Chapters....the unfair advantage

[humannature]

I think this is a ridiculous suggestion and you appear to be more than just a bit arrogant, thinking you know what other people mean and think. Who are you to tell what format is reasonable for this site? Both readers and writers come in many, many different forms and shapes, and actually, I am following a number of series that have crossed the 20-story mark. Every week I’m looking forward to what news I’m getting, and hoping that the characters will do this or that. In some cases I guess it’s like watching a soap—nothing too deep, but nice distraction—in other cases, the chapters are of excellent quality.

I'm sorry you're reading it as arrogant. If I sound sure about it, it's only because it's fact. It's not my opinion. One can look at the story statistics and see it.

The score of the first chapter is not the most accurate score. Normally, story builds up, and the best score is where the action is; the first chapter is often some sort of introduction, and there are a number of stories where the sex (I guess that can be considered ‘the action’ on a site like Literotica) only gets after several chapters. Some authors do a terrific job in building the suspension, which really adds to the story. Somehow getting an average score would be more realistic, although in all, I agree for various reasons mentioned before, that you can't compare series with stand-alone at all.

The first chapter is the most accurate because it's the story chapter that draws the most broad variety of readers. I agree that a person can skew the scoring by changing the content, but the point that I and others are making is that Chapter 1 draws the normal variety of readers, and Chapter 2+ draws the ones who like the story. The ones who didn't like Chapter 1 don't read Chapter 2+, and thus don't provide their (lower) votes.

To me, that’s one of the big advantages of the ‘new’ start page of Lit. I don’t consider myself a typical Lit reader, but I rarely check the “New Submissions” pages. For writers that I follow, I get a message each time they submitted a new story/chapter. For some other writers, I regularly check if they have new work published.

It's funny. I didn't know that feature existed until recently, and I think it would be very nice for readers. I didn't realize that it was actually a new feature. Bravo, Lit.

 

[SimonDoom]

The first chapter is the most accurate because it's the story chapter that draws the most broad variety of readers. I agree that a person can skew the scoring by changing the content, but the point that I and others are making is that Chapter 1 draws the normal variety of readers, and Chapter 2+ draws the ones who like the story. The ones who didn't like Chapter 1 don't read Chapter 2+, and thus don't provide their (lower) votes.

.

I think what RubenR is getting at, and what I agree with, is you need to be a bit more modest about what you think you know as a "fact" and what's right as policy. Yes, the first chapter will get a broader readership. But that doesn't mean its score will be the most reflective of the quality or interest of the story as a whole. First chapters often are prologues. They are much less interesting than chapters that come later. For instance, I wrote an 8-chapter series that's a slow build erotic story about a taboo relationship. The erotic content ratchets up with every chapter. The later chapters are much more interesting and erotic than the early ones. The first chapter is the only one with a score under 4.5. That's partly, but only partly, because of the broader readership. It's also because less happens erotically in that chapter than in any others. A reader interested in my overall story would get little clue about the quality or interest in the whole story just by looking at the first chapter, its tag, or its score. So, what you are saying is not correct, and I think it's not correct about many series.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Splitting the new stories list is a fair point. It should probably be one list for one-shots and chapter 1s, and a second for continuing serials. There's already tabbed navigation on the comments/popular lists on the hubs page. So the technology is there to have a tab to separate these stories as well.

Would be a great boon to some categories where large numbers of stories are posted every day — especially for people who post one-shots in those categories.

Knowing what's a chapter is a stickier wicket. That really requires all the new code that's being designed to do exactly what we're talking about here, cleaning up the toplists. The automated code to detect serials worked quite well, but it still had flaws. ( Prior to the new infrastructure buggering it ) That's what's being worked out behind the scenes, I'm sure — as well as author controls for same.

They do have a Series list of all the multiple chapter stories on lit. I see no reason they couldn't provide two 'New' lists. Simple SQL statement.

Of course now you will have authors that break their stories up now not giving them the same title names.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm sorry you're reading it as arrogant. If I sound sure about it, it's only because it's fact. It's not my opinion. One can look at the story statistics and see it.

A typical vote/view ratio is 1:100, so to argue "facts" on a 1% data set is absurd. 99% of reader reaction is unknown, so we're speculating from information content coming from the noise-floor.

The reality is, some folk won't read anything more than two pages, some folk will read hundreds of chapters and hundreds of thousands words, but nobody has data on how many are in each group. We ain't running on fact here, that's the one thing known for sure.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

That "Cluster of low scores" is not the author exactly but the fans or a group of fans. Also the same thing is happening on the favorite authors and stories lists so they won't help you any either.

How does an author who hasn't posted a story in 7 years stay in the top 10 of the favorites list?

Because once you have over 100 votes and above a 4.5 it's really hard to get it back down below 4.5. If the vote count is even higher, it's even harder.

 

[humannature]

I think what RubenR is getting at, and what I agree with, is you need to be a bit more modest about what you think you know as a "fact" and what's right as policy. Yes, the first chapter will get a broader readership. But that doesn't mean its score will be the most reflective of the quality or interest of the story as a whole. First chapters often are prologues. They are much less interesting than chapters that come later. For instance, I wrote an 8-chapter series that's a slow build erotic story about a taboo relationship. The erotic content ratchets up with every chapter. The later chapters are much more interesting and erotic than the early ones. The first chapter is the only one with a score under 4.5. That's partly, but only partly, because of the broader readership. It's also because less happens erotically in that chapter than in any others. A reader interested in my overall story would get little clue about the quality or interest in the whole story just by looking at the first chapter, its tag, or its score. So, what you are saying is not correct, and I think it's not correct about many series.

I understand that different chapters of a story may have different appeal, but that's not the only factor that affects scoring on a multi-chapter story. Let me ask you a question.

You see two ten-chapter stories that interest you.

You read Story A and it turns out that it's not well-written or well plotted. You give it 2 stars.

You read Story B and it's a great story. You really enjoyed it and give it 5 stars.

Do you read Chapter 2 of both stories?

You're probably much more likely to go to the next chapter of Story B and continue giving it 5 stars than you are to continue Story A and keep giving it 2 stars, right?

Now assume that there's another reader with the opposite tastes of you. They loved Story A (5 stars) and didn't like Story B (2 stars). They're probably going to stop reading Story B, and they'll go to Chapter 2 of Story A.

So now we've got 2 votes on Chapter 1 of each story, and their average score is 3.5 stars (a 5 and a 2). Chapter 2 of each story gets less readership, and Chapter 2 of each story now has a 5 rating (1 vote). That's the artificial effect, and it happens regardless of the content of the story.

It's a fair playing field when comparing multi-chapter stories because the effect is the same for all of them. But single-chapter stories never get the artificial boost.

The obvious solution is to have two separate toplists, and the problem is solved. I don't even mind if Chapter 1 of a multi-chapter story goes into the single-chapter toplist, because it's only Chapter 2+ that gets the boost.

But overall, I'm not as bothered by that as I am the cheaters. That's why I propose a ranking system that takes into account factors other than the raw score, because the raw score is the easiest measure to cheat.

 

[humannature]

Most readers don't come for scores and top-lists but for stories of their liking. Scores and top-lists are just an aid to find them, but nothing more. Some readers like short stories, other like long, endless ones, and another group likes something in the middle; that's a fact.

Agreed.

The toplists are a powerful tool, though.

Personally, I think the number of votes are as powerful as the voting score. If I see two similar new stories and one has a 4.6 on 20 votes, and the other has a 4.55 on 150 votes, I'm going to check the one with more votes first. And the number of favorites is even more powerful, because it's very hard for certain authors to cheat on the number of favorites. That's why I wish they'd be part of the scoring.

 

[SimonDoom]

You see two ten-chapter stories that interest you.

You read Story A and it turns out that it's not well-written or well plotted. You give it 2 stars.

You read Story B and it's a great story. You really enjoyed it and give it 5 stars.

Do you read Chapter 2 of both stories?

.

The answer is no, I might read chapter 2 of story B, but not of story A. But you're scenario doesn't take into account the situation I described, which I think is common.

Both first chapters might be equally well-written, but story 1 gives a quick erotic fix and story 2 doesn't. If all I had to go on was the score for the first chapter, I might skip story 2. But that might be a mistake if story 2 offered a fun buildup and great story-telling down the road, in subsequent chapters. If all that was scored was the first chapter, I'd never know that. I'd choose story 1, and I might be short-changed.

I agree with the idea of separating standalone and chapter-story lists. But it doesn't make sense on chapter lists to count only first chapters. That won't really convey what the readers want to know about the entire story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The first chapter almost NEVER is the highest rated. It often is much lower rated than others. So doing this wouldn't give readers the useful information they need to I.D. stories they like.

The "lower rated than later chapters" part is a feature, not a bug. Later chapters get an advantage in scoring, because only the fans are still reading, so it's fairer to compare a one-shot to Chapter 1 than to Chapter 50.

That said, while chapter-story score inflation certainly is a problem for ranking, I'm not convinced that this is a good solution. If we took all the great works of English literature and compared them based solely on their first chapters, it might be a fair comparison but it wouldn't be very useful. I want to know whether an author is able to write a good middle and end!

This also does nothing about very long single-shot stories, which seem to be subject to the same kind of score inflation as long chapter stories, for the exact same reason.

If somebody was paying me to address this, my preferred approach would be to do some statistical analysis to establish what effect chapters, story length, and other factors (e.g. genre) have on score, and then calculate an adjustment based on that. Chapter stories could then be rated on the average of their adjusted scores.

What do you mean "don't allow"? You mean if they try to submit Chapter 21 they should be banned? That's a terrible idea. Many people may not read Tefler's 100+ chapter series, but many do, and he has tons of fans. People love his stuff. Combining the chapter would make them overly long.

...and it would still have problems of score inflation, only now we'd no longer be able to mitigate the issue with a chapter/non-chapter split.

Oh, sure. I was obviously exaggerating for effect when I said nobody. But your statement is true of single-post stories as well. I get a bump in readership rates in all of my stories when I post a new one. I'm willing to bet that readers going through the "new stories" list are notably more likely to select a new story than a subsequent chapter of an existing story. In fact, we can easily see that in the number of reads that each posting gets.

What that tells us, then, is that readers find subsequent chapters less appealing overall. As a business, this web site should recognize that having 50 percent of postings being subsequent chapters is not what their readers are looking for.

"Less appealing" and "something to be discouraged" are not the same thing.

It's hard for readers to figure out whether a new story by an unknown author is one that they're going to enjoy. Genre, title, and blurb can only tell us so much. So the read stats for a story include a mix of "good views" (people who guessed right and clicked on a story that gives them what they want) and "bad views" (people who took a chance and got disappointed by a story that didn't have what they're looking for).

So, I post a new story and I get 10,000 good views and 10,000 bad views. Of course, the control panel doesn't break those down - it just shows 20,000 views.

Next, I post Chapter 2 of the same story... and only the people who enjoyed Chapter 1 bother reading it. So Chapter 2 gets 10,000 good views and zero bad views. (In practice, not quite zero, since there's churn in the audience and some people want more than one chapter to make up their minds, but let's keep it simple here.)

Chapter 1 was certainly "more appealing" - twice as many people clicked on it. But I'd suggest that Chapter 2 is actually a better outcome - just as many people enjoyed it as Chapter 1, and it didn't waste the time of those other 10,000 readers. The chapter structure gives them more information about it - "part 2 of a thing that you didn't enjoy part 1 of" - and so makes it easier for them to filter their reading. Everybody wins. "Less appealing" is a good thing!

And then atop that, there's the known perverse effect that the stories that generate less interest end up with higher scores as a result.

Another way to look at this: authors who oversell their stories end up being penalised for that, and authors who make it easier for readers to know what they're getting are rewarded for it.

My lowest-rated story on this site ("Counting to Eleven") is also the one that gets the most views. (It's slightly behind "A Stringed Instrument" chapter 1 in total views, but only because the latter had more than a year's head start; looking at views vs. days-since-posted, Counting to Eleven is far ahead.)

As far as I can tell, the reason for that is that I botched the blurb. I gave it a blurb that makes it sound much more stroke-y than it is, so presumably I got a lot of readers who were looking for stroke, and they got disappointed. In other words, I made it too appealing, to the wrong readers, and it's my own fault that it scored as low as it did.

I'm actually curious about that. I don't post multi-chapter stories for the most part. Do people reading a serial really find the new chapters on the "new stories" listing? That seems like a needle in a haystack. I would think that they follow the author and then check to see whether the author has posted a new chapter. The "following" feature works well for that.

I don't keep count of exactly how many readers are following me, but based on notifications I think it's a few dozen. When I post a new chapter in a story, I can expect to get thousands of views on it in the first couple of weeks. So, no, "following" isn't how most people are finding my updates. I have to assume most of them are getting there via New Stories, especially since the incoming views correspond pretty closely with when and where the story is in the New Stories list.

(Also, the ability to see updates via following is pretty new, and it requires readers to register an account, which many don't want to do.)

I agree that people may have different writing styles or tastes, and that's fine, but the simple truth is that readership goes down with every subsequent chapter, which means that scoring goes up.

I suspect it's more accurate to say that readership goes down and scoring goes up with every subsequent page. I'm not convinced that it makes a lot of difference whether those pages happen to be split into chapters or posted as a great big one-shot.

Chapter stories are highly visible on the toplists. Part of that is because one chapter story can hold many places on the same list, and part of it is because most writers seem to prefer chaptering when they have a long story to post. But when authors do post long one-shots, they do pretty well.

Looking at the all-time top-50 list, 41 of 50 places are claimed by chapter stories (including a couple that haven't been titled as such) but 50/50 are held by long stories. Of the nine non-chapter stories, the shortest is 6 Literotica pages, the median is 9, and the longest is 46.

IMHO we should be thinking of it as a "long story score inflation" phenomenon, rather than a "chapter story score inflation" phenomenon - and if I'm correct in that reading, then requiring authors to post these stories in fewer, bigger installments isn't going to help. If anything, it'll make things a bit worse - if I see "chapter 100" I can mentally adjust my expectations about the story, but when it's posted as a one-shot I don't see the length until I get to the bottom of page 1.

I think some sort of scoring is necessary, both for author feedback and so readers can do some sort of filtering of potential reads. The site should want to steer readers toward "better" stories rather than schlock.

Agreed, but there's some important nuance here.

When I'm looking for reading material, score is only one of the things I use to filter, and not the most important. I tend to look at category, title, and blurb before I go to score, and I suspect many other readers do too.

(Indeed, I know they do, seeing as how my lowest-scoring story is also the one that gets the most reads...)

That being the case, the most informative scoring system would be one that's independent of the other information readers already have. If the blurb makes it clear that this story will only be of interest to latex fetishists, then the score should tell me how good it is as a latex fetish story, not to an audience who have no particular interest in that fetish.

The current system is a long way from perfect in that regard, but penalising stories for low read counts would exacerbate the problem.

And I don't really care about differences in reads across categories, because some are naturally way bigger than others and they have different audiences. Stories don't really compete for reads across categories, but they compete ferociously within categories.

This may change, if the site does go ahead with the changes to navigation that they've been discussing. IMHO the current category-based navigation is woefully antiquated, it's terrible for those of us who write stories that straddle multiple categories, and if we're ever going to switch to a more flexible ontology then the scoring approach should be able to support that.

(FWIW, I would happily sacrifice story scores altogether if that was the price of getting a better classification/filtering system.)

What particularly bothers me is situations like this: go look at the Top 250 stories in the Exhibitionist category. By my count 41 of the top 250 stories are parts of one continued story that is currently at 77 chapters. The person may be a fine writer and I have no ill will against him/her, but ... seriously? This is not good for anybody.

No argument from me there!

I would respectfully disagree to some extent. I would hope that better stories would be more widely read. You're correct, of course, about differences across categories and that's just a market issue as I noted earlier in this multi-chapter post. But within a category, I would certainly hope and expect that the stories that are more interesting - or which draw more interest based on their plot, title, or synopsis - would get more reads.

That "more interesting stories" vs. "draw more interest based on title or synopsis" is a crucial distinction, though.

People don't know whether a story is interesting until after they've read it, ergo, number of reads tells us very little about whether it's worth reading. (Or rather, it doesn't give us anything additional to all the title/synopsis/category/etc. information that all the previous readers used when deciding to click on it.)

 

[ElectricBlue]

I agree with the idea of separating standalone and chapter-story lists. But it doesn't make sense on chapter lists to count only first chapters. That won't really convey what the readers want to know about the entire story.

Totally agree. In chapter stories (from my own micro sample of two, one with 26 chapters, the other with twelve), the stats from the first two chapters of each can be set aside - the steady state of dedicated readers can be seen to settle in around chapter three, and continues down to the end.

The odd thing, though, is that for both stories (one four years old, the other forty days old), the first chapter has the highest number of votes, and the vote/view ratio sets itself and is then pretty constant for the rest of the chapters. The overall scores generally rise, but not much, over the whole story. It's as if the category readership decide in chapter one, "okay, we're going to vote this way," but then 75% don't go on and read the remainder, but those who do continue voting do so with the same ratio. It's counter-intuitive, but there you go, it's what folk do.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oops. Duplicate Post

 

[Tefler]

The problem is that Chapter 100 gets a higher score purely because it's Chapter 100 and not because it's better.

I'm sorry, but that's not true at all.

In the case of Three Square Meals, my first chapter was only 5000 words. It was the first time I'd ever written a story and I made lots of punctuation, grammar, and dialogue mistakes. In the first chapter, I introduced the story's protagonist as well as the first girl who joined him, so the scope and scale of the story were tiny.

By contrast, Chapter 100 is over 93,000 words. It focuses on a climactic battle between two galactic empires, which I'd been leading up to over the last 2 years. By this point, I'd written over 2m words in the story and had greatly improved the technical quality of my work. The scope and scale of the story had grown exponentially, with 20+ main cast members, and hundreds of supporting cast.

My highest rated chapters are the ones with all the combat in them and chapter 100 has the largest scale battle I've ever written. It took me two days to write chapter 1, but it took me over a month to write chapter 100! I created a separate document just to keep track of all the scenes to make sure they happened in the correct sequence and just my notes are 1500 words!

I agree that having multiple chapters from a story spamming the toplist is a bit annoying, but I'd strongly disagree in using the first chapter's rating to determine the overall score for a story. If you were to restrict it to only a single score, literotica should use the highest rated chapter.

 

[Kantarii]

There are 1,000’s of stories on Lit. The simple fact is - not every story written on this site can be #1 or even make the top list of, say, 250. People here are too set on stroking their egos. I wish more people would just focus that energy on writing a better story and spend less time wondering about being#1 because the best story I’ve read on this site isn’t on any top list.
Kant

 

[SimonDoom]

If you were to restrict it to only a single score, literotica should use the highest rated chapter.

I hadn't thought of this. This is a better idea than the "first chapter" idea, by a long shot, but it's still not great.

It makes sense that improving story-telling ability accounts for higher scores, but it's also true that later chapters get higher scores because of reader self-selection. You have what might be the most devoted fanbase on this site. It's not a knock on your story-telling abilities to say that self-selection is part of what accounts for how well your stories do, score-wise. In my case, for example, I finished an 8 chapter series in 9 months. I don't think I improved so much as a writer that writing quality accounted significantly for higher scores in the later chapters. I think it was mostly the process of self-selection among readers (well, and hotter sex, I guess).

In addition to separating chapter lists from complete story lists, the lists might be made longer. After 20 years, a 250-story list might not be long enough.

 

[TxRad]

The original idea was an average of all chapters when the story is finished. Until it is completed and ended it is not a story but a string of chapters. It doesn't matter how many chapters or how well they are written, they are not stories and should not be treated as such.

 

[SimonDoom]

The original idea was an average of all chapters when the story is finished. Until it is completed and ended it is not a story but a string of chapters. It doesn't matter how many chapters or how well they are written, they are not stories and should not be treated as such.

The problem with this, though, is that it elevates "fair to the author" unduly over "useful to the reader." Readers will be eager to find high-rated and incomplete stories, and toplists help them do that.

 

[Tefler]

it's also true that later chapters get higher scores because of reader self-selection.

Is that actually a bad thing though? If we are writing stories to entertain people and the fans of a long-running story absolutely loved the later chapters, surely that's a helpful indicator to a new reader on the site? It's a bit like saying: "If you like the first few chapters of this story, stick with it, because it gets a lot better!"

A while ago, I wrote a short story with no sex in it, so I could show it to friends and family (Truckstop Takedown - 4.83). It was a fun little story to write, but it's only 18,000 words. I was barely able to scratch the surface of the characters in that story, and the fight sequence in it is relatively short. There are at least a dozen chapters in Three Square Meals with much more compelling combat and character development, which make them far superior to that standalone tale... and the ratings for those chapters reflect that.

I like short stories for what they are, but you will never engage the readership to the same extent as you can with an epic tale. The highest rated story in the sci-fi category is a 60 page monster from Lien-Geller (The Missing Dragon Ch. 05 - 4.93). Should that only be given a 4.86 score because that's what chapter 1 received?

 

[Tefler]

The original idea was an average of all chapters when the story is finished. Until it is completed and ended it is not a story but a string of chapters. It doesn't matter how many chapters or how well they are written, they are not stories and should not be treated as such.

I think that's a bit harsh.

An example that immediately springs to mind is "John and Argent" by cmsix on Storiesonline. He wrote a 200+ chapter behemoth about a survivalist guy sent back in time to a prehistoric Earth.

I would have loved to see him end that (I think the writer died), but what made the story engaging was how the protagonist overcame various challenges in prehistoric times. I prefer to think of it as a long-running tv show that got cancelled by the network after 10 seasons.

It might not have ended wrapped up in a nice bow, but it was still a great story.

 

[SimonDoom]

Is that actually a bad thing though? If we are writing stories to entertain people and the fans of a long-running story absolutely loved the later chapters, surely that's a helpful indicator to a new reader on the site? It's a bit like saying: "If you like the first few chapters of this story, stick with it, because it gets a lot better!"

A while ago, I wrote a short story with no sex in it, so I could show it to friends and family (Truckstop Takedown - 4.83). It was a fun little story to write, but it's only 18,000 words. I was barely able to scratch the surface of the characters in that story, and the fight sequence in it is relatively short. There are at least a dozen chapters in Three Square Meals with much more compelling combat and character development, which make them far superior to that standalone tale... and the ratings for those chapters reflect that.

I like short stories for what they are, but you will never engage the readership to the same extent as you can with an epic tale. The highest rated story in the sci-fi category is a 60 page monster from Lien-Geller (The Missing Dragon Ch. 05 - 4.93). Should that only be given a 4.86 score because that's what chapter 1 received?

No. I agree that's not a good solution.

There's no ideal solution.

The problem with the existing situation simply is that toplists are becoming increasingly crowded with multiple chapters of the same stories, and that reduces the amount of useful information to readers looking for good stories, and especially looking for short stories. There is a rapidly diminishing marginal utility in having dozens and dozens of chapters from a long epic tale filling up the toplists.

Maybe another way to do it would be to use an average. I don't know if that's doable, but it would be more accurate than (a) the first chapter score , or (b) the highest chapter score.

 

[TxRad]

When you get to the ten chapter point, you are no longer writing a story. You are now writing a book. Books are not sold by the chapter. By posting chapters, that is what you are doing on this site.

This is a story site, not a chapter site. Or at least it used to be until a certain story site went under from the crazy amount of chapters that were never ending stories finally killed its readership. It seems they all came here.

 

[KeithD]

A story isn't a story until it's completed. It would be fine to have separate tracks for actual stories and forming stories, but, really, chaptered series shouldn't be in the mix with actual stories at all until completed and then counted just once.

 

[RejectReality]

I still think of the toplists and the contests as two separate parts of the chapter discussion.

In the toplists, chapter stories should be condensed to a single entry, with either a median or average score and vote total. It doesn't need to wait until it's complete to earn that single spot. It can be ranked with the first chapter. That resolves the primary problem as stated in the OP, for the most part. Each chaptered story will only take up one spot in the toplist, and thus won't be crowding out everything else.

The widely observed and documented trend of chaptered stories increasing in score over time will still cause the top end of the lists to skew toward chaptered stories. That's the "most part" I mentioned earlier. Even condensed to a single entry, they're going to end up higher in the rankings due to most people who stick with the story being people who love it, and are likely to vote 5.

As far as contests go, I'm in the "it's not a story until it's finished" camp. The complete story's score should be an average or median of all the chapters for the purposes of ranking.

 

[AfterDusk]

A story isn't a story until it's completed. It would be fine to have separate tracks for actual stories and forming stories, but, really, chaptered series shouldn't be in the mix with actual stories at all until completed and then counted just once.

I'm not sure there is a good solution to any of this. We are conditioned to like suspense--this is how prime time TV gets ratings, forcing people to 'tune in to next week.' If you can effectively write a chapter it will compel readers to continue on with the story, I don't think that punishing an author for writing in length or detail is the route to go for a website that promotes writing.

Despite having a few chaptered stories and a few that also are not finished, I do completely agree that the Top Lists are worthless when they are bogged down by multiple entries from the same story. I'm not sure that an average is a viable solution; it seems like it would take too much effort/coding to get it accomplished. Perhaps a simpler one would be only allowing one chapter per story to post to the Top List.

And, as a reader, I will agree that I look through the Top Lists for something to read and almost always will not pick a chaptered story but a stand alone one (because every chaptered story I have chosen has not been finished and while some of them are good I don't want to spend three years waiting to finish the damn thing).

 

[RejectReality]

Only in the sense that the series coding needs to be fixed first.

On those stories where the series link is already established, or in the event of the bugs being worked out, getting an average would be a simple thing. They already have a variable assigned designating them as part of a series.

It could even be done on a timed task once a day, stored, and provide yet another benefit for readers by displaying the series average/median on the author submission list next to the series header.

It wouldn't be any easier to sort out every other chapter except one to display. No matter what criteria you use to determine which chapter will be displayed, you're doing all the work you would for the average/median score option.

I'm not sure that an average is a viable solution; it seems like it would take too much effort/coding to get it accomplished. Perhaps a simpler one would be only allowing one chapter per story to post to the Top List.

 

[AfterDusk]

Only in the sense that the series coding needs to be fixed first.

On those stories where the series link is already established, or in the event of the bugs being worked out, getting an average would be a simple thing. They already have a variable assigned designating them as part of a series.

It could even be done on a timed task once a day, stored, and provide yet another benefit for readers by displaying the series average/median on the author submission list next to the series header.

It wouldn't be any easier to sort out every other chapter except one to display. No matter what criteria you use to determine which chapter will be displayed, you're doing all the work you would for the average/median score option.

All right, that makes sense...but what about stories that are a series but not necessarily chapters? There are a few of them that are broken down into parts with chapters as well, or some that have different titles yet are meant to be read in order as a series of events.

Maybe top authors in each category?