Check out the Comment on Stories link in the left nav. Select the story you're interested in (right now it's just Flatland, but I'll add more soon) and comment away.

You'll need to be logged in. Click anywhere in the story and enter your comment. Little comment icons will appear wherever someone comments. Hovering over those icons will show you what the comment is.

This technology was originally developed for http://snark.tryit4fun.com [snark.tryit4fun.com] where you could snark on fairy tales. That was a lot of fun there, so I figured it's work well here for sci fi stories.

You can now rate stories. Stories with the highest score in an issue will show a little prize icon after their name.

Just view any story page or any issue page and go to the scoring section near the bottom above the forum section.

I've got lists up and working! I thought it'd take a lot longer, but it turned out to not be that difficult. Check out my favorite stories. You can create your own lists by clicking on the green buttons at the top of any story or author or topic page.

For instance, if you liked the story NetPuppets, head over to that page and click the green button at the top of that page.

You can also see all your lists by clicking on the "Your User Page" link on the left side of the page.

Better yet, you can put your lists on your own website. Just follow the instructions at the top of the list that you're viewing.

I'd really like to motivate people to use this site. What would you like to see here? Feel free to post suggestions in the Bugs and Features forum.

I was thinking about giving out prizes to people who post a lot. Possible prizes might be T-shirts and vandegraff generators. Would that be of interest to people?

The biggest thing I like about this site so far is that it's about maintaining conversations about stories.

Benefits of using the scifidb.org discussion forum for stories:[list][*]You get email alerts whenever someone responds to your messages. This is helpful if someone responds to your comments a while after you make them.
[*]If you are behind in your reading, you can come here and discuss the stories whenever you get around to it. In a normal forum, if you talked about an old story then most people wouldn't be around to see your post. But, if you reply to a post here then the people who posted the original messages will be alerted. This should cause conversations to keep going.
[/list]That really seems like a benefit to me. I like the idea of keeping conversations going about these stories.

If that's not enough motivation then please let me know what things you would like to see improved!

The idea of giving out prizes is just meant to get people to change their habits and try the site out. And, the more conversation there is in the forums, the more benefit people will get from joining in.

I'm not doing this to make money. Heck, I'm willing to spend money to get it going. I'm doing this because I love to work on projects and I want to feel like I'm doing something that actually makes a difference (however small). If I can get active regular traffic at scifidb.org then I can add other things like: [list][*]user story tagging
[*]user submitted stories (post your own stories for people to read right on the site)
[*]user story collection lists
[*]user story ratings
[*]user story recommendations (based on affinities in the collection lists)
[*]user author recommendations (also based on the affinities)
[/list]But, I'm not going to spend 3 to 6 months implementing that stuff in my spare time unless people are using the site.

The Brain Droppings forum (it's listed in the nav on the left) can be used to post about pretty much anything.

I've put up the stories in the May issue of Analog.

I'll try to get the story topics up there tomorrow or shortly thereafter.

The first story in this issue is an exciting one! (that's all that I've read so far)

I think the most obviously useful aspect of this site is the forum system. On this site there is a dedicated forum for each story. If you liked the story "NetPuppets" in the June 2005 issue of Analog then you can head over to the NetPuppets forum and chat about it there. Your comments will become part of a permanent record of discussion about that story that anyone will be able to browse if they discover that story years later.

There are also other discussion forums for entire magazine issues or specific authors or for content topics.

Beyond forums, this site is an effort to categorize stories. In the left column you'll see a topic tree. The larger a topic is, the more stories there are that use that topic.

For instance, if you open up "sci fi topic" then "alien", you'll see that "alien first contact" is a very popular story topic. Click on it and you'll see a page with informoration about that topic that includes a list of all the stories that use that topic.

Also on the left, near the top, you'll see sections titled "Stories" and "Authors". The stories section lists all the stories that are currently categorized on this site. The authors tab lists all the authors of those stories.

In any tree you see, a plus sign indicates that you can click it to see more specific information deeper in the tree.

This site was started as an attempt to categorize the science fiction stories in Analog magazine. It's the intersection of two interests of mine. I love categorizing information and I love science fiction that gets me excited about the future.

If this site generates enough interest then I'll expand it to include other magazines and books as well. I'd also love to add a system to allow other people to contribute content right on the site. But, for now the content (other than the forums) is all input by me. If you want to contribute content (for instance, if you want to categorize stories from another magazine or if you disagree with the way I've categorized existing information) then email me (you'll find my address lower down on this page) and I'll let you know how you can help.

It's my hope that people will come here to discuss specific stories and to find stories about topics that interest them. I think it could also be useful to authors who want to write about a topic and need to read other stories that have explored the same topic.

You can call me "Mr. 42" or just "42", but my real name is Geoff Fortytwo. I won't bore you with more information about me because I have an entire site dedicated to boring you with details about me over at http://g42.org. Feel free to drop me a line and tell me about how bored you are. Or, better yet tell me what you think of this site and how you would like it improved! I love getting email from people who are interested in my projects.