Site and Message Board Feedback and Suggestions

Howdy and welcome to the Site Feedback forum.

This forum is for discussion about what's good and what's bad with the site, and for suggesting improvements for this and future seasons.

We rely on you to tell us what you want so that we can keep NaNoWriMo awesome.

THIS FORUM IS NOT FOR BUG REPORTS. That's tech help, next door. Please don't tell us what's broken here - our purpose is more lofty.

Well, it seems to be one day wrong. According to this timer, Nano ends on Sunday, at Midnight - but November ends on Monday, doesn't it?

So, I reported an issue with the nano countdown clock about 2 hrs ago. (For my time zone it was removing a whole extra day, eek!) And, wham bam, 2hrs later (and possibly sooner I just now checked on it) it's fixed! YAY!! I have my day back! Thank you NaNo Tech people for being awesome and on top of things and listening the problems of those us as far afield as Japan despite our minority standing. YOU ROCK!!

Just thought I would share that. Anyone else who feels that the NaNo Tech people deserve some love, should feel free to post here as well.

**hugs**

~Gwen

I validated this evening and noticed I'd gained 24 words in the process. I went back up into the word count bar and changed it to what I have on my Alphasmart. I lost my winner status, and my purple bar went back to green. Is this because of the cookies or something, or do I have to continue validating using the copy 'n' paste method? In past years, I've been able to change the word count using the field above after validating (there's that word again...) without this happening.

I just wanted to comment on the fact that the halos one gets for donating are.... just okay. They strike me as a little too large and in your face, to be honest, and I think they should either be made smaller and neater or that a small title should appear beneath a user's name instead. I know a lot of people like them, but I feel like they're bothersome. I'd totally donate, but my parents won't let me. I'm just saying that I might feel more compelled if the halos looked better.

Wow that's a superficial complaint. I feel horrible. I'll probably send ten dollars your way in a good old-fashioned envelope.

First: it would be great to be able to edit the first post of a new topic.
I can edit all my replies but not a 'new topic' post - maybe it is possible but i haven't found out how to.

Second: How about a purple bar for those who have surged way ahead and made it to 100,000 words? That would be so cool.

Other than that, it's all been good! Thanks NaNoWriMo and all you guys out there writing away for a super time :D

Prue

Some of the MLs have been discussing on googlewave the possibility of expanding the wcapi, perhaps as an open source project. It is clear that the NaNo wordcount is a huge motivating force and a core part of NaNoWriMo. Currently the wcapi is updated only hourly; and regional roll-ups are done maybe less frequently. The wcapi itself offers some useful statistical information; but I think there is room for improvement.

• read a user's regional membership (homed region information); would be nice to be able to display this and automatically link to the user's home region forum
• allow users to update their wordcount through the API; the following is Matthew's good suggestion of how to manage the authentication: if you want to enable updates to your wordcount via the API, you have to go into the website, and indicate that. When you do this, it generates a large (128-character) hash string that is NOT based off of your username or password in any way, and that string along with your user id has to be provided to the API for authentication to be able to update your wordcount. That way, 3rd party sites don't have to request the password from the user for API usage.
• key information from a user's profile (years participated, years won, novel title, buddy list, genre, favorite music, favorite authors, favorite books, web site URL, location); this could be something the user opts-into when they edit their profile
• federated database separate from the main forum. Whenever the main site goes down, it is very awkward for users. Losing access to the forum is one thing; but this shouldn't preclude word count reading and updates. There should be a way to set up multiple databases for the word count data that are regularly synchronized. Ideally the wordcount data/interfaces on the main site itself will use the extended wcapi to display/update the wordcount.

I hope this isn't too out of place/odd. I just wanted to say thank you so much to all of you who put time and effort into this. I most likely won't be making the 50K goal, but I did manage to write a book start to finish in less than a month. I have NEVER finished a book before, so this is just absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for your encouragements and love of writing. I know my friends and I have really enjoyed the Pep Talks and community that Nanowrimo has. I will most definitely be back next year!!!

Again, just thank you, thank you, thank you!!! Keep up the amazing work!

Right now, about 80% of the "Other Genres" forum is fanfiction. While I don't particularly think fanfiction should be counted as its own genre (I mean, if you're doing Tolkien fanfiction then your story is fantasy, if you're doing Star Trek fanfiction then your story is sci-fi, etc.) but for the people who truly are experimenting with other genres (i.e. myself two years ago), I think it would be really great to have that forum freed up for that type of discussion about experimental novels, or novels that are a mix of fantasy and mystery, or novels that are a romance novel but with aliens, or short story collections, or etc. Meanwhile, the fanfiction authors can have their own little place to hang out and talk about, I don't know, what they think of original character and canon character relationships. That sort of stuff.

This is my first year doing NaNo, and I've loved it, really. I've loved it so much I won (I'm not finished yet, but I've technically won) early. [Insert gratuitous "yay me."]

But since this is year 1 of NaNo for me, 2009 is a pretty important issue to me. I want to update my author info for "participated" and "won" to 2009, and 2009 isn't even showing as an option for me. This bothers me. And for Christmas I asked for the NaNoWriMo 2009 winner T-shirt. But all that's out is the 2008 winner T. Come on, Administration--I'm trying to give you money!

So if you guys could... you know... get the 2009 stuff up to comfort first-timers like me, I'm sure the rest would appreciate it like I would. Thanks.

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Just remember--we're all in this together. Keep your stick on the ice.