That would rule. The only thing would be you'd have to have a way of putting it back if you discovered you couldn't do it after all, of lots of people would never get theirs.

Yeah, I think this would be part of the "choose to keep or return it" thing. Maybe the Cookie Jar could send you email reminders once a month that you have to write the ficlet, and after three months it automatically returned the task to the jar. And you don't get to request a new one until you actually write it and notify the jar.

I think the idea is BRILLIANT. If only I were a genius...

Oh, I love that idea!! I wonder how hard it would be... I should ask my brother. He might be able to tell me. Fun!

That sounds really interesting. I will ponder.

Neat idea. I do most of my writing in response to other people's nudging. :)

How I'd suggest doing it:

1. Get people to enter their request together with their email address, and tag each request with a unique ID number.
2. When somebody hits the "Show me a request" button, display a random request together with its ID number (the requesting person could be left anonymous - or not - I guess).
2a. And hey, why not have the Master List of Requests available for viewing as well? People can look through the whole list and find anything that looks interesting.
3. Have an automated archive, where a person can upload a ficlet, specifying the ID number of the request they're answering. (Or, I suppose, just upload a link to the fic if you don't want to archive them centrally.)
4. The ID is then used to look up the email of the requesting person and send them a notification.
5. Once a fic has been uploaded, the writer gets linked to the 'enter a request' page where they can put in a new request of their own.

Seems to me, that would work and allow the whole thing to be done fully automatically. (You'd have to start it off with a free-for-all period at the beginning where anybody can enter requests to get a decent number in the database.)

Under this system, of course, a request wouldn't be 'taken' until the ficlet is actually finished and uploaded. But I don't think that would be a bad thing. There would be times when multiple people wrote answers to the same request, but hey - where's the bad there? (I guess the archive would need some sort of failsafe to make sure multiple stories under the same request ID are all archived together instead of overwriting each other, but that should be simple enough to do.) And it avoids the awkward (on both sides) situation of somebody accepting a request and then never getting around to answering it.

Sadly, I don't have the facilities to do it myself, but if anybody's got the webspace and the coding skills to set up an automated archive, it could definitely be done.

That could work. I think it would be possible to find a way to avoid multiple answers, if that's what is wanted, but it would probably be easiest with a registration system.

Actually, registration would be good in any case. When you register you could enter one request even before you've answered any. That way there would be a decent number of request on the database. Then when you've answered a request, you'de be allowed to enter the next one. That way you wouldn't have to enter the new request right after you've uploaded your fic. You could also answer multiple requests and then you'de be allowed to enter multiple requests.

My knowledge of programming isn't too good, but I think that wouldn't be overly difficult to do.

Okay, now I itch to start to figure out how it could be done. (isiscolo, you're evil.) Let's say, if no one has done it in half a year, I can try it if I'm well enough. :-)

Oh, it seems twilightsorcery already did it. Cool.

What a cool idea! For someone of my limited brain capacity, that might actually work. No idea about how to actually create this thing, though, because, see above...

And your icon. They do look quite alike each other, don't they? :-D

Isn't that a lovely icon? It's by ildi_bp.

This is a wonderful concept! I want this cookie jar. Someone MAKE it, darn it!

Done.

:)

Oh, how fabulous! Off to plug. Thank you so much for doing this, and it looks pretty, too!

Thank you!

That is so the best idea ever. The only problem I can see is, you can't add another request in until you write a fic--but the request that's being taken out then is someone else's, not yours. So, if someone writes a lot of fic based on this but no one writes anything based on his requests, then there could be a point where half the requests are from that person.

On the other hand, if you haven't written anything, but you've been given one of your requests, why should you be given another chance to request something? And if you've written fic for five people, why shouldn't you be able to have six requests in there? :D I think I talked myself out of finding that a problem.

I hope someone with the capabilities does try doing that.

So, you inspired me. I decided it was a great idea, read nomadicwriter's comment, then sat down and coded the whole thing.

I've finished everything except the monthly reminder and automatic-release scripts; those will take a teeny bit longer as I find the Perl functions to emulate what I'm doing with PHP.

With that said, feel free to use it. The master list is at http://www.twilightsorcery.net/hp/cookie_request_list.php, and there are links to all the other functions as well.

Replying to myself to mention: I wrote this thing *today*, so bugs are pretty much a given. If you run across a problem, email me with the details and I'll fix it.

wow. that's neat. can't think of anything to request right now but I'll be back

That's cool!

I developed nomadicwriter's idea a little further. I think that would take more effort and space, but it should be doable, don't you think?

Actually, I was thinking along the same lines as I was writing it. (great minds think alike...) What it does is this:

When you go to request a ficlet, it counts up the number of requests you already have, then counts up the number of ficlets that you've finished and posted for someone else. If the number of requests is less than the number of finished ficlets plus one (your first request), it'll let you drop it in the jar.

The one thing that's missing is that it doesn't check to make sure you're who you say you are, so theoretically someone could use someone else's username and create problems. For the time being, I'm relying on the reputation-beatdown-punishment method as a deterrant, but I should be able to get real authentication up and running soon.

I think LJ has a built in solution for that, since clients like Semagic can authenticate with an LJ username and password. I'll look it up when I get home from work today; I have an idea for a really simple integration which hopefully will be short work to code.

Yay! That's the nice thing about a net-based circle of friends - there's got to be a few geeks in there somewhere!

Could there be art as well as stories?

Well, I hate to muck with something that's already set up, and I imagine people have certain expectations. I suppose that if you're an artist and are inspired by something in the cookie jar, you could ask the requestor if she would like art instead - and then claim it, if so.

I've only just found the Cookie Jar today, and I haven't had much chance to explore it, but I was wondering if there was a way to tell which requests have been waiting the longest? I ask because there are several requests I have ideas for, but I write too slowly to try them all at once. I'd rather write one ficlet well than write several badly, anyway, but... I'd rather do the oldest one(s) first, if possible.

It looks like it's newest on top. Is that correct? (I submitted a request to see where it would show up... brain deficient much, Aylix? LOL.) I think I'll just assume that's how it goes until I hear for sure, if that's alright?

You'll have to ask twilightsorcery, who actually programmed the thing. But yay you for wanting to give someone a treat who's been waiting a long time!