Site Post » (re)Introducing: Related Stories! · 10:00pm Feb 24th, 2012
So as some of you probably noticed, we took away the related stories feature for a little while. We didn't remove it, we were just improving it. The old related stories were dumb and bad, and they probably killed an orphan or something. We decided to do something about it by dragging the old feature out back Old Yeller style, and giving it a makeover!
Now what you'll see at the bottom of (almost) every story is a box containing some other stories! Woah, holy crap, I know, right? It's like there's a whole new world out there of fanfics just waiting to get read. These fics are basically just a list of what other people who liked the story you liked liked! What's not to like!?
But how about an example, I don't hear you saying because I can't hear you through the Internet you silly goose? Well, let's pretend we're all knighty for a second. So, you're just sitting around being really British and coding the site or whatever it is fat nerds do, and suddenly you get this urge. "I really want to read a TwiDash shipping fanfiction right now!" So you open up Building Bridges:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/8652/Building-Bridges
Of course, since you are knighty, you have already read this story at LEAST eighty-six times. What are you to do? Aren't there any other TwiDash shipping fanfictions on this web sight for you to enjoy?
HECK YEAH THERE ARE
You scroll on down to the RELATED AS HECK features box and click your dumb finger on the mouse button and you're whisked off to the story Tea:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/11661/Tea
Now you're reading a BRAN SPANKIN NEW TwiDash shipping fanfiction, all thanks to the new RELATED STORIES FEATURE. Yatta!
Okay, please stop being knighty now, you are starting to creep me out, guy.
That's the NEW related stories feature in a nutshell! Please let knighty know what you think in the comments, because I had nothing to do with it. I just made the blog post.
(u mad knighty)
God damnit Poultron.
/ban Poultron
18855
confirmed for mad
18855 18856
I love you high-larious mother humpers.
...And yes, it looks much better and i'm not seeing the same 3 stories each time i read a fic.
There's nothing more to say, apart from, whatever happened to the graph in the stats tab? Did i miss something?
Eee, needs to be 20% cooler.
RD could help with that, if she has time from napping and training for the wonderbolts.
God dammit Poultron your Pinkie avatar just makes that post I read it in her voice
It already seems to be having a positive impact on my back-catalogue, well done!
18862 I'm also wondering about the graph.
My fingers have the IQ equivalent to Forest Gump, and I'm offended.
Intriguing.
Is there any randomness built into the algorithm, or is it just a value based on highest number of concurrent "Likes" ?
And I'm wondering - are the similarity of subject tags (either genre or character) integrated in some way?
I'm British and I must say Coding a site? Where's the fun in that?
Though your quarrels do asmuse me, now dance for your Emperor.
Sips tea.
Good day.
18862
I was wondering this as well. I loved seeing my day-to-day views. Helped me get confidence and inspiration to keep writing when I got 200 views my first day on my very first fanfic, and after about a week of 50 views a day, it was last settled around 30 views a day. That kept me writing. BRING IT BACK PLEASE!
Well, let's pretend we're all knighty for a second. So, you're just sitting around being really British and coding the site or whatever it is fat nerds do, and suddenly you get this urge. "I really want to read a TwiDash shipping fanfiction right now!"
I shall begin pretending immediately!
...wait...this seems uncannily similar to what I do anyway...
It's not bad, but it would be better if it didn't show fics you've already read.
Besides that, it causes some lags while scrolling (as soon as you're able to see the box with the related fics, the scrolling gets laggy).
But, nice improvement!
I dunno. In my experience so far it's just been pointing me to ultra-popular stories that I already know about anyway. But maybe that's just me.
I like it. I suppose I'll stop sharpening my pitchfork now.
By the way, was there a reason for changing total chapter views to total story views on profile pages? Seems like an odd change, but that's just me.
This feature really rustles my jimmies
I like it, defiantly an improvement. But I just want to know, what's been going on with chapter views?
For some reason my stories have less views than they did before. I don't really care about the number of views my stories get, but I still think it's strange.
18987
What this guy said, only I understand that on the profile it shows the highest single chapter read count (for me on "Tales" it's about 18,000 for the one and 175,000 total). It's no big deal, just curious.
On that note, are you guys still working on story read counts and other related issues? I've been updating my story over the past couple of weeks but each time it doesn't show up on the Updated Stories listing within the hour. It also never shows up on the PopularStories list like it used to. Is this sabotage!?
Kidding. Just thought I'd give a heads up!
Yay! Related Stories are back!
Troll admin is trolling.
Like a BAWS.
Poultron is best admin.
Umad knightly?
Why can we no longer see when a tracked story has been updated with a new chapter? For me, all it shows is the word "Tracking" and that's it. It never tells me ANYTHING. I had to go and check myself yesterday and I found a lot of stories that had been updated without my knowledge! What happened? Can you fix that?
Ah, the funny love-hate thing you and knighty have going on is amusing, Poultron. The new system is alright, been working well for me so far.
19042
I'm with you here tails. Liked the old number system better. If they'd not revert the tracking link, how about a new addition to the notifications tab for non-email tracks.
Wait, that's a terrible idea, that's the same thing we used to have, just duplicated. Just put he numbers back. or add them in again. or change the eye to a fire when there are updated, unread stories. just do something.
Bring back the day to day, hour to hour, week to week, et cetera status pane! I used to love it!
ONLY 86 times? Pfft, freaking casual.
So, just gonna point out a minor problem with the related stories thing. The same stories keep coming up on everything's "related" list - Not My Destiny, My Little Dashie, Tea, Reading Rainbow, Anthropology, ARTICLE 2, On A Cross And Arrow, Mothers, Punchdrunk... and then there's half the list having nothing to do with what you were just reading because someone who likes your story likes both grimdark adventure and light romcoms, just not in the same sitting. I mean yeah, it's accurate, people who liked story X, also liked story Y, but... it's not terribly helpful for surfing related stories. This new system relies on lots of users only liking one kind of thing, which never happens.
Basically, the related list should probably still take tags into account.
19930
Yeah we still need to tweak it more. It kind of falls apart for bigger stories usually where there's a huge correlation between any 2 popular stories full stop. But that's why I reworded it to say stories that people liked that also liked this one, which is what it is. They may not be hugely related but it should still have a high chance of returning stories you'd like to read.
19931
Maybe it should be guided by a random number selection where
Probability of appearance on list = [X*(LIKE similarity) + Y*(TAG similarity)]/N
Where X and Y are weighting parameters and N is a normalization constant.
Or something.
Just kinda brainstorming on this. Throwing out whatever comes to mind
Feel free to ignore me.
I like the new format. It's easier to see all the selections, instead of them trailing off to the side.
Now if you'd fix the tracking counter, that will be fantastic.
Problem: The same related stories keep showing up in everyone's fics. This makes sense, as the most popular fics have the most people 'liking' them. However, it means that only the few most-liked fics are getting tagged as related.
18907 Y-...yes master. *starts to dance*
I'm happy with whatever happened (prob'ly in related stories) that's causing a lot of new tracks to come my way for 'Trixie's Magic Bit', but it worries me that now I can update, pull hundreds of hits as usual, but not show up on the popular stories anymore? I don't get features or anything, I have to get my readers by just writing harder every chapter, and this is what I've been doin'.
I'm used to having a little fun saying 'whee, I charted higher than Romance Reports (or My Little Dashie) briefly!' (during the time when the new chapter just came out). I'm okay with that going away the next day, but I really enjoyed it and when the numbers went away on popular stories, something else seems to have changed. And I was counting on getting a few readers each new time I bounced up 'into the charts' with a chapter release.
What was changed, and does it have to stay in that way that means I never get any help anymore? I work real hard...
You have the greatest sense of humor of all time. No exceptions. Write a fic, please just for once write a fic to blow all of our minds. It would be glorious.
22924 Fffff~ I ment to say write a fic about being knighty >_>
Fucking iphone4S.
18855
(I can't believe I dare reply to knighty!)
Woah, you're red/orange! I have only seen you purple!