Substitute - Featured!? What the what?

Don't get me wrong, I'm walking on air right now. Being featured is great!

But I'm mostly... confused right now. Reason being is that I never saw it go into the featured box in the first place. And what I mean by that is, those bottom three slots are reserved for stories that have been featured previously and have since been updated. Which means that at some point within the last three weeks, Substitute was featured and it flew completely under my radar. I have a hypothesis as to how that happened, but I can't possibly prove it now.

Anyhow, lots of cheers! As such, I present this amusing fact: this latest release now contains 100% less boldface. If you happened to see it, you'll know what I mean.

Comments

[terrycloth]

I thought that technically, the bottom three stories are just using a different heat algorithm that strongly favors stories that were previously featured (because it times out more slowly or not at all or something).

[xoid]

4218710
Not sure that it favours stories that were previously featured so much as stories that were previously featured usually match the criteria necessary to appear there. i.e., A boatload of people eagerly waiting for an update leads to the heat necessary to show up there.

[Meta Four]

Yeah, bottom three spaces in the feature box are reserved for new updates as opposed to new fics. Stories that have previously been featured are definitely more likely to get those spots, but it isn't necessary. My own longest story made the feature box, but only for its last two updates.

[RQK]

4218786
4218710

Pretty much what 4219246 said. Another of my stories (The Pinkie Parable) made the feature box from its first chapter (I don't know why, to be honest). But I base my claim about those threes slots based on how that story behaved when I updated it. I further support it by also noting that with this most recent release of Substitute, it was in that featured box within five minutes. Not nearly enough time for it to gather a lot of heat.

That's why I'm sure those are reserved slots.