That Feel When... · 10:23pm Jan 5th, 2016
...you miss the feature box by this much. 
(If I cared about success, this might actually be tragic.)
Wait! Before you commiserate: I'm kidding. 
I have no desire to be #HORSEFAMOUS. It's nice for me when my work is able to reach more ponies, but the real tragedy would be if it were more popular than it deserved to be for its quality. There's a huge ocean of horsewords out there, and what's best for everypony is when the best stories (as measured in many ways, including diversity of content) float to the top. Those aren't mine. They might not be what usually hits the feature box, either, but that's hardly the point.
Put another way: If what I write isn't mindblowingly good, I don't want it to become popular. It would be replacing something more deserving, and then net goodstuffness* would go down for everypony! 
Nopony wants that.
This has led to a brief discussion in the thread of the fic in question, Colts Will Be Colts, about possible ways to self-promote—EqD being one of them—and some of the reasons why I haven't submitted my works there. But the details aren't relevant. I think I'm where I should be already, if not already overrated. It takes a bit of effort to convince myself to leave up my stories in public at all, but I know somepony enjoys them, so that's enough to hooftip the scale.
*goodstuffness: (n.), personal fulfillment from horsewordgawkery, frequently measured in kiloFeels
EDIT: Related! Back to Normal is my first story to hit 100 downvotes! Woohoo! 
(This pleases me far more than it should.)
Oh my. XD LOL
I don't think I've hit that particular milestone yet, and it's not entirely for a lack of trying.
I know that feel. I spend hours agonizing over a fic that's near and dear to me, and hardly anybody reads it; I get drunk and throw together some absolute piece of crap, and when I wake up in the morning it's in the feature box.
i.imgur.com/I8Jjy.png
Anyway, I'll try to check out "Colts Will Be Colts" as soon as possible. It does look like a cute story.
Blame the clopfics.
In other words, when you include mature-rated stories, you don't see your story in the feature box.
But if you check the list of featured stories, you will see that you did hit the feature box! (It's currently the ninth story on the list.)
3666830
Bizarre! I must have been there for barely a minute or so, because it didn't seem to impact the number of readers.
That's actually kind of fascinating. Maybe the algorithm tries to provide a smoother "blend" between featured and non-featured by having variable rates in which almost-there stories hit the box for just a few moments? I really can't tell the difference between this story's vote rate and that of my other non-featured stories, except that it's just a tiny bit higher.
3666830
Well, buck.
I just tried to search myself in the Featured list, and it turns out searching my name won't work because it contains a space! I tried Dubs Rewatcher and had the same problem. Searching for horizon works perfectly well, but I can't search myself.
I'll ask a mod about this, unless somepony knows a workaround?
3666976 Just click on the link in my post and scroll down.
I'm still trying to figure out the logic of both the feature box math and the story ranking math.
3667003
I already did; I was trying to search my name to see which of my stories had at one point hit the feature box.
That way, I would know if I'd had other stories featured without realizing it.
3666976 You could try with %20 in the name where the space is?
3667270
Doesn't work (you can test it using the link below in the conversation).
Look, the feature box is little more than a way of measuring your ability to play the market. Showing up there or neglecting to has little to do with the quality of the story and everything to do with how enticing it is. Having gotten a few brainfarts featured, I'm speaking from experience here. Hell, Fifty Shades was a thing. So is Michael Bay.
Colts will be colts is a nice little oneshot, and I did like it, personally, but it leaned too far towards children's literature for my tastes. Getting that featured would have been a simple matter of adding a giant twist that no one sees coming, like maybe Sassy is scared of Rumble because he thinks that's a girl, leading to some shenanigans or other. And the cover art, while it does let the reader know what the main character looks like, would have gotten more hits if it had been a funny Scootaloo picture.
But, again, marketability and quality don't always see eye to eye. If you do want to get something featured, there are ways to game the system. It helps if you submit to major groups ASAP, to get the spike in traffic you need. For multi-part stories, submitting several chapters in one go can bump up your numbers, too.
Trick, I wasn't suggesting you use EqD as a barker. I suggested you submit it because it's a nice fic. Quality counts, not quantity. It is true that, as a side effect, you'll get more readers, but what imported here is the quality of your fics being acknowledged.
As you say, there's an ocean of middling/bad fictions floating around, so the authors that consistently write good stuff, such as you, should find a way to rise above the melee, don't you think?
And don't sell yourself short!
3667665
I agree. I wasn't suggesting I think this particular fic is feature-worthy. This is actually a big sidestep from what I usually write.
Interesting, how can you tell if something has almost hit the feature box? Is there a set of criteria that I should be aware of?
3799217
In this case it was hovering in the sidebar for several days, and accumulating upvotes almost as fast as a story does right before being featured.