Some very quick mid-month patch notes since we've had a few mention-worthy updates since the last patch notes (which really hasn't been all that long ago)!
Reader Suggestions
If you are one of those authors who just love getting grammatical and typo corrections from their readers, this one is for you! You can enable Reader Suggestions in the Settings -> Edit menu on the very bottom:
Once you enable this, readers can highlight any text in your fiction's chapters for quick corrections:
They can quickly type in their edits, which is then added to their comment box. This should make it a lot faster and straightforward to send corrections. The feature is on a toggle so if you don't care for it or find these corrections bothersome, you can simply leave it off or disable later on.
The credits for the original script go to Firebird, who provided us with the source code some time ago for improvement and site-wide implementation.
Disabling Rating Stats
One of our most requested feature for a while has been the ability to disable the ratings and rankings for your fictions so they stop staring at you. While these ranks are an important discoverability feature for authors, we understand that not everyone wants to obsess over them or might find their glaring presence on their dashboard distracting. So now you can disable them via the Settings -> Disable Rating Stats menu.
Disabling these stats will not disable ratings for your fiction - as doing so would have a huge number of further implications -, you simply won't see them.
In case you feel like you might be the type of person who obsesses too much, you can also lock this change for a certain period of time or even forever so you can't disable it even if you have the urge.
Hiding Reviews
We have been frequently told that authors may want to remove certain reviews from their dashboard just so it stops annoying them - and while reviews are crucial as feedback to both readers and authors, we understand that authors might not always agree with the reviews' content and don't want to have the criticism staring them down every time they open their dashboard.
We've now added a button to the author dashboard to hide a review from the author - please, PLEASE keep in mind that this only hides the review from the author, other users will still see the review as usual.
The feature requires 2 clicks instead of 1 to avoid accidental clicks, and the toast notification contains an undo button - once the notification expires, the action is final.
Our goal with these changes is to help the mental health of authors with more utility features without degrading the usability of the website for readers.
Minor changes
Some additional, more minor changes:
- Added a reminder to the review form about being nice and sticking to the rules.
- Replaced the "first chapter in x hours" input during chapter import with a datetime picker
- Added a popup that appears after rating to encourage writing reviews instead of only leaving a rating.
Further fixes
Here are some more, albeit less note-worthy fixes:
- The author dashboard and fiction dashboard should now show the same number for your rank
- Chapter release lines are no longer missing from the pageviews page
- Removing fictions from your favorites no longer redirects you to the fiction page instead of the favorites page
- Accidental double-posting comments and forum posts should be a thing of the past
- The table editor now uses max-width instead of width, which means it can now be used with absolute values instead of percentages - it will only apply that width if it can fit on the page.
- Support ticket and achievement notifications are now marked as read when you click the notification
- Replying to a comment that you have a notification for will mark the notification as read
- The text color picker no longer has black and white options since these aren't respected anyway
- Fixed browser errors when editing chapters which happened when you tried adding links
- Fixed the bug where the occasional forum link took you to a page with no posts
- Forum subscriptions are updated correctly based on the dropdown when you post a new reply
- Fixed a bug where certain comment links linked to a non-existent comment page
- Fixed a bug where the last updated thread didn't update correctly in the forums
Selkie on
Thank you!
SuperPowerRon on
Hmmm, did Zethuron change their name or something? ;)
Lemon-Gruber on
Is he alive ? I didn't see him on the first page
broww on
I saw on
broww on
I saw on a novel that he apparently has some pc issues
Fractal on
A new challenger has appeared! Congrats Selkie
DoomAlsoDoom on
Thanks!
Gennon Asche on
Thanks dad.
Nulls on
THANKS FOR CHAPPY!!! <3
caerulex on
Thanks Kana! Hiding reviews is lovely.
SJ Reaver on
Stare at the ratings too long, the ratings stare back.
NickXenix on
Under 'rated' comment.
kanadaj on
RavensDagger on
Thepundit2 on
GamingWolf on
JK-sama on
Plus1 on
Thanks!
l611 on
Replying to a comment that you have a notification for will mark the notification as read
I think this isn't needed. the cluttering of comment notifications usually happens when there are a ton of comments in a fast moving discussion. so there is often a chance to miss some other comment. instead of that, a 'mark all read' for notification would be a lot more helpful. that's my opinion.
Banhammered 40k on
Absolutely amazeballs
The Aimless Passerby on
I'd been wondering about the Suggest Edits feature for a long time. Similar to the Hypothesis extension. Happy to see it taken up!
The Aimless Passerby on
...Why are the suggested edits in a comment instead of a toggleable overlay or updating report the author can access? This seems so inefficient and prone to duplicates
Faber Write on
Thank ye kindly!
pewpewcachoo on
Thanks Kana, keep up the good work and you might get some tacos.
jacobpaige on
Is there a way for readers to disable the suggest edits thing? I highlight text to keep track of where I am as I scroll through the story, and it is extremely distracting to have that thing always there, blocking the upcoming text.
l611 on
^^ this
kanadaj on
Not yet but if enough people want it I'll see what I can do tomorrow
jacobpaige on
Fingers crossed then that this annoys lots and lots of people ;)
Rayodino on
I feel the same, it's quite distracting
weakman54 on
Yup, same here.
Jeff091 on
same
Asviloka on
Could put it off to the side, outside the text area, so it's not in the way of reading?
Monitor on
That actually sounds nice. As both a reader and a author I like that feature (although the button seems a bit weird on my iPad (I might just have misclicked, etc, more testing necessary)), but having the button not somehwere obstructing would be nice. Maybe over the marked text, to the right?
Just throwing ideas around :-)
Gramis on
Please add the ability to turn this off.
kanadaj on
You can already turn it off on your user settings page
Drakaos on
It finally happened! Reader suggestions!
SuperPowerRon on
Thanks for the hard work! I also love that you made it, so when you unadd favorites that it doesn't take you to the main page. It's not that big of a deal, but it's nice.
MarikoRawralton on
Y'know, I thought I was worried I'd hate the suggestion feature, but I got my first comment with it today. Pretty impressive stuff, definitely keeping it on for my story.
Thanks for the update, devs! (Sorry, I'm still kinda new and learning names.)
Lower Tier Dragon on
From a self-admitted neurotic wreck: Thank you. The ability to toggle off the prominence of the "rat race" in personal displays means a lot to me. You folks have done a super job implementing things that addressed my gripes over the past two years and I was (slowly) on the way to making a return anyway, but this completed the part of the list that I myself had written off as "I'll just have to learn to live with it and mess with scripts myself". The corrections function is the sweet maraschino cherry on top.
Guess that's another excuse out the window for me.
Endless Paving on
Hooray! This was writing excuses; you're out of excuses, now go write.
xD
SavageMercy on
Thanks for all your work! ^-^
Imperator Virtue on
Benis
Vowron Prime on
Stay awesome, you two (three?)
Audumn on
Thanks for the update!
Root Greevil on
Looks good! It's great that the site is constantly updating itself and adding features, which are often actually valuable, as opposed to much of the internet which randomly changes things just to change them.
A quick note - as a general rule, reviews are NOT for the author. They would never be for the author, except that as a website that hosts ongoing works authors might want to check in and and see what people think to change and learn as their story goes on. My views on this are not just my own but things I have heard from established Hugo award-winning authors, and I agree with their take. Reviews are for other readers to potentially help them learn if they will like a story or not. There are plenty of other ways to contact authors on the site, such as comments and PMs, and it would be nice if RR could help promote reviews for other readers only, as that's what they are there for.
Endless Paving on
Yup. There is need to distinguish between a review and a critique.
Lwan on
nice
artsymarsy on
wonderful updates, thank you
Goblin_Kun on
ngeeeEEEEEEEeeeng ?
WitheredSage on
Thanks for the new features! The Suggest Edit was truly helpful.
Skoonting on
The edit suggestions makes me so incredibly horny
Sorry on
Venan on
These changes are awesome!
Ace Arriande on
Great additions!
Cawasnow on
Looks good to me.
Csuite on
Incredible.
Also love the 'ngeeeEEEEEEEeeeng'.
Rydenius on
Wow! The site feels way faster! Wheeeeeee!-min-AACAHCk7Xgw=.png)
Thanks for all your hard work, admins!
Sydorow on
This are all pretty cool, thanks!
Sydorow on
Wait how do I delete a comment
Sydorow on
HELP
IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE "THESE"
HOW DO I EDIT
Sydorow on
Can someone delete my comment please
I can't sleep seeing this grammatical error in my hastily revised comment...
uiytt on
😂
Rayodino on
Just commenting to let you know I'll never forget this blunder
uiytt on
Thank you for the update, would it be possible in a future update to add a way for readers to readers suggestion. I'm not good at english and I found this feature very distracting.
Sorry 😬, Anyway, thanks for all these greats features
Croriam on
oh the reader suggestions one is nice.
Rayodino on
I believe a better feature would be to allow the author to comment on a review. I believe this would be fair as many other review systems do the same in order to allow the recipient a chance to either defend themselves or aknowledge specific criticism.
Lentin on
NgeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeennnnggg!!!
Umbral Reaper on
Reader suggestions 🎉. Finally, I don't have to save all the typos in a separate page!
Not_A_Hat on
Being able to hide the story metrics is great. I might actually be able to focus on writing, if I can manage to get past the things blocking me IRL.
Now you guys should do an a/b test, where it's auto-hidden for half the new authors to see way writers are more likely to stick around, then make that the default.
Not_A_Hat on
*which way
Weird that there's no 'edit comment' button here.
Endless Paving on
Whatever happens on the Internet stays Everywhere. Also, Science! Experiments are always great if you can afford to do them.
Endless Paving on
What a glorious update.
LurkerWizard on
You guys are awesome!
Ararara on
Finally, no more empty forum pages!
Asviloka on
YESSSSSSSSS thank you!!!
RainGear on
Thank you for the update! ❤️
DarkD on
Amazing update. Didn't think you'd ever give us such advanced features. I just assumed they would take up too much bandwidth to implement. Well done.
13lack12ose on
Speeeeeed
Thanks for the update RR team!
Mangroowe on
Noice
Joe the majestic reader on
Thank you
Burningsock on
Well this seems nice. Thanks a lot RR!
Anhi Rany on
Norman Arthur Brumm IV on
While being able to suggest edits to the Author are great, is there a way to opt-out as a reader? I tend to highlight text when reading and that bright blue button to directly suggest edits gets in the way of the next paragraph.
kanadaj on
Will have that implemented sometime this week. I mostly just need to figure out where to actually put it so it's in a sane place.
kanadaj on
You can now disable it at Account Settings | Royal Road
Celestial Reader on
Thank you for these fixes. I feel peaceful
LazyTiger on
The new suggest an edit feature is a great additon, however I would like to suggest that it return the text color to the default white after the transplanted text rather than having to do so manually. You might even say I'm suggesting an edit to the suggest and edit feature.
kanadaj on
Would that I could, but it's your browser that's doing it, not me. I'll see if I can do some class shenanigans instead so it won't copy the color.
ChocolateBun on
Thank you for the hard work
Roko's Basilisk on
I saw the "suggest edit" button accidentally while on mobile and went "There's an aupdate? Already? Hot DAMN that's useful!"
Volker Hütter on
Great :)
Fractal on
I have a request: can chapter reply notifications also include the title of the book? It can get very confusing