Do Better

Learning from mistakes is very important, but requires a mistake to be made first. Learning from the mistakes of others, however, has no such requirement.

Below you can find a list of other websites similar to Genfic, and common wishes and complaints of their users that we managed to identify. With each issue, you will also find how Genfic decided to Do Better.

Archive Of Our Own

Users want to filter by importance of a given tag. For example, a story might be tagged with Bob and Tina, but Bob is merely a background character.

While Genfic does not assign importance to tags, the Club system allows other users to do so. For example, a club dedicated to Bob could tag stories that feature him as the main character, or stories that feature him as a supporting character.

Tag blacklists

Users want to permanently filter out certain tags.

Genfic offers tag and user blacklists.

Filtering for existing lists

Users want to filter stories they have saved in their “marked for later” list.

User-created bookshelves like “for later”, “favourites”, or any other user-defined one, can be filtered just like any other story search.

Filtering by average chapter length

Users want more filtering options in general

Genfic already offers robust filtering options, but of course adding filter by average chapter length is something we’d be willing to look into, should the demand be high enough.

Marking stories as read

Users want to mark stories as read per-account, not just per-browser.

Genfic tracks your read chapters on a per-account basis. You can always see if a story has chapters you haven’t read, or if you’ve read all of it.

Kudos and comment history

users want to see the history of kudos and comments they left.

While Genfic does not support Star or comment history, it should not be too hard to add in the future.

Reordering tags

Authors want to be able to reorder tags on their stories.

Genfic currently does not offer tag ordering. Rather, tags are always sorted the same way: first by namespace, then by name.

Scheduling

Authors want to be able to schedule when their stories or new chapters for them are published.

Genfic currently does not support scheduling, but we are working on it.

”Discontinued” or “Abandoned” stories

Users wish for authors to mark their stories as “discontinued” or “abandoned” if they are no longer writing them. AO3 only offers “in progress” and “completed” statuses.

Genfic allows the author to mark their stories as in progress, complete, on hiatus, and cancelled. Additionally, we are working on a system that will automatically mark in progress stories as being on hiatus after a year without updates, and on hiatus stories as being cancelled after three years.

Continue reading

Users want their progress through the work/chapter to be saved, so they can resume reading where they left off

While Genfic does not support that yet, we would be happy to look into it.

Story stats

Authors want more insight into how their stories are doing: daily/monthly views, reader demographic, chapter-specific stars, etc.

Genfic currently does not track users in any way, so providing those stats is not possible. We might look into that in the future.

Better communication with readers

Authors want better ways to communicate with their readers, than just comments and author’s notes.

Besides author’s notes at the beginning and/or end of every chapter, Genfic offers a user page that can be filled with any desired content, as well as a robust blogging system. Authors can leave important information right on their profile, or write a blogpost — either standalone or attached to a given story or chapter — should they need to communicate something.

User profiles also have a dedicated section for social links to services like Bluesky or Patreon, which makes communication with readers much easier.

Better co-creator management

Authors want the ability to remove problematic or inactive co-creators from their shared works.

Genfic currently does not support stories with multiple authors, so this particular problem does not exist. The credits section of a story can be freely edited by the author, though.

FanFiction.net

Outdated interface and lack of updates

Users see the site as looking and feeling old, as well as lacking modern features or any meaningful improvements.

We’re trying to keep Genfic just shy of the bleeding edge. We’d like to believe that the design is clean and modern, and updates will be coming frequently.

Content restrictions and bans

FFN has a history of banning certain types of stories, like real-person fanfiction, CYOA, or NC-17 content.

Genfic has only a few requirements when it comes to what content can be posted on the site:

  1. Compliance with Polish law
  2. Abiding by the ToS
  3. Submitted works have to be actual literary works, so not a shopping list or a funny joke you found on Reddit.

Better search and filtering

FFN has categories, but the search functionality is often described as ineffective and clunky.

Genfic offers robust searching, filtering, and sorting options. It also has Clubs that allow users to curate and tag their own lists of stories, and other users to subscribe to them.

Limited formatting options

Authors say the text editor is basic, making it difficult to format stories beyond simple paragraphs.

Genfic has a robust Markdown support, which allows authors to add images, section breaks, align text, and more. A helper tool to clean up the most common issues (space before punctuation, turning -- into —, etc.) is also in the works.

Lack of author-reader interaction tools

Reviews are the primary method of interaction, and forums can be unmoderated and difficult to navigate.

Genfic offers authors their own blog, profile page with comments, as well as the ability to create clubs other users can join. Each club has its own forum as well.

FIMFiction

Technical issues

Users observe excessive captchas, technical issues like persistent notifications or libraries showing unread chapters that don’t exist, or frequent rate-limiting.

While Genfic strives for excellency, technical issues are sometimes hard to catch and even harder to fix. That said, the entire codebase of Genfic is available on Github, so you can take a look and try to fix them yourself!

Malicious downvoting

Some users complain about their stories being downvoted maliciously.

Great news! Genfic only offers Stars, an equivalent of an upvote. No downvotes to abuse!

Wattpad

Many users struggle to find relevant stories. Wattpad offers barely any filtering and sorting options. Some users report they can’t even find specific works by their exact titles, and are being given irrelevant or heavily biased results instead.

Genfic offers advanced filtering by tags, authors, titles, and more. As well as sorting by length, publication date, title, and so on.

Better community features

Users miss the Wattpad forums and the sense of community it brought to the site. They wish for dedicated ways to communicate with readers, creating book clubs, or competitions.

Genfic has book clubs, each with their own forum, as well as blogposts you can use to communicate with your readers. While a dedicated competition system does not exist, it’s something we would be willing to look into if the demand is high enough.‘

Better formatting and editing tools

Authors want more control over how their story is presented.

Genfic has an extended Markdown support, which offers more than just basic formatting like bold and underline, but also section separators, alignment, images, and more. A helper tool to clean up the most common issues (space before punctuation, turning -- into —, etc.) is also in the works.

Export/download option for stories

Authors want to easily back up and use their works outside of Wattpad

Genfic lets you export the entire work as .html or .txt files, with .epub support coming in the future.

Direct linking between stories

Authors want the ability to link directly to other stories, like sequels or spinoffs.

Every story on Genfic contains a description that can contain links to other stories. We’re also looking into ways of grouping stories together into series.

Excessive ads and paywalls

Wattpad users miss the unlimited online library and describe the ads as intrusive.

No stories on Genfic are or ever will be paywalled. Genfic’s ads are as minimal as possible, and we’re looking into ways to remove them entirely. You can also get an ad-free experience for as little as $2 per month.

Lack of moderation and rampant plagiarism

Users observe that there is little to no moderation, and many stories are plagiarized. Authors of said plagiarized stories are also having issues having them taken down.

Moderation is a difficult subject. Genfic relies mostly on volunteers to keep the site safe, but we are working on ways to make it easier to moderate. When it comes to plagiarism, we do not require a lengthy DMCA process, all that is needed is for the original author to prove that they own the original work. We’re also working on a “verification” system that would let the users link their accounts from other writing platforms.