Rob Barba wrote:

...  If one sees Ranma walking into the
schoolyard as Akane beats up hordes of guys, we'll probably
assume it's day one; if he launches a Hiryu Shotenha, we
know its later; if there's a mention of Saffron, we know
it's after v.38.

Again, something I agree on.  The reader should already be aware to a
degree of the timelines of the fiction, and where it stands with the
canon timeline.

	Excuse, but there i have to wake up from the deep slumber.
	Should he?
	Okey, for someone who has seen the full anime series, 
read translated manga, and owns piles of LD with the original 
japanese stuff, this isnt necessery. Lets take and average 
Jon Doe not from USA/Japan. Does he have same interest into
reading? If he is here, then yes. Does he has same knowledge 
of the series in question? Doubt.
	If about the big ones (Ranma ,SM & NGE) one can quickly
get some insights simply from following the discussions here,
what info one can find about less popular series?

	While i can agree, six page long introduction to four
page story is overdone, a few sentences before the story 
is only authors courtese to the readers.

...  This is, again, another failure to effectively
describe, this time temporal details that serve to give the sense of
place within the series.

	Often many stories concentrate not on the detalized 
positioning into the existing timeline, but on the story own
problems, conflicts, discussions.
	While Your thoughts are the ideal verse, how many
stories are close to that ideal...

 If you don't think your readers are
intelligent enough to figure out details like that, perhaps you should
be writing Sesame Street fics, not anime.  Admittedly, while some
people need things like that hammered out to them, it is the exception
rather than the rule; at least I would hope so.

	And some like to see details.

						Aivars