The site requires a fairly up-to date browser with JavaScript enabled to operate (probably not MSIE; tested mostly on Google Chrome, a bit Mozilla Firefox). If you have any concerns in this regard, feel free to report those via contacts on the About page.

On the Search page (after it completely loads) you can find a search form, and a list of proofreaders (search results for the default query). You can open/close each proofreader's "card" individually by clicking the black bar with their name, or do it with all cards at once by clicking the "expand all"/"collapse all" buttons above the list.

The search currently uses strict matching: whatever criteria you have set, if there is no records that satisfy them all, you will end up with no search results. Thus, Select search criteria wisely! Too many matches? Add more restrictions. No matches at all? Loosen your search query.

Now let's run through the form controls.

If you're looking for a specific person, you can type their name or part of it into the Name field. If the switch next to it is set to "contains," all records with their name containing your sample will match; if it ever happens to be too much, swap it to "exact" to select [probably] the only record for which you have typed its full name.

There is currently a switch to filter for proofreaders that are accepting stories irrespective of length ("yes"), or those focusing on short stories ("oneshots only"), or not accepting ("no"), or skip filtering by accepting status ("any"). Generally, you can leave this in the "yes" position.

According to an option under "show settings," omnivorous proofreaders are included when the switch is set to "oneshots only."

The Timezone fields let you find a proofreader who lives as close to your time zone (the first field) as possible within a specified range (the second field) of time zones apart from yours.

For example, if you live in New York (with daylight savings it's GMT-4), values -4 and 0 will give you proofreaders from the same time zone, -4 and 5—from Alaska (more or less) to London, and -4 with 12—from the whole world (or just clear both fields).

"Last seen" means "Last seen on Fimfiction within … days". Currently, the only method of contact for a proofreader is their Fimfiction profiles. Correctly linked profiles are checked daily for being online. You can filter out profiles that are offline for too long. A default value is set for this field as a hint; clear the field to disable this filter.

According to an option under "show settings," matched records are sorted ascendingly by the time since last online.

Finally, there is a set of switches to select genre preferences. If you want a specific genre to be present on the proofreader's "Prefers to read" or "Prefers not to read" list, select "likes" or "dislikes" respectively. "May like" means they aren't explicitly against proofreading the genre, and "may dislike" means they don't like the genre explicitly. "Any" means the preference is unimportant. So if you want a proofreader in Romance who doesn't mind reading Clop but isn't someone who likes trollfics, select Romance "likes", Clop "may like" and Troll "may dislike".

It is recommended to narrow the search criteria incrementally, field by field, beginning from the genre switches. Because if there are no records that exactly match the search criteria, you will see no results. The results are supposed to update automatically with each change of filtering criteria, but if it doesn't happen for your platform, you can apply your filters manually by clicking "Search."

The "Reset" button is supposed to set the form controls to their default value, and reset search results. The "Shuffle" button must randomly change order of current results.

There is also a bunch of checkboxes under the "show settings" checkbox, but I doubt anyone gets there, half of those are for debugging. I believe the default settings are ideal. And I forgot how "save settings" works, so you should better not enable it.

The site's engine is not perfect (it may include broken formatting of proofreaders' notes), so all proofreader cards have a link to a corresponding record in one of the group's docs, as well as a link to their Fimfiction profile (when available). Remember that the database is updated roughly as frequently as daily, so the links may break if their target moves or renames. As well, this text may go slightly out of date as the site development progresses. I believe you will be strong and able to get through it.

Kody Wiremane