This week: A Weekend with Bernie Edited by: JACE - House Targaryen  
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Hi, I'm JACE - House Targaryen .
Welcome to this issue of the Noticing Newbies newsletter. Join me as I take you into some nooks and crannies of Writing.Com that you may not have found time to check out yet.
Don't forget to toss me a note about what you liked or didn't like in my column, or about a topic you'd like to see discussed. This newsletter is about and for you. And for you seasoned members, I hope you'll find something you can take from my ramblings. 
Your Noticing Newbies Newsletter full-time Editors:
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Have you ever noticed that I use a slightly larger font size than is considered normal (3.0) on WDC when I pen my newsletters? Perhaps you didn't. I do because as I age, I find reading larger type much more satisfying. And I'm certain many of you may feel the same.
Anyway, I got to thinking about time in general. As we approach WDC's 23rd year of existence, I decided to seek out a member who joined in those earliest of days and is still active on site. Without further ado, meet ...
Writing.Com has existed for almost 23 years—a veritable eternity for an Internet entity. Actually, it’s only been about 20 years for Writing.Com; the first few years were under the name Stories.Com. I though it would be interesting to talk
with someone who was a Newbie for the opening of the site.
Recently I interviewed a long-time member Bernie  . I found her using the
Authors tab in the Navigation menu. I was looking for someone with a very early
established account date, who was still active on site. Bernie agreed to chat with me
about her early experiences with the site(s).
You joined Stories.Com quickly after it was founded (according to the Portfolio
dates). How did you actually discover the site?
Your entry alluded to the SM and SMs coming on board later. Did they not play a part in
Stories.Com? Or were they less hands on?
I'm going to combine these questions as they'll kind of roll into each other as I
explain. I discovered the site by just typing "stories" into the search engine and
Stories.Com was the first result. I was just looking to see if there was a community for
writing, because as you know it was still the Wild West out there at the time. This was
probably late 1998 or early 1999. I was 13 or 14. At the time, I'm not sure who
exactly ran it when I first came to the site. There were no accounts; you just typed in a
name and used an email address if you wanted to be notified if anyone added onto your
story.
The whole concept was the creation and storage of interactive stories, but there was no
way to "own" them. Even if you started it. It was not until the SM and SMs bought
the site that one had the ability to transfer stories to a personal account. I don't
remember why I never did, as I had two extremely successful stories: one was about a
haunted house, and another was a pirate romance.
As I said, SM and SMs eventually purchased the website that summer of 2000, going live at
the end of August. I ended up having something to do on the 30th, so I didn't
"create" my account until the 31st.
Did you consider yourself a writer when you joined? Were you looking for a place to
expand your writing abilities?
I wanted to be a writer. When I was little, I loved making picture books, stories with
just pictures and no words, and reading them over and over creating a different story each
time. When I was about 6 or 7, I even tried creating a chapter book out of a small hard
covered notebook my dad had in his office that he let me use. I loved to read and at that
time loved horror stuff (I still do, but I've branched out to other genres).
I was not sure exactly what I was looking for when I found Stories.com. I wanted a place
to write. But it wasn't until this website formed and expanded to what it became under
the SM and SMs, that I really wanted to enhance my writing abilities.
Stories.Com was started ostensibly as a site for people to post and read stories.
Was there a library of stories already on site? If they were interactive, were you able to
add to them?
Not like you think. It was basically whatever people decided to transfer over when they
created their accounts, and they were only interactive. I want to say I think you could
still add onto them, but I honestly can't remember since I didn't bring over any
of mine.
Were you able to rate and review the stories?
You could rate, but not review. The reviewing came somewhat, though not too much later.
It's funny because you used to be able to see your rate to review ratio and mine was
always really skewed for a long time. I was more of a writer while I was here, so when I
logged on I was always so busy writing; I’d read at a smaller rate than I wrote.
I assume people became members to post and read stories. What was the site really
like when you joined?
In the beginning, there wasn't all the extra stuff. There weren't groups or
activities. It was really basic at the beginning. Everything would come later (though
pretty quickly). But it was just interactive stories, static items, and campfire
creatives. There might've been forums too but I can't quite remember.
Campfires were REALLY popular at the time. It wasn't until a few years later that we
got the chatroom and the IM. The chatroom then was only allowed to Preferred Author and
above. Only a small group of us actually used it.
Were different membership levels available?
Memberships came a lot later. I remember being very upset about it at the time, because it
was still early in the Internet days and there were a lot of young people like me at the
time who didn't have a lot of money. I felt very protective of this place as it was
like my home. I was also very young and didn't understand how expensive it was to run
a website like this, especially since at the time membership levels were introduced, the
website was growing pretty rapidly! I can't remember exactly when that was though.
Were member leadership roles offered under Stories.Com? Or did that happen after the
name change a couple years later?
Did you accept a leadership role?
Yes, I can't remember how immediately it was, but it was pretty close to opening of
the site in 2000 and I was made moderator. (I was grandfathered in at the time when they
made the rules for the different levels as I wasn't 18 at the time!). Before SM and
SMs' takeover, there were no levels of leadership or types of accounts. Afterward,
Moderator was the highest level (with the exception of Admin); it wasn’t until much
later when Senior Mods came about.
Do you remember how many people were active on the site when you joined?
Oh man, when I first joined? Probably a few hundred? That would be a total guess though.
Describe your typical interaction when you went online. Did you interact with other
contributors? I’m trying to get a sense of what the site was like in those early
days.
For the longest time, I didn't interact much with other members. Not that I didn't
know other members, because I did and we'd often work together in the same Campfires
or what-have-you. But I didn't converse much. I often would work on poems or stories.
A lot of others did, especially the chat. I was introduced to it by a friend who
frequented it a lot.
If you look through my portfolio, you'll see {item: 508388}, which was just a
collection of fun and silly stuff we'd say. Stuff we could go back on and laugh at.
Probably wouldn't make much sense today or probably to many who weren't a part of
the chat during that time. But it was a snapshot of a time where I made a lot of friends
and actually spent time here not writing, which was and still is, a rarity for me!
To answer your question in another way, there were forums where people could interact with
each other and obviously through email. Those were the main ways, until the IM system came
in and offered another way to communicate.
With everyone new, was there an established Help forum?
Yes! The Technical Support forum was our help at the beginning, though a few months after
the site began. We probably just emailed SM or SMs before then. Then it was 2005
(according to some of the files in my portfolio) where we started the more expanded help
section.
How active were you initially? Daily visits; every few days; weekly; etc.?
Oh, I lived here.  I was here basically every day. Time per day was all over the
place as I was in high school at the beginning, then college for the next four years.
Anytime I had time, I was here.
How did folks like the change from Stories.Com to Writing.Com? Did members feel like
their suggestions mattered?
I remember people, me included, being sad to see Stories.Com go away. I wish I could
remember what we condensed Stories.Com to, because I remember being "annoyed" that
we couldn't condense Writing.Com in a similar way. It was much later when people just
started using WdC as a condensed version of it. I remember it being something that just
happened and dealing with it as anyone would. The change was pretty seamless really.
Oh, that was fun! It's been a hot minute since I've gotten to think about those
times. I can't believe it's been over 20 years. It feels so bonkers that
there's anything on the Internet that is over twenty years old. And if you want to see
what the original website looked like, you can use the Wayback Machine, an Internet
Archive site: https://web.archive.org/web/20000901000000*/stories.com. You'll
have to copy/paste the link into your browser. I have 2000 highlighted (unfortunately it
doesn't go any earlier, but it does have some clips prior to August of
2000).
I must admit, I had a wonderful time "talking" with Miss Bernie . And I admit to taking some liberties with my Title--we actually emailed back and forth for more than six weeks. I hope to select other members from time to time to interview. You folks have a lot of wisdom to share--not only about writing, but also about WDC ... and perhaps life.
In the meantime, write on!
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Thanks for spending time with me today. At the bottom of every newsletter is a section entitled
followed by a text box. If you liked what you read (or if you didn't), please take time and drop me a line. I'd love to hear your ideas.
From the mailbag:
From Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT  : "Read the rules" can't be said often enough. As a contest host, I will not read entries that didn't follow the rules. If I read an entry and find that it went against some rule, I will send a very short review with a couple of impressions and also tell the author that their story is disqualified for breaking a rule. I try to be reasonable, but, as you mention, reading contest entries takes a while and when I do that on my own time, then the least an author can do for me in return is to read the rules I put in place. Those rules are there to create an even playing field for everyone, so they are not optional.
Thanks for your input, Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT . Early on in my WDC career I failed to read all the rules and was disqualified. Never did that again.
From tracker  : I appreciate the tutorial on contests. Such a great newsy entry. You are touching on things Newbies want to know. I have entered 5 and placed twice. It was a great motivator. Thanks for your newsletter Jace. Nice job.
I appreciate your comments.
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Noticing Newbies: August 09, 2023 Issue [#12109]
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