Forum Tips for New Folks (& Reminders for us Vets)

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Hello all! 

I love seeing an increase of new folks being active in the forums. Us Old Skool kids will tell you that the forum is the best part of this contest. However, as always, when new folks come on board, and especially on a Stone Age platform like this, it's not always intuitive to navigate and can become a bit of a free for all. 

So, here's a list of tips and resources to help make your life a little easier.

Do not post your story until we get the "All Clear" email from NYCm. This is not the submission acknowledgement you get after submitting, but comes a few days later. 

Do not post your story in the "Creative Writing Corner" forum. This is a public forum, and if you are looking to try to submit your story to magazines afterwards, it will count as being "published." Make sure to use contest-specific subforum--these are only accessible to registered users.

A great resource on when, where, and how to post can be found here.

The contest-specific subforums ("Contest Name Year Review") are technically for story postings only. Beta requests go in the "Private Forum." The idea behind the Private Forum is to keep the beta lists, which have people's email addresses on it, in a registered-user-only area of the forum. All other topics - feedback conversations, writing conversations, progress reports, discussions on craft or the contest experience, belong out here in the "Creative Writing Corner" forum. The reason is that once stories start getting posted, these other type of conversations will get lost in the review forum and the engagement in these conversations will decrease. 

Once you get the all clear email and post your story, don't forget to put a link to the forum post (not directly to the story!) in your signature. This will make it easier to get returns reads. Here's a great tutorial with video on how to do it. Here's another very easy step-by-step post on how to do it. 

Typically, what you put into the forums is what you get out of it. Yes, people who have been around a while and who are active in the forums tend to get a lot of reads. However, just sitting around waiting for people to read your story isn't going to get you reads. The more stories you read, the more returns you will get. No one "owes" anyone a return read, and everyone has their own limits on time, however I've found about a 70% return rate. Active forum members are more likely to do return reads.

Post early. With so many contests, forum activity is the highest in the first couple of weeks posting. After that, people tend to move off onto other things, and then maybe come back on results day. If you post late, you are likely to get low engagement.

Historically, peer review has been used as a workshopping space for both praise and constructive critique. There seems to be a trend lately of only giving positive feedback, however you'll find some of the older crowd will still offer thoughts on how a piece might be improved.  Again, you don't owe anyone constructive criticism, but if an author notes in their post the kind of feedback they are looking for (or not looking for), respect that. And give that guidance on your own post if the kind of feedback you receive matters to you.

Have fun. Be kind. Learn something. This forum is filled with really awesome folks and I know I always learn something every contest. (It's why I keep paying the fee!)

 If your story requires a content warning, please do put it on the post. Use the "spoilers" function to hide it for those who don't need them. How to do that is in the post linked in point 3. Not everyone needs CWs and sure we don't get them on all literature, but if you can do the kindness and avoid sending one forum-mate into a PTSD spiral, why wouldn't you? 

In order to reply directly to someone's comment in a topic, use the "Quote" button located at the top right hand side of their comment. This will open a new comment box that includes the string needed to show the quoted text. The "Reply" button will simply add a new comment to the topic, it does not reply directly to any specific comment.

You can anonymously "thank" people for their post or comment up in the righthand corner. A lot of people will thank people for their story share comment after they read the commenter's story. It's an easy way to keep track of who you've done a return read for. 

You can follow or unfollow a topic by clicking "topic options" on the upper right side of the post. When you leave a comment the forum defaults you to "following" that thread. The next time someone comments, you will get an email notice. However, you will not get additional emails for that specific topic until after you visit the forums again. This helps avoid a build-up of 50 email notices if a topic is hot and you haven't had a chance to log back in a see what folks are saying yet. Once you log in, you will again get a notice for that topic after the next comment is posted.

In Classic Mode (not on Mobile) if you scroll alllll the way down to the bottom of the page there is a dropdown menu called "Forum Permissions." It tells you what you can do in a particular forum. In most cases you cannot delete comments on threads. You can edit them, which is why you will occasionally see a blank comment box or a "nothing to see here" comment.

Veterans, feel free to add your own advice. Newbies post questions.

I'm looking forward to reading some awesome stories in a couple days! 

****EDITED TO ADD*** I will occasionally come through and update with tips people are adding on the thread so that we are capturing them in the OP as well. :) 

Edited by nod1v1ng - 25 Mar 2025 at 6:54am