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: 7/11/2002 12:11pm

Hey guys. I want to again thank all of you for the support and the uplifting letters that I have been receiving the past few days. It helps me tremendously, when I know that I'm in turn, helping you :) I want to delegate some responsibilities that I have little time for. 1. Master of Ceremonies for TPL Convention (Probably end of September) 2. Anthology Editors 3. Technical Support people To each of these tasks I will take volunteers. These positions will offer no monetary reward as we can afford none at this time, but they will offer significant mental rewards :) I will also offer other things, such as Anthologies, T-Shirts and Submission Credits. Please send me an e-mail if you would have the time and interest in performing one of these tasks. I would like to now elaborate a bit on what I'm after in each of these 3 cases: 1. Master of Ceremonies. I may have the title all wrong here, but I'm looking for someone to over-see everything with the organization of the convention that I want to hold in September. I have the place and we can get a date in September (weekend) very easily. It will be in Elizabethtown, PA so the location is fixed, but date will be decided shortly. This person would simply be in charge of gathering other information like hotel and restaurant info, directions from various areas and scheduling of the affairs. I would imagine that we'd want a 2 day event, but perhaps a 1 day event for our first convention would be in order?? -That would be up to you. We have the facility for free, so we would probably not have to charge anything for the convention, but again, that would be up to you. I am hoping to get someone that has experience in this sort of thing already. Please e-mail me if you'd have the time and feel qualified to fulfill this role. 2. Anthology Editors. I'm terribly behind on Anthologies. Last one I did was Jan-March 2001 ...so that means that we are 5 behind!!! -YIKES. Editing them takes time but is very easy if you are good with MS Word. I will send whomever volunteers for these tasks, several of the old documents (as masters) so that you can understand just how I put the Anthologies together. You will receive the RAW format of the poems for the particular Anthology that you are working on, and simply clean it up to fit on the pages etc. When you are done editing, you simply send the file back to me for printing. Obviously since we have 5 to do, we could have up to 5 volunteers for this. Please let me know if you have the skill and time to do this. You will not need to have any other qualifications than MS Word and the time to do the editing. 3. Technical Support. I am constantly receiving e-mails for problems that would easily be answered by someone who has been with TPL for some time. Many relate to login issues, validation issues, password problems, etc... I want to start routing these messages to a Help Desk of sorts. In this way, people could pluck issues off the Helpdesk and answer those who were needing the assistance. It would be very easy for the most part, and if the problem was too complex, you would simply NOT pull it :) -If however, the problem is something that you can answer, you can pull the ticket. My first task is going to be putting the helpdesk system together, but I hope I can do this quickly. That's about it. So if you feel you'd like to help out, please send me a message. I would like to start taking a back seat on these and perhaps other issues, so that I may better focus my time on upgrading and improving the site. I'll be anxiously awaiting the flood of e-mails :) -Chris

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Hey guys, just a quick note. There appears to have been a bug last evening some time after the newsletter was sent out. As wonderful as my newsletter was, impassioning all of you to dive back in over the summer... the damn bug prevented any protected functions. That meant you couldn't buy credits or any other protected functions! -UGH! Well, it's fixed now. I apologize for the inconvenience. By the way, this problem seems to have also reset our counter??? Anyone know what we were at on the main page counter -Laugh! I'll put it to my best guess for now but would like to make it more accurate so if you noticed the number, please let me know. One more thing. I want to thank ALL OF YOU for the wonderful letters of encouragement and assurance. I see that we are probably just in a summer slump more than anything. But I still hope that we can give a summer rally here and recapture some of the magic that we once had in such abundance here! -Let's see where it goes... shall we! :) Thanks, -Chris

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Hello Everyone! I just sent out he awards and prize notifications for the June winners. I was hoping that the larger prizes would drive some more interest but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. I will let things go for one more month, just as they are, before I make any changes. Our financial status right now rests at about $900.00, so we should be ok leaving things as they are for this next month. I am seeing a downward trend in participation lately. Perhaps people are getting burned out, perhaps the hot summer months are preventing good solid computer hours... perhaps the time of TPL is over? Who knows... the only thing I can use to gauge things, is money in vs. money out. We have held steady for the past 3 months, which is not entirely good, but of course, it's not entirely bad either. --It does mean that I'm working for free though (laugh). Guys I would like to try for some summer revival here. We can ONLY survive if support is there. We can not run a website where there is no means to pay the bills. To this challenge I propose a "Fresh Start Summer!" Yes ...old nasty words, gone. Mean harsh emails, erased! Let's try a fresh start and see every new post and every new critique as a fresh beginning. Not many of you recall the early days of TPL. It was amazing just to have people interacting as we were all doing here. Now, that interaction has been taken for granted. It is shadowed by other factors that may not be entirely pleasant. Human nature causes friction on this site. That can never be avoided. But we are larger than petty, child-like arguments... or at least we should be. Lets try to reclaim the amazing charm that this place once held. Let's all try to do our part to yet again, making this place special. You see guys, the big secret here is this. No matter how hard I work; no matter what measures I try to take. This place is run by YOU. I merely built the framework within which you all operate. If majority deems that the atmosphere here is depressing, then it will be a depressing place, despite my best efforts. If however, the majority here deems this place to have a charming and magical atmosphere... then it will be such! So, the choice is yours to make. I am done fighting. I am done settling fights. I am done beating my head against a wall. All you have to do to change things around here... is try :) That's it. Try walking away from a few fights this month. Try being a bit more up-beat in your replies and thanks. Try being a little bit more outgoing and meeting some new poets. Try to see the inner beauty and reason that others write and share their work here. --Just simply try. The results will be immediately evident. Thank You, -Chris

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Hey guys! I'm writing a short update tonight just to mention that I have done some more cleanup of some routines and files that help to run the site. The things that I have changed and upgraded are mostly my admin tools but they are necessary to the functioning of the site. I have been busy with some new ideas for site improvements and until my thoughts are entirely solid on those topics, I will not introduce any changes. I am mainly looking for the best ways in which to promote more critiques. That is the biggest problem we have. I was thinking about increasing the prizes, but would that really help? Would even a 500 dollar top critiquer prize help to increase the critiques? -Not that I can afford it at this time, but if we could? -Or might it merely cause "in-fighting" and bad feelings if one receives a harsh critique reply from one of the poets? All of these questions whirr around in my head on a nightly basis. Be glad that you do not suffer from my tortured dreams of this place :) On a different note. Someone wrote to me this week, asking about the Anthologies for 2002. Yes I have been a bad boy. But my wife (bless her soul) just agreed to edit the next set of Anthologies. It's not a bad job, and it helps her to get used to Microsoft Word. So as soon as she gets around to doing it, I will have them to the bookbinder for us. I think that I'm going to use the voting portal so that I can keep track of advanced orders. That way I'll know how many of each set to order. We are currently sold out of Volume #4 (Jan - March 2001). So I will be printing more of those with this upcoming order. For not ...sit tight. Don't e-mail me with any advanced orders or anything. I will post the voting or some means for you to alert me of your wishes, when the time is right. I have been seeing a decline in the activity on the site in the past few weeks. Perhaps it's just the summer and nice weather, or perhaps it's us loosing members? -I hope it's not the latter. At any rate, I would like to request that we each take an active role in spreading the word to friends and family, classmates and teachers. We need to let others know that we're out there. We need to start taking on some new members and driving the popularity of the site. I believe that most of our difficulties are behind us for now. Yes I will continue to sharpen and improve processes and hopefully make things ever more fair for all ...but without members, it is all for nothing. So please, give some consideration to bringing in some new blood and helping us out. If you have never tried critiquing... give it a try this month. It is a wonderful experience, and most critiquers say that in doing critiques they have learned how to greatly improve their writing skills. If anyone has some brilliant ideas on how to promote more high quality critiques, I'm all ears! Some links of interest. Please use them :) Donations: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/donations Anthology & T-Shirt Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales Submission Credit Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/pl/buy_credits.php3 Signing off for now! -Chris

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Hello everyone. It's been a very long time (over 3 months) since out last newsletter. Part of the problem was that I knew the newsletter function was broken now that we have switched to our new host. The other part of the problem was that I had several very important things to fix before I got around to fixing the newsletter functionality. Well I am happy to report that I have found the time to fix those important things and to finally give the newsletter some attention. I suspect that we have lost some of our members, due to the fact that the newsletter has not circulated in nearly 4 months. But I am hoping this revives some of the interest in things. I want to get things back into full swing. The site seems to be very stable and secure on our new host... Thank Goodness! The membership has held steady and funds have survived. I want to thank all of you who generously donated to our new home 4 months back. Without your caring and generous donations, we could not have survived. As we stand right now. Funds for the site are at about 1,000 dollars. This is not bad considering all of the difficulties we have overcome in the past few months. It is not so much a testament to the site or of the management behind it, but rather it is a testament to all of you. It proves that our community here is something needed and something that will survive. If we can make it through the lean times as well as we have... I am confident that we can make it through just about anything! To this new beginning, our new "era" if you will... I am going to kick things off by increasing the prizes awarded for June. So after this newsletter is written tonight, I am going to modify the prize distributions and see what I can do about giving you guys some much nicer incentives. Yes I'm going to take a risk in doing this. With only 1,000 dollars in our account, I have to be careful not to over-extend our finances. But I am confident that you are all up to the challenge. I call on each and every one of you to log into that old and dusty account. Brush off those pages of poems that you were working on and submit some new work! T-Shirt orders are back online. Anthology Orders are back online. All prizes up through May have been sent out. The Award letters are finally back online. Everything with the voting process is working smoothly. I plan on taking this next month and giving some serious attention to site improvements. I want to examine the voting process that we have and see if it can be improved upon. So guys... please spread the word. TPL is here to stay! If you care about poetry; if you wish to get something much more than you can receive at any other poetry site... please come back and revive your relationship here with our family. We have not forgotten about you, please don't forget about us. On a much sadder note, I regret to announce the recent passing of one of our dear members: Doug Shy. I recently went to his profile page and it brought tears to my eyes. If you would like to see his little corner at TPL, please visit the following link. You will be missed Doug. -Safe Journeys friend! http://thepoeticlink.com/pl/view_someones_poems.php3?user_id=dd_hudson In closing I would just like to say that this site has survived so many hardships and difficulties. It amazes me every time I think about it. It survives, not because of my efforts, but because of you... the members and people here behind the scenes. You are the ones who are truly doing the work. You are the ones that I must thank! -So Thank You... Thank You ALL! Here are some links that you may wish to use: Donations: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/donations Anthology & T-Shirt Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales Submission Credit Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/pl/buy_credits.php3 Take Care! -Chris

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Hello Guys. Well the FULL Voting code is now installed along with the new Winners List code. You can NOW exercise your voting power and vote for the poems of your choice. Please be sure to read the directions at the bottom of the Voting Option Page. To access the Voting Page, simply view any poem... at the top left of the View Poem page, you will notice a "Click HERE to add this poem to your Voting Possibilities List." -Use that link to access voting options. I will later add a link to the Voting pages, from the Main Menu. I think that you will all find the voting interface easy to use and very fun. It should be quite an exciting week, as we watch the poems move up and down on the winners list. The Top Poets should "bubble" to the top as we approach the end of the week. As before, each poet will have their TOP poem listed on the Winner's List. You can NOT vote for your own poem. I still plan on adding the code to now allow Categories to the Poem Submissions, and some check-boxes for different choices you will have on how you would like to be critiqued. But I am very pleased with how things are going lately. The site is running like "Clockwork" and I hope you all spread the word. Let's see if we can't ramp things back up so that I can once again offer some very nice prizes. I thank you ALL for your support. I will be very anxious to hear any comments you have on the new Voting system and winners list. Please e-mail me with your thoughts :) By the way, it's still not too late to participate or vote in the February contest. It closes out at midnight on the 7th so you can do some critiques now to raise your voting power and cast your vote! -Chris

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Hello everyone. I am writing to give you an update on the current state of things at The Poetic Link. Last week was a turbulent one, to say the least. I hope that we can all move forward with renewed vigor now that it is over. If you are not sure of what I am talking about. Please visit the forum: http://ThePoeticLink.com/forum ...there you can view this past week's posts to bring yourself up to speed. Because I spent so much time dealing with last week's issue, I was not able to fully finish the Voting Update tonight. Therefore, voting will begin tomorrow evening. -I apologize for having to put it off for 1 evening, but it would not be good for me to release the voting update tonight, in case there were problems. Tomorrow I can stay up all night if need be, since I don't work on Saturday. I have come up with a fairly nice way to allow you guys to vote. It should prove to be very easy for everyone. I expect that over the next few months however, the voting process will be refined further and streamlined to the best of my abilities. If you are anxious to get started, I would suggest a pencil and paper tonight. Start writing down the poem names and dates of submission. That way, you will easily locate them when tomorrow comes and you are ready to start the voting process online. The new updates are going to allow you to mark poems throughout the entire month. These "marked" poems will be your list of "Voting Possibilities." This list can be as big as you like. It is meant to help you narrow down your choices so that you can then numerically represent your final choices. This first month, I have decided to allow 10 choices. We will see how that goes and tweak it next month if necessary. This will mean that you can pick up to 10 poems (less if you like) as your TOP CHOICES for the month. You will not be allowed to vote for your own. Through the course of the 7 day voting period, you will have the opportunity to refine your votes 2 additional times. This means that you will have 3 total opportunities to cast your vote for the 10 poems that you feel were the best during this month. I am not aware of ANY site or organization that allows voting like this, and I am very excited to see how it all plays out by the end of day 7. I conceived of this little idea last month and feel that it will be the best way to find our winning poems on The Poetic Link from here forward. I will reserve the right to tweak or change any aspect of the voting process as I see fit... especially during the first month or two. -If my plans and programming are careful and correct, it should be a "Hands Off" system. I should not need to do anything but sit back and watch the winners list evolve. As was the case before, each poet will have their TOP Poem displayed on the Winners List. Any poem that receives at least 1 voting point is eligible for inclusion on the list. It's not too late guys... if you want to be included in the fun, go do some critiques and gain some voting power. The more Voting Power that you have, the more you will be able to influence the final results of the Poets Winners List. I look forward to this voting period with great anticipation. I hope you are all just as excited as I am! Hell, I may even have to critique a poem or two... just so I can cast my vote :) -Chris

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Hello Everyone! I decided that it was time to put out another newsletter due to the fact that all of the upgrades have been going BEAUTIFULLY! I have completed every update that I hoped to have done up to this point. The only remaining program that I need to finish, is the VOTING program. I hope to have this one done over the weekend. Once the voting program is in place, you guys will be able to start making your selections for your Favorite Poems on the 1st of March. That's just 1 short week away. If you have not been keeping up with the site updates, there have been a TON of changes. I would suggest reading the past News articles to catch up if you are curious. Although I have not yet decided upon how exactly the voting process will work. I can give you a basic idea. I reserve the right to adjust any of the following settings at my discretion; especially since this will be a very new process for us all. During the voting process I will allow you guys to vote 3 separate times. This is to help assure that any poems you might have missed are open to you voting for them ...even after the process begins. The limit is set to 3 to keep abuse possibilities to a minimum. I think that right now I will allow everyone to vote for 5 - 10 poems. I have not yet decided upon an exact number. But indications are that people wish to have a lot of choices available... so I'll give it to them :) Voting calculations will be REAL TIME. So that means, every time the Winners List is displayed, the votes will be re-counted. If a person is supporting poem A with their vote and later decides to change to poem B... then poem A will loose the points and poem B will gain them. The points or support that you are lending to each of the poems you vote for, will depend upon 2 things. Firstly, it depends upon your Voting Power. The more voting power you have, the more support you will lend to the poems you are voting on. Second, the place you rank your poem choices. For a practical example ...let's assume that I let everyone vote for up to 5 poems, each of their 3 times. If you have a voting power of 6, you will impart: 30 points to the poem you rank 1st, 24 points to the poem you rank 2nd, 18 points to the poem you rank 3rd, 12 points to the poem you rank 4th, and 6 points to the poem you rank as 5th. The equation is simple, just multiply your Voting Power x (total rank slots available + 1 - Rank you Assigned). In the example of the poem you gave 2nd place... your equation would be 6 x (5+1- 2) = 24 At any rate, the voting should be VERY exciting. I am looking forward to seeing the poems violently shift around during the first day or so, and then slowly shift into their final positions over the last few days. I have not yet decided upon the full details of just how the voting will work, but this explanation should at least give you a good idea of what will happen and how exciting it will be. Basically the MORE VOTING POWER you gain... the more you will influence the final outcome of the poem prizes. Now regarding prizes... I know they are pretty shabby this month. But we are just pulling out of a very bad financial depression here at The Poetic Link. The past few months have been "touch-and-go" but we made it through. Finances right now are in the $700 range. I would like to increase the prizes but I have to be careful to not over-extend things right now. I have always held the philosophy that the more money coming in, the more prizes will rise. That still holds true. So as long as you guys keep supporting TPL, the prizes will once again, rise to respectable levels. I said it in the forum and I'll say it again now. I never wanted to become rich from this site. If I was able to simple support my family from it, that would be more than enough payment for me. I would love to be able to offer $1,000 top critiquer prizes each month and $500 top poet prizes. But that will only happen if you guys help to spread the word. I have stopped ALL paid advertisements for the site. I have been relying solely upon you guys and word-of-mouth advertisement for over 6 months now. Since I have finally finished my upgrade ...I am now asking you guys to PLEASE kick in and start spread the word. If you can please tell everyone you know (who loves poetry) about this site, we should grow quite nicely. I am also going to start actively recruiting some colleges or universities to be the first to officially start working with The Poetic Link. If you think your University or College would be interested in working with The Poetic Link, please contact me ASAP. I am going to limit the official interaction with schools in the beginning... at least until we work out the best ways for the schools to benefit from what we offer here at TPL. If you think your school would be interested, let me know... and let me know FAST :) It will be a first come, first served basis. -Opening up to schools is going to open a huge amount of opportunities for them as well as TPL. Lastly, after this voting period is over, I am going to install the final phase of this HUGE Update. I am going to be installing the Poem Categories so that we can start sorting the myriad of works here. I am also going to install some checkbox options. Some examples would be: Finished Work, Work In Progress, Positive Comments Only Please, Brutally Honest Analysis Please. Basically, stuff like that. I will take that discussion to the forum so that we can work out the desired checkboxes that you guys want. I will also take the Categories to the forum so you can help with that decision process. Sorry for the very long newsletter, but I had a lot to cover. Great and wonderful things happened this month and will be happening still next month as the Site Upgrade is finalized. I hope that you are all pleased with the changes. Please spread the word and come spend some time with us. Here are some links you may find helpful: Donations: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/donations Anthology & T-Shirt Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales Submission Credit Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/pl/buy_credits.php3 Thank You, -Chris

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Hello everyone. I thought it was the appropriate time to inform all of you that the updates I have been promising for the past 2 months are finally in place! Yes you heard correctly. Everything that was going to be changed is now online. I still have a few things to finish writing, but functionality is all there as of this moment. I still need to finish writing the "Historical Data" portion of the winners list, so if you look back at any previous winners list (January 2002 and back) it will be displaying incorrect information. Once I update the historical data, it will show the proper lists. Once that is done, I have to add routines to allow you guys to VOTE on the poems at the end of the month. Voting at the end of the month will now be a very big part of the site. It will begin on the 1st of each new month and end on the 7th at midnight. You will be able to cast votes for the poems that you feel are deserving of "Winner" status. Your "Voting Power" will play a HUGE roll in the way the poems rank. The more Voting Power you accumulate, the more weight you have at the month end voting. You accumulate voting power by critiquing poems. You accumulate the MOST voting power by picking the poems from the TOP of the critiquing list each time (you know, the ones worth 4 points). For now, please save your questions until you try the new system out. Critique a few poems, submit a few poems. See how things work. If you are still confused, ask your questions on the FORUM so that we can answer you there and have everyone benefit from the answer. http://ThePoeticLink.com/forum Your scores in the Critiquer Portion of the Winners List will start updating and moving around immediately. Do a few critiques and you will see what I mean. Remember that at the moment, ONLY the February Critiquers Winners List is working. I am still coding the rest of the winners list. But the section that is working right now, is the most important section. -Enjoy :) Well, I'm off to do some more coding. Thank you all for your support and I hope that you all enjoy the new changes. As of this morning I checked the bank account of The Poetic Link. It stood at around $495 ...with 3 outstanding checks totaling $124.00. This means that we have roughly $370 in the "Coffers" as some people like to refer to the funds here. The reason I am telling you this, is to let you know why the prizes are remaining at only $50.00 It is my hope that now with the new system online and with interests renewed, you guys can start to enjoy and use the system HEAVILY :) Please buy credits and submit poetry. Please critique those poems and sharpen your writing skills. Most of all... please have fun. I will do my best to take care of you as long as you guys take care of the finances here. Here are some links you may find helpful: Donations: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/donations Anthology & T-Shirt Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales Submission Credit Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/pl/buy_credits.php3 Thank you all! -Chris

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Hello guys! GOOD NEWS, GOOD NEWS, GOOD NEWS! Yes you heard me ...Good News! I have put in for 1 week vacation starting Monday the 11th. Guess what I'm going to be devoting that entire week to? -You guessed it... The Poetic Link! Barring any unforeseen nasty circumstances, we should be looking at one FULL week of update bliss! -Ugh! :) It should be great for all of you but I'm not sure I'd classify it as a vacation for me? *laugh* At any rate, we'll let the January month finish out as normal and then I will be free to apply the update for February. It won't matter that part of the month will have poem ratings, they will all be wiped and only the critiques will be kept. -I don't foresee any problems with doing things this way. So I wanted to let you ALL know that I am holding true to my word and dedicating an entire week to you guys :) This will be a great relief to finally get some time to do this properly. Please spread the word! Post this on the forum if I don't get a chance. Tell your neighbors, talk it up and stay tuned. I will likely be hitting you guys with MANY opportunities for feedback and your decisions will play vital roles in some of the things I will be changing. The Forum will be my vehicle for this "idea exchange." http://ThePoeticLink.com/forum So for now, I'll sign off. Please keep your spirits high or raise them if they were low :) -Good things, very good things, are on the way this coming week! -Chris

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