Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

Wow, I missed that.

FYI - If an author has not been active on the SOL website for 5 years (i.e., log into the site), then their stories are archived in the Members Only area. If the author logs back into SOL, then the stories that were archived are returned to the Free area.

If you find a story that you want to reread, it is in your best interest to download it.

There is a link on the homepage "Up for archival" with all the free stories by authors who will soon be approaching the fifth anniversary of the last time they signed onto SOL.

In my case, I decided to 'retire' my oldest stories on SOL (largely just to see what would happen), but wanted to keep them available as free reads to my fans, just after they came off SOL, I started reposting the entire series on Sci-Fi, which also helps bring more readers to the less-used SciFi site.

"Started reposting on Sci-Fi ...less-used...?" I recently found Finestories which seems to be a sister site of SOL. Is Sci-Fi a sister site or? Are there other sites I'm missing? :-)

You can register with these free and sue the same logon ID and password as for SoL. There are also links at the bottom of the left hand column of the Home page

http://finestories.com/

https://scifistories.com/

and the head company's site listing page is:

http://wlpc.com/

Thank you! That info does not show on my phone version on the webpage, I guess I should go to a computer screen.

If you click on the image of a computer monitor at the top of the page, it changes your view from "mobile" to "desktop", where it reveals the added detail.

"Started reposting on Sci-Fi ...less-used...?" I recently found Finestories which seems to be a sister site of SOL. Is Sci-Fi a sister site or? Are there other sites I'm missing? :-)

They're both sister sites. FS (Fine Stories) is the clean 'kid friendly' site which many access while they're at work, while SciFi allows both kid-friendly and 'adult only' stories, as long as they're related to Science Fiction.

Unfortunately, since the sites were slow to start, Lazeez has had to supplement their story content with professional writers from the 50s and early 60s, meaning there's less original content to draw new readers. I've been posting to both to try to draw more new readers to both sites (I either post an entire story before starting SOL, or start it early on one site, so the stories are always a couple of chapters ahead of the others).

There's talk of another new sister site, where SOL readers can purchase new books by SOL authors, with SOL taking a cut, but none of us have seen anything of it yet.

There is a link on the homepage

Yes, I know.

I have a paid membership, but if I had a free membership then the archival of a story I wanted to reread would be a problem.

There are currently 68 stories listed. Personally, I don't care to wade through that many stories to see if a story I want to reread is listed. Then there is the fact that I frequently forget titles and author names very quickly, which means I would have to read the descriptions provided by the authors. If the description doesn't match my recollection of the story, I will probably miss it.

On the other hand, if I download stories I want to reread as soon as I finish reading it, I have the story and won't have to worry about doing the above.

I was curious and checked this reader's votes. He/she had voted on 2934 stories each of those votes is a 10. He/she gave more than half of the stories that he/she read a score of 'most amazing story'.

This is the second reader that I stumble on that votes nothing but 10s.

They may be the type who don't vote unless they really like the story, and then they only give it a top score.

They may be the type who don't vote unless they really like the story, and then they only give it a top score.

2,934 is a LOT of "I only vote for the top stories" votes. More likely, they want to encourage every author, regardless of story content.

I may be butting in where I should not, so feel free to advise me to stay out.

Feel free to join in. The more the merrier.

The score is supposed to be a way for readers to show if they liked or didn't like the story by registering a level of story appeal to them. It's all subjective, but not everyone scores a story. There are many reason for that. Not everyone likes a story, and not everyone finishes a story. While every readers has an opinion on when and what they should score a story by - and every damn one is a legitimate opinion.

None of that stops many authors and writers from trying to work out trends of cause and effects.

One of the odd facets is the variation between downloads and votes as a percentage. They are no where near uniform. I have access to the stats for another author since he started having issues with Internet access and asked me to look after his stories for him in regards to fixing and posting typos etc. as well as posting a story when he has it ready to go.

Overall he has one vote for every 110.174 downloads. One story has a rations of (a) 186.83 to 1, another has (b) 13.93 to 1, another (c) 42.1124 to 1, with another at (d) 115.431 to 1, with his fifth at (e) 98.98 to 1. Now you could expect some variation due to story length but which is a, d, e, c, b and it does match the ration order. You could also expect to see a disparity due to people re-reading stories upping the downloads and not the votes. But they are some odd ratios there.

Yet my own 107 stories have an overall ratio of 33.42 downloads to 1 vote with my largest story having 100.55 to 1 and the shortest single story is 12.15 to 1. yet a story i get a lot of people emailing me about have re-read again, and again, and again, has a ratio of 10.16 to 1 for a very short story.

No matter how you try to look at the two important factors of downloads and votes, there is absolutely no clear relevancy between the two across the story on any basis. But it's fun trying to find one, most of the time. Thus there's a lot of discussion on why people vote.

There's only a weak relationship between the number of readers who read a story and the download count if stories are uploaded in multiple chunks.

A better measure would be the number of downloads of the concluding chunk versus number of votes. However that doesn't work for single chunk stories because some browsers auto-load the first chapter.

AJ

A better measure would be the number of downloads of the concluding chunk versus number of votes. However that doesn't work for single chunk stories because some browsers auto-load the first chapter.

I typically load a "cast list" as my first post of any story. I then update the cast list whenever I post a new story. That allows me, when the story finishes, to ask Lazeez to delete the cast list, which erases the notorious 'false download' counts, leaning a more meaningful first chapter download scores.

It's a tedious approach, but it seems to provide better intel about those abandoning a story after only reading a couple of chapters.

The only time I have ever voted for a story I didn't finish was when I once read two paragraphs of misspellings, grammatical errors and writing worthy of a second-grader. I rated that story so low that, I hope, it discouraged the person from ever writing again.

Rather than chasing newbie authors from the site, you'd do better sending them a short note, suggesting they find a volunteer editor to help them correct their writing, and hopefully guide them in the proper use of techniques. That's much more encouraging of potential authors. Not every great author is a decent speller. I can't spell my way out of a paper bag, and only survive due to the Google search bar suggesting alternate spellings.

Happytechguy15 presented a considered decision as his reason not to vote on a story but I assume, the usual reason is simply lazyness.

Rather than laziness, I suspect most don't feel qualified to vote on the literary merits of a story. They might vote if they like a story, but consider voting on stories they aren't interested in disingenuous.

The score is supposed to be a way for readers to show if they liked or didn't like the story by registering a level of story appeal to them. It's all subjective, but not everyone scores a story. There are many reason for that. Not everyone likes a story, and not everyone finishes a story. While every readers has an opinion on when and what they should score a story by - and every damn one is a legitimate opinion.

I much prefer authors who don't vote on stories they aren't interested in than readers who only read a couple paragraphs, and then score a story low simply because it doesn't appeal to them. Since my stories typically start slow, I'd rather readers not vote right away, allowing the story to get underway before anyone voices their opinion—which is why I like the per-chapter voting. I don't mind someone telling me they dislike a particular chapter, as long as it doesn't effect their final vote on the story.

I may be butting in where I should not, so feel free to advise me to stay out.

Nope. We're always happy to hear from readers. Too often, we authors spend most of our time fighting over technical minutia (like how many adjectives to hyphenate at a time), so it's nice to hear how readers perceive our arguments.

For me, as an author, I generally ignore the total score, but as an ex-economics student, I'm more interested in the changes in the score. As many readers vote for each chapter, it provides an insight into how readers respond to specific techniques and content. Some chapters you expect to score badly (such as when the protagonist gets injured or a favorite character dies), but if readers dislike a particular character's actions, it best for authors to get ahead of them problem, which is difficult if they don't even know the problem exists.

Again, total scores don't really matter, as they're not an objective measurement. But when readers vote the story down based on the latest chapter, that tells you something useful.

I first noticed this 'per-chapter voting' early on when I noticed you could cheat on voting because the SOL cookies would expire, allowing readers to vote on the same story multiple times (I noticed because I read on multiple devices, each with their own cookies). I reported it to Lazeez, and he came up with the current fix (adjusting a users story score, rather than only registering new votes).

Obviously, a very nice and generous person. We need many more such readers to counterweight the scoring system of SOL's grouchy Webmaster.

I do hope your post was in jest - not sure due to the lack of a smiley.

I've encountered people who score that way before, and in each case it was because they used a trinary scoring system of:

I hated the crap = 1
I loved the story = 10
I liked it but didn't love it so I didn't register a score at all.

This type of person likes a thumbs up or thumbs down type system and doesn't register anything most of the time.

Out of curiosity, I did a search on stories with a score of 1-2. I got 17 returns, but only 4 had numeric values. The rest had '-' in the Votes and Score columns.

I assume voting was turned off, so no votes and no score.

But why did the story get listed as having a score of between 1 and 2, if there was no numeric score? Is it a bug in the search algorithm.

Out of curiosity, I did a search on stories with a score of 1-2. I got 17 returns, but only 4 had numeric values. The rest had '-' in the Votes and Score columns.

The score doesn't display until the story gets a certain number of scores in, but it's still in the system and used to place stories in search returns. We had this come up a few years back in one of the lengthy scoring discussions. It confused many until Lazeez told us about it.

The score doesn't display until the story gets a certain number of scores in

I have seen stories with no score and only a low number of votes displayed, which matches your explanation.

So, why would some stories display their low vote count, but not others. That assumes voting was not turned off.

The fact that the software appears to behave in 2 different ways implies something is affecting the decision tree in regard to returning the story as a search result and that something is not clear. Is that something a glitch or is the decision tree supposed to yield that result?

I think that the minimum number of votes required to show the score was 20.

You missed my point. My question was about the number of votes, not the score.

I recall seeing stories with a low number of votes in the Vote column and (-) in the Score column. Voting must have been enabled to record votes.

So, my question is - why do some stories with (-) in the Score column, sometimes show (-) in the Vote column, while other stories have a numerical value in the Vote column. I am assuming voting is turned on for stories with (-) in both columns.

I seems to me that the display software would treat the value displayed in the Vote column the same way. Instead the module for displaying the number of votes appears to be doing two different things.

I recall seeing stories with a low number of votes in the Vote column and (-) in the Score column. Voting must have been enabled to record votes.

Not sure, but it might be due to old votes, before the current voting system was in place (stories posted before the minimum vote count was instituted).

Not sure, but it might be due to old votes,

Votes are votes. When the votes were cast should not matter to todays software. Todays software just accesses the number of votes a story has and displays that value.

So why do some stories have their vote count displayed as a numerical value with no score while others show a '-' which I would interpret as no votes since other stories display the number of votes with no score. If voting is enabled, I find it hard to believe that there wasn't at least 1 vote cast for a story. It is also hard to believe that of the 17 stories my search returned 13 would have voting disabled.

I will. It just seemed odd to me when a saw a vote count, which seemed high enough to warrant a score, but no score. That was a while ago, so I don't recall the details.

The fact that the software appears to behave in 2 different ways implies something

I'm not going any further into this, but at the time it was explained very well. There is the one voting system to calculate the votes and scores, however, the display system is set to not display a score until the number of votes reaches the magic marker. So the calculation is the same, what's different is what's allowed to be displayed.

I'm not going any further into this

Like AmigaClone, you focused on the score column while I was concerned about the Vote column. My reply to AC applies.

So, why would some stories display their low vote count, but not others. That assumes voting was not turned off.

The threshold is 20 (?) votes - 5% from the top and bottom.

I'm a poor bastard on SSDI

"Solid-State Drive Interconnect"? 'D

Probably Social Security Disability Income.

Yes.

Probably Social Security Disability Income.

I was teasing. Although I'm on SSDI (the official name), I almost never hear anyone on it actually refer to it as that. Most simply say "I'm on disability." There's only one 'official' disability in the U.S., defined by the Federal government but implemented by each individual state, so there's no confusing one 'disability' agency with another, the only difference being what each state covers (i.e. how much reimbursement you get).

IMO the author dosn't deserve lower scores because of my preferences.

I think that's the ideal summary of the 'I don't vote on stories I dislike/don't read' crowd. The fact you don't like the story has no bearing on the authors ability to tell a convincing story, it's just that certain plots (like watersports or being shat upon) just aren't up my aisle!

Is author feedback available on each chapter or

.At the end of each chapter, the is a feedback link. Click the link and type away. Many of us make it a point to acknowledge your feedback, and some of us will even chat with you for a while.

I rarely read an in progress story (similar reasons to Helmut). Is author feedback available on each chapter or at the most recent update? If so, then an author could invite feedback at the end of each update. That is if an author wants more feedback than just a vote...

Feedback is ALWAYS offered on the last chapter, often causing readers to just to the last chapter repeatedly when reading a story, just to post comments or corrections.

Of course, the other option is to post comments to the story comments, specifically targeting individual chapters, but that might be distracting to the other readers who are much further along in the story. :(

that might be distracting to the other readers who are much further along in the story.

Don't forget that readers who jump forward to the last posted chapter can read the comments about chapters the haven't read.

It got scraped because analysis made it clear that they weren't being filled out properly.

My understanding is that readers were giving the same score to each category, as some reviewers currently do :(

AJ

My understanding is that readers were giving the same score to each category, as some reviewers currently do :(

That was what I understood the problem to be. Something like 95% of the votes had the same for each category, thus the system wasn't providing anything really useful and didn't justify the space it took up within the system. Thus the system was dumped with only the Appeal scores being kept. I'm sure the lot was archived somewhere, but only the appeal was used in the calculation form that period. By cutting back to the one voting system it reduced the code, storage, and bandwidth used.