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Updates to Groups & Posts ✌️🙂

☮️ 🕊️ Hello, Similar Worlds! 🛸 🛩️

The SW Team is pleased to provide you with an update of what has been implemented recently.

[sep]

⚠️⚠️ We understand that at first it might seem we have removed features from Similar Worlds, but we haven't removed anything.
We have just simplified/reorganized some things, that make total sense to do 👍 (as some people have said -- "it's about time").
✌️🙂

[big]All features of Stories and Questions are now merged 📝[/big]

• You can now add a Title/Question to all Posts, no matter what group they are.
• Polls can be added to all posts in any group.
• You can select a "Best Comment" in all your posts.

All Groups (whether they start with "I" or not) are now similar in terms of functionality.
There is no longer a "Me Too" or "Subscribe" button, just [b]"Follow"[/b] instead.
"Stories" and "Questions" are now just called "Posts", no longer with any distinctions.

[big]It is now much easier to create Posts 📨[/big]

• Improved interface of the "New Post" form.
• You don't have to choose between a Story or a Question. It's just a "Post".
• Made the Audience/Rating of the post simpler, when choosing what type of contents your post has.
• If you pressed "Add Poll", there is now a button to "Remove Poll" if you want to get rid of it (before posting).
• As soon as you enter/focus the "Group - type to search" field, we straight away display some groups that may be relevant to you.

[big]We improved the Polls 📊[/big]

• It is now possible to see what answers have you voted to in Polls, and remove them.
• Before, on non-multiple answer Polls, if you voted for another answer, it would just replace your previous answer. Now you'll get an error if you try to vote on another answer, before explicitly removing your existing one.
• Poll owners can now set a limit on multiple answers per user.
• Poll owners will now automatically see all the votes, without having to press "Show Results" all the time.
• Poll owners can now change the Single/Multiple answer setting after the post went live.
• Poll owners can now disable notifications of new votes.

[big]Other changes 🔨[/big]

• The "Popular Groups" page got some improvements, such as being easy to switch between "Popular" and "Recently Active", and pagination (up to 5 pages of groups).
• Since we reduced the Stories/Questions links into a Posts links, we moved the "Gift Shop" link to the main menu.

[big]System Fixes and Improvements 🧱️[/big]

We are continuously working on improving security and other technical elements.
As usual, we always work in correcting known glitches, fix bugs, and make improvements to the System, Security and User Interface.

💡 [b][c=#BF0000]If you find any weird behavior in our system, please let us know straight away by sending any of the admins a Private Message, an email to us or open a Staff Support Ticket.
This is the best way to reach us (rather than creating a public post) and ensure that we will look into the problem as soon as possible.[/c][/b]

---

Thank you for your support and we hope you continue to stay with us.

We are constantly listening to your suggestions, so please keep giving them to us, as they are very important to the future of Similar Worlds.

Very kind regards, 🧡
- The SW Team

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

Cinnaman

Thank you for your hard work.
I understand merging Stories and Questions because any distinction really was being ignored.
HOWEVER I've said it before and I'll say it again: there needs to be encouragement for long stories, and there needs to be a way for those of us who like to read long stories to find them. Otherwise the posts that someone really took time over, and that really reward thinking about, get lost among all the witty repartee.

sarabee1995 · 26-30, F

@Cinnaman 1,000% agree.

Some way or some place to keep & highlight long-form prose and serial stories.

I know that initially SW was promoted to former EP members as "the new EP" but this part of EP has been completely dropped. As a result, many of the truly talented authors have left.

EP was to connect people through common experiences, SW purports to connect us through the similarity in our worlds... Neither can be done without more than 140 characters (which seems to increasingly be the average post size on SW).

Nuno · Admin

@Cinnaman As you said, there wasn't much distinction between Stories and Questions. We haven't removed the Story or Question functionality. Users can still type long stories if they want, or they can simply type a Question. The functionality is still there. Not much has changed with this update, mostly because the users were also using Questions for Stories, and vice versa.

sarabee1995 · 26-30, F

@Nuno Yes, merging your[b] current[/b] story function with the question function makes sense for the reasons you stated. I think what Cinn is saying (and I concur) is that there is a need for a[b] true[/b] story function here.

When I was manually reposting some of my EP content here (before you made it available en mass) I constantly ran into your max story size limit. Back on EP (and, yes a I know this is not EP), there were features that encouraged long form prose. This built a community of authors who then attracted an audience (I was part of both).

Here's the fundamental difference: their story function had a minimum character count, yours has a max character count. Their story function encouraged long stories. Yours doesn't allow long stories.

And yes, I am aware that long stories require more storage, but they tap into an entirely different audience that you are losing.

If you do launch a true story function, some other EP features to consider:
- a ranking on the author's profile showing most read story, highest rated story, most viewed story, etc
- a separate section on the author's profile for their stories (distinct from his/her short posts & questions)

🙂

Nuno · Admin

@sarabee1995 Hello. Thank you for your feedback.

[quote]Here's the fundamental difference: their story function had a minimum character count, yours has a max character count. Their story function encouraged long stories. Yours doesn't allow long stories.[/quote]

I didn't know about this!
I'll bring this to discussion and see if we could do something like this (and your suggestion above).

Do you know what was the minimum character count?
From what I remember, it wasn't that big. Meaning, 1 small sentence would "do it". We also have a small limit like that. But I could be wrong.

If the minimum size is too big, I can predict users putting "junk characters" at the end just to fill up that minimum limit. This would decrease the quality of our posts, causing noise.

Thank you.

sarabee1995 · 26-30, F

@Nuno You are right that their minimum character count was very low and it did create noise (even from me at times!) If I wanted just to post a meme and no words, I couldn't do it. So I would add a junk sentence at the end to the effect that "this is just to meet the minimum character count" or something like that.

But the minimum character count is not really the point. The point is that long stories were encouraged in several ways:
- a separate area
- filters for most commented, highest rated, etc, gave stories a longer "life"

Here very few people read stories more than a couple hours old... On EP I continuously and often got comments on stories months and years old. I even featured a "table of contents" story here in an effort to give them some legs, but the lack of a true story area (I think) has prompted the audience for stories to leave.

@Fungirlmmm has done a ton to try to encourage true stories with her weekly writer's challenge. It's great, but it needs tools to really flourish.

Thank you for listening! Despite what I probably sound like here, I really do enjoy SW and have since the day you guys opened! 🙂

sarabee1995 · 26-30, F

@Cinnaman Sorry Cinn! It appears I've hijacked your comment! 😇

Cinnaman

@sarabee1995 *cowers in my seat looking nervously out the window wondering where the hijacker is taking us *

sarabee1995 · 26-30, F

@Cinnaman Hahaha ... Nothing to worry about, Sir, I'm here with the Navy and we'll get you home! ;)

Cinnaman

@Nuno Thank you for considering @sarabee1995's important points.

Now that the former "stories" and "questions" have been merged here on SW, why not create a new category specifically for longer stories?

Suggestion: call it Writing.
It could appear next to Home, Posts, and Explore.
Someone who clicked there would see a brief explanation that this is for longer pieces of writing that will take some time to read. And that comments are invited at any time, even months or years after posting.

I don't know if a minimum word count would be helpful or not, but the other incentives that Sarabee suggested, would be. Also: why not test this feature with a limited number of members? Make it available to Sarabee, me, and other people who have posted long stories, like @Yulianna who has been writing an actual novel on here. Sarabee can probably recommend some names.

Allow those members to post some of their long stories in the new section before you open it to the SW public, and that will set the tone.

Undoubtedly at first this Writings section will cater to a small minority within SW --but it will be the most creative minority! However, gradually it will draw new members who will enrich the site and let it live up to more of its promise.

Cinnaman

@Nuno What incentives can we offer you to do this? Would you like a work of fiction with you as the main character? 🙃

sarabee1995 · 26-30, F

What he said! ☝️