Brian Coltrane

No. What do you think this is, the Holiday Inn? Besides, the jail food here comes fresh out of a can. Delicious, nutritious, government surplus, creamed chipped beef! Gravy's so thin, it hides the stale bread we serve it on. And our tapwater is fresh outta the faucet, served in a sanitized 4 ounce tin cup. Just like momma used to make.

Oh, I will name her bail, in good time. But since she's been admirin' the place so much from the outside, I'm gonna let her get a good look at the view from inside the cell. Maybe an overnight stay will make her think twice about tryin' to pull any shuck n' jives against the law. Plus, she's a Duke, and ya gotta maintain some substandards.

Don't worry Mufn. As soon as we're done lockin' up Dukes, we'll get to the rest of our Wanted list. *pencils in another name*

Aha! Finally, the top-secret Duke family recipie for chocolate no-bake cookies! Tasty and easy to make. 'Zactly what I was lookin' for. I'd say yer free to go, Daney. Lemme just see if MaryAnne is paying any attention.... DEPUTY! We got real estate openin' up, if you'd like to get the key for Miss Duke.

It was a good, productive discussion all the way around. We're glad ya'll piped up and made your points. We'd rather know about something, and have a chance to improve it, than just see people walk away with no explanation whatsover. And Mufn's got some new scheme in mind that should make the fanfic section pretty cool. Tho' we had to take our discussion "outside" to settle some differences in viewpoint....*holds an icepack over eye* Just kiddin', we're all on the same page, if you'll pardon the expression.

Daney, if anybody's evah needed a lawyer... it's you! Man alive, look at this rap sheet. I can't even read this stuff aloud as we got young 'ens in the building. Bail's gonna be mighty steep in yer case.... But lucky for you, I'm willing to overlook some of your more blatant crimes and give you a break. For your bail.... You need to surrender your recipie for chocolate no-bake cookies.

Would that kind of structure allow for multiple-author uploads on the same story? In other words, support an RR structure?

That's true. Then again, I've seen ones start of bad and get worse. The difference is , if the participants are actually trying to move the story forward. It's subjective thing, and open to a lot of opinion and interpretation, but I believe our members trust the HNet staff to make those judgment calls. And again, this thread speaks to the one-liner post habits as being the most unacceptable. I'm OK with taking some input from people here, and keeping what's worth keeping, but I'm also saying that we've got the right, and responsibility, to make determinations on what gets kept in the forums and what doesn't.

BAHAHAHAHA!! I think that qualifies as bail. That's a right purty poem! Rodger, you might just be the new balladeer o' Hazzard County. Whatcha think, MaryAnne?

This thread, and it's title, speaks for itself. I think there's been plenty of concensus that says, stories that are mostly one-liners, are not what the RR's ever intended, nor what a reader expects. My stance was different when I was picturing some budding writer trying to elk out a story. But after really looking at what is here.... that doesn't seem to be the case. I think our generosity and openess can, in fact, be taken advantage of.

I think deleting the crap would be doing the right thing for HNet and most members. After further review, you could say, my stance on the issue has changed.

I have to respectfully question the value of keeping some of the low-quality fics. If it doesn't attract readership, doesn't promote interest in the DOH or HazzardNet, and it's basically the writer's equivalent to ...manual self-gratification, then why dedicate server space to it? After looking some of these RR's over, I'm not seeing much more than a quest to see how many posts can be racked up. A couple years ago or so, we broke up the categories in the RR's to please a particular segment of members. In the process, we displeased a particular segment of HNet staffers. Nobody's been bothered by that latter fact, apparently, but I don't see where the change brought any improvements. Excuse my temper, but it's starting to piss me off, when I stop and think about how much we sweat the details on how this site looks and functions, and what the user experience is like.... and then we pretty much get run over with crap and we're expected to protect it. Say what? I'm not saying everything is Masterpeice Theatre around here, or has to be, Lord knows I've got baloney posted in several areas. But I think we NEED to use that delete key to get the point across, in the most blatant cases. If we don't care about the content in the RR's, nobody else will either, and the quality will never improve. I'm all for supporting budding authors and helping people grow their skills. However, when the RR's pretty much become a Twitter page - we're done. Can it. Flush twice to make sure it goes down.

Bail? What bail? Oh, thassright. BAIL! We can't have Rodger freeloadin' around in our jail forevah. Besides, we're equal opportunity injustice, and we gotta give other folks a chance to experience the hospitality of our hoosegow. Roger, here's whatcha gotta do to pay your way out. Write a poem with a Hazzard theme. It can be an Ode to Miz Tizdale if ya want. Post it here where everybody can see it, and if it passes our already notoriously lax standards, you'll be free to go! Have at it!

I'm sorry we interrupted yer date takin' Miz Tizdale to a catfight. But lookit the bright side, the AOL dial-up is a free trial. MUAHAHAHA!!

You just got here. You already want to make a phone call? I suppose it's awright... I'm still comin' up with what the bail's gonna be. MaryAnne's gone looking for more victims, er - lawbreakers.

To help HazzardNet keep the Round Robin sections in good order, please take a moment to nominate your favorite story, or stories. Include some feedback about why you like those stories. It's OK to vote for something you're participating in, or have started yourself. We'll fine-tune this as we go along, and we may use this kinda feedback for determining writing contest winners n' such.

People gotta earn their way OUT of jail, not into it. It's very easy to get in. This is Hazzard, after all. Jail's always an option in Hazzard County... And to take the first thang last, if a writer isn't lookin' for feedback....then they can ignore it. But it's always gonna be there. Any type of art is gonna bring opinion.

Tell ya what! Feel free to rat out some offenders, and we'll get the warrants out on 'em. The Hazzard County Jail is officially open. Roger's our first "guest." He hasn't realized this yet. Heh! I'm ponderin' his bail.....hmmm...

Very good points are being made by ya'll. There's some well-thought out feedback and ideas here. MaryAnne and I will put our heads together today - *bonk* OW! - and sort out the likely plan, and get Mufn's input. Meanwhile, I'm gonna start a thread for voting on your favorite stories. One of the things we'd like to do going forward, is make sure our writers get recognition and constructive feedback. Voting for favorites, and maybe having an occassional award, is something we should do on an ongoing basis. Similiar to the "Fan of the Month" thang, maybe we should have a fanfic award, quarterly. Who knows, if we see a story that's really good, we might include it in our monthly ( or every so often-ly) newsletter. Or at least link to it. I hear two things over and over that are very positive in these discussions. Namely: "I wanna write!" "I wanna read!" I think we can find a win-win.

There's been some good feedback on this thread and the "Say No to One-Liners" thread, which probably has the latest on the proposals going around. Everyone's input is appreciated and will be considered. I like the idea of a "Hazzard County Jail" section, tho' I might use that for a variety of purposes. It'd be a hoot to list somebody in there at random, then given that person a "bail" of sorts, being a task they'd have to complete, in order to be "released." Like, for example, I threw Chet Duke in there. Chet's "bail" might be, a 100-word essay on Why Brian Coltrane Is The Best Moderator Anywhere. Tho' I might pitch Roger Duke in there first, just becasuse he'd get a kick out of it.

Sounds like we're on the same page, couisn. I've already started deleting a few very old, and dormant threads, that were crafted by one of the nuisance parties. But I won't touch anybody else's stuff until Mufn and other folks around here can weigh in. I think if we leave a few active stories going , that are good, and we archive some for library material , and delete the dead stuff.... we can breathe some new life into the RR's. And you and I can keep up with them. Not that we're going to butt in all the time, and participate in EVERYTHING, and take it all over.... no. Not at all. But we won't abandon the place again. Maybe we've over-categorized the RR section, too. We've tried so hard to keep everybody happy, that darn near nobody's happy. Including me and MaryAnne. For now, nobody panic. We'll always have RR's and we do want all levels of writers to feel welcome. But we also want READERS to feel welcome and have, as it's been said, something worth reading. I don't wanna see the RR's reduced to scratchpaper and scribbles.

I'm gonna quote myself and answer my own question, to see what reaction , if any, it gets. I think we've went off-course with the RR's. I'll take responsibility for some of that , as I used to patrol those pretty heavily, and I'd delete the crap. Yep. Bad post? *ZAP*. No post. No problem. Other times, to make a point, I'd take a post that made no sense, and make it even worse, editing it to amuse myself. This isn't professional conduct, but it was funnier n' hell. If a story thread was so awful that it was a waste of server space, I used to get out the Magic Black Eraser and *POOF!* Gone. I paid more attention to what was going on in the RR's , when I participated. But then when there was that big to-do with some people not wanting non-original Dukes characters in an RR...I took it as a hint. I left the RR's to go in whatever direction the participants wanted, left all of it to MaryAnne to sort out, and I spent my writing time elsewhere. Looking back....maybe we're too democratic and too kind here, and we've let quality slide to the point that some people don't even make a real effort to post something worthwhile. I'm tempted, with a couple of exceptions, to blow up everything on the RR's and start over. Clean slate. Begin anew. Before anybody panics you could all vote on the top 3 or 5 stories you think are worth keeping going. This might be a radical notion, but it's the only way a moderator could jump back into the fray and keep up with what's going on. Opinions?

It ain't unreasonable, to want a story that contains something. Heh!

BAHAHAHA! Thanks for pointing that out, Roger.

I think the question really is...what are we looking for, on HazzardNet? What was our original intent with the RR's, and are they what we'd hoped for, today?