Points System Survival Guide!

[Andy]

The Points System Survival Guide!

What is it?
It's a system to ensure everyone does their fair share of critiques, making the staff's job easier. You have to pay points to submit your work. And you gain points by commenting on other peoples' work.
How many points are we talking about?
Prose, essays, and scripts cost 10 points to make a new thread. Poetry and other/experimental work costs 6 points. And photography and artwork cost 4 points.

When you critique something, you get points based on length. The maximum number of points per critique is the same as the cost to submit something in that forum (so if you're critiquing poetry, the maximum possible is 6).

When you reply to your own piece, you get to choose if you're:

1. Submitting more writing (costs same as a new thread)
2. Just posting some comments (doesn't cost anything)

When you reply, your post's title will be marked as either a "submission" or "reply." Your post's color will also be changed - so we can tell if you paid to post it or not.
What do you mean, we "receive points based on length"?
You receive .01 points for each letter/character in your critique. But only three kinds of letters are counted:
- bold
- colored (not black)
- letters that are not within tags.

This means that if you type 200 letters of red inline comments, and then have another 100 letters after the quotes as a summary, you get 300 x .01 = 3 points. It may not sound like a lot, but the characters go by very fast.
What if I have 100 bold AND red characters outside the quote tags? Do I get 300 points because they're all counted three times?!
No. The points system is smart enough to only count each letter once. So ha! But if the staff sees anyone attempting any tricks to give themselves more points, we will take appropriate action.
What if the piece I quoted already has any bold or colored characters? Do I get points for them?
No. When submitting or editing literature, all bold and colored text will automatically be converted into normal plain text. You won't encounter any.
What if my story has multiple chapters? Should I keep them all in one thread, OR give each chapter its own thread?
That's your call. It costs the same number of points either way.
What's that "Find Chapters" link I see in the Long Stories sections?
If a story's chapters are in different threads, that link will search for them. For example, if you're reading "My Story Chapter 3," it will show you links to "My Story Chapter 1, "My Story Chapter 2," and any others there are.

It searches for the titles only, so if a person's chapters all have very short or different names ("1: The Quest," "2: The Next One"), the link will probably not work.
Anything else I should know?
There's a maximum total of 30 points per person. This is to prevent people from accumulating loads of points or submitting a lot of things at once. It basically keeps everyone submitting and critiquing at a moderate, steady pace.

The stories section was split into short and long stories. The Literature page's URL has changed. The URLs of all your stories and posts have NOT changed.

Posts that the author has marked as a "submission" will have a dark gray background near their name.

Lastly, I understand that all of the above may seem confusing at first. However, you'll find that whenever you're posting in the Literature section, there will always be some messages to tell you what's going on and what you're doing. :)