The Glowfic Constellation

[Ezra]

Most threads are designed for exactly two authors. Would it be useful for threads to auto-lock-authors when the second joins, and rely on manual add or manual unlock to add more?

[pedromvilar]

+1

[Throne3d]

To answer Kappa's question from another thread, author locking was added back in November!

There has also been discussion about auto-locking already. Issue 74 is about it (and has "discussion welcome" attached). It could happen on the second join, yeah, and then I expect we would need to add a message to the UI somehow to make it clear that this has happened (whereas we currently just hide the 'Join Thread' thing, maybe make it show a 'This thread is author-locked' on the last page?).

[Alicorn]

Would there be a way to boot an unwanted author who snuck in while a thread was unlocked? How about inviting authors individually to an otherwise locked thread?

[Throne3d]

There's no way to boot an author at present except to ask an admin to do it. It'd probably be part of the planned moderation features, and if we implemented some way for non-moderators to do it, I think it'd probably be limited to the thread creator or we'd need to… give earlier authors in a post authority over later ones? I'm not sure. Do people have any preferences on this?

There's also no way to invite people to posts, but that seems like a good idea. Perhaps the standard should be for posts (in Sandboxes) to be locked, with the ability to make them "free for all" and also the ability to invite authors to the post. (In continuities, it should probably default to the continuity authors.)

It also could be annoying to have to invite the other author each time you make a post, but you kinda have to do it anyway and it might be neat to just have it as part of the standard UI.

[Unbitwise]

In the long run I think "specify/invite authors when creating thread" is the right idea.

[Kappa]

I'm super spacey right now because Mike and Alicorn's baby has been having a day, so this will not be the most coherent post, but

The invite-authors-when-creating-thread thing sounds good

And it reminds me of the thing where your Tags Owed does not contain threads you have not posted in

(Does it contain threads where you have not posted but have a draft saved? I feel like it should)

And also Tags Owed does not contain solo threads

(Does it contain solo threads where you have a draft saved? Maybe it should)

And I'm wondering if an author-locking thing would be relevant to those

Because like, if you're the *only* author in the thread it's probably a solo thread and you probably owe yourself tags in it

And if you are a listed author in a thread you've never posted in, you probably owe a tag in it

(I have a lot of private solo threads that I find difficult to remember when I'm not working on them and difficult to track down when I'm trying to work on them and I feel like if they showed up in my Tags Owed this would help a lot)

[Marri]

HI FROM FRANKFURT I HAVEN'T SLEPT YET SO I CAN JETLAG PROPERLY AND I'VE BEEN SEWING FOR LIKE 8 HOURS AND MY BRAIN IS NOT FUNCTIONING

These seem to do listable though. Later.

[Kappa]

Hi Marri you are good <3333333333

[Unbitwise]

This is a questionable request, in that it touches on author freedom and aesthetics, but we don't actually have a thread for Discussing How Everyone Should Glowfic anyway:

I wish the screen names fit better into The Aesthetic of Assigning Characters Fictional Screen Names (Because we Used to Use Real Ones).

In particular, I have seen all of -, _, and space used as word separators. I wish that only one of the three were used. (For reference, on DW, you got only _ except when it appeared as - in domain names.)

(On the other hand, following this notion to the extreme suggests restricting fun-with-Unicode, which seems Wrong...)