Of specific interest, do you brows through the group folders looking for stuff to read, or do you just notice when it gets added? This is relevant to how we organize. If no-one >>replies me, I'll come back in a week to tally results. (Otherwise I'll tally results if we've got everyone.)

The below is discussion about what we do and how we do it. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that, too, but you don't have to read it if you don't want.

The original inspiration for this group was to provide an alternative of sorts to the featured box. I'm not entirely sure what we were thinking. It's not really working that way, though. It doesn't help that none of the mods are putting much effort into it. (I can say that with complete impunity, because I'm one of them, and possibly the worst of the bunch. What are we doing, mods. Mods stahp. ) Having an actual procedure for how the group works might help with that, though. But we just got approx. 30 notifications in a swamp about fics moving, and I feel that's simply unacceptable.

If we're trying to 'do' a featured-box-type system, then we need to decide how we're going to do that. If not, we need to decide what we're doing instead, and then how we're going to do it.

Relevant to this, I realized that what I'm most interested in from a group like this is finding fics that I otherwise would only discover through pure dumb luck and/or direct recommendation. This doesn't actually have anything to do with viewcount. True Colors (archives, low-ish views, [complete], ancient), The Colour You Bleed (not archives, large views, [complete], ancient), and Days of Wasp and Spider (not archives, large views, [incomplete], both ancient and recent -- I found it in the actual featured box) are examples of things I found through pure dumb luck. Not Quite BFFs (archives, low views, [incomplete]-abandoned, ancient) is an example of something I certainly would not have found, and most likely wouldn't have even looked at, if it hadn't been directly recommended to me. Eternal and Yours Truly (both not archives, large views, [complete], ancient) are both possible candidates for this sort of thing if you're very new to the site.[1]

One idea I've come up with is to re-define the purpose of the group, completely toss the viewcount system, and establish a well-monitored recommendations thread. The new criteria would be based on Periphery's "Would people want to know about this fic?"[2]. The group Serious Stories has an open recommendations system, but I don't feel that particular system would suit our purposes. Therefore, the new criteria would call for a well-established and well-monitored recommendations thread. I think we should go for at least three recommendations (one nomination and two 'second's), and at least one of them must be someone who hadn't read the story before. Ideas for other systems? Thoughts on this one?

[1] I feel Eternal especially has a lot of background attention vibe going on and you'd be sure to run into it sooner or later, but if you think I'm wrong about that I probably am.

[2] Quoted here:

I suppose ultimately, the question you should ask yourself before adding a story to this group is, "Is this a story people would want to know about?" It doesn't have to be the best of the best for that to get a yes, but it should still be pretty good, and the basics of good grammar and general coherency are musts. Plus it's an attempt to insert a bit of objectivity into the consideration. If you could wipe all memory from your mind of having read a story, would you leave yourself a note first telling you to read it again, or would you feel like you wouldn't have missed much if you'd never read it?

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When my "read later" list runs low, or I first join any group, I poke around in the folders. After that, I mainly pay attention to my notifications.

As for the second item, I was relatively late to the fandom, so I'm sure there are many good fics with relatively low view-counts and few people linking to them, which I haven't heard of but would love to read. I would probably get more out of a recommendation-based system. One suggestion for that would be to create a forum thread for each nominated fic, so that a) we get notifications if we so choose (story and thread notes are separate) so we can check and vote on proposed stories, and b) it allows for cleaner votes and decisions.

985230

Being a co-founder, I don't know how much my perspective applies to everyone else, but I click every fic as they're submitted. (Don't read most of them, though, to be honest, because I'm perpetually behind in even keeping up with the fics I already track.) One thing to consider, though, is how people who aren't members use the group. I think most people are far more likely to look through the folders without actually joining the group, so notifications don't apply to them. I know that's how I use most groups on the site.

But yeah, I really didn't like hitting everyone with that wall of notifications, and I don't want that to happen again. I think a weekly shuffle would fix that problem pretty well, keeping updates fairly small, but not frequent enough to be spammy or outshine the new additions.

But I really don't like the idea of abandoning view count entirely. To me it's a critical factor that these are stories hardly anyone is aware of. Doesn't mean the folders need to be organized that way, but if we take out the upper limit for views, it just becomes a bit too generic "add/suggest anything you liked a lot" type group. There are soooo many fics on this site that probably everyone here would have quite a few fics that others would be utterly amazed they hadn't heard of before.

We're really considering two separate issues and merging them into one purpose here: getting the word out for good stories that fell through the cracks, and bringing stories people would be interested in to their attention. Both of those are important, and I don't want to abandon half of the equation.

However, that doesn't mean we couldn't add some extra folders for stories that fall outside the regular criteria. Just an hour ago, someone sent me a PM about a fic they enjoyed, but failed the 90% rating test due to subject matter more than quality. So we could have one Recommended Fics folder that ignores ratings, and another that ignores view-count.

I haven't put anything in here myself yet but since my friend recommended it Ive read a few from the zero to hundred one.

While I may be a step up from the other users, I'm still not on Mod-hood () level, so my opinions may still apply here.

I go through each folder to see what's there and if it interests me at that moment, I'll click open a tab just for it.

There's no real system to my methods, just flip through and read.

985330 You use the group. (More than I do, at any rate ) Of course your opinions apply here. They're exactly what we're interested in.

985247 Your Read Later list runs low?
Teach me please. Mines' done nothing but grow.

985314

getting the word out for good stories that fell through the cracks, and bringing stories people would be interested in to their attention

Getting the word out for interesting stories that fell through the cracks, perhaps?

You're right that these really don't both apply. I could make a case for either or both of them fitting the group's name, but then we'd just kind of be confused. Bringing interesting fics to people's attention is a bit more like the Vault or Epic Quality Fics instead. (Or Seattle's Angles, or the featured box.) I'm not aware of any groups that explicitly focus on older, interesting fics; but that doesn't mean we have to fill that niche here.

But I really don't like the idea of abandoning view count entirely. To me it's a critical factor that these are stories hardly anyone is aware of.

How about view-count versus age? I don't particularly think this version would work the way we'd want, but as an example:

Minimum age to qualify for the group is two months. At two months, there's a five-hundred-view-count limit. Also, the fic still has to get through whatever process we use to decide whether it's "actually good". For fics older than two months, the view-count limit goes up by 20 views per month; so a fic that's 12 months old has a 700-view limit. That seems really, really low. Seattle's Angles started with a 1000-view cap. Well, we'd have to play with the numbers anyways. We continue to maintain a graduates folder for fics that no longer qualify because we succeeded.

The older fics I'm particularly interested in miss on that system, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Regardless, there are statsbronies on this site who I'm sure could help us come up with a better version for whatever we decide our objectives are, if we ask nicely.

I also realized that I'd like to encourage our members to vote more. We'd have to talk about how to do that. I'm pretty sure that is a separate thread, though.

failed the rating test due to subject matter more than quality

Oh, now I'm curious. I probably "should" be terrified, but instead I'm curious. Care to PM it to me?

Because it will be relevant to my interests when I read back through here in the future

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I guess the limit could increase with time, but that feels like it might start making things overly complicated. I doubt people really want to do math (even easy math) just to decide whether or not a story qualifies, but eh, not a big deal, I suppose. Just skimming the back end of the browse pages, it does seem like simply being around for a while bumps up the average view count a bit, so some consideration could be made for that.

I do still prefer the idea of just having a separate recommendations folder that ignores view count, though, and if you want to get members involved and voting, simply upping the view limit isn't going to do it, obviously. To me, since the majority of stories on the site seem to slip by with maybe a couple hundred views, 500 is already fairly generous, honestly. My biggest concern when we started this group was how I'd see good stories that felt pretty much ignored, with like two comments. And if 500 people have looked at a story, to me that seems like a decent amount of attention, from the author's perspective. It does seem like the older a story is, though, the less likely someone is to comment on it when they read it, so I can see how an ancient fic with 750 views could still feel pretty neglected, so I wouldn't be opposed to granting some leeway based on age.

A two-month minimum seems high, however. Fics already generally seem pretty buried after just a week or two, and it'd be better if we could bring some notice to stories while they're still ongoing.

The low-end of Equestria Daily features, particularly fics which are produced for events and which are only listed in compilation posts, can net a story five hundred views in a three day span while granting it only a dozen votes and no lingering repute whatsoever. We should find some means by which those stories can be rediscovered by future readers.