That’s an interesting argument that mirrors thoughts I keep rolling around for a long time already.
Here’s the thing:
Overall ratings average for a series is already implemented for the story challenge - but it’s a stressful process for the database (all of this is calculated life in the SQL database). For a challenge, which only has to be calculated once, that’s ok, but for a permanently updated statistic not so much.
For all the other “Top ratings” lists I use the approach that I look at the stories - and if a story of a series qualifies for a “top Rated” entry, I list the whole series in its place (the ‘medals’ shown on a series also always show the best medals that any of its stories achieved). I make sure that each series only comes up once, even if its stories would qualify for multiple appearances on the same or other categories.
For the purpose of the User Profile, an average for series is not a good idea - neither for ratings nor for number of clicks or “favorites”. The reason is, that “one-shot” stories always get WAY more hits than a single story in a series. Otoh, all hits of a series combined of course will overshadow a one-shot-story by far. So in either way, it’s just not fair.
What I could do, though, is to apply the same logic I use for the “Top Rated” lists, i.e. I look at the stories individually to find the most hits, the most favorites etc, but I list its series, not the individual story itself. And then I make sure that each series only shows up once in any of the lists.
How does that sound?
@mgreene70 Yeah, the first chapter (or the first two) of my own stories are always the ones I like most myself. I’m eager to get my idea out, I write myself in a kind of frenzy. On later chapters I find it very hard to keep up, not to repeat myself, not to get overboard. That’s why I have such a hard time finishing series - and usually fail. Because of that I try to restrict myself to single-chapter stories for now.
I really like the profiles and all that stuff - very cool!
About the “Please review and comment” pop-ups - as an author I very much appreciate this gesture (even if the pop-ups appear for my own stories ), however, I don’t want to assume that a pop-up such as this would actually do anything to increase reviews and comments. In fact, it’s possible that it may even reduce the amount of reviews and comments; as mc kinksters, I think we can all appreciate the complicated psychology involved in a call-to-interaction.
I’d appreciate maybe some verification in the coming weeks that this pop-up at least did not appear to decrease number of ratings and comments, if that’s possible.
Hey Martin, random question but is there way to make it so that the chapter synopsis in a series shows up when the story is posted and not the series description. The reason I ask is that sometimes people use the series system to link related but different stories and this way instead of it being a general synopsis its a specific one.
If this is like ten thousand hours of work to do then no worries or anything, but I figured I would ask.
Well, I don’t think so. If somebody wants to be mean, he will be mean, regardless of any popup.
It’s a friendly reminder. And in my book a rather mild one. It disappears by itself and doesn’t obstruct much of the screen. If it does, it goes away with a single click.
At most I’d offer to add a user option to disable them. But I’d only do that reluctantly. It feels like a “let me shit on the authors” option.
I’ll do a check on the number of ratings. But there are two changes which affect this: The rating block is collapsed by default on mobile devices now - due to the frequent accidental ratings (just clicked a rating bar when they just wanted to scroll). That will probably have a greater (negative) effect.
Here’s the total number of ratings per month (as of 28th of May)
It’s not much work, but where does the series synopsis show up then? The entry is for the series, not a single story.
I understand of course, that you usually want to read the latest part of a story if you find it on the main page. But it is still the series which is listed there.
What I could do easily enough is to add a tooltip type of pop-up when hovering over the entry to show the latest chapter’s synopsis. But hovering tooltips don’t work (well) on mobile phones…
Just to be clear, I’m very much in favor of the pop-up - I was very happy the first time I saw it show up. I agree that it is not very obtrusive. I just don’t want to assume that just because I like it, it does what I want it to do (increase engagement).
Particularly with respect to comments, I could see the pop-up creating some bystander-like effect where someone might think “I would comment, but probably other people are going to now so I won’t,” and then fewer people comment overall. Again, if I were to bet on it, I would bet that the pop-up increases engagement, but I just like evidence.
Thanks for providing the review counts! I appreciate that!
Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. I mean for most series stories the synopsis for chapter 3 isn’t really that different from chapter 1.
I think the issue in this particular case was that the stories in the series share the same general principle but are radically different in actual events, meaning without seeing a synopsis its hard to know if the story is one’s cup of tea. (That and the poster actually used the same synopsis again and again for each chapter, rather than adding a bit of what the new story is about).
So yeah I can see that the current method makes sense and that any change would just be for change sake rather than being truly beneficial.
Well, that said, thinking on it, I guess the most blatent way to do it is that when the story shows up both the series synopsis and the chapter synopsis are shown on the main page. The problem with this is word length but in this it could allow for there being stories in a series with different descriptions.
I’ve got a 1 badge in my hamburger menu on the top left of the screen on my iPhone when viewing the site, but when I click on the hamburger menu, I don’t see anything that the number refers to. Does anyone know what it is? I’m excited to discover yet another new awesome feature that Martin implemented
The Martin / Sexbot-013 paradigm interests me because it is actually a story issue. I love stories about people being turned into mindless drones with all their memories and personalities wiped away. The problem with this in a story is that because we are all humans, we cannot relate to people with non-human ‘machine’ minds. It makes writing such stories very tricky indeed, which is why, once the human character has been fully assimilated, most such tales come to an abrupt end.
That’s why in my stories I always introduce an element that the turned person is still there somehow or comes back in some way. Otherwise, after the actual conversion, there’s nothing left to tell. And that’s a bit… underwhelming for me!
To me if the person is gone gone, like permanently gone, then that is death, and death fics have zero interest to me. Buuut if the person is shifted or changed, there is new subroutines and operational elements, then that is nifty as it allows for elements of the person to show up, to be used, to be played around with.
So yeah, if I read a story and it ended with 'the guy is gone and all that is there is an empty shell devoid of anything" I would tag the story ‘death’ or the equivalent.
Today’s update brings an all new layout of the story list on the main page. I tried to get the best compromise out of all requests I got over the time.
And some other changes throughout the site, mostly cosmetic and based on your suggestions and requests in the last days.
Since the site limit of the first thread has been reached, I’ll continue the listing of the changes of the site in this thread.
Comments, requests and bug reports can be posted in this thread or in a separate thread.
2020-06-06
Redesign of the home page story list. For series, the latest story entry is now listed completely with summary and title, additionally to the series data.
All story listings now include the word count
On all places where single stories are listed, the series it belongs to is now also shown.
Direct links from third party sites (Discord, Facebook, Twitter etc.) to GSS’ stories and the personal user pages now include the author’s avatar picture.
The pulsing of the buttons for “Top Stories” and “Random stories” has been removed. An update of those contents is now shown using the usual green star.
In the User Profiles, most of the lists (top rated, most favorite etc.) now show the series, not the stories. This way, repeated listings of stories of the same series is avoided.
The list of bookmarked stories is now sorted by date of the bookmark (latest on top) by default.
The author name can now be directly changed on the user profile page (click the name)
Removed ‘Google Analytics’ (was used to collect usage statistics)
The site is now protected against attacks with CloudFlare
Bugfixes:
“Overall” ranking in the author’s ratings panel was showing wrong numbers.
For community series, the actual author of a chapter is now properly shown.
Menu bar is no longer obscuring the title of pop up modal dialogs on mobile devices.
