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Thoughts (and looking for suggestions)!
4 months ago
General
Hello all,
A lot has happened over the past week, namely the itch shadowban (a developing situation: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-n.....#addendum-faq) as well as the introduction of the UK "Online Safety Act" which is largely incoherent and risks limiting both freedom of expression and access to information. On top of this, the topic of Google Docs has also re-risen to the surface — specifically, take-down of content from Google Drive if deemed in breach of T&Cs. The latter suddenly feels (whether true or not) a much bigger risk than it once was. Notably, because so much of my furry writing is enabled through Google Docs collaborative features.
So, I'm writing this journal to ask for your feedback on two things:
(1) Are there other writing apps you'd recommend with the same collaborative functionality of Google Docs? I'm currently trialing Ellipsus. Any other suggestions would be great! I need something which I can (a) write and format [a4] text documents with, and (b) link to others so they can view/comment on the document.
(2) What do you think about a website specifically tailored for furry transformation fiction? I.e., a library/gallery of stories from authors (that wish to contribute) hosted independently — meaning I'd help set up and run this personally — that isn't relying on the whims of giant websites. The website could be a repository or something more active, depending on what the TF writing community wants.
Any comments are welcome, though please just in response to these two questions. The culmination of recent events is a LOT to take in right now. It's very important we talk about them together, but this journal isn't the place for that : )
Thanks so much. Stay awesome, stay wholesome, stick together and help each other.
Zen
A lot has happened over the past week, namely the itch shadowban (a developing situation: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-n.....#addendum-faq) as well as the introduction of the UK "Online Safety Act" which is largely incoherent and risks limiting both freedom of expression and access to information. On top of this, the topic of Google Docs has also re-risen to the surface — specifically, take-down of content from Google Drive if deemed in breach of T&Cs. The latter suddenly feels (whether true or not) a much bigger risk than it once was. Notably, because so much of my furry writing is enabled through Google Docs collaborative features.
So, I'm writing this journal to ask for your feedback on two things:
(1) Are there other writing apps you'd recommend with the same collaborative functionality of Google Docs? I'm currently trialing Ellipsus. Any other suggestions would be great! I need something which I can (a) write and format [a4] text documents with, and (b) link to others so they can view/comment on the document.
(2) What do you think about a website specifically tailored for furry transformation fiction? I.e., a library/gallery of stories from authors (that wish to contribute) hosted independently — meaning I'd help set up and run this personally — that isn't relying on the whims of giant websites. The website could be a repository or something more active, depending on what the TF writing community wants.
Any comments are welcome, though please just in response to these two questions. The culmination of recent events is a LOT to take in right now. It's very important we talk about them together, but this journal isn't the place for that : )
Thanks so much. Stay awesome, stay wholesome, stick together and help each other.
Zen
There's also docs lab and cyoc, however the latter does not currently allow any content based on existing ip and both of them have a lot of rather explicit and odd stuff from some of the user base.
I think your best bet would be teaching out to Transfur ans offering help setting up stuff for writers. I'm not sure where it's based but it's older, venerable, and has standards similar to fa with decent policing.
Outside of that, this has been a subject I've been on for some time and I've talked casually about either reaching out to lgbtqa groups and expanding the umbrella to encompass all alternative lifestyles. I've also talked with a. Few artists and authors about forming a guild or union so that creators can have health insurance, legal representation, standards for payment, and training avenues as well as actual pull in politics for this sort of thing.
Both paths are difficult, but need serious discussion when the community is facing so many threats.
2. Sounds neat. There was a site for tf art specifically, so a writing centered one sounds good. Would be nice if there was something like weekly/monthly story ideas to liven up the community.
A website for furry TF fiction is a good idea. Very niche, but it'd be a nice go-to for those who produce TF content, and would be a nice highlight for writers that often get lost in the mix of all art. I'd certainly use it. If you need some help putting it together I'll help in whatever capacity I'm capable of.
Cheers :3
Next cloud does have a collaborative writer function, but it's more meant for personal or internal business stuff (everyone needs an account on that Next cloud instance) plus it's self-hosted, meaning you'd need to admin the instance and server yourself.
You could just use something like LibreOffice to write your documents and send the odts around (odt is their specific document format, it can be opened in MS Word and some other office suits). It's not really collaborative, but it does allow for peeps to add notes and send the file back.
LibreOffice is free and open source, so it does have that going for it. All the other solutions I can think of involve spending money (monthly) somewhere :/
I would totally use a website dedicated to transformation writing. I have no experience with website building, but if you’re trying to gauge interest, I would totally be on board.
The issue is that the more niche a site is, the fewer artists are going to post on it, because they're going to get less attention. The vast majority of TF artists don't post on Transfur, because there's a smaller audience there; instead, they post on bigger sites like FA or DA where they can get more attention. This is also seemingly what killed Shifti; it's just easier to post stories on big websites, and there's more potential reward than on smaller and more specialized ones.