yule 2008 Challenge

Rules:

1. No more than two entries per person.

2. One-shot stories only (minimum 1000 words, maximum 10,000)

3. Upload to The Petulant Poetess (only) by the 24th of December in the special category for the Yule 2008 Challenge.

4. One prompt response per entry please (no mixing this time).

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Stories will not be anonymous this time, and there will be no
voting.

A small group of judges will read the stories and use a point system to help judge the stories.

Winners will be announced around New Year.

Stories can be posted anyplace after that.

Prizes to be decided upon (someone has volunteered to make goodies).

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You can choose from the following prompts:

1. For the Children: Use a child to show us how some of our favorite characters celebrate Yule.

2. Stand Here Please: Dumbledore/McGonaga ll-type meddling to get an unsuspecting couple to stand under the mistletoe.

3. Revisiting Friends: If you have an established story, give us a
one-shot tale to compliment it so we know what your characters are up to for Christmas.

**If you do this one, I suggest you title it the following way to
make readers more aware of what it actually is:

Original Title: Yule Edition (example: Luring the Enchantress: Yule Edition)

4. Movie Madness: Turn your favorite Christmas movie into a one shot featuring HP characters.

5. Snow Day: A blizzard comes to Hogwarts for those staying at the castle for Christmas. What goes on?

6. Hogsmeade Encounter: How does one character brighten another's lonely holiday when they meet in Hogsmeade for Christmas?

7. Armistace: The Yule Season shows two people from different
Hogwarts Houses how to be friends.

8. I See You: What does Trelawney predict for the holiday? How does it come about? Or does it?

9. Dance the Night Away: Ah, Voldie's dead. It's time for a Yule Ball to celebrate. What goes on?

10. Wheezey Christmas: A Weasley Wheeze causes "trouble" for someone during Christmas? Who? What?

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You may begin. Spread the word please. Let's get involved.

Judges are the TPP admins by the way, which is a good thing.

And just so you know what we'll be judging on so that it doesn't come out of left field:

Plot
Characterization
SPaG
Originality
Execution

Have fun and reply here or on our yahoogroup if you have questions.

Voting for the Anything Goes

Hello!

For the next week, voting for the Anything Goes Challenge stories will be open. You can find the voting page at the following link:

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

Voting information and rules are on the page, but if you have questions, you can always email me anyway.

:)

There were 74 stories total.

There are three categories:

1. One Shots
2. Chaptered Stories
3. Media/Art Entries

You will be able to vote for two each and will receive an email confirmation once you've done so.

Have fun! Please remember to review the entries if you have time. The mystery authors will truly appreciate the feedback. :) And reviewers can win, too!

Cheers,
Southern_Witch_69

Stats for September 2008

Better Late Than Never~!!!

I still owe banners to everyone from last month's stats, and I will do those as soon as I am back on my regular computer (still on the laptop these days). I'll work up this month's winners as well. Thanks for understanding!

SW69

Story Information

There were 113 new stories posted.
There were 47 updated stories!

93 of those are complete and ready for your reading pleasure--no waiting!

We now have a total of 2632 completed stories on the site.

Member and New Author Information

We've gained 355 new members! Wooohooo!! Welcome, everyone! Let us know if you need any help with anything.

We also have several new authors to be welcomed to the site! Either they've had stories posted or have something in queue.

Alley_B
Arabella Bloodgood
Fanny T
Gemmika
il_grifone
juniperus
kereia
lisi_apple
neelix
PajamaPants
queenp
RavenHairedMoon
Ravenswing
Red Writing Hood
simulacrum
SnapesTalon
songsofcerulean
tobeacting
ultimateauror

Thanks for joining us!

Review Information

A whooping 4719 reviews were posted for stories here last month, likely spurred by fierce competing between our top two reviewers in August!! That is almost too awesome for words!

Of these reviews, authors responded to 3936 of them! The reviewers appreciate responses.

The Top 20 Reviewers at TPP for the month of September are:

sunny33 (282 reviews posted)
braye27 (182 reviews posted)
kimjo2 (177 reviews posted)
Arabella Bloodgood (167 reviews posted)
snitchette (151 reviews posted)
blue artemis (146 reviews posted)
sinbad (131 reviews posted)
debjunk (118 reviews posted)
pookah (104 reviews posted)
Muggline (93 reviews posted)
beaweasley2 (90 reviews posted)
elsolel (84 reviews posted)
morgaine_dulac (73 reviews posted)
kittylefish (63 reviews posted)
salvamea (62 reviews posted)
Sampdoria (58 reviews posted)
severuslover (53 reviews posted)
PajamaPants (51 reviews posted)
Isode (49 reviews posted)
MollysSister (49 reviews posted)

Good work, everyone!

Now, let's give kudos to the authors who do take the time to respond to their reviews. Whatever reviews were left for them during the month and responded to by them figures into the following top 20 best review responders.

Lariope (274 reviews answered)
livvy6 (185 reviews answered)
Melenka (162 reviews answered)
HogwartsClassof91 (160 reviews answered)
rdholmantx (133 reviews answered)
mia madwyn (131 reviews answered)
Angel Mischa (103 reviews answered)
beaweasley2 (96 reviews answered)
little beloved (93 reviews answered)
Elise_Wanderer (88 reviews answered)
Southern_Witch_69 (83 reviews answered)
shellsnapeluver (72 reviews answered)
ClayPotter (70 reviews answered)
_Levicorpus_ (65 reviews answered)
Muggline (57 reviews answered)
Cosette (55 reviews answered)
tonksinger (52 reviews answered)
melusin (52 reviews answered)
Arabella Bloodgood (49 reviews answered)

The Hidden Before Voting authors have answered an amazing 825 reviews between them. Way to go, folks!

Great work, everyone! Authors, as you know, responding to reviewers is a great way to make new friends and begin discourse!

Looking forward to another wonderful month!

Server Upgrade!!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to TPP over the past few days.  Your money is going to something worthwhile: the immediate improvement of this website.  I've already got the host paid for the upgrade to a semi-dedicated server, and now they will be in charge of moving the account over to its new location.

Absolutely nothing will change.  I made sure of that.  Asked it several times, asked different people.  They all assured me that all the software will be moved, my settings, everything, the way I have them.  So this is when the move will happen:

Thursday, September 18 between 10pm and 2am MST.  That is GMT-7:00.  When the account is in the process of being moved, we will experience a "down time" of 30 minutes.  So, please, nobody panic.  And if you see anyone panicking who isn't aware of this, please let them know it's alright.  Once it is moved, they will email me (of coorse I will be asleep) and we should resume as normal.  I will probably wake up really early that morning just out of anxiety to see if it went well.

Working Towards a Server Upgrade

Wow, the site is slow today.  It is a Saturday and everybody and their second-cousin-once-removed must be online.

TPP uses very little as far as CPU usage on the server (.000239% by last glance).  However, we share this server with 199 other accounts.  So each one of those accounts uses up CPU usage as well as RAM.  (Imagine having Word, Outlook, Photoshop, Internet Explorer, YIM, and a couple other programs open.  Your RAM usage just gets all used up and then everything works slower.)

I tallied up what I have available to me from donations made, and because of these donations for which I am extremely grateful, we are close to being able to upgrade our server to a semi-dedicated one.  I spoke with the accounts department today, and was assured that the move would be seamless and we would benefit greatly in terms of site access time because instead of sharing with 199 other accounts ... we will only be sharing with 19 other people.

So, if anyone is interested in helping out TPP by making a donation towards this server upgrade, all the admins here would appreciate it.  I cannot do anything until Monday regarding this (that's when the billing department gets back), so I'm hoping to have sufficient funds by then to complete this move.  Because personally, it is bothering me that people are waiting so long to access pages ... and it's darn aggravating from my end as well.

Thank you to those who've donated.  You all are wonderful!

You can always access the donation page through the 'Support TPP' link below, but here it is for convenience:

Support TPP

Scheduled Server Maintenance

Dear WestHost Client,

We are performing important network maintenance on Friday, July 25, 2008 from 10:00 p.m. to midnight MDT. Total downtime will not exceed five minutes for the following domain(s):

thepetulantpoetess.com

This maintenance is required to provide a high level of continued network availability and redundancy. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Best regards,

Network Engineering Department

What's New ...

You may have noticed that your front page looks a little different today.  We have decided to place all recent drabbles in a different column, and as such, I needed to rearrange all the skins.

This will be of great benefit to all stories.  Both recent fanfiction and recent drabbles will stay on the front page longer. Plus, I was able to increase the number of recent fanfiction due to the rearrangement.  I hope this works well for all of you.

Oh, and don't forget, you can always click 'More Stories' at the bottom of the columns to view the next few stories in that column without navigating away from the front page.

Server Maintenance

Another scheduled server maintenance you all need to know about. Pencil it in!

Dear WestHost Client,

We will be performing server maintenance on the server that hosts your account on June 23, 2008, between 11:00 p.m. MDT and 2:00 a.m. During this server maintenance we will be applying minor security updates and patches. During this time your account will be unavailable for approximately 45 minutes. This maintenance will affect the following account(s):

thepetulantpoetess.com

WestHost Hosting Systems Department