# Brag Thread?



## buni (Jan 2, 2012)

Hey, Frank. Question for you, and in general for the home audience.

Does this place have a sticky "brag thread" for folks who get published or otherwise awards or recognition? Would such a thing be valuable to anyone if it were available? Does anyone even use this place as a recommendation source, or consider doing so if it were available?


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## M. LeRenard (Jan 2, 2012)

Not currently, no.  We've just got the resources thread and the list of writers on FA.  But a brag thread doesn't sound like too bad an idea, considering how otherwise impossible it is to find authors in, say, magazines and the like.  Maybe we should all discuss this a bit and come up with a nice way to do it without letting it turn into just an ad thread for peoples' crummy self-published novels they wrote when they were 15.  We had sticky hell a long time back, so I'm always wary of stickied threads, but now we've only got, like, four, so it shouldn't be a problem.
What was your idea, then?


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## buni (Jan 3, 2012)

I'll admit, my initial thought was a generic brag thread like we have over at the FWG, but the entrance requirements there make hawking self-published work unlikely. I hadn't really considered the possibility. Would adding the requirement that works can't be self-published be a sufficient brake? I don't want it to be a discussion thread, but I also don't want to burden the admins with having to curate the thing. I'm open to suggestions, if you have any.


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## M. LeRenard (Jan 3, 2012)

Well, in my experience, if it has rules, it will have to be policed, and that always falls on me.  Hence why I'd like a bit of discussion on how to make something like this work on these particular forums.  The culture here is, of course, way different than the FWG, in that most everybody who posts here is either in the state of 'I enjoy writing but don't want to try for publication' or 'I enjoy writing and hope to be published someday'.  But we all want a nice way to publicize our work, so I can foresee people coming on here, seeing a thread like that, and simply plunking down a pre-made ad for some work somewhere (self published, published online, or legitimately published, in unequal amounts) and walking away forever.  And if it's just going to be that, there'd be no reason for it and I'd rather not have to deal with it.  But if we could get a system where people can use these forums to market their works and the magazines/anthologies/publishers who decided to publish their work, I think it'd be beneficial in a number of different ways.
It could be something as simple as enforcing linking to the publisher's website in the post, or in the best case scenario, a link to the particular issue in which the work appeared.

Man... a really awesome thing would be if we could have a rating system, but that's beyond the capabilities of these forums.


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## â™¥Mirandaâ™¥ (Jan 3, 2012)

I could keep a vigilant watch, and then report to you whenever there's something that needs deleting

I have nothing better to do during the day anyway

If I might add my two cents, I think if you're bragging about a work you should be bragging about its success. Like "I'm not making 1000$ a day on books", as opposed to "I just put a book on amazon"

like, put up awards or successful sales. The latter wouldn't bring much discussion, but the previous would make for a resource for different contests and such


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## M. LeRenard (Jan 4, 2012)

Sure.  I mean, it'd be different for different mediums.  Like, I could make a post saying I got published in X magazine and got $13 for it, and someone else could say they had their novel X published with a $500 advance, or someone could post and say they had this novel that's been on the market for X number of months that has so far earned them about $200.  I guess I don't see why people COULDN'T post that sort of info, if they wanted to.
And if you'd like to help police it, that'd be great.


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## â™¥Mirandaâ™¥ (Jan 4, 2012)

of course!

Anything to help a bro out

(we're bros, right? Is that something we are?)


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## M. LeRenard (Jan 4, 2012)

We're all bros here on FAF.


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## buni (Jan 4, 2012)

M. Le Renard said:


> Man... a really awesome thing would be if we could have a rating system, but that's beyond the capabilities of these forums.



I'm still working on it. I haven't forgotten. *argles*


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## M. LeRenard (Jan 5, 2012)

buni said:


> I'm still working on it. I haven't forgotten. *argles*


I think you misunderstand out of a guilt complex.  I was actually thinking it would be a neat idea if there could just be a button people could click to rate the work the user posts in the thread so that people would have a quick review available before checking it out themselves, or something like that.  I wasn't making a cloaked reference to the award system you've been working on.

Anyway, when I said we should discuss that type of thread, I forgot that nobody posts here anymore, so I might just make a rough version sometime soon and post it.  I do think it's a good idea.  I'll just try to brainstorm a little more on how to implement it, then make changes later if problems arise.


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## â™¥Mirandaâ™¥ (Jan 5, 2012)

hmmmm

I think if you did that, there should be a limit as to who can rate. Something like "must have been signed up for a month", to weed out spammers and people who want to mess with the ratings and such


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