Forum: Author Hangout

Based on earlier experiences, I turn off voting when I start posting a new book, and then enable it when I get to a point I believe people have a good sense of how things are going. In one of my earlier books in the series, the MC had a fairly complete meltdown and became more of a jävla idiot than normal. I didn't turn on scores until we were well past that point. I endured the hate mail and the story ended up scoring very well.

If you do turn off scoring, nothing is purged. But I simply turn it off when posting the first chapter. It's worked well for me.

The votes are never purged.

As I found out with 'Gay!'. I tried to switch off voting from the outset but something went wrong. By the time I noticed, someone had 1-bombed the prologue.

I switched off voting until readers had an idea of where the story was heading. When I switched it back on, the 1-bomb was still there. I suspect it's still present today, although it's not visible because I don't have access to the raw scores. Its only current impact would be to knock out a 10.

AJ

Its only current impact would be to knock out a 10.

You are going to lose 5% of your high scores regardless of how low the 5% of the low scores are.

That's not true. The votes are never purged.

My mistake. The one time I turned voting off on a story the votes vanished. However, I didn't turn it back on, so they're gone as far as I'm concerned.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone asked Lazeez if there can be a Stat History readout that could list, possibly weekly, where the overall stats are on each story. I know we have chapter by chapter downloads, and on the title tag for downloads a tooltip that shows previous weeks downloads. But, I'm more talking a table that would list how many votes and the adjusted scores at the end of each week just for that week. My thinking is I could use that to see if adjustments in style/editing/etc had a net positive impact or not on the reception of my stories. Otherwise I would need to start a pretty complicated excel sheet to track the changes.

Just a thought.

Personally, I no longer worry about the 1-bombers who bomb every story.

The number of people who 1-bomb every story posted is small. Their votes may initially have an impact on your overall rating. However due to the 5% rule, their votes are likely to be dropped out of the rating calculation as your number of votes increases. I would be more concerned about why your readers feel they have a valid reason for 1-bombing your story.

Wait until you're still doing that long after new scores have stopped rolling in, and you're just hoping for any shift in the download count.

I've noted before, and you'll notice as you continue posting, Merlyn, that you'll see a very brief boost (to the true score among the early readers), once it completes, before it almost immediately drops (within a day or two) as a flood of new readers, who weren't interested enough to read it while it was posting flood it with new 'Eh!' scores. The true scores, as I said, you'll only see after it's been completed for a couple of months and the scores settle into their final numbers.

While a story is posting, you'll also see changes as many of the voters vote 'per chapter', voting a story up when something exciting happens, and voting it down when something unsettling happens--which is another reason NOT to get too caught up in the overall score.

But, alas, as REP will tell you, that's just a reflection of MY scores, and isn't a scientific standard reflective of every story ever published in the entire history of mankind!

I'm confused by this. I thought the status was given at a particular KB of files (adjusted by score). Is it really tied to amount of downloads? Or is there a separate metric that decides that.

The note beside the figure is explained as:

This number is the size of text qualifying for premier service. If it is over 500, then you should be getting premier service on the site, or you will after your next post. It's calculated from the regular size and the score. Better quality stories are worth more. Stories with multiple authors are divided among all the authors.

As you can see the number of downloads have no direct affect. However, since experience has shown the more downloads you have the more votes you get, and the more votes you get the higher the score you have, there is a tenuous link there.

Thanks for the advise about not really knowing until it is done. It makes sense, since I myself used to avoid unfinished stories, it just hadn't occurred to me. Maybe it's the programmer/dba/data junkie in me but I feel like I am checking my stats multiple times a day, and that is probably not healthy

That's why many of us (try to) ignore the total score entirely, and mainly focus (like any good statistician) on the percentage change). If you compare the change in scores between each chapter, it'll alert you to anything you didn't anticipate, like an unhappy response to a new character, or how excited readers get over an particularly exciting chapter.

The total score, alas, only tells you how it does against every other story posted on SOL for that time period, which is not always a fair comparison.

The snobs who won't open a story unless it's above a certain score will find you. Since they have impeccable tastes, they won't score you lower than their threshold ... and your scores will improve again.

You (merlyn2748) should also bear in mind that longer stories almost always score higher. Thus a 20 chapter story will score higher than a 3 chapter story, just as a 50 story will score even higher—everything else being equal. Readers enjoy stories they can sink their teeth into, plus after that many chapters, you're eventually left with ONLY those who're already invested in the story, and THEIR scores will entice others into giving it a shot who might not otherwise.

That's why you'll notice that many of the 'all time high ranking' stories are long-running series (50+ or 200+ chapters).

On the concept of an author not allowing scoring on early chapters - it makes a lot of sense because all too often at least the first chapter is merely scene setting.

I've discovered, that for stories that start slowly—as virtually all of mine do—it's often best to post multiple chapters up front. However, for me it's a conflict, because my main followers all frequent the 'Series Updates' page, thus I like to post a single chapter, just so the next post will go directly to the "Updates" page. However, the drawback to that is that the 'New Stories' followers will often give it a low score, which will stick with the story for much of its posting life.

I really wish there was an option to post directly to the "Series Update" page when the story launches, rather than frustrating readers looking for short stories and are stymied when my stories don't 'get to the point' right off the bat.

I would guess you could achieve that effect provided you start with a post of more than one chapter. Simply include a special instruction that chapter 1 is posted and immediately followed by a post of the other chapters you kick off your story with.

That's entirely up to Lazeez, as to whether he'd do as requested or not. If it's a matter of policy, I'd guess not. Though I also got a private note that new stories updates and series updates flag the story title in different ways, so doing that might change how readers identify stories.

I'm not confident that gaming the scoring system is in the best interests of SOL's readers. If readers trying a story from the 'new stories' page don't particularly like a story and mark it down, I think it's useful information that should be available to potential readers.

If the majority of CW's readers access his stories from the 'updated serials' page, will they be deterred by a less than stratospheric score by the time the story impacts their consciousnesses?

AJ

omehow stories without scores when you look them up turn up in some kind of order when you search for stories in score order.

That's more likely a case of a story with scoring on with some votes, but not yet enough votes for it to be visible. There is a low limit before votes and scores are visible to everyone, but the scores are still kept by the system and used in sorts etc.