The Last Roundup Question · 5:56pm Oct 18th, 2014
Hi guys. If you've all got a moment, I'd like to ask something.
So, The Last Roundup has been going on for about five weeks now, going on six, and while it started out fairly promising, I've noticed something of a disheartening trend in that it doesn't seem to be getting much of a particular response from people. There haven't been all that many comments on the posts themselves as of late, and the last two suggestion threads got a total of zero suggestions. Which sort of makes me wonder if this is actually something people really enjoy and want to see continue, or if the overall sentiment's kind of lukewarm and there's something better I could be doing with my time re: bringing you guys stuff you'd want to see.
But I'unno, that's just how the response lately has felt to me. I'm aware that there aren't a lot of ways to promote/spread this sort of thing beyond what I've been able to do for it off my own follow-base, so it's understandable that there's limited power for anyone who might feasibly be interested to actually find this. Which is sad, but that's just life, I guess. That said, if the people who're already aware of it aren't really that interested in it, I guess that'd be something of a final nail in the coffin. So I'd kinda want to see what you guys have to say on the matter.
Thoughts?
I'd be paying more attention to it if I were not so busy with life. Otherwise, I like the Idea, and what has been going on.
I just joined, and I would like to see where it's going. Don't cancel it, for your own sake as well as mine!
What is the last roundup
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The post features a link to The Last Roundup group, which should contain most of whatever you'd want to know about it.
In general, it's an effort to provide an alternative to Fimfiction's featured box by collecting a number of solid recent stories that'd be worth your time and attention (as opposed to the Featured Box, which can solely promote stories that've received the requisite attention in the form of upvotes/views/etc.)
I follow The Last Roundup and I read the stories you suggest, but I don't comment or suggest any stories myself because, quite frankly, all the stories I read are either featured (and are therefore not worth noting), written by my friends (which are rarely all that great) or written by a few choice writers I follow (who work on novel-like stories for months at a time, and never seem to come out with anything "new" that I can recommend).
Oh! I'm sorry! I've been treating The Last Roundup kind of like site posts—not to comment on or add suggestions, just another convenient list of good stories I should read.
I'm starting to think that feature box alternatives can't possibly work. Nobody pays attention to them because they're too busy looking at the feature box! Even the people who hate the feature box pay attention to it! You can't compete with that.
IMO, the only way to let something like TLR have any effect would be to feed their selections into the feature box, perhaps by dedicating a couple slots to Roundup-selected stories. Five slots of new stories, three slots of updates, and two of hand-picked candidates. I guarantee that people will care if you do that. The question then becomes whether there'll be too many submissions, and TLR will spend too much time curating those two slots.
Every time they go by I kind of with they were site posts, I think you would get better engagement.
Hello Obs,
I look (and usually add to my read later list) at all your recommendations. I enjoy reading good stories, even those with a few "rough edges". However, since I don't read them straight from your blog I rarely think to come back here to comment. With the new bookshelf system in place maybe a lot of others are doing the same.
Still, I do hope you'll continue – and that some of my own stories might eventually make it into your blog!
I like this stuff. I usually don't comment though, and go straight for reading the stories. It's up to you though, continue if you will, and I will continue reading.
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Same, I've just been benefiting without contributing, I suppose.
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Not true. I haven't been to the site's main page (where said box is located) in months. I have, however, read all Obsolescence's posts in that time, even if some weeks I had time to look through all his recommendations and others I didn't.
Edit: Admittedly, it's become harder to find stories since people's favorites lists vanished, since that used to be my primary source, find an author I liked, look through their favorites, then look at any authors on their list I liked and repeat the process.
I love your Last Roundup, especially the "Wildcards"-section. I have always read at least one story you recommended right after your post and added the others to my Read Later-shortlist. So "bringing you guys stuff you'd want to see"? Definitely Yes and Thanks!
But that's the problem too. After reading a story I'm much more likely to comment on the story than to retrace my steps to your recommendation.
Wow, now that I'm writing it, that's a pretty mean thing to do.
I'll try to remember and give you some feedback in the future, okay?
I think it's a good thing to be doing. I just don't tend to comment on recommendation posts such as this one. Might just need more time to work up a noticeable response to posts. I'm pretty sure I've added at least one or two stories from TLR to my read later list. A good number of others stories are ones that were already there or I've read already.
Ask the authors how many more views they get following a Roundup.
I am looking for an editor with knowledge of the movie I spit on your grave if any one does please contact me
I love the posts, I'm just an exceptionally slow reader. I usually don't get around to reading anything new within the one week window that it could be suggested for inclusion. All the same, two or three of the stories from each post usually make it onto my Read It Later list.
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Favorites lists are still accesible, along with any other public bookshelves they've created. Click the drop down arrow in their user bio, then hit Library.
I would pay more attention to it, I guess, if it didn't feature the same authors every single time...
There's always a chance I might have been wrong, though. 
OK, I might be exaggerating, but Pascoite? SS&E? CiG? Seriously? They are all great authors and
everyonemost of the readers here know that. What is the point, then, of promoting their stories even further? OK, there's always a chance that someone following you hasn't heard of them, but I find it highly unlikely.I was under the assumption that The Last Roundup was supposed to bring light to stories not only good, but also from authors who have less than bazillion of followers already.
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We go off of what we can find, and in the absence of recommendations, we sort of gravitate toward what looks most likely to be worth the time spent reading (i.e. works by authors we recognize and would most likely be able to say are good). It's kind of unreasonable to expect us to be able to dig into all the New Stories and sift out what might be good from the scores of stories that're posted every day, so we rely fairly heavily on Recommendations to identify lesser-known works of quality.
Except, y'know, for the past two weeks, we've gotten no recommendations at all. Which is troubling, both in that it sort of implies that people aren't really interested in The Last Roundup and in that it handicaps our ability to identify stuff that might otherwise have been overlooked.
2541358 Pretty much what this guy said, Obs.
I like the idea (I don't participate in the suggestion threads because I'm not able to articulate why I do or don't enjoy a story, and I don't usually find good stuff before it hits the feature box and/or groups like TLR)... but most of the stories are either ones I've already read or RiL'ed because they are popular authors who I'm already following.
On the other hand, Seattle's Angels already does the "good stories that aren't popular" thing. And Twilight's Library (theoretically, and incredibly slowly) collects high-quality stories.
I guess what I'm saying is, that you need to more narrowly define the vision of what TLR is trying to do. New stories that are good, even though they may also be popular and/or be in the feature box? Old stories that never made feature box, but are high-quality, good literature? Just another "good stuff" aggregation?
I love having another source of story recommendations, and I do check most them out (some still don't seem like my cup of tea even after reading your recommendations, but that's okay different stokes and all that). I've read a lot of the the stories you guys suggested or at least added them to read later.
But like others her have said, I don't generally offer suggestions because I don't have any. Most of the authors I follow do pretty well for themselves and don't really need the LR signal boost.
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Pretty much "New stories that are good and worth your time to read, regardless of their extant popularity." The problem sort of goes back to it being really difficult for us to dig up stuff that is both good/isn't popular without some outside recommendations. Because, y'know, we're human and have limited time to actually read stuff. It's a lot easier for us to investigate stuff that we can reasonably trust to be good than trying to sift potentially good stuff out from the total mass of everything that gets posted in a week.
Which isn't to say we don't try--we do tend to include some lesser-known stuff in every featuring--but it's much less of a risk of wasted time/effort to look at good authors' stuff and figure out what's worth featuring than it is to roll dice and investigate, say, a random 8k word story from an unknown author, without much indication of whether it'd actually be good or not.
If the problem is that people don't like that we gravitate toward featuring stuff by better-known authors, but simultaneously aren't interested in providing recommendations for lesser-known stuff that we can investigate, that feels like a bit of a catch-22 on our part, and I'm not entirely sure if it'd be reasonable for us to be able to address both of those issues on our own.
But given that, as you say, The Last Roundup has trouble standing out if it can't provide both better-known and lesser-known recent works of quality, I am wondering if it's really feasible for us to keep this up if we can't get a reasonable level of participation on recommending stories.
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Site posts are sadly unfeasible for this endeavor, for reasons I can't really get into.
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It's not that I don't want to. It's just that I don't spend as much time reading as I used to, so most of the stories I could suggest are pretty popular already and every bodies already read them.
What 2541358 said. I kinda get the impression that TLR is just another venue where writers who are already popular are recommended yet again to readers who have already seen those authors and their stories prominently featured in all the other venues. The fact that it goes by reader-submitted recommendations also means that the already-established authors with lots of followers are much more likely to have their stories submitted than less popular authors. It can end up seeming redundant to readers, and closed off to new talent
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It'd admittedly be kind of nice if we got even recommendations for stories by well-known authors.
With that said, I'm not sure what the best path to fix that sort of issue would be, exactly, if working based on recommendations is flawed. Accepting, again, that we're human with limited time and resources to read stories, we need some level of indication of what we can prioritize in our search for stories to feature. Else we're just sort of taking shots in the dark from all possible newly-posted stories, with as much wasted time/effort as that implies.
It's sort of like the Feature Box. I don't tend to comment on the FB (mostly because there is no method of doings so. Oh Luna, imagine if that were possible).
I have generally looked over the offerings that show up now and then from the group, and While most of the stories still fail to capture my attention, there have been a few highlights that went into my Read Later. I assume that is really all it is meant to accomplish. If the stories presented are comment-provoking, that is most appropriate on the stories themselves.
Have you noticed a trend towards more views, comments, or votes on the stories that you feature?
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Not... particularly. Although that sort of thing is admittedly hard to measure. The best I can say is that I haven't really observed anything indicative of a noteworthy rise in attention that'd coincide with a TLR featuring.
2541064 Ah, so it takes a quality over quantity approach then.
Neato.
Well, I could work on recommending more things, I guess. The problem is that I constantly forget it even exists save on the day it posts; I remembered for a while, but at this point it has kind of fallen by the wayside in my mind. The other issue is that a lot of the time, I've already read a good chunk of the suggested stories which interest me because I suspect I follow a lot of the better writers already and that the rest are drawn from the feature box.
EDIT: Looking through my lists, though, another problem is that I mostly read older stuff that I haven't read yet rather than newer stuff as well (or at least, that is where the most stories I like get upvoted). I've only upvoted two eligible stories at the moment, but neither of them made my favorites list - and both of them are presently in the feature box. Is that something that should be submitted, or not?
I feel like most of the stories that I've seen come through TLR have also been in the feature box at some point during the week, so it seems like TLR is redundant. I've begun to see it as a "popular stories: the week in review" more than anything else. Like you've addressed in other comments here, it's tough to search out good works by lesser-known authors, since it's always a roll of the dice whether or not something will be good.
However, when I originally read "Our crackpot team of story people will sift through the stories posted in the prior week and dig up a handful of stuff that’s probably worth your time" in the group's description, I'd thought that scouring the recent submissions was the goal. Have you considered expanding the team?
Didn't really know about this group before so I've just joined. Very much doubt I'll get the time to read every fic posted there but I appreciate good recommendations as much as the next guy.
Who knows, might even aim to get on there with the fic I'm writing at the moment. Will be very surprised and disappointed if it doesn't gain much traction. Concept alone deserves it.
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We have been looking through relatively unknown fics to some extent. Typically there'll be at least 2-3ish stories per week that haven't been featured. The thing is that any plans to get numbers higher than that, such as people seem to want, were fairly heavily reliant on the idea of Recommendations helping to direct our focus on stories that were good but not necessarily popular... which apparently didn't pan out.
Expanding the team is a possibility, but difficult, since most people I know well enough and would trust to recommend stuff are either already part of the team, busy with other endeavors, or not personally interested.
2541428 Yeah, that's pretty much what I'd figured. Here's my 2 cents.
I don't look at the feature box. I do follow some authors whose stuff I like. I don't want to miss out on good stuff from less-known or newer authors who I don't follow - or from popular authors who I also don't follow.
I like groups like TLR and Seattle's Angels because I don't have the time to wade through all the new stuff and find good things. My only suggestion is to spread the net wider, and get recommendations from a larger number of people who follow a bunch of lesser-known authors. I say this as someone who has never suggested anything to TLR.
Mostly because I don't feel qualified. There's a lot about what makes a story good that I don't understand. That, and of the authors I follow, most of them are either popular already and I presume you get those suggestions a lot, or they don't write much and I follow them for social reasons. So there's my excuses. I consume TLR, but I don't contribute.
I'll keep my eyes open, in case I see good stuff from non-famous authors. I don't feel like this reply has contributed anything, seeing as you already knew you needed more contributors.
That banner is too good to sacrifice!
I like the Last Roundup, I just have my nose in a particularly long fic at the moment (1 mil+) and don't get that much time to scour the new lists.
Of course, I could definitely start to toss suggestions. I really hope this continues, despite my lack of comments. Usually, I'm launching off into another world as I begin one of the fics you list.
Plus, Morcraw has me chuckling every post. You guys really managed something, albeit one that seems to get recommended the popular ones. Perhaps we should abandon our senseless fear of Mary-Sue overpowered OC's, angsty-colored alicorns, and *shiver* Lavender Unicorn Syndrome...
...Okay, maybe not that last one. But still, we should advance, fearlessly into the endless ranks of the fics, searching for that one glimmer of hope, that we may gaze upon the beauty of that which your posts do verily bring.
FOR THE GREAT SPOOKSELESCENCE!
My issue is that I rarely read new stories anymore. I'll try to do that more often so I can have something to recommend in the future.
I do like the idea, but I'm finding that, at the moment, I lack the time required to really help with recommendations as well. Maybe it'd be more effective as a biweekly thing?
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Well, that is good news. Thank you for letting me know.
Personally I really like The Last Roundup lists. It's a nice way to see some quality fics that don't get much attention. I'd like to see it continue but I understand if you let it fall by the wayside.
FIMFic is, alas, but one part of the information deluge that is the internet. The currents are a little strong sometimes.
Sorry for doing this without reading through the whole thread so far, but my two cents is that the last roundup is too much like drinking from a firehose for people to engage the way you seem to want. People might be more ready to comment if it was less frequent and maybe had a more involved selection process, but at that point maybe you're redundant with Seattle's Angels, Twilight's Library, etc.
For my part, though, don't mistake silence for indifference; I may not be able to keep up with all the suggestions, but I'm happy they're there to dive into when I am. The Last Roundup as it exists is a force for good in the world, a beacon of light, all that, so don't give it up if you still think you can get stories worth suggesting just because we're appreciating it silently.
I really appreciate The Last Roundup. I don't contribute with comments/suggestions, but it's nice to have something presenting a convenient list of stories to choose from that meet some content criteria, even if it's just "we like these." I like the Fic Spotlights too for the same reason... Anything to help sort out the large volume of content is appreciated.
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Hey guys, thanks for all your feedback on this. The future of The Last Roundup as a thing might still be a bit up in the air, vis a vis our capacity to actually find stories that're worth reading without being somehow redundant, but it is nice to know that people seem to like the idea.
If you guys do want to support TLR and help it find underrated fics that're worth reading, it would be pretty nice to either help spread the word or help provide recommendations for us to look at, but either way your appreciation is, well, appreciated.
Incidentally, might possibly be a bit late with the TLR post this week. Midterms are here and are rough. So if the post doesn't go up today, that'll be why.
I would suggest more, but most of the stories I tend to read fall outside the required recent time limit. I'll try to pay more attention and toss any recent stories I enjoy your way.
I didn't actually read a single word of your blog post. I just wanted to post an utterly gormless comment that would serve no purpose beyond probing to see if it warranted an actual response. If you've read all the way up to this point, I will have effectively wasted 10-20 seconds of your life...varying from reader to reader in accordance to his/her own individual literary skills.
You're welcome.
horse pussy
I've been checking out the stories, but don't really have a reason to comment.
I suspect there's unfortunately a divided audience problem here: the people who find TLR useful are the ones who don't have a whole lot to contribute to the fic list, and vice versa. I'm in the "find it useful but can't pitch in" camp. The vast majority of my pony reading these days is writeoff or RCL-related; I don't get to a whole lot of new stuff, and when I do it's likely to be from posts like this.
So I can offer kudos, and I might be able to pitch in some older stuff for the wildcards, but the odds of me having a rec within the one-week period are awfully tiny.