Message Board

Congrats!!

Just to let you all know, Petulant Poetess Admin Phoenix gave birth to a baby girl yesterday. She's a big baby, too--9 pounds, 4 ounces. Wheee!

Congratulations, Phoenix and hubby! 

Welcome to the New Server

The new server is up and running, and I've just pointed the DNS in this direction.  It should take about 24 hours to go into full effect.  Please note that some people are already making it to the site.  However, there may be some lost e-mail during the transition period, which means that you may not receive e-mail notifications during this time.

As of now, both databases are the same as of the posting of this.  If there are any additions to the old database during the transition, I will be doing my best to recover them so that authors don't lose reviews.

A Special Note to Authors:  First of all, try not to upload any stories for about a day.  I will try to keep up with those who do not see this message, but whatever help you can give me is appreciated.

Secondly, please have a look over all your titles, chapter titles and summaries.  Some of the apostrophes and quote marks (not all) and dashes in those areas are coming out as question marks.  I need to leave it up to you to edit anything you might find with the proper punctuation.  Thank you! 

Thank You for Your Patience

Hello to everyone.

I wanted to thank all of you for enduring with us through all the server problems this past (going on) two weeks.  I have been speaking with techs what seems like every day ever since, trying to work out bugs.  The tech today said that there are still problems with the server I am on.  He even offered to have the  site moved to a different server.  That was nice of him.

However, I am in the process of setting up a brand new VPS server for the site as we speak.  I am having the top-level techs exchange some essential software on the server for me so that the site will work seamlessly.  I am doing my best to have this taken care of by the end of the month.  This brand new server will be better for us.  Pages will load faster, and you won't see the amount of errors you have been seeing lately.

I just wanted to let you know that I am working hard to make this site a better place to read and post.  And a special thank you to my admins, who are also dealing with the frustration of slow page-loading and down-time.

Favorite Stories, Favorite Authors, and Reviews

I'd just like to make a post to point out a few things that some of you may not know, having witnessed a few remarks being made lately about our speedy updates (things being buried) and the small amount of reviews given at times.

Here at the Poetess, the staff tries to get stories out quickly to the readers. Unfortunately, since we do validate so many chapters daily, some stories get buried without having the proper amount of time at the top of the list and being more easily noticed.

Please remember to scroll down the page. NSS has expanded the recently updated list to hold 25 stories to help out with this problem. At the bottom, she's added links so that we can easily view more stories, which will bring up the next 25 tales. Sometimes people find this tedious or simply don't think to do it, not wanting to go through different pairings and genres that they dislike to find the ones that they do.

This can easily be remedied. Have an author you enjoy? Have a story that you're following? Add that author or that story to your favorites list. It's easy to do. On the author's page or the story's page, there are links you can click to automatically add this to your account. You will get emails each time someone updates a story or posts a new story to the archive with a direct link to it. The Petulant Poetess has many great features. Please utilize them.

As for the reviews part of this post, many stories that go by quickly on the front page sometimes don't seem to get much attention by the way of reviews, as some updates are missed. Even some stories that do seem to have  a small amount of reviews. Please keep in mind that people do put a lot of time and effort into their work, and it's very disheartening to see your reads/hits rise, but not many people take the time to even say if the story was liked or not. This is entertainment for you done by people who are giving up their free time. The only payments they will ever receive are reviews from readers. Please don't forget to take a moment to encourage authors to carry on and let them know their work is appreciated.

I guess that's all for now. Thanks for reading, and I hope this has been helpful to some of you.

New Admin

I'd just like to take a moment to announce that we have a new administrator, as many of you likely know already, who has joined the team. Her name is Soul Bound.

Welcome!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to all!

A Valentine story popped into queue today, and I realized that there weren't too many Valentine stories to be found (only three recent ones, I think) ... shocking, to say the least! So to get in the spirit of the holiday, I did a search through the stories in the archive and found a few for everyone to enjoy. If I've missed one, please feel free to add it!

My Snarky Valentine by sunshinefanfics

Saint Valentine's Liquorice by Subversa

Valentine For Three by Maddy Riddle

Valentine's Eyes by SS Lupin

Valentine's Game by Deccaboo

A Dreaded Holiday by GinnyW

Be Mine...I'm Yours by Southern_Witch_69

Guess Who by DawnEB

Sweet Tart Memories by broomclosetravenclaw

Guess Who, Valentine by Southern_Witch_69

Intergalactic Quidditch Cup

The sign-ups are now closed, and we are in the middle of sorting teams and assigning positions. Watch this space for further news, and if you've signed up, expect to hear from your captain sometime this week.

Yahoo E-mail

Just a quick note, my inbox is full of e-mail to Yahoo users from the 15th and the 16th.  Yahoo apparently has decided to go on the fritz, stating: "Message temporarily deferred."  I thought I'd let you know in case any of you are missing e-mail notifications.  There are too many for me to forward, or else I would.

Any complaints should be addressed to the Yahoo gods.  

Plagiarism and Paraphrasing

It was brought to my attention this morning that a story in our queue was plagiarized from another story published on this site.  We are in the process of documenting this occurence, and strict measures will be taken against the perpetrator.

Please note: There have been significant modifications made to the Terms of Use and the Submission Rules.  Please take a look, specifically at item number 6 in the Terms of Use and the topic "Grounds for Immediate Rejection" in the Submission Rules.

I have been searching for a decent definition of "plagiarism" on the Internet, and I believe Wikipedia explains it perfectly:

"Plagiarism is the passing off of another person's work as if it were one's own, by claiming credit for something that was actually done by someone else. Deliberate plagiarism is an attempt to claim another person's work as one's own, usually by removing tell-tale evidence or changing words so the plagiarism is made harder to spot.

An unacknowledged use of words, information, research, or findings not one's own, taken from any source is plagiarism only if a person is claiming personal credit for originality."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism

Back to Work ...

I just wanted to take the time to let you all know of a couple additions I have made to the site.

1. The Bookmarks page has been updated and now allows you to sort by story title or author.  In addition, there will be an e-mail sent to you every time a story on your bookmarks list has been updated.  This way you do not have to add everything you are reading to your favorite stories list (effectively separating favorite stories from stories you are currently reading).
   
   
2. Authors now have the option of choosing 'keywords' for their stories, either when they post a chapter or when they edit a chapter.  The search engine will then include those keywords in the search if the member types in a search term.  I have done this because the stories themselves are not saved within the database (for security purposes); therefore, it is impossible to do a search on the text of the story itself.  By adding in keywords, it will increase search possibilities. 
   
   To all authors:  If you find the time, you can add in keywords to your stories.  Keywords are for the ENTIRE story, not just single chapters, so you only have to edit one chapter (any chapter) within a story.  No matter which chapter you choose to edit, you will see the list of keywords you have saved.  This is because the search engine brings up an entire story on a search, not every single chapter.