Related Stories Sidebar

I didn't even notice this thing until Wanderer D posted a blog about it last night. I haven't had much time to read fics lately, so that's probably why it escaped my notice until now, but I thought that sounded like a pretty cool idea, so I clicked on over to my stories to see what was suggested after reading them.

And, okay, they sort of make sense. "Tea with Jam and Bread" has links to a bunch of Celestia stories, "To Ms. Yearling"'s Related Stories are all about Daring Do, "I'll Always be Loyal" links to a bunch of other sadfics starring AJ... But for some other stories, I don't see any kind of correlation.

"Twilight Sparkle Plans Her Schedule and Nothing Happens" only links to one other "Nothing Happens" story, and it's not even one of Bootsy's - the rest are just random stories with Twilight. The Related Stories for "Off Like a Shot" just seem to be an unrelated collection of stories with similar character tags.

And then there's "The Back Shelf". My little dumping ground for vignettes and silliness. I'll admit that I probably made it pretty difficult for whatever algorithm they're using, because there is not one single tag on that story, but it links to one, two, three, four of my own stories.

So, from this data I assume that it only takes into account the character and genre tags to generate a list of similar stories. But, why? Theoretically, it would be more accurate if it took into account the groups that the story was featured in. "Something Unexpected" links to a bunch of stories with Twilight Sparkle, because she is tagged, but she's a really minor character; Twilight Velvet and Night Light don't have character tags, so I had to use an "Other" tag, but it's in the "Twilight Velvet" group; if the system took that into account, the related stories would actually make more sense.

Of course, then "Twilight Sparkle Plans Her Schedule and Nothing Happens" would have links to a bunch of TwilightxSpike fics. (I don't know who added it, and I've PM'ed the admin of that group, but he won't respond. They really should have a system like deviantart, where it requires the author's permission to add a story to a group.)