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toafan
Group Admin

Alright, you've just been swamped by about 20-plus notifications as I go through and move stuff up. There's got to be a better way to do this.

As I go through, I noticed that there's several stories I wouldn't have considered, just because of the type of stories they are. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just different. Do we want to talk about that?

C

Well I'm pretty curious about your opinion so I wouldn't mind talking about it.

agree...there are different genres to considered as well

Periphery
Group Admin

Thanks for doing that, by the way. But yeah, that's kind of why I've been lax about re-organizing stories as they gain more views. This seems like such a cumbersome way to go about it, and I still can't help but feel like I'm going to annoy people by constantly shuffling everything around.

We should probably just switch over to a genre system and let the maximum view rule be good enough for that whole factor. Sorting by genre would also address the other issue you mention. I didn't really intend to put any restrictions on content or maturity ratings, since as long as they meet the other requirements, I'll assume readers generally consider them pretty good stories. However, I could also see people being dubious about HiE or mature stories being mixed in with everything else, so those stories could have their own folders entirely.

We could still maintain a graduates section, though. It'd be nice if we could make sub-folders for that, but I think right now the only way would be to have two folders for each genre, one for stories that still have fewer than 500 views, and a 2nd for those that have surpassed that mark. That's kinda clunky too, though. I guess we could just continue to jumble all the graduates together in one big folder, but that could get messy over time.

Also, we're up to 40 members now. Not too bad, really. When I brought this question up way back in June, I got two replies saying to leave it as it is, but we have more people and more stories now. I'd like to change it, honestly.

sgtnolisten
Group Contributor

I try to bring your attention to the stories that need to be moved as often as possible (but I'm sad to say that I've not added one in a loooong time).

However, my view on the system so far is unchanged. It puts what is going on with my story in perspective and is easy to use/understand. But! If you TRUELY feel that it needs to change in the face of more stories and members, then I will quietly, if unhappily, consent to what you do.653618

I recommend setting a maximum story-moving rate. Say, a rule that any given story can only be moved once per day, and there can be no more than four story-moves per day. That would avoid spamming while still bringing attention to things that are moving up the folders.

Do keep in mind that bringing attention to things that are moving up the folders is a feature, not a bug. Stories which successfully move up the scale are stories which especially don't deserve to be so underappreciated.

I just joined this group. I almost didn't join, because viewcount doesn't really seem like a good measure of appreciation. I suggest moving to a thumbcount metric instead. Such a system should count both upthumbs and downthumbs (while still enforcing the 90% upthumb rule).

Periphery
Group Admin

970537

Well, my fear is that if we shuffle fics around frequently as they move up the ladder, members will get used to group notifications telling them about stories that were already here, and might start to just ignore everything. I like the new additions to stand out, which wouldn't work well if 80% of the notifications are about stories people already knew about. Maybe a weekly thing, perhaps.

As for reorganizing the folders based on votes, rather than views, well, maybe. My original intent behind structuring based on views was more to accentuate underappreciation, rather than an indicator of how good a story is. And the problem with getting rid of the view-count system is it would eliminate the graduates folder, and I really wanted the group to emphasize the stories that haven't gotten the notice yet. Although, I guess we could still keep the folder for 500+ viewed stories, even if the other folders ignored view count, so maybe that wouldn't matter.

I'm not sure how that would work, though. A folder for 0 to 10 up votes, 11-20, etc? That might work, although most fics seem to have around a 10-to-1 view-to-vote ratio, so most of them would end up in the same general arrangement anyway, with some exceptions. And the older stories that were around before the site changed to the up-or-down system never have anywhere near the number of ratings as newer ones, regardless of story quality. Or if we went by the % of up and down votes combined, it seems like that would require a lot more monitoring, since a single vote could shift them, and fics could repeatedly bounce back and forth between two folders.

I don't want to rule it out, but I'm not sure right now. Maybe I'll start a new thread in a bit, and ask for opinions about both topics.

Oh, and welcome to the group, and I appreciate the suggestions.

984937

I specifically wasn't referring to upvotes or vote percentage. I was referring to total votes. This emphasizes stories that net a reaction from their readers, even if that reaction is negative. As long as they stay within the 90% upvoted range, it won't emphasize negativity unduly. The point of "total votes" is to find things that are more reactive than the 10 views to 1 votes paradigm. Things that nobody votes for (or against) are generally 'meh'.

Also, views can increase when one person views the same story repeatedly, but you can only ever vote for a story once.

There would still be graduates. Once something has had a hundred votes for it, it's had a chance to be noticed. Views turn into votes, after all, so how can total votes fail to eventually pass a graduation threshold?

Also, 0-10 is way too small a range, just like 0-100 is too small a range. As far as I'm concerned, with the size of the site as it is (and taking into account the size of this group alone), things are underviewed up to a thousand views/hundred votes.

Periphery
Group Admin

987835

With that 90% up-vote rule, total votes versus just positive is automatically going to be pretty close together, so it's nearly the same thing either way, really. Either could potentially work.

But 1000 views... it usually seems like a fic almost has to have be featured to pass that number, and a story with, say, 800 views could have a pretty active reader base. The intent of this group is to uncover good stories that got largely buried and forgotten, and 1000 seems like quite a bit of attention to me. I'm thinking mostly of the stories that fall off the front page with views in the double (or single)-digits, and never really recover, getting a handful of comments.

We are talking about the idea of granting some leeway based on age, though, in another thread.

989984

I've looked at a lot of story charts. I always hit that stats button. When I think underappreciated, I care less about the total number of people that have seen something, and more about the trajectory of the story. When something with a highly positive rating is no longer being viewed and has stalled out, I start to think it has lost its audience and is being buried.

In any case, I propose higher lines precisely because groups like this exist. We can push views (and votes) towards things that wouldn't get them otherwise. Especially if we switch to a vote metric, encouraging voting among those who pay attention to the group.

I haven't been following that other thread. You're referring to the 'Poll' thread, right? I tried to read it and felt like I got clobbered by textwalls. I keep procrastinating on a second try. I know I should read it; for all I know, it may have completely negated what I'm talking about in this thread!

toafan
Group Admin

990580
You make a good point with the lines, and with the votes-not-views metric. Clearly, you've thought about this at least as much as I have, probably more.

Yes, the poll thread. I don't think it's negated this, though.

989984
What about...

We toss the 90%-upvote rule. Instead, for fics with with more than 15 votes, we enforce a 50%-positive minimum. Fics with fewer than 15 votes get free rein up to, say 500 views -- if you've hit 500 views and haven't received any votes, you probably aren't worth voting on. "Graduates" are those fics which have more than, say 60 votes.

This assumes that we keep our currently-stated purpose. It'll also be a fair amount of work, seeing as we're doing it manually. Nothing wrong with any of that, but I've recently realized that our currently-stated purpose is not what I, personally, am actually interested in.

inre: single-digit-view fics, while that's a good concern keep in mind that most of the stuff on this site is, quite frankly, complete shit.

Periphery
Group Admin

995513

Honestly, I don't see that accomplishing anything but encouraging a larger proportion of fics of dubious quality. Yeah, the 90% rule probably excludes some stories that are actually pretty good, but that seems preferable to basically just taking everyone's word for it altogether. My hope when this group started was that every fic here would be worth reading, and I don't see how dropping the ratings requirements will help that goal.

Debating how best to define "underappreciated" is one thing, but overhauling the system to that degree seems like it'd be more appropriate just to have another group entirely. I mean, if you don't like the way the way the purpose is playing out, wouldn't it make more sense to have two parallel groups with different intentions and game-plans?

And how many fics do we really want in this group anyway? We're at 88 members right now, and it seems like we've been getting one or two stories a day added lately. Even at that rate, we're starting to build up a pretty decent collection (45 stories in the regular folders at the moment, plus 28 graduates), and the more we expand the criteria, the more it's apt to pile up into just another mountain of fics where they each get lost all over again.

I still think the best idea is to make a couple recommendations folders that each ignore one of the requirements the regular folders are held to. That's a good opportunity for some voting participation anyway. Each ignored criteria could have one folder where anyone can toss in whatever they want, and then a mod-only folder for the stories that get bumped up by group approval.

toafan
Group Admin

995809
I want to argue this, but everything I could say would probably be better served by waiting until "after" the poll thread. I'm doing my very best to keep my mouth shut over here. :coolphoto:

That said, I agree that different purposes would be better served by a different group. That's why I am not suggesting we change the stated purpose of the group, merely how we go about it.

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