Preview #5 - Meeting the Challenges of Open Listings

In last week's preview, I wrote about a major change in the way LitMatch's successor will handle updates to its listings. The new website will open those listings so that nearly anyone will have an opportunity to add or update information. While this approach offers a great deal in terms of interactivity and efficiency, it brought with it some significant challenges that we had to address in the course of developing the site.

Specifically, those challenges were:

1. How to prevent accidental deletion of information.
2. How to prevent malicious users from intentionally deleting critical information or planting false information.
3. How to allow listee companies and individuals to protect their own listings, and maintain their own content.
4. How to protect our users from scams, and malicious companies and individuals.

All serious considerations, and ones for which we've developed some pretty serious solutions. Let's look at them one at a time.

Maintaining Data Integrity
The first is really about protecting data from those "oops" moments, like the times when you accidentally remove an entire paragraph of text and only realize it the instant after you click "save". Or worse, thinking you've hit the "save" button when you really just hit "delete".

To address this, we've taken some cues from wiki sites such as Wikipedia (or, if you're a Star Wars fan like me, Wookiepedia) and put in place a complete revision management system. This system allows you to view any revision that has been made to a given listing since the time it was created. In this way, no change to a listing is ever lost. Users will be able to view this history and compare versions in order to see which specific details changed from one to the next. If necessary, older versions can be made current, bypassing all subsequent changes, but still leaving those changes in the edit history in case they need to be referred to or restored later.

All this relates to our second challenge: limiting the impact of malicious users. Anytime you have a website that allows users to post content, you're guaranteed that, eventually, someone will try to post spam. It's an unfortunate reality of life on the web, but one that we've taken steps to limit as much as possible.

First, we're allowing only registered users to make changes to the listings. It's a simple step that allows users and administrators to see exactly who's making changes to which listings. If a user spams the site, he can be removed quickly and his revisions just as quickly reversed. We've also beefed up our registration process in order to weed out robots and auto-posters (though registration is still free, just as it always has been!)

Identifying inappropriate content is simple, too. If you see something that looks questionable, you'll be able to click a button that flags the listing for review. You can also remove questionable content directly by reverting the listing to an earlier revision, or by removing the content entirely in a new revision. However, for safety reasons, users will not have the ability to delete a listing completely; that's a task we've reserved only for site administrators.

Allowing Data Ownership
That takes care of a good deal of data integrity issues, but what about listees who want to own their own information? If a literary agent wants control over what appears on his page, or a professional editor wants to make sure competitors don't come in and remove crucial information, what then? That's where Official Listings come into play.

Official Listings are listings that can only be edited by one person. In the case of a literary agent listing, the agent himself might control the content. In the case of a market listing, the content may be maintained by an editor or a publisher. Once a listing becomes official, the listing becomes locked to everyone except that listing's owner, preventing changes from anyone except for that official poster.

The process for creating an official listing is simple, but for the sake or safety and accuracy, not automated. Users who wish to take over a listing will need to contact the site's administrators in order to make the listing official, and that will only happen after we've verified the user's identity and his affiliation with the listing in question. Like registration on the site, creating an official listing will be completely free, and listees will not be charged for the ability to maintain their own information.

Enabling Data Commentary
That leaves us with one final task: protecting users from scams and predators. LitMatch, in its current form, weeds out agencies that have been identified through other sources as charging up-front fees, as well as those that are fronts for self-publishing companies, and not really agencies at all. With the open nature of the new site, we can't effectively keep such companies from becoming part of our database. So, how will we protect writers from those who might seek to take advantage of them?

We've provided not just one answer, but several, by giving users options for interacting with and commenting on a listing without necessarily changing the content of that listing. The first of those options is the comment system. This system is already in place on the current site, and allows users to post their personal experiences related to a listing, as well as information they might have come across that may not fit into the listing's structure. Unlike the current site, comments will appear immediately, without the need to go through an administrative filter (though they can still be moderated after they are posted).

The second, and more powerful option to protect against scams is a built-in warning system. Using this system, users will be able to flag a listing in order to warn others about any questionable practices by the listee. If a listing receives enough warnings, it will be marked accordingly, alerting users to proceed with caution. In addition, users will be able to rate any listing on a scale of 1 to 5, giving an indication of the overall quality of the services that the listee provides.

The final option is perhaps the most exciting one, and deserving of an entire preview all by itself. But here's a hint: any user will be able to connect nearly any piece of content they create on the site to any listing, providing additional context to the listing and the information it contains. Watch for more information on that set of features in the coming weeks.

With all of these options, the information they create connects to the listing, but is not part of the listing itself. This means that reviews, comments, warnings, and related content cannot be changed or removed by anyone except the user who created them. In the case of Official Listings, listing owners will not be able to change the information that relates to their listings, only the listings themselves. In this way, we've done our best to create a kind of church-and-state separation between listing content and listing context.


That's a lot of information to digest, so I'll leave it there for now. Watch your inbox for our monthly newsletter, in which I'll provide a project status update and drop some more hints about new functionality. And watch this space next week for more previews!

Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net

Preview #4 - Your Turn at the Wheel

In the last preview, I wrote about the new listings that will be part of the redesigned website. The new listings will expand the site's size from its currently respectable 2500-or-so listings to an estimate of over 15,000! That's a lot of data to maintain, and keeping the site up-to-date would be a challenge, even for a full-time staff. So, early in the process, we had to figure out a solution for keeping an ever-changing, ever-growing database as complete and current as possible.

The answer lies in our new philosophy, and the site's new mission.

You see, until now, LitMatch has always been like a car that you could ride in but never drive. There was always a lot of motion, but your impact on that motion was limited. If you saw a change that needed to be made, you'd have to send us an email and wait for us to make that change. That approach worked well enough, but wasn't the best way to get up-to-the-minute results in a rapidly changing world.

The new site, however, is like a car where everyone gets a turn at the wheel. Every aspect of it is socially-driven. I'll expand on that idea in later previews, but what that means for our listings is this: any registered user can add or edit almost any listing at any time.

This new approach puts all the power in the hands of users like you. Find a new market? Just add it in. Read about an agent move? Update the listing. There's no need to wait, and your participation will in turn help thousands of other users. In this way (and in others yet to be revealed), LitMatch becomes a site created by the writing community, for the writing community.

But with this new approach comes yet another challenge: how to keep the listings accurate. If anyone can make a change, then what's to stop someone from making an incorrect change, or worse, trashing or spamming the site on purpose? We've got that covered, and I'll go into detail about the steps we're taking to promote data integrity, as well as some of the mechanics of updating, in the next preview. Until then, I need to get back to building a website, and you need to get back to writing!

Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net

Preview #3 - Everybody into the pool!

In my first preview, I mentioned that the scope of LitMatch is expanding to better represent the breadth and depth of the entire publishing industry. Keen-eyed readers of preview #2 may have noticed an inadvertent hint at that expanded scope in the teaser image of our new submission form.

So, when I talk about expanded scope, what do I mean, exactly?

The full answer is too much to cover in a single preview, but a good place to start is with our listings. The current site has just two kinds of listings: agents and agencies. The new site will expand on what's already there, with room for all of the following:

• Agents & Agencies - expanded to allow for screenplay agents (our most common user request!)
• Contests - Places to enter your work for recognition and prizes.
• Events - Conferences, seminars, classes and other events you can attend.
• Markets - Places to sell your work, including magazines, anthologies and webzines.
• Products - Information and reviews of books and writing-related products.
• Publishers - Companies that produce book-length products, including traditional and self-publishers.
• Resources - A writing resource that does not fit into any other data category, such as a website, a blog, or a writing magazine.
• Services - A service offered to writers by a third party, such as editing or marketing services, usually available at a cost.

In addition, contests, markets, and publishers will join agents and agencies in our submission tracking system, allowing you to organize and track every aspect of your quest for publication!

That's all for now, but there's lots more to cover. Next week, I'll have more to say about listings and how they'll be maintained on the new site.

Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net

Redesign Preview #2 - If It Ain't Broke...

Once the path to a new site was decided, the next task was arguably the most important one: in building a new site from the ground up, using new technology, we needed to make sure that nothing from the current site was lost. The site would have a lot of new features, but we had to take care that none of the existing features disappeared.

So we started development with the web version of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do not harm." Plenty of things on LitMatch worked just fine the way they were, and we didn't want to make a lot of arbitrary changes that would confuse or alienate the thousands of users who already depended on the site as it was. We set out to keep what worked, change only what we had to, and wherever possible, improve on what was already there.

So, when you look, for example at an agency's profile on the new site, it should look very familiar. Submission status, contact information, genres...everything is in its place. The graphs are still there, along with the very same statistics you're used to seeing. In fact, if not for a few key additions (which I'll be discussing in later previews), you might not even notice that the listings have changed at all.

Other functions have undergone more significant changes, while still retaining that which was best about the original. A great example is the new submission entry page. Your feedback told us that you wanted a form that was less cluttered and more flexible, with the ability to enter more than just initial and follow-up conversations. So we took your advice and designed a form that looks a little something like this:


The New Submission Form (click to enlarge)

The new form turns every communication into an action. Send a query? That's an action. Get a response? That's an action, too. Send sample chapters, a full manuscript, a status inquiry, or just make a note. They're all actions, and you can add as many or as few as you need, all without having to save or refresh the page in-between. We'll be looking at submissions in greater detail in another preview, but for now, you get the idea.

Bottom line: if you already use and like LitMatch the way it is, you should have no problems adjusting to the way things are done on the new site. If there was something you felt was a little clunky, chances are good we've improved upon it. If you want to read more about the features we've added...well, that's a preview for another day.

I'll be back with another preview later in the week. In the meantime, I need to get back to coding, and you need to get back to writing!

Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net

Redesign Preview #1 - Motivations

Next month marks the two-year anniversary of LitMatch.net. In that time, it has grown beyond all expectations, both in terms of the information it presents and the number of people who use it. By all indications, the site has been a great success, and I'm incredibly proud of what it has achieved.

So, why make a change? And why now? Well, answering that question requires a little history...

LitMatch, at the beginning, was something that I started building for my own use. I was in the middle of shopping two novels, and needed a better system than the arcane, color-coded spreadsheet that was the bane of my existence at the time. My background was in web development, so I started building a database using the technologies I knew at the time. About halfway through, I realized that I was onto something that would benefit a whole lot of writers, so I expanded the scope, added statsitics, spent another six months on development, and LitMatch as we know it was born.

But, as excited as I was to share LitMatch with the world, the launch brought with it a certain sense of "now what?" I knew something was missing, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. The site worked well for what it did, but its focus was extremely narrow. It was also hard to maintain and update, because the technology used to build it was no longer cutting edge.

There was also something of a sense of remoteness. I had built a website where people could share information, but couldn't connect with, or even contact each other. I wanted to get to know LitMatch users, and I wanted them to have the opportunity to get to know each other. I considered adding any number of social tools, from shared blogs, to forums, to out-of-the-box social networks, but each one just felt like a temporary fix.

So, from the beginning, it was clear that LitMatch would be a first step, but it wasn't clear what the next step would be. The more the site grew, the more it became clear that it would, one day, have to be replaced.

What also became clear was that there was a serious need for education among writers. I had initially assumed that things like proper manuscript format, how to write a query letter, and other key information was widely known. But as more and more people came to the site, the more questions I got about those topics. Many users were looking at me as an expert, when really I'm just a writer like everyone else. What I had built was a tool for informed writers, but what people were looking for was a tool that would inform writers.

Fast-forward to the stock market collapse, Black Wednesday, and related changes in the publishing industry, and it became clear that focusing solely on a traditional publishing model was short-sighted. In order to be successful in the long term, LitMatch would have to expand to encompass ALL the publishing options available to writers today.

So, the challenge was to create a website that covers the whole scope of not just publishing, but the writing world as a whole. At the same time, the site needs to promote learning and encourage writers to connect in meaningful ways. As if that wasn't enough, it has to do everything that LitMatch has always done, and make sure that existing users can continue to record and track the submissions they send.

And that's exactly what we've done! A new site is on the way, and it's almost ready for launch. Want to know more? Just stay tuned to this blog. In the coming weeks, I'll be previewing the new site, talking specifics about new features, and how we've made the current features even better. I think you're going to like what we have in store.

Next time, I'll be talking about submission tracking on the new site, what's new, and what hasn't changed. Until then, keep writing!

Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net

Big Announcement! - The Site, it is a-Changin'

As of this writing, we are in the final stages of a complete redesign, rebuild, and expansion of the LitMatch site. More than just a patch or a version 2.0, this project represents a complete, ground-up redesign of the entire site, using cutting-edge web technologies that greatly expand the features that we have to offer.

The end result will be a site that is larger and more interactive, with content and features designed to appeal to ALL writers, regardless of their experience levels and career goals.

I know you want details, and I'll be highlighting major features and updates in a series of previews between now and our projected launch date at the end of September. In the meantime, here's a quick list of just some of what we'll have to offer:

• Expanded listings, no longer limited to just literary agents and agencies
  
• Improved submission process, offering more flexibility and tracking options
• A complete social network, which is fully-integrated with the listings on the site
• Detailed user profiles that allow you to connect with other writers in meaningful, career-building ways
• The ability to create special interest groups on nearly any topic
  
• Better connection with existing social media, and improved email and RSS offerings
• Articles, Blogs, Forums, Photo Galleries and more!

There's a lot more to talk about, an no single newsletter or blog post could possibly encompass it all. So, over the next two months, keep an eye on our blog, newsletters and Twitter feed for detailed previews of new functionality, exclusive screenshots, and a few more surprises that we haven't even hinted at yet. Believe me, you're going to want to be in the loop!

We'll also be looking for volunteers to help test and create content, so if you're interested in being part of the process, drop me a note at admin@litmatch.net.