This quote is from an Author's Blog. Jason Samson. It proposes a new approach to finding stories to read, not necessarily new ones, but new to the person looking.
"Finding new stories
9/2/2018 Posted at 1:10:28 PM
I read more than I write.
How do I find stories? I read the 'new stories' section! And if I like the story or if its a continuation, I click on the author and see what else they've written.
But of course there aren't many new stories. I can read quicker than people post. So I've taken to searching.
Only searching is very crude. I'm kinda skeptical about the scoring algorithm and classifications. I have actually taken to searching by random word like a thing 'lake' or a person 'alice', just to get random stories and see what is good.
What this site really needs is a recommendation system. "People who liked this story also liked..." etc.
Technically this is called 'collaborative filtering'. Its not as scary mathematically as it sounds. If there were a list of users (anonymous, their usernames are really not useful data) and their views and scores, it would be trivial to group stories by who likes them, and to suggest to people what stories they might enjoy reading next.
As it is, the homepage announces there are over 46 thousand stories, but I'm sure that searching by category is not going to find good ones just as I'm sure that the absolute scoring doesn't reflect anything useful.
In the meantime, if you know any authors with good romantic stories, please let me know; the chances of me chancing upon them by random searching are pretty slim! ;)"
It occurs to me that by using readers "History" the site has a potential mine of information about what is being read. Often I give scores to the stories I read that I liked and occasionally scores (low ones) to stories I didn't like. It might be possible to use that data at least for some authors who agree to have their readings mined to set up a listing of what they liked. I like Author A's stories, I would be interested in what he liked (stories by other authors, not his own). It is probably far too much work so maybe it might be worth something if we, or some of us who help pay for the site, offer to pay a little more for a useful source of what to read.
I tend to mine the data on recently concluded serials to find newer stories worth my time to read. That doesn't help me find stories posted more than a year ago, and there are a lot of those stories on this site.
One more thought. If stories authors like aren't doing the job for you, consider looking at stories reviewed. If there is a reviewer who reviews stories you liked, probably other stories he (or she) reviewed should appeal to you.
