‡ Fiction Alley ‡

• http://www.fictionalley.org/
  
• Ratings: G – R.
• Terms of Service
• FAQ
• Submission Guidelines
• Authors' review by Jayabear, zoec, anonymous, and Heidi, site owner.
• Reader review by Jayabear, zoec, and anonymous.

‡ Authors' Review ‡

• Are the rules and terms of submission easy to find?
  "Yes, very."
  -Jayabear
• Do they supply a beta reader for authors?
  "No, but they have a board where you can ask for one."
  -zoec
• Are they polite about rejecting fics?
  "Yes."
  -Jayabear
• Do they remove author's notes or copyright notices without asking the author first?
  "Not to the best of my knowledge."
  -zoec
• Do they ever archive fics without permission?
  No.
• Are they prompt about removing fics at an author's request?
  "I've never attempted to remove one of mine, but from what I've seen, yes."
  -Jayabear
• What is their plagiarism policy...do they investigate or do they take a complainant at their word?
  "They investigate."
  -Jayabear
• Do they update at least once a month?
  "They update nearly every day."
  -Jayabear
• Do they make it possible for readers to leave feedback?
  Yes.
• Is their location stable, or do they move frequently?
  Stable.

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‡ Reader review ‡

• Is the site attractive?
  "Yes, it's very pretty. Nice and colourful :)"
  -zoec
• Is the site easy to navigate? (can you get to all the main sections from every page, or do they rely on the 'back' button an awful lot?)
  "I had a lot of trouble navigating at first, before I got used to it. The main problem was I didn't know where to find the list of newly posted and updated fics. For that reason, I avoided Fictionalley for a long time after it was created (stupid of me, I know). By chance, I clicked on Schnoogle one day and actually *noticed* the update blog. ^^"
  -anonymous
  "Yes, it's very easy to navigate, there are buttons everywhere."
  -zoec
• How selective is the archive? (Are you likely to find a good story?)
  "As long as you can spell and have basic HP skills and the story is not nc-17, then they take it in. Although I have seen some absolute shockers there. I do wonder how some of them get through. But yes, it's pretty easy to find good fic, since there are many to choose from! The good far outweighs the bad."
  -zoec
  "To my understanding they only screen fics based on grammar. Another FA reviewer said they also discriminate based on gaping plot holes, but I don't understand what would qualify as a gaping plot hole and what wouldn't. And of course, there is no fiction rated above R there."
  -anonymous
  "Just to make this clear - we do send things back for major canon errors, especially if they are integral to the story, but we don't send things back for glaring plot errors like having a character do something OOC."
  -Heidi
• Are they a specialty (ship or genre centric) or general (only ratings restrictions) archive?
  "General, no nc-17 fic. All ships are welcomed."
  -Jayabear
• Is it easy to navigate within multi-chaptered stories?
  "Yes, there are links to the next chapter within the chapters, and also a link to the Author's page which has the full navigation of chapters in one place."
  -Jayabear
• Are there search engines? Are they easy to use?
  "I think you can search for 'keywords,' which I've tried, and don't find at all useful. The author posts 'keywords' at the top of their fic, and I guess that's what comes up when you search. Sorry if I'm wrong here! I don't use searches very often."
  -anonymous
  "Yes, and yes."
  -Jayabear
  "The search engines are hard to find, but the google ones are good and very easy to use."
  -zoec
• Are the indexes (author, title listings) clearly laid out?
  "Yes and no. You can search by title and author, but both ways take alot of downloading time and searching through. Maybe a drop down menu with the authors names would be better for each house, but maybe they have too many stories to make that possible? I don't know. It was also be good if there was just one author's page for each author, encompassing all their works from the different houses, but that's probably not possible either. I don't know how much room the site has."
  -zoec
  "Well, in example the "authors" listing is laid out all at once, if you know what I mean. It's tedious to scroll down so many names, but it is alphabetically listed and that makes it fairly easy."
  -anonymous
• Are stories appropriately labelled if they require warnings?
  "Yes."
  -Jayabear
  "There aren't many things IMO that require a warning, since nothing rated above an R is archived there. I have read fics there with non-explicit incest that had no warning."
  -anonymous
• How many pages do you have to search through to get to the first story?
  "Two. On the mainpage, there are links to the four 'houses' of fic. On the mainpages of these houses, there are recently updated/new fics/chapters."
  -Jayabear
• Is it easy to leave feedback?
  "Yes, there is a review button at the end of every page."
  -zoec

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