Heya. Welcome to the Protagonize FAQ. We'll expand on the list of answers as we receive more questions from our members, but this should cover the basics until we have time to flesh it out.

Table of Contents

General Site Information

1. What is this site, anyway?
2. What are the benefits of registering for an account?
3. Who runs Protagonize?
4. Do the developers have a blog I could subscribe to?
5. What was the site developed in?
6. What browsers does Protagonize support?
7. What are the requirements to view the site?
8. What 3rd-party components do you use?

Advertising on Protagonize

1. How can I advertise on Protagonize?

Writing Stories, Branches, and Chapters

1. How do I get started using Protagonize?
2. Where can I find the story posting guidelines?
3. How can I edit a story, branch or chapter that I've written?
4. Can I link a branch in the addventure post I'm writing to a previous one?
5. I spent a long time writing this story branch or chapter, and when I posted it, someone else had already written it!
6. Does Protagonize have a built-in spell-checker?
7. What are solo stories?
8. What is author guidance and how does it work?
9. Do you have any helpful tips for using the rich text editor?

Your Content & Site Policies

1. How exactly are the rights to my content protected?
2. Are my email address and/or account information safe?
3. How can I tell if an item contains mature content or not?
4. I saw some nasty content somewhere on the site. What can I do?
5. What types of content are not allowed?
6. What does the "content by this author has been reported..." text mean on an author's profile?

How Protagonize Works

1. Is there a way to search for stories or authors?
2. How can I change the number of items that display per list?
3. What do all the icons mean?
4. What are some not-so-obvious but useful features I can use?
5. How are user, story, and branch/chapter ratings calculated?
6. How exactly do user rankings work?
7. What makes a story "hot"?
8. How are top rated stories calculated?
9. Oops, I found a bug.
10. How can I subscribe to your RSS feeds?

Your Protagonize Account

1. How can I delete or de-activate my account?
2. How can I block a user?
3. How do I hide my online status?
4. How do I enable or disable the profanity filter?

About This Site

Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to writing various forms of collaborative, interactive fiction. One author writes a story, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where everyone can participate. Curious? You can read more about how the site came to be over on our About Protagonize page. If you want to join in our community, feel free to register for a membership and take advantage of all the features we have to offer.

back to top

Membership Benefits

If you register for a free Protagonize.com account, several options open up to you that you wouldn't normally have available as an unregistered user.

Here are some of the features that our members enjoy:

• Post and rate stories, branches, and chapters
• Add favourites and page markers
• Edit their profile
• Comment on stories or author profiles
• Send items to friends
• Contact authors
• View and print entire stories

On top of that, we're adding new features every day. The Protagonize blog describes new features as they're made available to members.

back to top

Site Authors

back to top

The Protagonize Blog

Yup, check out the Protagonize blog for site feature previews and other information. Make sure to subscribe to our blog RSS feed while you're there!

back to top

Site Information

The site is built entirely in Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 and sits on top of a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database. Protagonize is happily hosted at ServerBeach, a Peer1 company.

back to top

Browser Support

Protagonize has been tested with and currently officially supports the following browsers:

• Firefox 3.0.1
• Firefox 2.0.0.16
• Internet Explorer 7
• Safari 3.1.2
• Flock 1.2.4
• Opera 9.25 (some minor stylesheet issues)

Protagonize has been tested and runs in limited fashion with the following unsupported browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6 (please upgrade to IE7!)
• Opera 9.5 (has issues with login mechanism)
• Safari 2 (please upgrade to Safari 3)

Note: We suggest that you upgrade to the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Safari for a better user experience!

back to top

Site Requirements

To achieve any kind of kind of decent user experience on Protagonize, you'll have to have JavaScript enabled in your browser, images enabled, and support for Cascading Stylesheets (CSS.) If you don't have any of those three turned on, we suggest you either loosen up or upgrade to a modern non text-based browser. :)

back to top

3rd Party Components

We want to thank the many large and small organizations that have published open-source and free/public domain components that allowed us to make the our site's user experience that much better.

Protagonize.com proudly makes use of the following third-party components:

• Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)
  http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/
• MoxieCode TinyMCE: JavaScript WYSIWYG Editor
  http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/
• ASP.NET RSS Toolkit
  http://www.codeplex.com/ASPNETRSSToolkit
• Newtonsoft Json.NET
  http://james.newtonking.com/pages/json-net.aspx
• ASP.NET CAPTCHA Web Control
  http://www.codeproject.com/KB/custom-controls/CaptchaControl.aspx
• JSMIN, The JavaScript Minifier
  http://javascript.crockford.com/jsmin.html

back to top

Advertising on Protagonize

We currently use Google AdSense for the majority of our advertising, but if you're interested in advertising independently on Protagonize.com, please read our advertising information and let us know. We can always work something out to suit your needs. Additional traffic statistics and our rate sheet will be provided upon contact.

back to top

Getting Started With Protagonize

So, you've been meandering around the site, reading others' stories, and now you want to contribute something of your own. How do you go about doing that?

Well, first and foremost, you'll have to register for a free Protagonize membership. Once you've done that, a whole slew of new options will open up to you.

The best place to figure out how stuff works is our new Getting started with Protagonize page. Give that a read-through and you should be set!

Looking for inspiration, or more stories to read? Check out our main stories page.

back to top

Posting Guidelines

Our posting guidelines can be found over on the Write A New Story page.

back to top

Editing a Post

The poster of a story, branch or chapter can edit their post for up to 24 hours after creating it, as long as no one has followed it up with a new post yet. If someone's already posted a follow-up, you can't edit it anymore; we can't have people changing their stories after the fact. :) To edit a story, just click the "Edit story/branch/chapter" link beside the content you've just posted:

If it's a story, you'll be able to edit everything, including tags and categories. If it's a branch or chapter, you'll have the standard editing options.

However, if someone's followed up on your post, the edit link will no longer show up — so if you need to edit, try not to wait too long before doing so! Note: The editors of the site may also edit posts here and there (not often), mostly to correct small, obvious typos. This is just general clean-up, and is in no way intended to cause harm to or modify the meaning of your story fragment.

back to top

Linking a New Branch to Existing Ones

Due to popular demand, we've added the ability to link branches of addventure stories of a new post back to existing/previous branches in the same story. How does this work? It's actually pretty simple. When you're posting a new branch in an existing story, you'll see a new link above the branch title boxes that looks like this:

Click the "link to previous branch" link, choose a previous branch in the story from the popup, and hit the "Link" button. The pathway should now be linked up to the previous branch you created, uneditable, and look something like this:

Now once you save your branch, the path you linked back to a previous branch will jump directly there when someone clicks on it. Keep in mind that you can't link to the same previous branch twice in the same posting, and you can only link to previous branches that you would have crossed in order to get to your current point in the story.

If you picked the wrong branch to link to, or simply decided to write your own new branch title, just click the "unlink" button to clear the linkage. Keep in mind, this functionality only appears on addventures, and not on linear stories.

back to top

Story Fragment Duels (!)

Please be careful if you spent a long period of time writing the same branch or chapter. It's entirely possible that someone else is completing the same fragment as you, and in that case, since we don't lock posts while you edit, whoever submits their post first will "win" and you'll have to move your post elsewhere.

We're looking into a better solution to this problem, but the options are limited to either locking branches and chapters for editing, or adding some kind of background check every few minutes to see if someone's posted your fragment. Locking posts for editing seems a more likely option, but we won't be adding that until we can afford to have story fragments locked off for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, once the site has been up a little longer.

back to top

Spell-checking

While Protagonize itself does not have a built-in spell-checking tool, you have a couple of options if you don't have a spell-checker handy when writing.

• If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, the text editor that you use for writing on Protagonize should offer you a spell-check option. It'll be on the right side of the editor's toolbar. The IE spellchecker uses a 3rd party tool called IESpell to handle checking and will require you to install a plugin.
• If you use Mozilla Firefox, things are a little simpler, as Firefox has a built-in spell-check tool. Using Firefox, misspelled words will be underlined with a dotted red line in your editor.
• If you use Safari on Mac OS X, you should be able to harness the power of the built-in OS X spellchecker. You can find out more information about enabling this tool here.

back to top

Solo Stories

While we encourage folks to write collaboratively on Protagonize as a social undertaking, we recognize that many authors just want to write their own stories all by their lonesome. With this in mind, we've added the option to publish solo stories. You can find this option at the bottom of the story editor (see image below), or in the Story Settings panel after you've published your story and can no longer edit the content.

Solo stories only allow the original author to add new chapters to them, as you would expect. You can also switch a story back to collaborative mode if you so desire. The only catch here is that if you started a story in collaborative mode and someone else added a new branch or chapter afterwards, you can no longer convert the story to solo mode. If you're the only author in your story so far, though, you can switch back and forth at will.

back to top

Author Guidance

When reading a story, you may notice a link entitled "Click to view author guidance" to the right of the chapter you're reading. Author guidance allows the original story's author to describe their plot outline, setting, characters, narrative mode, intended story length, inspiration, or any other notes they'd like to add about their story. The entry area is freeform, and entirely optional.

The purpose of author guidance is to allow the author of a story to communicate some guidelines about how they'd like other authors to follow up on what they've started. The original story author can update the author guidance block at any time after their story's been posted, so that they can follow up on further posts with notes or changes to the way they see the story going.

One thing to keep in mind is that author guidance may contain spoilers for the story you're reading, so unless you're planning on contributing a new chapter or branch to it, you may not want to read it right away.

back to top

Rich Text Editor Usage Tips

This is a quick list of useful tips and tricks for using TinyMCE, our rich text editor:

• You're limited in formatting to the options we've enabled — if you try and paste in huge purple bold text in Comic Sans from Microsoft Word, it'll still be formatted on the based on the rules and styles we've allowed. Sorry!
• Writing something long and worried you might lose it accidentally? Feel free to write it in an external editor (Notepad, Microsoft Word, etc.) and paste it into our editor. If you're prone to accidentally hitting the back button in your browser, this may save you some trouble.
• You can't create hyperlinks in your post. This is on purpose, to prevent spamming. Down the road, however, we may tweak it so that it will auto-link URLs that refer back to Protagonize. That way, you'll be able to link to other pages on the site easily.
• If you hold the shift key when pressing enter, it won't double-space the next line, it'll single space it.

back to top

Protecting Your Content

All content published by individual authors on Protagonize is protected by and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

The basic gist of the license is that (to quote Wikipedia):

• Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
• Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

For the legally inclined, a more detailed version of the license is available for your reading pleasure here.

back to top

Your Privacy

Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more information concerning the security of your user account information.

back to top

Mature Content

Items containing mature content should be marked as mature. Items flagged as mature will not show up in many areas of the site (for instance, on the homepage), so be sure not to flag an item as mature by accident. Author profiles or comments containing mature content will be edited by Protagonize staff as necessary.

Keep in mind that if a story is flagged as mature, every branch or chapter under that story is also considered mature, even if it may not contain mature content.

back to top

Reporting Content

The site is not actively moderated, so we count on users to report content that is inappropriately flagged as mature, or goes beyond our internal "mature" rating in terms of content. We hope that mutual respect will enable everyone in the Protagonize community to work together to handle policing the site and making sure content stays at appropriate levels throughout. At the bottom of each story, branch, chapter, or user profile, you'll see a button entitled "Flag". Please use it if necessary, but don't abuse it! If you see an item that is not flagged as mature, but should be, please let us know via the link. The "Flag" link should also be used if you find anything from the list of disallowed content below. Keep in mind that abusing the reporting functionality may result in negative consequences for the reporter, at our discretion.

While we do allow specific types of mature content on the site when properly flagged as such, we don't allow any kind of hate speech or content that would be in excess of an "R" rating, in MPAA terms.

The maintainers of the site reserve the right to remove any content (be it stories, branches, chapters, comments, or user profile information) that we find offensive or illegal. We're reasonable people; content that we think should be flagged mature will be flagged as such if we come across it, but we're hoping that members don't cross the line and post anything overly distasteful or illegal. While chances are good that you will only be warned for a first offense, we are also more than willing to permanently ban members who break the rules regularly.

More information about content rules can be found at our Terms of Use page.

back to top

Disallowed Content

Here's a brief (but not comprehensive) listing of the types of content that are not permissible and will likely result in the aforementioned content being removed immediately:

• Content containing hate speech or inciting hatred in any way
• Obscene content, or content containing overly pornographic, violent, illegal, or aberrational elements
• Libelous or slanderous remarks towards real people or legal entities
• Copyrighted material not owned by the poster and not available in the public domain
• Attacks on other site members, be they unprovoked or otherwise
• Advertising, marketing, or spam of any kind

In addition to the removal of the offending content, members found posting content of the types listed above may be banned or have their accounts permanently removed, at our discretion. This includes all of the comments, story, branch or chapters posted by a specific user, so please think carefully before posting anything that could be construed as overly offensive.

back to top

Reported Authors

The "reported" text on an author's profile (in the Author Popularity section) displays the total number of times a profile, story, branch, or chapter by the author in question has been reported to Protagonize staff, and that report has been verified and resolved. Unresolved reports will not show up in author popularity information. This means that either an administrator or moderator has reviewed the report and has resolved it.

However, that resolution (assuming the report was not frivolous), if it's against a specific author, will remain on that author's profile as a warning to other readers and authors.

back to top

Search Functionality

We're currently in the process of adding some basic search functionality to the site. In the meantime, feel free to browse the Stories listing by tag or category, and Authors listings by browsing author names and ratings.

back to top

Changing the Number of Items Displayed

You can tweak the site interface to your own liking (slightly) by changing the number of items that display in all listing controls throughout the site. The default setting is 5 items per listing, but you're welcome to set it however you like.

To change this setting, simply scroll down to the bottom of a page that contains several listing controls (such as the homepage, or the authors or stories main pages) and make a new selection from the "showing ... items per category" control:

back to top

Icon Definitions

Well, all of the icons on the site should have tooltips explaning their function if you mouse over them, but in case you're having a hard time figuring out their individual functions, here's a brief overview:

• Write a new story
• View entire story / View all stories by author
• Add (or remove) a favourite
• Add (or remove) a page marker
• Jump to latest branch/chapter in story
• Send this item to a friend
• Edit a story, branch or chapter
• Edit my profile
• Contact this author
• Report this item

As an aside, if you see the same icon graphic on a different coloured background button, there's a very good chance that it has a similar function in both cases, related to the context.

back to top

Not-So-Obvious Features of Protagonize

There are a few things you may have missed when glancing at Protagonize the first time around. We figured we'd let you know about a few of these nifty yet unobtrusive features before you find out accidentally:

• Most story and author listings throughout the site will allow you to subscribe to their specific RSS feed by clicking the icon beside the title of the control.
• When you're several posts into a story, and you've forgotten where you're at, or you just want to print the whole thing out, click the icon to pop up a window displaying the entire story path you've taken to date, in an easy-to-print layout. This option is only available to registered users!
• As a registered user, looking at "My Page Markers", "My Favourites" and "My Top Rated" will not only list the stories you've read in a variety of different views, it'll also let you know which of your favourite/marked or top rated stories have been updated recently.
• When reading a story, the icon at the bottom of the story box will jump you to the latest branch or chapter posted in that story.
• Additionally, clicking the "branches/chapters" link below a story name in list views will generally take you to the latest fragment posted in that story.
• There are a couple of ways to see all postings be a specific author: you can click the "stories + branches" link under their name in author listings, or you can click the "See all stories" link from "The Goods" panel on the right-hand side of their profile page.
• This FAQ is actually quite informative, if you read it through entirely. :)

back to top

How User & Story Ratings Are Calculated

Branches and chapters are voted on directly by registered users, and this rating is the basis for all generated ratings throughout the site, including stories and authors. The rating you see for any specific story is an average of all votes for each post in a story, out of 5. User ratings are an average of the ratings of all stories and branches or chapters posted by that user.

back to top

User Rankings

User rankings are based entirely on the amount you post. Similar to how you'd be rated on message boards, the more you post, the higher your ranking. The ranking icon is unrelated to your user rating, which is explained here.

<10 posts = Lackey
10 posts = Hothead
25 posts = Gambler
50 posts = Daredevil
100 posts = Mercenary
250 posts = Adventurer
500 posts = Swashbuckler
1,000 posts = Argonaut
2,500 posts = Hero
5,000 posts = Legend
10,000 posts = Immortal
Moderator
Editor

back to top

Hot Stories

"Hot" stories are determined using our special sauce™ (ahem) algorithm. It's not all that complicated (for now) — a combination of several weighted factors, including frequency of updates to a certain story (i.e. new comments, branches/chapters, favourites, and markers), the story's overall rating by readers, and the "freshness" of the story.

On top of those factors, if a story hasn't been updated in over 31 days, it will never show up in the Hot Stories list.

While it's probably quite possible to "game" the system right now, we'll work on making that a little less obvious t

back to top

Top Stories

Top stories are calculated in a pretty simple fashion. They're the highest rated stories on average, with a fixed number of minimum votes required in order to qualify. That way, voting a 5.0 on your own story won't let it show up on the homepage right away. :)

back to top

Reporting Bugs

We're not perfect, so it's entirely possible that some bugs have made their way through onto the site. We appreciate all bug reports — please send them to us via email and we'll address the issue as fast as we can.

back to top

RSS Feeds

Please take a look at our detailed feeds listing for information on subscribing to the various feeds spread throughout the site.

back to top

Deleting or De-activating Your Account

We'll be adding the option to delete and/or de-activate your account yourself very soon. In the meantime, if you'd like us to remove your account (including all of your posts and comments), please contact us and let us know if you'd like your account de-activated (which is reversible) or removed permanently. We'll be sure to process your request promptly.

There are a few caveats to be aware of when requesting account removal or de-activation. Please read the following to ensure that you understand exactly what you're getting into. These issues are specific to collaborative writing and prevent us from deleting some content entirely if others have contributed after you, so as to not destroy entire stories with the removal of posts willy-nilly. It's important that you're aware of these limitations.

Account deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. Deletion results in the following:

• All of your stories, chapters or branches that have no follow-up posts will be permanently deleted
• All of your stories, chapters or branches that have follow-up posts will be shown as posted by Anonymous
• All other content associated with your account (comments, markers, favourites, ratings, etc.) will be permanently deleted
• Your user profile is permanently deleted and your former username/handle will be made available to everyone

Account de-activation is reversible if you so choose, which means that your content and user profile will remain on our servers, although invisible to other authors. De-activation results in the following:

• All of your stories, chapters or branches that have no follow-up posts will no longer be visible to users
• All of your stories, chapters or branches that have follow-up posts will be shown as posted by Anonymous
• All other content associated with your account (comments, markers, favourites, ratings, etc.) will no longer be visible to users
• Your user profile will no longer be visible to users, but your username/handle will remain assigned to your account

Please note: Make sure to email us using the address associated with your account, or we won't be able to help you!

back to top

Blocking Unsavoury Users

Unfortunately, there's no way to block another author from seeing your content on Protagonize at the present time. It's something we're looking into, definitely. For the time being, if someone is bothering or harassing you in some way, please report the author using the "Flag" button on their profile and we'll deal with them accordingly.

back to top

Hiding Your Online Status

To hide your online status, simply edit your profile, and under Privacy & other options, check the "Hide Online Status" box. Once you save your profile, you should appear as an anonymous registered user. To switch back, just uncheck the box and re-save your profile.

back to top

Enabling & Disabling the Profanity Filter

To disable the profanity filter, you need to edit your profile. Under Privacy & other options, un-check the "Enable Profanity Filter" box. Once you save your profile, the filter should be disabled. To re-enable the profanity filter, just check the box and re-save your profile.

back to top