Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Donations for July site hosting needed

HASA is an ad-free, fee-free Web site, run for the enjoyment of quality JRRT fanfiction. Our monthly hosting costs are $150 US. Thank you to generous site users who donated last month, and in previous months. Currently our balance is at $12.05, which means we will need donations to pay the July hosting bill. The due date is July 8th. If you look down at the bottom of any HASA page you will see a message, "Visitors Currently Online". As I write this it's at 121 visitors. If a fraction of that number who have not donated yet can donate $5 each we will be funded for next month. I'll keep you informed.

Thanks for enjoying HASA,

Julie

Saturday, June 6, 2009

HASA news - June 2009

The general news bulletin for June 2009, focusing on reviews, birthdays, challenges, and stories.

Right now, there are 11 stories waiting for reviewers (remember to log in first). If you are an active reviewer, why not go and check one out? If you are not a reviewer, please consider signing up.

Reviews

Right now, there are 11 stories waiting for reviewers (remember to log in first).

If you are an active reviewer, why not go and check one out?

If you're not an active reviewer, but would like to be one... why not sign up? You're eligible if you've been a member of HASA for thirty days or more.

As you can perhaps guess, member participation is crucial for reviews. The more people are involved in the review process, the more opinions will be represented. Just as importantly, having more people involved means that stories pass through review more quickly - which is good for everyone.

By submitting a story for review, you are asking nine other members to read and evaluate it. So why not do unto other authors in reviews as you'd like other reviewers to do unto you: check out one of the stories already in review and give it a read. Put more simply: put one in, take one out.

Challenges and Nuzgul

We have two prospective Challenges waiting for authors to join in: the Midsummer Challenge, and the HASA Birthday Challenge. You can find the Prospective Challenges forum here

Forums and Workshops

Forums are where you will find people discussing research questions and stories.

A quick overview of forum links:

On Our Minds displays the ten most recent posts in forums open to all HASA members. It’s a good way to catch up on what you’ve missed, though the page can move quickly when lots of forums are active at once.

If you've been out of touch for longer than a few days you might want to use the One Month of Posts page. This page is just what it sounds like: a list of forums that have been posted to in the last month, beginning with the most recently updated.

Workshops are specialized writing communities. They allow you to share stories you aren’t ready to post to the whole site, and many have interesting forums attached to them. Explore workshops to find a group of members interested in similar topics. (You must be logged in to see this link).

Playlists

Playlists are lists of HASA stories put together by authors and readers, just as music lovers put together lists of their favorite songs.

For example:
- An author uses playlists to put the stories in a series in reading order.
- A reader puts her ‘favourites’ in a playlist and explains why they are listed
- A reader makes a list of similarly themed stories, for instance Hobbit romance or critical essays on Men.
- ...

Anyone can create a playlist!

If you are a reader, you can collect your favorite stories by different authors together in one place. If you are an author, you can put one together of your own stories. Using the Workshop, a group of authors can put together joint playlists of their work.

If you are logged in, go to My Playlists for more information on creating your own lists.

Playlists are meant to be shared!

Once you publish your playlist, other HASA members can add your list to a playlist favorites collection. You can collect playlists by authors and other readers even if you don't have any of your own. On every playlist overview page is an "Add to My Collection" button. Click, and that list is added to your collection. If you don't see the button, check to see if you are logged in.

May Stories

All of us writers love feedback. It is the lembas and miruvor that sustains us as we write our story, and leaving a few words about a story you read is always a nice thing to do, whether the story is new or old.

Every fifteen minutes HASA highlights a story chosen at random from the Reviewed and General stories in the archive. Why not go to http://www.henneth-annun.net/ and read the currently featured story?

Many talented writers are publishing every day. In May:

--- 16 Reviewed Stories were published or updated.
--- 42 General Stories were published or updated.
--- 6 Beta Stories were published or updated.
(Please note, you need to be logged in to view beta stories.)

Thank you for reading at HASA. Enjoy!

- Nath -

Friday, June 5, 2009

HASA is looking for reviewers

I made an announcement Wednesday on the website that HASA needed reviewers.
Thank you to reviewers that answered the request -- enough that there are now 17
stories waiting, down from 19.

If you are an active reviewer, why not go and check one out? Remember to log in
first.

If you are not a reviewer, please consider signing up. You're eligible if you've
been a member of HASA for thirty days or more.

As you can perhaps guess, member participation is crucial for reviews. The more
people that are involved in the review process, the more opinions will be
represented. Having more people involved also means that stories pass through
review more quickly - which is good for everyone.

Thanks for helping,

Julie