3000 and counting! · 3:11am Aug 20th, 2018
Each time I've passed another 1000 verdicts for Equestria Daily submissions, I've posted a blog, and I recently got to number 3000. Man, I'm really behind on several blogs I need to do, but no time, no time. Finally got to this one, though, mostly because it'll be short.
For the previous two of these, I'd only posted my cumulative statistics, but I think it'll be illustrative to repeat the earlier ones to contrast them. For the record, the types of verdicts are defined as:
Sun: outright rejected permanently, usually for crossing our thresholds for adult material in a way that couldn't be changed without substantially altering the story.
Moon: regular rejection.
Mars: rejected, but with relatively few problems. Authors are told their stories are close and would only need a cursory look if resubmitted. It's incredibly frustrating when these stories never come back, because they rarely need more than a couple hours' work, often less time than it took me to write up my feedback on it.
Post: story looks good and will be featured on the blog.
After 1007 verdicts After 2001 verdicts After 3003 verdicts Sun: 27 35 42 Moon: 887 1763 2562 Mars: 43 93 165 Post: 50 110 235
To help make a few points clearer, instead of doing those as cumulative totals, I'll break them into blocks:
Verdicts 1-1007 Verdicts 1008-2001 Verdicts 2002-3003 Sun: 27 8 7 Moon: 887 876 799 Mars: 43 50 72 Post: 50 60 125
Now, I still have a higher rejection rate than most pre-readers, since I still kind of take on the role of screening the queue. I'll weed out a lot of the stories that are clear rejections from page one so that the other pre-readers get more enjoyable stories to read, and because it keeps the queue shorter that way. Most other pre-readers will only take one story at a time, whereas I don't mind handling three or four in a night.
It's no secret that readership is way down across the board. You don't see that many stories top 1k views anymore, and plenty of them come and go from the feature box without accumulating more than a few hundred. Same thing with Equestria Daily. A feature there used to virtually guarantee 2k views, but now it's more like 400. Which isn't surprising, because it was always comparable to making the feature box, and it still is. EqD covers many other media, so it can get a wider audience, and the occasional readers brought in that way (possibly people who use EqD as a quality barometer, possibly people who are casual fanfiction consumers and don't regularly hang around FiMFiction, etc.) offsets the reduced traffic. To that point, it's interesting to note that most of EqD's traffic these days comes via its Facebook page instead of just the general fandom awareness it used to have.
Anyway, one piece of data I'll add to the tables above is the dates I reached each milestone.
Verdict 1: 8 Aug 2012
Verdict 1007: 22 Oct 2014
Verdict 2001: 8 Dec 2015
Verdict 3003: 18 Aug 2018
I started out doing only a couple reviews a week, but after a few hundred, we went to the yes/no system, which sped things up. So I got through the second thousand in half the time of the first. But the last thousand was the slowest yet. What gives?
Simply, there aren't as many stories to review anymore. With readership down, so is authorship, and we don't get submitted nearly the number of stories as we did in 2012. With that, I've backed off spending as much time on it, so the trade-off is more free time for me while keeping the queue wait times about the same as they have been. It looks like the other pre-readers are doing the same thing, though I can't speak for them. What the numbers in the tables show is that the decline in submission numbers hasn't been accompanied by a decline in their quality. In fact, it seems like the decline is mostly in the people who just send us things on a lark. That's both good and bad. For one, it means fewer new authors entering the fandom, which won't surprise anyone, and that's kind of a shame to see. There are multiple instances of someone submitting their first story to us, and while it wasn't in great condition, we were able to give them feedback to help, and later submissions did make it. That's what I love to see the most. So while our submissions are getting a little more concentrated to repeat contributors, it does mean we're more regularly getting things we're happy to post, on a percentage basis.
It's been an interesting run, but I'd be fooling myself if I said I'd be able to post another of these blogs, because I don't see how we'd even get another 1000 stories submitted before the show ends, and at that point, I don't know what'll happen to EqD. Shut down? Become inclusive of G5 and start posting that content? If so, I'd gladly hang around and keep pre-reading, but I'll have to wait and see. I've had a lot of fun, and I hope I've been helpful to some of the writers out there.
Pas "The Executioner" Coite.
Really, though, 3k verdicts is crazy impressive. All things considered, though, an 7.82% post rate really isn't that bad, actually.
You've absolutely been helpful, at least from where I stand. I remember the first time I got actual feedback on a submission, and not just a denial; I didn't go back and try bringing that story up to snuff, but it helped inform my later stories. So thank you for doing what you do.
I hope EqD doesn't go away. I think having some kind of semi-official community hub will only go up in importance as the long night sets in. But one never knows.
This all reminds me, I need to go back and revisit my most recent rejection again. I didn't mean to drop the conversational ball there; it just got buried by my house move earlier this year and my growing need to get my one long story finished.
I suspect EQD will be around for a long while to come.
You can say that again. Back in 2012/2013, anyone could post a decently written clopfic and it'd hit the box and get 300+ likes with ease; same can be said for sfw stories. Everyone was so obsessed with the show back then, and it was a wonderful time to be a writer/reader. But today? Everything has pretty much been written, so it's hard to find something new, and that's what people are looking for. You can't just write some shipfic and expect it to blow up because there are literally hundreds of stories of the popular ships; what makes yours stand out from all the rest? A lot of people left the fandom when Twilight became an alicorn, trolls and people being mean pushed a lot of people away from fimfiction, and people just lost interest.
https://www.fimfiction.net/statistics
If you look at the stats, it's plainly obvious that interest has been waning since the end of 2014. If you look at the bottom graph, it shows that there are roughly 1400 new user accounts made each month in the last year, so one would think that we'd get new readers, followers, and commenters on our stories, right? Myself and many others have noticed the complete opposite.
For one shots? You're totally right, but don't forget about multi chapter fics. One of mine has 3.2k+ referrals from EQD, mostly from the story updates pages from Equestria Daily. I'm certain that other ongoing fics have a lot more than that.
Anyways, it's crazy to see how many stories you've gone through. I don't know how many people say this, but thanks for all your hard work with EQD; same goes to all of the other prereaders. EQD is still the best place to go for pony everything!
4922745
That's really going to depend on Seth. There are times it sounds like he'll shut it down at some point, and others where it sounds like he'll let one of the other blog-side folks take it over. And one time recently when I got the impression he wanted to at least start G5 with it. So who knows?
4922735
That rate's been going up all the time, too. I think I went my first 40 verdicts before I posted anything, mostly because I was scouring the easy rejections out of the queue to get my feet wet. But in the last 3 years, I'm up over a 12% acceptance rate, which isn't much below the blog's overall one.
There’s no question about that
4922752
That's a really cool statistic.
I think readership statistics are also affected by the sheer amount of stories we have here. Now that Auto-approve is a thing, quality is even lower and things that would have otherwise been immediately sent back just go through. There's too many stories, too many authors and comparatively, too few people willing to take risks.
I submitted a story once I think. The experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I don't think I'll try it again.
4922791
I posted a (more than a little screechy) blog about this type of thing quite a bit ago, how the vast majority of fics that get posted are written with more eagerness than skill or actual ideas behind them. It's not that uncommon to see a 69 or pot joke fic about once a week for me, being mostly mobile and therefore seeing the new story page by default.
You may be able to divide MLP fans into three broad groups: those for whom it's the fandom, or at least right up there; those for whom it's a significant interest, but simply one among several; and those for whom it's just a very casual thing. I'd further guess that, for the most part, new fans will probably be a small number of people who get absolutely smitten by the pony bug (having contrived not to be since 2010) and a considerably larger number of casual fans, with the middle ground getting more and more thinly populated. That middle ground is the place which holds (or held, anyway) a lot of people who were more than incidentally interested in writing ponyfic but didn't know how to find help to improve. Combine that with the fact that there is simply less help around than there was, and these fans may feel it not worth the effort. The deeply committed will find a way anyway; the casuals won't mind anyway.
4922791
I really do wish the Auto-Approve threshold had been made a little harder to cross, perhaps with some kind of timed element. Something like: to qualify for AA, you must have published five stories and have been a member of Fimfiction for six (or even three) months. Nothing too onerous, but it would have stopped authors signing up, rushing out just enough barely-passing hraka to reach the current threshold on their first day and then posting (nearly) whatever the hay they wanted with no further thought.
Wow. I feel less bad about getting a Mars once or twice.
Also I should probably fix that one you Marsed back at me a year ago.
That is an impressive milestone for sure. Thanks for your service for this fandom, I really appreciate it.
I would expect that there is a direct causal link between the decrease in readership, and the decrease in new stories. After all, it is harder to justify investing time in writing something you know less people are going to read. On the other hand, this means that people writing just for the attention are less likely to do so, which might help increase the overall quality of the stories.
About the decrease in readership, I would expect to have as much to do with we getting less active readers, as with there just being too much good fics to read out there. Other than stuff up for RCL consideration, I rarely read any new fics being published. And that is because my backlog at this point is just too large — I know that this is peanuts compared to some other people around here, but my RIL is at 33 million words at this point. I would need to be dedicating at least 40 hours a week to reading to make any considerable dent in that number, and that is without considering any new additions. I would expect many others to be in this boat. There is just too many good horse words out there.
Is it really so bad? There is a fic I have written this year, which I didn't reckon to get into the Feature Box because it's a fic about a background pony barely anyone knows and who had only 4 appearances in the show in total. She hasn't been seen since "Party Pooped" in Season 5.
And creative material for her is almost none-existent; before my fic for her, there hadn't been a single one and she got maybe two or three art pieces. It's like she does not exist in the fandom.
But when I wrote this story, it jumped straight into the Feature Box anyway:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/811249/wish-for-a-mother-is-in-the-feature-box-brown-sugar-is-featured-d
The overall stats and achievements of this story after the first three days look very good, too:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/811755/wish-for-a-mother-brown-sugars-awesome-achievements-sequels-in-the-future
The feature didn't get it a few thousand views and it's "only" clocking in at ~700 now (after 3 months). But considering that I chose a random background pony who almost no one knows at all and this is the result, this is very impressive and unexpected.
Of course that's too early to say for sure and I need to see with other background pony fics if that continues to work..... But this gave me back a little hope that the old writing spirit for background ponies can be revived in the fandom.
Maybe, the fandom just needs to expand its scope and delve more into background ponies again, like it used to in the early years, to bring back the activity.
Edit: Speaking of which, do you have any statistics about the amount of stories for background ponies that got submitted to you over the years? It would be interesting and revealing to see how many stories like that were submitted and how that number developed from the start of the fandom to now.
"Hey, Rainbow." Twilight Sparkle fluttered up to the cloud where her friend was napping and took a seat on an unsubstantial wisp of vapor. "What are you watching down there."
"Oh, I gave Starlight Glimmer one of my stories and I wanted to see her reaction."
"One of your... stories?" A muscle under Twilight's eye twitched. "You mean one of the stories you wrote about clouds being a more complicated metaphor for life and--"
"Naa," scoffed Rainbow Dash. "One of my Daring Do dramatizations."
"Oh," said Twilight, peering down at the ground. "That explains why she's digging a hole for it."
"And she's..." Rainbow Dash squinted. "She must really have needed to use the bathroom. Is the one in the castle broken?"
"And now she's pouring gasoline on it." Twilight Sparkle considered their altitude and quietly used her wings to lift the cloud to get some distance from the incoming inferno.
As many people here have said, and many more elsewhere should say: Thank you.
I'd have never guessed that, but I set up FB years and years ago and then left. I' rather squander my time around these parts.
As your numbers show, it's been a lot of work, so it is nice to hear you've had fun, and a lot of it.
Count me as one. Again, thank you.
4922900
Ain't it odd how that works? Too much good stuff to read => read none of it. It doesn't make sense, but I do it too. When I think of my RIL list, I feel despair, not anticipation. A sense of letting down all the people whose stories I haven't read.
Is there some better way to think about our RILs?
4922806
Forgive me if I have this wrong, but weren't you formerly known as Kanzlerin Maud?
4922844
Yes, we try to include language to that effect whenever we give out a Mars verdict, but it does mean there's not much we're asking you to fix, and you're all but a shoo-in if you resubmit. These are stories that need a small tweak to really shine, or that have a relatively small variety of mechanical things that persist throughout. Unless the story's quite long, it shouldn't ever take more than a couple hours' work, often well under that.
4922900
I'm in the same boat as you with regard to reading new stories. I just don't have time to read things I'd choose to on my own. The EqD and private reviewing queues take up all my ponyfic time. I read maybe 2 stories a year that I simply wanted to read. There are times a story that really piques my interest comes through the queue, and I'll beg other PRs to leave it for me, since I won't otherwise read it. "Administrative Angel" was like that, but someone else took it before I could. The recently RCL-inducted "Broken Bindings" is another. Present Perfect and AugieDog are RCL curators, as you know, so they were both prepared to send it on for posting, but I got out my hobo knife and stood guard over it so I could read it.
4922942
I'm glad you'e had a good experience with your writing, and those are indeed pretty good numbers these days for a minor character. I don't personally keep stats by character tag, but character tags are searchable on EqD. They're at the bottom of story's page, and if you click on one, it should take you to a list of stories using that tag.
4923085
Maybe that the show ending is a blessing meaning that you'll quit adding to that list and start making headway? That's my attempt at a silver lining.
4922900
Someone with a Read Later list that's larger than mine!
I didn't think that's possible! Mine is 11 million words.
Though, if I look at my season bookshelves that I keep since Season 5 to see how many fics each season got/gets and the bookshelf for the movie..... I probably reach that number, too.
4923085
Yes: The challenge of finally working through this list and the feeling of accomplishment once you make progress.
I have the biggest problems with reading ponyfics since I found FIMFiction.net in 2013. For some reason, while I had zero problems doing other things and consumed a ton of fanwork over the years, it were always the fics that I struggled with reading.
These days, though, I slowly ease myself into a weekly fic reading day, where I do nothing else but reading fics. I'm still struggling, for some reason, and it's still hard to do that, even though I WANT to do it, but I'm easing into this and it's getting slowly better.
The backlog I have is stil intimidating, especially because I keep adding fics, but starting to read fics made it much easier and gives me the feeling I will work through it eventually.
The feeling of making progress makes it easier, so what you should do is finding a day or time in the week that you can set aside to just read. You need to really dedicate yourself to it, because if not, you will always keep putting it off.
4923101
Nope, I think I was ApocalypseTankPony then.
Congrats on 3000 Pasco!
Good grief, I doubt the number I've read tops 100. Well, if you don't count writeoffs.
On decreasing stories: I also think the show doesn't inspire authors like it used to. It mostly bores me nowadays, personally.