AO3 question

[sholio]

*flings self on mercy of flist*

On AO3, how do you get a story to show up as a "work in progress"? I had no idea that the little green checkmark meant "completed story", until I started noticing fics that had the other symbol (the red circle), and mouse-overed to find out what it was. So now I've realized I really should switch my one WiP (the Neal dragon one) so that it doesn't show up as a completed work, but I can't find anything anywhere in the edit window to let me do that. HALP.

ETA: Lightning-fast answer! (Or an alternate but similar method.) Thanks, guys!

This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/379389.html with comments.

Comments

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

When you edit the story, change your chapter count from #/# to #/? (that's my guess, anyway).

[sholio]

That's it!!! ... although I couldn't figure out how to do it until xparrot showed up below with a more detailed explanation of the process. But you're quite right, that's the basic idea, I just hadn't poked at it enough. Thanks!

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, we need to make that clearer! ^^;

WiP is determined by number of chapters. So if you edit a work and under "This work has multiple chapters" change the "Chapter 1 of" field to "?" total chapters (or however many you plan on having) - then it will show up as incomplete. (There is currently a bug with chapter drafts that sometimes a complete work will show up with extra chapters, but if you edit the chapter count you can fix that.)

[sholio]

AHA. Thank you! grav_ity suggested the same thing, but I couldn't figure out how to do it because I had thought that the text in that box was automatically generated and didn't realize it was user-editable. Your more detailed explanation did the trick. DONE!

[sholio]

Yeah, I wonder how that could be made clearer for the denser among us? ^^ Because obviously some people figured it out on their own, but I couldn't; I kept looking for someplace to mark the story as "done" or "not done" (maybe because that's how ff.net does it?).

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's one of those things that makes perfect sense from one POV and is entirely nonintuitive for another! There were plans for a checkbox at one point, but I think they've been scrapped - I find the current system makes more sense, but a note of explanation would help, because you're definitely not the only person who couldn't figure it out!

[sholio]

The funny thing is that now I know how it's done, it seems simple and elegant, and I can see why the coders felt that a checkbox would add an extra layer of complexity! I just couldn't get there on my own. Maybe if the "Chapter x of x" line had one of those handy little question buttons that people could click on for an explanation? (I know you're not the one to suggest this to; I'm just musing out loud.)