Latest News for ThePoeticLink.com

To Write to me, simply send mail to: Webmaster@ThePoeticLink.com I read all of your comments and suggestions... don't be shy!

News Entry Date: 6/1/2000 7:33pm

At the request of some people, I have added what I term as "Soft Anonymous" routines to some Poetic Link functions. In other words critiquing poems and replying to critiques is now a more "anonymous" function. You can still of course, view who wrote a poem or who critiqued your poem, but you must physically click something to see that information before you give a critique or reply. If you simply use the NORMAL Poem Critiquing method (Rightmost white box) the poet will be hidden until AFTER you submit the critique. In the same vein the critiquer will be hidden from the poet when he/she is rating the critiquer... until after the score and rating is given. This was NOT done to hurt anyone. I did it to help make things easier for you to be UNBIASED in your critiques and ratings. Some people were saying that as soon as they saw a poem from a certain individual... they were pre-judging that poem based on work they saw in the past from that individual. I hope this new method encourages you to all be more free and honest in your critiques and rating. --And if you MUST know the identity of someone... you can easily find it out ...but I hope you try the new system and see the reasons behind its implementation. -Chris

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Your wish is my command :) I have now made it easy for everyone to see who has entered a Personal Profile to The Poetic Link. I hope that many more of you take advantage of this ability. If you have any further suggestions for the Personal Profiles... Please let me know. -Chris

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You may have noticed that in several places now the "NAME" of a poet or critiquer has become a link. This is due to the new addition yesterday where I added profiles. Now whenever you see someone's name displayed as a link (something you can click on), you will be able to view their profile just by clicking that link. I have added this to View All Poems, Search Poems, Winners, View One Poem & View One Critique. I have also made the directions a bit clearer for people to see how to add their own profiles to the system. -Chris

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I forgot to mention that I moved the Critique Box up to the top of the Critiques List while you are viewing a poem. I hope that this appears to be more logical when you are on that screen. I was sure that by now I would have heard some silly comments on my picture :) But I guess it was a slow evening... or perhaps many of you didn't even thing to check *laugh* -Chris

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OK Finally done! Go to your Personal Information Modification Screen and you will find the wonderful surprise that I spoke of a few days ago! Please try to keep the pictures to a reasonable size... Under 20k would be nice. I hope you all like and use the new addition :) Please send me feedback! I am interested in knowing what you all think of it. -Chris

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I have just installed an option to allow people to REFRAIN from critiquing a poem if they so choose. All you need to do to clear it from your "Uncritiqued Poems" list is click on the poem like you normally would. Then go down to the Critique Score box and look in the Pulldown menu. There you will find the option to NOT critique the poem. This will clear it from your "Uncritiqued Poems" list once you return to that list and refresh the page. You will not receive any Critiquer Points for that particular poem, but you will not receive any sort of penalty either. I hope this helps some of you who may be uncomfortable or feel unqualified to critique certain poems. Those who are of course looking to maximize their critiquer points, should not use this option very often if at all. Those who do not care so much about Critiquer points, but merely do it for love of poetry, may use the option as much as they like. -Chris

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Well tonight I fixed a timeout problem and a few minor grammar issues. Overall things are running very smoothly and I am pleased with the wonderful use of The Poetic Link. I hope that everyone brings all of their friends to this new home that they have found. I would like your opinion on something guys. How long should critiques be kept? I originally thought that I would keep critiques for 3 months. Time is soon approaching when we will purge off March critiques if I hold true to the 3 month cutoff. Keep the following in mind when writing me with your opinion. Keeping more critiques slows down the process of replying to critiques you have received on poems. For many of you the slowdown is minimal, but some avid writers may experience longer delays when refreshing this option. Of course, keeping fewer critiques will help to speed things up for some of you who may now be experiencing some delays, but where do we draw the cutoff line? I am curious to hear from you regarding the speed of the "Reply to critiques" process. I have optimized quite a few times to shave off processing delays. -Chris

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Tonight I made a few fixes to the system. There appears to have been a poem entered without a Title, and it was preventing people from receiving 4's in the "View Uncritiqued Poems" option. I have hopefully fixed this problem so that it never happens anymore. I have been vey happy with the performance of The Poetic Link this month. Everything has been running very smoothly and I have not gotten any reports of problems that were not easily fixed. Heck, by next month there may not be any more problems to fix. That would be great :) Tomorrow I am going to work on a nice little surprise for you guys :) I have been wanting to add something special to The Poetic Link for about 2 months now, well I finally figured out how I am going to do it. I won't ruine the surprise, but I think you will all enjoy it greatly. -Chris

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All of the Award Letters and Award Checks were sent out today. If you were an April Winner you should be receiving your letter in the mail shortly! Congratulations to all who won. You are to be commended for all of your hard work and dedication. -Chris ps. I should be hearing more about the "disabled" issue later this evening. The person who did it does not get to work until 6pm Eastern Time.

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Well as all of you know yesterday 5/14/2000 at about 2:45 in the afternoon, my Account was Disabled. There was absolutely no reason given, no message sent and no phone call made to me. Nothing but a disabled account and one very upset webmaster (that would be me). To make matters worse, my e-mail was also disabled, so basically your messages that you were all sending, piled up in a folder and I was not even able to receive them or respond to anyone. Then to make matters worse yet... they did this on a Sunday Afternoon. I could not even get a live person to speak with that had power to affect this situation. The best I could speak to was an operator who merely takes messages and could do nothing to help me. Needless to say I am very, very upset about this entire thing. I am expecting a call back shortly from the Supervisor at Jumpline.com when he should be answering all of my questions and hopefully installing measures to ensure that this will never happen again. ...more to come when I get my phone call. -Chris

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