Frequently Asked Questions on Protagonize, a creative writing community

Protagonize: collaborative story & creative fiction writing community

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Help Center » FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Heya. Welcome to the Protagonize FAQ.

This elaborate list should give you an idea of how most of the features work within our writing community. If you have any questions that aren't answered here, please ask them over in our Help Center and we'll do our best to answer them (and update the FAQ as needed.)

If you're looking for a quicker intro to using Protagonize, you might want to try our handy Getting Started guide instead.

About This Site

Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to writing in a variety of formats within a friendly, supportive environment. Our authors participate in both solo and collaborative works ranging from short stories and interactive fiction-style addventures to collaborative novels, poetry, writing exercises, creative writing competitions, and a number of other types of writing.

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.

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.

The site allows registered members to:

Publish their own original stories, write and share poetry, participate in writing exercises, publish a variety of other types of content
Promote their writing for free to a broad audience from around the world
Cultivate a following of dedicated fans
Engage in conversations and learn from other authors by participating in collaborative stories, writing groups and contests
Discuss and refine their writing, style and technique via feedback and critique from thousands of other authors
Show off their best works via portfolio-style author profiles (coming soon!)
Follow their favourite authors and subscribe to their works with the help of site-wide feeds and personalized activity streams and notifications
Discover the works of other talented authors in a growing, supportive community

On top of that, we're adding new features every day. We also have a subscription system in the works that will provide additional premium features to those interested. The Protagonize blog describes new features as they're made available to members.

Site Authors

Protagonize was developed by Nick Bouton, Founder & Principal of Taunt Media. From top to bottom, front-end and back-end. And yeah, it turned out to be a lot more work than expected, but it was worth it. :)

The site is developed and operated entirely out of Burnaby, BC, Canada.

Site Moderators

Protagonize has a team of seven dedicated, diligent and generally wonderful moderators. They're all also fabulous authors in their own rights, and long-time members of our community. You can tell who a moderator is by the little green "Mod" flag on their profile images in discussions and in the list of online users, and by the Moderator badge on their author profiles.

Our moderation team discusses every report and infraction that our users submit, and they have the authority and ability to deal with many of the troubles and issues you may experience on the site. They may also contact users directly in moderation-related cases, on behalf of Protagonize.

Here's a listing of our moderators' handles on the site (in alphabetical order!) and links to their author profiles; if you have any questions, feel free to contact them, or to post your site-related questions in the New Members group.

The Protagonize Blog

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!

Site Information

Protagonize is built entirely on the Microsoft .NET Framework and sits on top of a Microsoft SQL Server database. Our site is happily hosted at ServerBeach, a Peer1 company.

Protagonize is a participating member of the Microsoft BizSpark startup program. BizSpark is an innovative global program designed to help young and innovative software companies gain valuable experience and expertise in Microsoft technologies, with no upfront costs, so they can get the technologies they need when they can least afford them.

Browser Support

Protagonize is currently developed and tested on (and officially supports) the following modern browsers:

Firefox 3.6+
Internet Explorer 8
Safari 4
Chrome 4 (has some minor issues)

Protagonize has been previously tested and runs (with some possible issues) in the following older browsers:

Internet Explorer 7
Firefox 3.x
Safari 3.x
Chrome 2.x
Opera 9.x (has issues with login mechanism)
Flock 1.2.x

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

Protagonize no longer supports the following browsers — please upgrade to the latest versions! Be aware that we can't guarantee that you'll see the site as intended if you're still using one of these elderly browsers.

Internet Explorer 6 (please upgrade!)
Firefox 2
Safari 2

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. :)

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/
jQuery
http://jquery.com/
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

How Can I Support Protagonize?

Protagonize is happy to accept donations to help further the development of the site. If you're interested in contributing to Protagonize's development, we encourage you to check out our donations page for more information. You might just find it worth your while. ;)

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 reading page.

How to Write on Protagonize

There are two separate ways to write something new on Protagonize.

First off, you select "Write something!" from the Read menu in the site's main navigation bar. The other option is to click the big green "Write something!" button on the right-hand sidebar. Both will lead you to the same Writing page.

Posting a Follow-up Branch or Chapter

This is a collaborative story If you'd like to post a follow-up chapter or branch to someone's work, there are a couple of things to be aware of.

First, the work in question must be flagged as a collaborative work (see image at right.) This means that other authors can contribute to the story. If the story is flagged as solo, only the original author can add to it.

Second — and this may not be obvious to authors who've never used the site before — in order to add a new chapter or branch, you'll need to reach the final chapter of the work (if it's a standard, linear work), or an unfinished branch (if it's an addventure) in order to add your own piece to the work. If you reach an incomplete chapter or branch, you'll be presented with the editing form.

Here's an example of an addventure story with an incomplete branch, followed by two completed branches.

Finding an incomplete branch

Clicking on the first branch, which doesn't show any more branches to read below, will present you with a writing form, like this:

Filling in an incomplete branch

Complete the branch body, hit Post, and you'll be redirected to your completed branch. The same goes for new chapters, although they may also prompt you for a chapter title.

Tip: Keep in mind that only new works can be saved as drafts!

Posting Guidelines

Our full posting guidelines can be found over on our Writing page (see the right-hand Need more help? panel.)

Here's a high-level glance at the general posting guidelines, though. Make sure to stick to these, because not following the rules may result in a moderator getting involved.

All authors are responsible for their own content. We don't write this stuff — you do. So feel free to use a little adult humour, but please don't go overboard, or we'll have to flag the story as containing mature content.
If you're adding to an existing story, try and stick to the theme, back-story and characters of the original story as much as possible. Often, the original author will provide guidance, which you can see in the yellow box to the right of the story in question.
Posts need to be at least 140 characters long. That's about three average sentences, not too painful, but it prevents spamminess.
If you find a problem somewhere, or see a bad posting, click the red Flag button on a story or user profile and report it to us!
Note: Please be careful if you spent a long period of time writing the same branch. It's entirely possible that someone else is completing the same branch as you, and in that case, since we don't lock posts while you edit, whoever posts first will "win" and you'll have to move your post elsewhere.

Editing a Post

The poster of a work, 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. :)

If the original author happens to have made the story Always Editable, though, you won't run into that time limit.

To edit a story, just click the "Edit work" (or chapter/branch, depending what you're looking at) button below the story title the content you've just posted:

Finding the Edit button

If it's the first page of any type of work, 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.

Editing a story

If someone's followed up on your post, and the story isn't set to be Always Editable, 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 site's moderators may also edit posts here and there (not often), mostly to correct markup glitches that can sometimes break page layout, when authors copy-and-paste works from other text editors (particularly from Microsoft Word.) This is just general clean-up, and is in no way intended to cause harm to or modify the meaning of your work.

Deciding on Chapter or Branch Length

While the reading format on Protagonize isn't particularly standard and will likely change in the future, we suggest that when writing fiction (typically in the Stories section) on Protagonize, your chapters (or branches) are the most readable if they're approximately the length of a page in a typical novel, 250-300 words. This will allow your readers to have a comfortable amount of text to read before having to click to the next chapter.

While it may be tempting to post an entire short story into a single Protagonize chapter, reading 1,000 or more words on a single page can be a little tough on the eyes. You'll often find that stories posted as one large chunk into a single chapter are skipped over by readers, in favour of more evenly spaced, readable stories. We suggest breaking up longer posts into manageable chapters, even if it's only breaking your story into two or three sections. Believe us — your readers will thank you for it!

Tip: When you're writing on Protagonize, you can keep track of the character and word count in the bottom right corner of the text editor window.

Word and character counts when editing

Linking a New Branch to an Existing One

Sometimes you just want to have your reader go around in circles, right? That's why we've included the ability to link addventures branches in a new post back to existing/previous branches in the same work.

How does this work? It's actually pretty simple. When you're posting a new branch in an existing story, you'll see a small grey link below the branch title boxes that looks like this:

Linking to a previous branch

Click that "link to previous branch" link, choose a previous branch in the work 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:

A linked branch

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 the current point in the story (this includes incomplete branches.)

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 standard works.

Branch or Chapter 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 branch or chapter 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 branch or chapter. Locking posts for editing seems a more likely option, but we won't be adding that until we can afford to have pages locked off for editing for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, once the site has been up a little longer.

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.

Solo Stories

While we encourage folks to write collaboratively on Protagonize as a social undertaking, we recognize that many authors just want to write all by their lonesome. With this in mind, we've added the option to publish solo works. You can find this option on the Writing page (see image below), or in the Work Options panel after you've published your work.

Selecting a writing mode

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

Categorizing Your Works

One of the awesome things about Protagonize is that people are constantly come up with new and creative ways to write on the site. While much of the work you see on the site falls under the general "Stories" breakdown, we've seen lots of non-prose content being contributed recently, including other formats such as poetry, music and lyrics, screenplays, and fun, collaborative writing exercises such as roleplays.

We've seen so much interest in these writing formats that we've decided to create new areas to post them in, separate from the main prose area. If you're interested in finding out more about our new Read area and the new sections for Stories, Poetry, Writing Exercises, and Other Works, please check out the related post on our blog.

Special note regarding roleplays: We've had a number of authors ask us to define the term roleplay in order to help them decide whether or not their work is a roleplay or simply a typical collaborative story. In order to help folks decide, here's a definition for the term that was generously contributed (and mildly adapted) by one of our authors, aryst0krat:

Roleplays generally involve each contributor to the work writing only their own character (and NPCs), thereby piecing together a story. On the other hand, a collaborative story involves each participating author writing segments of the story, regardless of the characters that they write in doing so.

Now that we've reorganized things, we ask our authors to properly categorize their works using the Category option while posting, so as to not confuse readers. All of the aforementioned types of works have their own set of categories dedicated to them, so please be sure to use the option when writing.

Author Guidance

When reading works on Protagonize, 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 work's author to describe their plot outline, setting, characters, narrative mode, intended length, inspiration, or any other notes they'd like to add about their work. The entry area is free-form, and entirely optional.

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

The 140-Character Minimum

Due to general spamminess and abuse in the past, we at Protagonize decided to implement a 140-character minimum to all written works.

Why, you ask? Because it keeps people from abusing the site with tiny scraps of spammy content, and trying to artificially boost their post counts by posting chapters shorter than a typical text message on your phone. We're all about promoting good, quality content here on Protagonize, and we'd love for our authors to buy into our plans. If that means a little more heft to your stories (and really, 140 characters isn't much to ask), then so be it. It spares everyone else from being subjected to reading ridiculously short chapters, right?

We've seen a number of requests to lower or remove the limit for poetry, though, so we may consider doing this down the road.

And yes, if you're curious about where that number came from, it's the maximum length of a tweet. We figure that anything you write here should at least be a little meatier than that.

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.
Pro tip: If you hold the shift key when pressing enter, it won't double-space the next line, it'll single space it.

Deleting Your Works

If you'd like to delete a work that you've posted, you can do so via the Work Options panel. You can call up the Options panel by clicking the "Options" button directly below the work's title:

Finding the Options button

If your work is flagged as solo, you should be able to delete it right away.

If you want to delete a collaborative work, you'll only be able to delete it if no-one else but you has written in it yet.

If you want to delete or modify a chapter you've written in a collaborative work, please hit the "Flag" button on that specific story segment, select "Request item modification or deletion" as the report reason, and explain why you need it modified or deleted in the comments box. Our moderation team will review your request and get back to you as fast as we can.

Other Protagonize-Related Terminology

Here are a few terms you might see thrown around on Protagonize that you may not understand at first glance. Not to worry — we were all new here once!

Pages: When you see the term "pages" used on the site, it generally means every chapter or branch of a work, aside from the first root or "starter" chapter of that work. So if you're looking at an author's profile and it says they've written 20 works and 80 chapters, that means they've written 20 starter pages and 80 follow-up pages, for a total of 100 pages in all. Clear as mud, right? :)
Markers & Faves: The distinction between markers and favourites may not be clear to a new user, but they are quite different. A page marker lets you jump back to a specific page in a work that you were reading. A listing of your markers in whichever work you're currently looking at will show up beneath the author guidance in the right column while reading. A favourite lets you flag the entire story or work you're reading as something that you'd like to follow later on. By default, you will be automatically notified (both on the site and be email) of new updates to your favourite works. You can also opt to receive email notifications about follow-up chapters after your page markers, but that's turned off by default. You can configure these notifications from your Profile menu.
Orphans: An orphan, or orphaned work, is simply a collaborative work with only a single chapter or branch. This means that the original author is the only author to participate so far, and they're waiting for other collaborators to join in. For the most part, orphans are in need of love and attention, so if you see an orphaned work that you find interesting, be sure to jump in!
Flagging: This is just shorthand for reporting content or using the "Flag" button on a work, author profile, or discussion topic in a group. Flagging brings up a menu that lets you notify the moderation team about a potential problem with a piece of content on the site, or lets you tell us about a change you need made to a specific item.
Guidance: The author guidance, as described in this FAQ, is a spot that lets a work's original author add information about plot, characters, setting, or anything else that strikes their fancy. Guidance is just like it sounds — helpful tips to give other collaborators a nudge in the right direction when adding to a collaborative piece. For solo works, the guidance may be used to give information about the piece that may not have been appropriate to include directly in the work. Note: If the original author takes the time to post guidelines about participation in their guidance, it's considered good form on Protagonize to follow those directions when participating in a collaborative work.

How Are the Weekly Features Selected?

Features and Editor's Picks on Protagonize are selected subjectively by the editorial staff (which is, for the time being, one person.)

Featured authors are selected based on their activity for the week; whether it's commenting, providing feedback, writing new works or pages, or how long they've been a member on the site. If you're an active user for the current week, providing great feedback and participating in the community, there's a good chance you'll be in the running to be featured. It's pretty subjective, unlike the top rated authors and stuff which are voted on by the site's members.

Also, bad behaviour in the eyes of the moderators means that you're unlikely to be selected, so keep that in mind before doing anything questionable. :)

The Editor's Pick and Featured Group are selected in much the same way, although popularity is considered a little more for these two. If your work is gaining a lot of traction, or your group is particularly interesting, you'll be considered for a feature for the week in question. We also try and feature written works that we consider to be pretty awesome, but may have been overlooked by the users amongst the torrent of new postings we get every day. We figure this will give the users the opportunity to read works that we think are cool and merit being shown off, that may not have been noticed otherwise.

You can always see the last few featured items on our Weekly Features page, if you're interested.

Search Functionality

A basic search tool is available from the top of the right-hand navigation (see image at right). It's based on Google's index, and not directly on Protagonize's database, so it may not always be completely up-to-date. We're working on a better search tool that will be available down the road!

In the meantime, you can also find works on the site by tag or category, and you can find authors by browsing by rating, influence, or by filtering by the first letter of their names.

Friends & Fans

Unlike many social networks where you explicitly add people you know as mutual friends, Protagonize works in a slightly different way.

While we do allow folks to be friends on the site, the mechanism is a little different. In order to someone as a friend, you'll need to become a fan of their work by clicking the (appropriately named) "Become a fan" button on their author profile.

When that author "fans" you in return, they will show up in your friends list. Until then, you will be listed on their profile as a fan. This allows members to be fans of other authors on the site, even though they may not be friends.

If you do want to become friends, it's just a matter of being a mutual fan.

Page Markers

A page marker is exactly what it sounds like — each story, poem, writing exercise, etc. is made up of a number of pages, often referred to as chapters or branches. Adding a page marker is basically just like adding a bookmark for that specific page in the work you're reading, so you can come back to it again later easily.

You can keep track of them in your Profile menu; in addition, when you're looking at the work in question, you'll see a listing of markers you have in that work. Clicking the marker will take you right back to where you left off.

How Are Statistics Calculated?

In case you're curious, author and work stats (including cumulative totals for views, markers, favourites, hot stories, "top" author rankings, etc.) are not re-calculated immediately. Doing it that frequently would be a massive drain on our database server, so we try and keep it to a reasonable amount of updates a day (normally hourly).

Also, view count totals exclude views by the original author of that piece, so you'll never see your own page views included in the view total on a branch or chapter you've written. What you see are the views by other users on the site, not your own.

Icon Definitions

Editor's note: These are a little (okay, a lot) out of date. Please bear with us until we get this section updated!

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 something new!
View entire work / View all works by author
Add (or remove) a favourite
Add (or remove) a page marker
Jump to latest branch/chapter in this work
Share this item with a friend
Edit a work, 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.

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 work 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 written work, 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 works you've read in a variety of different views, it'll also let you know which of your favourite/marked or top rated works have been updated recently.
When reading a work, the icon at the bottom of the reading pane will jump you to the latest branch or chapter posted in that work.
Additionally, clicking the "branches/chapters" link below a written work's name in list views will generally take you to the latest page posted in that work.
There are a couple of ways to see all postings be a specific author: you can click the "works + pages" link under their name in author listings, or you can click the "See all works" 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. :)

How 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 written works and authors. The rating you see for any specific work is an average of all votes for each post in that work, out of 5. User ratings are an average of the ratings of all works and branches or pages posted by that user.

A few notes about the Top Rated Authors listing on the main Authors page:

Users who have a report filed against them within the last 6 months (verified and resolved by a moderator) will not be displayed in the Top Rated Authors lists on the Authors page, even if you happen to have an excellent rating this week. Unfortunately, this is one of the downsides of having a verified report against you (be it due to your profile's content, one of your works, your comments or treatment of others, or just general bad behaviour.)
There is a minimum number of ratings required before you will show up in the Top Rated lists. It varies depending on the list, but in most cases, it will be at least 5-10 ratings for the weekly lists, and at least 20-30 ratings for the all-time lists.
The Top Rated lists (and Popular Works, Most Influential Authors, etc.) are updated hourly. Please don't expect them to update immediately when you do something that might get you listed.

Your P-rank

User rankings, or P-ranks, 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. We also have some special rank icons for subscribers and community supporters, as you can see below.

Your P-rank icon is unrelated to your user rating, which is explained here.

Lackey = <10 posts
Hothead = 10 posts
Gambler = 25 posts
Daredevil = 50 posts
Mercenary = 100 posts
Adventurer = 250 posts
Swashbuckler = 500 posts
Argonaut = 1,000 posts
Hero = 2,500 posts
Legend = 5,000 posts
Immortal = 10,000 posts
Community Supporter ($10+ donation)
Pro Member ($25+ donation)
Plus Member ($50+ donation)

Try not to take these rankings too seriously — they're just a fun little measure of how much content you've posted on the site, nothing else!

Influential Authors

The Influential authors list is something that we've introduced recently to replace the old Top posters listing.

We discovered that a number of our users were attempting to manipulate the top posters list by posting many times in short burts, simply to increase their post counts, with no regards to the quality of their contributions to the site. This isn't something we wanted to encourage, so we decided to take action and remove the list before the negative behaviour got out of hand.

We've replaced it with the new influential authors listing, which more accurately reflects (not perfectly, of course, but it's a lot better) which authors are participating in the site in beneficial ways. Post count still has a little to do with how influence rankings are calculated (a relatively small percentage), but a number of other factors come into play as well.

Think of it as a measure of an author's reach in the system, combined with the quality and volume of their work, weighted on certain factors.

Popular Works

Popular works are determined using our special sauce™ (ahem) algorithm. It's not all that elaborate (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 won't show up in the popular works list.

While it's probably possible, with some effort, to "game" the system right now, we'll work on making that a little less obvious.

Email & On-site Notifications

By default, Protagonize will send you email notifications about updates to your content, or comments on your works or profile. There are also a number of additional email notifications that you have the option to enable or disable via your profile (see below). You can also disable email notifications completely, if you like, and rely entirely on our on-site notifications system (see the My notifications option in your Profile menu.)

Having trouble receiving email notifications? Make sure that your email address is set correctly in your author profile, and be sure that your spam or junk mail filter isn't accidentally filtering our emails. All email notifications sent by Protagonize will come from the address notifications@protagonize.com.

For more information about how these updates work, check out our Getting Started guide's section about notifications.

Configuring Email Notifications

Configuring your notifications You can disable specific types of email notifications in your user profile: go to your Profile menu and select Configure Notifications. From that screen, you can disable whichever email notifications may be bothering you.

There should also be a link that you can click to reach the configuration page at the bottom of any notification email you receive from the site, as well as on the bottom of the menu on the left side of your personalized Notifications page (see image at right.)

Adding Links in Author Profiles

Unfortunately, due to a recent proliferation of unscrupulous folks creating fake accounts on Protagonize for spam/advertising purposes, we've had to impose a (relatively minor) restriction on adding links to your author profiles.

In order to add a functional link to a URL (or to use the link tool in the profile editor), you'll have to have posted at least 10 items (stories or pages) on the site, effectively gaining Rank 1.

We understand that it's a little annoying not to be able to post links to your work in your profiles right away, but think of it as doing us a favour for the good of the site. In any case, if you're an active member, you should hit Rank 1 in no time. :)

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 Read pages) and make a new selection from the "showing ... items per category" control:

Toggling the number of items displayed in groupings

Your selection should stick for the browser that you're using. If you switch to a different computer, or to a different browser on the same computer, or if you have your browser set to delete cookies when you close it, your selection won't be saved and you'll need to re-select it the next time you visit.

Reporting Bugs (!)

We're not perfect, and Protagonize has gotten pretty big, 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 (or by using the "Flag" button on a buggy item on the site) and we'll address them as fast as we can.

RSS Feeds

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

Exporting Your Work

While Protagonize doesn't offer an explicit way to export your writing from the site just yet (coming soon!), there are a couple of ways you can extract your work in the meantime:

PDF: Click the PDF button at the bottom of any of your written works to export that entire work in Adobe PDF format.
RSS: There are a couple of different ways to export your content via RSS. First off, you can export your latest works in plain text format by clicking the "Subscribe to Author Feed" link in the top-right hand corner of your author profile. In addition, you can subscribe to any story's feed by clicking the "Subscribe to (Story/Poem/etc.) Feed" link in the top-right corner of any written work or page. Both of these options will allow you to browse the latest contributions you've made to Protagonize in a feed reader like Google Reader, or export it to other formats.

Protecting Your Content

By default, all content published by individual authors on Protagonize is protected by and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

You also have the option of selecting a different Creative Commons license when posting new works of any type. In addition, Solo works may be set to have no license, effectively making them "All rights reserved" by the original author / copyright holder.

The basic gist of our default 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 copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.
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.

Your Privacy

Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more information concerning the security of your user account information. And no, we won't sell your email address! :)

Writing Mature Content

All authors are responsible for their own content. We don't write this stuff — you do. So feel free to use a little adult humour, but please don't go overboard, or we'll have to flag the story as containing mature content.

Basically, if your story or poem wouldn't qualify as "PG-13" (under the MPAA's movie ratings scheme), you should probably flag it as mature. If it contains profanity, the writing interface won't let you post it unless you flag it as mature. Sorry, but that's just the way it is; we have kids reading this site, too.

If you're not sure, and your work has mature themes but doesn't contain any profanity, the safest bet is to post it as mature, then hit the "Flag" button on your work to ask a moderator to review it for you. If they come to the conclusion that it's fine for everyone, they'll remove the mature flag for you.

Tip: 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. Mature works are also ineligible to be featured, and will be excluded from certain areas of the site that are easily visible to the public.

Avoiding 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.

If you discover an item that should obviously be flagged as mature and currently isn't, please hit the "Flag" button on the work in question and let the moderation team know.

Reporting Content

Although Protagonize has a moderation team, we're not physically able to read every item that's posted, so we count on users to report content that is either not flagged or is inappropriately flagged as mature, or goes beyond Protagonize's normal "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 work, branch, chapter, or user profile, you'll see a button entitled "Flag".

Please use the button if necessary, but don't abuse it! If you see an item that is not flagged as mature, but should be, you can let us know via a report. The "Flag" button 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. If you want to post obscene, pornographic, or X-rated material, there are plenty of other sites on the internet that cater to that sort of thing. Protagonize isn't one of them.

The maintainers of the site reserve the right to remove any content (be it written works, comments, groups, discussion topics, images, or user profile information) that we find offensive, illegal, or in violation of Protagonize's Terms of Use. 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.

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 written works, comments, branches or chapters, discussion topics, or groups created or posted by a specific user, so please think carefully before posting anything that could be construed as overly offensive.

Reported Authors

The "reported" text on an author's profile (in the Author Popularity section) displays the total number of times a profile, written work, page, or discussion topic by the author in question has been reported to Protagonize staff, and that report has been verified and resolved. This means that they've engaged in conduct that goes against our site's rules in some way, shape, or form, as decided by the moderation team.

Reports include violations of the site's Posting Guidelines or Terms of Use, and resolution of those reports are at the discretion of the moderation team. 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.

Reports on an author's profile

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. The moderation team may (or may not) decide to remove that "reported" flag in the future, but it's a safe bet that it'll be there for a while if you do cross the line.

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 login to your account, go to your Profile page, and "Flag" your profile (the flag button is at the bottom left corner of your profile box.)

When the Report this profile window comes up, select "Request item modification or deletion" and in the description, let us know if you'd like your account de-activated (which is reversible) or permanently deleted. One of our moderation team will 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 works, chapters or branches that have no follow-up posts will be permanently deleted.
All of your works, chapters or branches that have follow-up posts will be shown as posted by Anonymous.
All other content associated with your account (groups, topics, comments, markers, favourites, ratings, profile images, 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 works, chapters or branches that have no follow-up posts will no longer be visible to users.
All of your works, chapters or branches that have follow-up posts will be shown as posted by Anonymous.
All other content associated with your account (groups, topics, comments, markers, favourites, ratings, profile images, 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: If you happen to email us regarding deleting or deactivating your account, be sure to contact us using the address associated with your account, or we won't be able to help you!

Changing Your Handle

While it's possible to change your username (handle) on Protagonize, we don't allow users to do it themselves. If you've made a typo while registering, or you just don't like your handle anymore, you can request a username change by hitting the "Flag" button on your author profile (it's on the bottom left corner of your profile box.)

Fill in the report and let us know that you'd like your handle changed, as well as what you'd like it changed to. One of our moderators will deal with your request as soon as they can.

Resetting Your Password

It happens to all of us — we're on so many sites, with so many different login combinations, that we forget our passwords.

Fear not! If you happen to have misplaced your password, we have just the thing for you! Our handy new Password Reset Request form! Check it out. It'll save you time and money (okay, maybe not money), and it's absolutely free. :)

Changing Your Password

Changing your password can be done from the Edit my profile page (found in your Profile menu).

You should see a link that says "Change your password..." under Account Details about halfway down the page; click that link. You'll be asked for your old password, a new password, and to confirm your new password.

Once you're done, hit Save profile, and you're all set.

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.

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. This will also hide your profile from showing up on the Online authors page.

If you get tired of being invisible, you can switch back at any time by unchecking the same box and re-saving your profile.

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.

How Will Subscriptions Work?

While the site is currently ad-supported, we at Protagonize are in the process of developing a new subscription system to provide our members with some cool additional features. Don't worry — everything you see today on Protagonize will remain entirely free; subscriptions are completely optional. If you're not interested in subscribing, you can still use the site just the same way you do right now. You'll just be missing out on new subscriber-only features.

Subscriptions will be split into two tiers of accounts: Pro accounts ($30.00 CAD / year) and Plus accounts ($60.00 CAD / year). We're still in the process of establishing our subscriber feature matrix, but suffice it to say there'll be some pretty awesome stuff in there. :) We'll be sure to update this FAQ when more information becomes available.

For the time being, if you'd like to get a sneak peek at the subscription system, remove the advertising from your account, and get a nifty badge for your author profile, please can check out our donations page!

What's a Beta Account, and How Do I Get One?

Beta testers are users with special accounts that allow them a sneak-peek at new features on Protagonize before they're released to the rest of the site's members. They're also privy to discussions about new features, and we often ask them for feedback about upcoming changes.

In exchange for this advance access, beta testers provide the Protagonize team with valuable feedback and detailed bug reports. It's a win-win situation.

We don't advertise these beta accounts because we've already got a good stable of testers, but when we're looking for new testers, we'll definitely let you know.

Note: We currently have a special deal on — if you donate enough to become a Plus account holder, you'll be granted beta access in addition to a discounted Plus account. This deal will only last until our subscription system goes live, so please can check out our donations page if you're interested.

Why Does Protagonize Carry Advertising?

Protagonize is currently completely advertising-supported. We don't make anything off of user accounts, so we depend on advertising to support the site for the time being. In the future, we'll be implementing an optional subscription system with additional features over your base account, but for now, we'd appreciate it if our users keep our sponsors in mind. If you find any of our ads of interest, please check them out. Every ad you click helps us to keep developing Protagonize!

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.

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Help Center » FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Table of Contents

General Site Information

Writing Stories, Branches, and Chapters

How Protagonize Works

Your Content & Site Policies

Your Protagonize Account

Advertising on Protagonize

About This Site

Membership Benefits

Site Authors

Site Moderators

The Protagonize Blog

Site Information

Browser Support

Site Requirements

3rd Party Components

How Can I Support Protagonize?

Getting Started With Protagonize

How to Write on Protagonize

Posting a Follow-up Branch or Chapter

Posting Guidelines

Editing a Post

Deciding on Chapter or Branch Length

Linking a New Branch to an Existing One

Branch or Chapter Duels (!)

Spell-checking

Solo Stories

Categorizing Your Works

Author Guidance

The 140-Character Minimum

Rich Text Editor Usage Tips

Deleting Your Works

Other Protagonize-Related Terminology

How Are the Weekly Features Selected?

Search Functionality

Friends & Fans

Page Markers

How Are Statistics Calculated?

Icon Definitions

Not-So-Obvious Features of Protagonize

How Ratings Are Calculated

Your P-rank

Influential Authors

Popular Works

Top Rated Stories

Email & On-site Notifications

Configuring Email Notifications

Adding Links in Author Profiles

Changing the Number of Items Displayed

Reporting Bugs (!)

RSS Feeds

Exporting Your Work

Protecting Your Content

Your Privacy

Writing Mature Content

Avoiding Mature Content

Reporting Content

Disallowed Content

Reported Authors

Deleting or De-activating Your Account

Changing Your Handle

Resetting Your Password

Changing Your Password

Blocking Unsavoury Users

Hiding Your Online Status

Enabling & Disabling the Profanity Filter

How Will Subscriptions Work?

What's a Beta Account, and How Do I Get One?

Why Does Protagonize Carry Advertising?

Advertising on Protagonize

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