Sink Into Your Eyes :: Sink Into Your Eyes - A Harry/Ginny Fanfiction Archive

News

2010 Annual Fund Drive Concluded

I believe that we have reached a point where we may conclude our fund drive. During the past week, generous donors have contributed $559.75 to the site. I would like to thank those generous people on behalf of our readers and authors. This would not be possible without you.

By way of information for those who have requested more details, I provide the following facts. It costs approximately $1200 a year to maintain the site itself. The staff provides its services on a volunteer basis. Because we do not advertise nor charge fees, it is necessary to turn to donations for the hosting fees. After renewing SIYE's contract last year I concluded that it would (1) put SIYE in a more secure position and (2) put me through a significantly smaller amount of stress if SIYE held it's fund drives twice a year. (That's really my main job as President--scrambling to make sure SIYE stays online.) The combined results of this fund drive and the previous fund drive leave SIYE with enough to pay our hosting and have some left over to bolster us next year.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact me. I will do my best to satisfy you.

If you missed this fund drive and are heartbroken, we do accept donations year-round.

Now . . . other business. The staff is concerned that a lot of things in the fan fiction world seem to be on the decline in general. We want to know what we can do to help make this site a better place. We also wouldn't mind hearing what you think we do well. Feel free to comment on this post or e-mail us via the contact information on the staff page.

Thank you all,

Robert L. Scott
President, SIYE

Lord Dreadnault on 2010.02.23 - 12:18AM ()

Comments

nat3738 came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.23 - 08:56AM to say:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed already because I'm a bit new here. I want an easier way to publish my story other than convert my Word document to HTML and put it through some beautifier (or spacing will be broken). Currently I use FanFiction.net Document Manager to convert, but the text field has problem with html entities (I know it is hard to fix) such as & r d q u o; (without space) which is right double quote.

Fire_kei came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.23 - 09:32PM to say:

I think as long as challenges keep coming up, some of us will still be willing to write and that will foster our muses on individual stories, and hopefully, spur others as well. As long as the Challenges continue to be interesting, and giving new takes on the HP world, SIYE will still grow, or at least stay level.

Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.23 - 09:44PM to say:

nat3738 - if you are using MS-WORD, all you have to do is save your document as an .RTF format instead of a .doc format. Try it.

Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.23 - 09:51PM to say:

Fire_kei - although I don't give out too much, I do ask questions to some SIYE members concerning Challenge plots. Most are my ideas but some have been suggestions from fellow readers and authors. Any ideas you wish to contribute?

leezdz22 came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.23 - 11:12PM to say:

I love this site and use it more than any other. I am handicapped and I appreciate being able to enlarge the print. I also like the new chapter notifications. Thanks to the staff for your wonderful work.

M_And came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.24 - 12:52AM to say:

Sir Ollivander, I us MS-Word, but I'm not familiar with .RTF What does that allow you to do? Secondly, you take suggestions for Challenges? I might have to throw a few your way. Finally for Lord Dreadnault and all the staff. I have always said that perhaps the biggest draw to SIYE is the quality of the stories, Your insistence that stories meet a certain standard make it enjoyable to read stories here. Additionally the staff's accessibility, I think, leads to the feeling of community here that lack at other sites. Hope those comments are helpful. - M_And

HGRHfan35 came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.24 - 05:33AM to say:

To me, as a reader and Artist, I think this site is one of the best out there. The stories admitted here (and moderated) are of a high standard and the quality of the submitted stories is way above any other site. There is so much rubish on some sites that it is hard to filter out the occasional gem that is hidden in said rubbish. This site is such a relief in that point. The work that you, volunteers, do for this site is needed to maintain this level of quality and so I'd like to thank all of you.

Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.24 - 07:45AM to say:

To solve the formatting issue I use the < > tags when I write for the italics and centering and then save my story as .htm. I then open it in a browser window and c&p. This saves all the spacing and paragraphing etc as is. I upload everything this way and have had no trouble with formatting. That is also something to try if you are having problems with it. For suggestions, I'd like Challenges to be less prescriptive. I'm interested to see how the DSTA goes in it's new format.

ginnyweasley777 came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.24 - 12:13PM to say:

I write in Wordpad (.rtf) forfat and use the tags when I write. Then I just copy and paste when I'm submitting a story. I've got to agree with HGRHfan35 - this site is definatly one of the best. It's easy to navigate around, it's completly dedicated to H/G stories and I've found some real gems here. It makes it so much easier when every story is of a good quality and more than just a few hundred words. Well done to everyone who makes this site possible.

redandraven came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.24 - 05:05PM to say:

I love how moderated this site is, because it means I won't have to sift through junk written by a fifth grader or straight out porn like I would on fanfiction. The formatting stuff doesn't bother me when I write. And as for challenges, it would be nice to see them a little more "plot bunny" to get people started than "here is the entire plot for you to flesh out". I realized after the 4th or 5th "Baby" one recently that I didn't want to read them because I already knew how they all ended! The less the challenge specifies, the more variety the stories will have. But thanks, everyone, for making this site so awesome!

Ginny Guerra came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.24 - 06:54PM to say:

What sometimes makes me uncomfortable is the lack of consistency among the mods. Some return stories for one or two commas missing, and some validate chapters with loads of mistakes of all kinds. I love, as redandraven said, the moderation in content, and the quality of most stories, and I can't thank the staff enough for making and keeping this site.

Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.25 - 07:24AM to say:

Yes, redandraven said exactly what mean about the Challenges.

jenn came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.25 - 03:51PM to say:

Robert - just popped in to see how SIYE was doing and I'm glad to see you still around!! I can't believe this site is still going strong after all this time. To you and the staff, keep up the great work!! (FYI, for those who don't know I created this site.) :)

Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.25 - 07:49PM to say:

jenn - and a Hi! to you, too. There's still a few of us old-timers around. I don't know if you knew, we lost Jaq/Billie quite suddenly a few years back. SIYE has grown a lot and had it's ups and downs. But we're still pretty much the same site you started. I hope you're doing well in your adventures after SIYE. Tom

Kezzabear came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.26 - 05:56PM to say:

Oh! I only just noticed - thank you for enlarging the response box in the review section! This one's still a bit small :D

Fics by Fumph came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.27 - 08:26AM to say:

I agree with the comments about challenges - they can end up being a bit repetitive, so perhaps you should consider basing challenges on a one sentence prompt? I must admit, I've not been entering challenges because the specified content is too daunting.

King of Pain came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.27 - 11:10PM to say:

Thanks for the information on the financials. I will make a suggestion or two on potential traffic drivers, as I concur with the decline of quality fan-fiction. I would suggest you "recruit" any of the active writers that may not be posting here. Find out what appeals to them, and how you can accomodate them within reason. I can only speak for myself, but the dearth of quality multi chaptered stories has caused me to look less frequently at SIYE. Finding authors who regularly update is getting harder and harder. I believe that active writers attract avid readers. Also, not sure how hard it would be to accomplish, but I bet that there are many completed works here that some of the newer readers may never have uncovered (maybe some that us older ones read years ago and need a prod to revisit). Maybe you could highlight such works on a regular basis. Maybe pluck out a reader who has given quality reviews and post a short profile on them. Writers love a well thought out review for the most part, so anything you can do to spur that activity woudl be a positive as well. I also agree on the challenge suggestion that less would be more, leave more to the writers imagination. I do give you kudos for maintaining your identity and not allowing so much of the garbage that infest other sites. My continued best wishes as you move forward

nat3738 came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.28 - 04:08AM to say:

Sir Ollivander - What do you mean about Rich Text Format? Is SIYE engine able to parse that format?

HG4HOOD came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.28 - 05:36AM to say:

Personaly I think we should get somthing such as a facebook account going where we can publish our ideas, or a multi chat setup in SIYE, such as messenger uses.

Torak came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.28 - 06:50AM to say:

HG4HOOD, there has been talk in the past of adding a forum or similar, but it's always been considered that it would detract from SIYE's focus on stories. It may be time to revisit the idea; I'll put it to the staff, but realistically I don't think it's something that'll happen in the foreseeable future.

Torak came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.28 - 06:53AM to say:

nat3738: RTF is a much simpler format than DOC; it's essentially pure markup, without the swathes of internal bloat that Word throws in. So yeah, it shouldn't be a problem. What I do is write my stories in Word, either adding markup as I go or going through afterwards to add it, then paste the entire document into Notepad to strip out the Word markup before pasting it into the submission box.

santafe came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.28 - 06:33PM to say:

My way round ensuring I get no trouble when posting is to write the story using either MSWord or OpenOffice Writer (compatible with almost everything) and cut and paste into the story text box. Never yet had a problem. I think that the completed reads section could be made a little more prominent to draw attention to stories - I've found many that way that I would otherwise have missed. I agree that posting updates as often as one can is a good idea to keep readers engaged, but I wouldn't want any quality drop, as SIYE is definitely the best I have found, and quality control drives that. Big respect to those who actually give their time to keep the site going. I personally would be lost without you! SF

MyGinevra came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.28 - 10:35PM to say:

I want to give my heartfelt thanks to all the admins and staff of this site. It has provided me with the opportunity to write and to meet incredible fans. I think it's inevitable that most HP sites will face declining participation as the fires and passions cool. I don't think that has to mean this site will die. It has a unique identity and style, and will always attract nut cases like myself who carry Harry and Ginny in our hearts.

I have two suggestions, one of which has already been made here: make the challenges broader and less restrictive. The other is to tweak the DSTA nomination and voting process as time goes by to give new writers a better chance of winning. This could mean restricting the number of awards a story or an individual can win in one year, or in a row, or something like that.

jennyelf came out of the woodwork on 2010.02.28 - 11:34PM to say:

MyGinevra Actually there is a new rule in effect about the number of awards a story can win. Here's the rule as stated earlier in the news post about the reinstatement of the DSTAs: "A story may win in each specific category once a year." If the story gets the most votes again, they will get an Honorable Mention, rather than the actual award, *grin* everyone, keep the suggestions rolling. It's always fabulous to see brainstorming at work!

Cyrus Smart came out of the woodwork on 2010.03.01 - 12:42AM to say:

I would like to thank all the staff of SIYE as well. I really don't know what I would do without you guys. I feel a little ashamed that I have never actually submitted a story on this site and will look to remedy that soon. This is by far my favorite site with such a wonderful collection of stories. It is really hard to find that quality elsewhere. As for suggestion, I have to agree about highlighting old completed stories. I actually spent several hours trying to find a story that was completed back in 2005 on this site. I went as far as posting on YahooAnswers trying to find it. Highlighted complete stories will make finding those old gems all that easier and can even draw people from other sites when they are trying to find an old classic that they have never read before.

tangle elfwand came out of the woodwork on 2010.03.01 - 02:47AM to say:

I think featuring stories would be a nice idea, with suggestions from members and themes depending on the time of year perhaps? I also enjoy the Audiofictions another website uses, though I have a feeling their bandwidth and whatnot is a lot larger than ours.

ginnyweasley777 came out of the woodwork on 2010.03.01 - 09:11AM to say:

I always prefer quality over quantity and this is certainly the top site for quality. I've found some super fics through the "Top Searches" on here as well as the completed reads.

Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2010.03.01 - 11:43AM to say:

Everybody concerned with Challenges - I have read all your Comments and asked a few others about how to improve the Challenges. The conditions used will be lightened some to allow for more creativity vice everybody writing the same story. The next Challenge in April will be a good test. Thanks for all your suggestions. The Challenge Meister