Chaptered stories: Possibilities

[starrkers]

Great idea, Dark. I add my voice to the talk to Manu list.

 

[Darkniciad]

Bump for opinions from anyone who might have missed it yesterday.

 

[Guest]

QUOTE d-b The problem is, you present your ideas with no perception of the back-end reality of coding and maintaining a website. That's what I'm addressing, in a manner that doesn't penalize people who choose to write long chaptered stories

And the boss is more than happy to congratulate you on it! He claims no computer expertise at all and is quite happy to bow to people who have mastered the art. He helped identify the problem and was quite sure when he did so that competent people like you could overcome the technical problems.

He’s also never had problems with authors submitting multi-chaptered stories if they so choose.

His problem with them is with the way they clog the TOP STORY lists and how later chapters invariably win the MONTHLY CONTESTS for reasons that have been endlessly discussed before and so need no rehashing here.

He also believes an author should have completed the whole story before he starts submitting chapters but that is another question entirely and is up to the individual authors themselves.

Gabrielle L.

p.s. we’d still like to have you as a computer consultant at ScouriesWorld. Jim’s offer is still open…

p.s.s. besides PMing MANU you might also try starting one of those poll threads … it worked the last time…

 

[Darkniciad]

He claims no computer expertise at all and is quite happy to bow to people who have mastered the art. He helped identify the problem and was quite sure when he did so that competent people like you could overcome the technical problems.

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=27385332&postcount=3214

You continually prove darkboy that you have the mind of a bureaucrat. It’s sad really how you approach every question, every suggestion.

“It’s too hard.”

“It’ll entail too much work!”

“We don’t have time.”

“It’ll cost too much!”

Yep, you've always deferred to people who know what they're talking about *snicker*

Oh well, so much for this thread. Where's the flush handle?

 

[TxRad]

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=27385332&postcount=3214



Yep, you've always deferred to people who know what they're talking about *snicker*

Oh well, so much for this thread. Where's the flush handle?

Just flush the post above you and carry on like it never happened.

I hope you've already contacted Manu with your ideas.

 

[Darkniciad]

Nah, haven't done anything more than make this thread. I wrote it straight out of my head. Odds are that I can come up with solutions to some points of it that require less modification of pages, if I put my mind to it.

The less work required and the fewer server tics it takes, the more likely it becomes that something might get implemented.

I should really translate it into full geekese as well.

 

[scouries]

these eco nuts keep saying the polar bear is endangered…

… so how come I just saw a whole family of them wandering down Bloor Avenue?

That’s what I’ve always liked about you db. How did you do that? Another computer trick I’d never seen before. Pulling up one post like that. And how the hell did you find it anyway? Computer magic.

Anyway I did read the page involved and found it quite interesting. One of the saner scouries thread pages.

And while you took it as an insult, I, on the contrary, believe it demonstrates perfectly how far you’ve come. Before you were the bureaucrat and now, just months later, you’ve become a problem solver. It’s a quantum leap and I congratulate you for it.

Don’t let your proposal – it’s a very good one – get overshadowed by the whole “hate scouries” thing. Move it along. From “problem solver” move to the next step – “facilitator” or “implementor” – and get this thing done. For all our sakes.

jrs esq.

 

[Darkniciad]

The more you agree with me, scouries, the more I believe the whole idea is nothing more than lead poisoning from painting miniatures back in the 80s finally catching up with me.

 

[oggbashan]

When is a chapter not a chapter?

Some of my stories have chapters but are submitted and posted as a single story.

Some of my stories are submitted and posted as chapters that can stand alone but make up a complete story.

Some of my stories are short stories in their own right with an overarching theme which progresses to a final ending e.g. the Flawed Red Silk series.

Some of my stories are based on the same premise and might, or might not, have the same characters but are independent stories e.g. Shelacta.

Some of my stories are submitted as parts but need to be read as original and sequel e.g. Danger! Naked Woman.

Some of my stories are on-going stand-alone episodes in a complete Chronicle that may never end e.g. my Silverbridge stories.

And some of my stories are chapters that need to be read in sequence and might or might not be complete e.g. Gulliver.

What is the definition of a chapter?

Og

 

[TxRad]

Some of my stories have chapters but are submitted and posted as a single story.

Some of my stories are submitted and posted as chapters that can stand alone but make up a complete story.

Some of my stories are short stories in their own right with an overarching theme which progresses to a final ending e.g. the Flawed Red Silk series.

Some of my stories are based on the same premise and might, or might not, have the same characters but are independent stories e.g. Shelacta.

Some of my stories are submitted as parts but need to be read as original and sequel e.g. Danger! Naked Woman.

Some of my stories are on-going stand-alone episodes in a complete Chronicle that may never end e.g. my Silverbridge stories.

And some of my stories are chapters that need to be read in sequence and might or might not be complete e.g. Gulliver.

What is the definition of a chapter?

Og

If you have to read the part before to understand what is going on and the part after is a continuation of the whole then it is a chapter. My first novel has twenty stand alone chapters but they are still chapters to understand the whole story.

Sequels and a series are different in they are complete stories unto themselves.

Serials, I'm not sure but i feel they are chapters.

 

[Darkniciad]

For the purpose of this discussion, a story that contains multiple submissions all having "Ch. xx", "Pt. xx", etc. as a part of the title.

It's not perfect, because my own Arts Ardane series would fall under the rule. Every one of those is a self-contained story in a series, but there's currently no way to link them as a series without numbering them according to the series title, or linking with end-notes. All of them actually have two word titles ( Somebody's Something ) that sort of link them together, but it scatters them out of sequence throughout my list.

That shows up in my magic of the wood series as Les. Daughter appears in my submission list ahead of Steward, even though the chronological order is the reverse.

 

[TxRad]

Scouries, Dark hasn't changed one bit. He's exactly the same and so are you.

Oh and by the way, there is no "Hate Scouries" thing. No one hates you that I know of. Despise what you do and try to do for your own ego, yes, but not hate.

Unless you have something constructive to say, please go back to your thread and let the grownups work on this.

 

[TxRad]

For the purpose of this discussion, a story that contains multiple submissions all having "Ch. xx", "Pt. xx", etc. as a part of the title.

It's not perfect, because my own Arts Ardane series would fall under the rule. Every one of those is a self-contained story in a series, but there's currently no way to link them as a series without numbering them according to the series title, or linking with end-notes. All of them actually have two word titles ( Somebody's Something ) that sort of link them together, but it scatters them out of sequence throughout my list.

That shows up in my magic of the wood series as Les. Daughter appears in my submission list ahead of Steward, even though the chronological order is the reverse.

When I first came to Lit i didn't know how long of a story you could post so i broke one of my long ones into two parts. They are both stand alone but the end is listed before the beginning. It has hurt scores.

 

[oggbashan]

For the purpose of this discussion, a story that contains multiple submissions all having "Ch. xx", "Pt. xx", etc. as a part of the title.

It's not perfect, because my own Arts Ardane series would fall under the rule. Every one of those is a self-contained story in a series, but there's currently no way to link them as a series without numbering them according to the series title, or linking with end-notes. All of them actually have two word titles ( Somebody's Something ) that sort of link them together, but it scatters them out of sequence throughout my list.

That shows up in my magic of the wood series as Les. Daughter appears in my submission list ahead of Steward, even though the chronological order is the reverse.

I have numbered some of mine as chapters because it is the easiest way to get the sequence in order even if they aren't really chapters at all. When posting to Yahoo Groups I tend to change the file names to 01whatever; 02whatever because that puts the stories in the correct order.

What about Chain Stories? For example I wrote "The Worst Chain Story Ever Ch 01" and "The Literotica Olympics Day 17". The first could stand alone but the rest of that chain uses the same characters. The second, although "Day 17" can be read alone with no reference to the other stories in the chain.

Og

 

[Darkniciad]

I have numbered some of mine as chapters because it is the easiest way to get the sequence in order even if they aren't really chapters at all. When posting to Yahoo Groups I tend to change the file names to 01whatever; 02whatever because that puts the stories in the correct order.

What about Chain Stories? For example I wrote "The Worst Chain Story Ever Ch 01" and "The Literotica Olympics Day 17". The first could stand alone but the rest of that chain uses the same characters. The second, although "Day 17" can be read alone with no reference to the other stories in the chain.

Og

My thought is to exclude chain stories from the various housekeeping functions, because the chapters of the story are all written by different authors.

Laresa is a good example. In the beginning, all the tales are self contained with a loose background and a character linking them together. When you get into the final five chapters or so, the greater plot emerges, linking them all together in a manner that requires reading previous chapters.

Some chain stories work off a theme only, and have no link other than the title. FtF's virtual reality chain is an example there. Then again, I mess that all up by my stories in that chain following a larger storyline *laugh*

With the low exposure and limited interest in the chain category, excluding those shouldn't skew the toplists much. Because a common beginning string is the norm for titling these stories, they should be fine in the category listing. I seriously doubt it will have much impact on the monthly contests, either.

For the purposes of the icon noting completion, that will be up to the author writing the final chapter in the chain to mark it as such. In this case, it would be a matter of scrolling down to see if the chain is completed, much as you would in the author submission list to see if a chaptered story in an author's list has the "complete" icon on the last available chapter.

I knew this was going to come up eventually *laugh* Chain stories are one of the things I'm still trying to puzzle out. It's a rather unique category, requiring a lot of fine points to undergo unusual scrutiny.

 

[fifty5]

Recent events have got me thinking about this. Chaptered stories are no longer allowed in the themed contests, and the Survivor contest is planning to eliminate them from eligibility next year as well. It's a little off that a single chapter of a long story can win a monthly award, as well.

The toplists are often filled with multiple chapters of the same story, quite likely obscuring some very good self-contained works. There are stories out there with multiple chapters that aren't complete, and may never be -- big time frustration for readers who read all the way through to be left hanging.

As someone who writes a lot of chaptered stories ( though I have more than a few self-contained 6-7 Lit pagers as well ) I've been thinking of ways to level the playing field a bit and smooth out some of the issues with them.

Code to identify chaptered stories already exists. It's used to create the series listing next to chaptered stories. I dabble a bit in PHP, so I tried to think from behind the scenes about the difficulty, server load, and page load angles of all of this, in order to simplify it into something workable that utilizes already existing code and functions programmed into Lit.

I know all the standard arguments about suggestions regarding the website, but humor me and discuss. Some of this will only make sense to people who've worked with a dynamic 'Net language, but the greater scope of what it is supposed to do should be something that everyone can give a thumbs up or down to.

Let's start with the submission page. Add a radio button with three options, all of which would operate off of one database cell for the story. ( Also serves multiple purposes, which I'll get to in a bit )

Chaptered story? ONo OYes OFinal Chapter

This would allow you to set the status of your story at the point of submission, and should default to "No". A trap could detect "Ch. 01" or something similar in the title and automatically select the "Yes" option while generating the preview.

The code to create the series listing could handle filling in the Yes/No portion for existing stories.

That doesn't capture completed stories to fill in the "Final Chapter" option on older stories, though. Let us move on to the author page.

Add a radio button with three options to the author page as well. This will allow authors to set the "Final Chapter" option on existing, complete stories.

That takes care of active authors and links normal chaptered stories together. I have thoughts about how to deal with complete stories from inactive authors, but I'll just leave that be for now.

One small amendment (maybe needing another radio button) - some series are designed as unending: there are cartoon strips that follow this model. That's valid, but doesn't quite fit your model. I'd think that the criterion for competitions here is whether each episode can stand alone, rather than whether it is part of a series. For top lists, your idea of an average score might still work, but (I deal with weighting below, q.v.) maybe a different calculation, using a moving average might be appropriate. The sums themselves seem to me to be trivial in demands on computing power.

The code required is trivially more complex - it just needs a switch/case statement to pick the relevant calculation.

Now let's move on to what we can do with this. First, a few small icons could help readers tremendously.

For example, A circle with a star inside notes complete chaptered stories. A half-filled circle denotes incomplete stories that have had a chapter added in the last year. A circle with a red dot in the center would represent incomplete stories with no updates in the last year.

The concept of intentionally never-ending series again needs an extra icon, maybe an infinity sign instead of a circle, but the principle remains sound. Again, that red dot to show a lack of recent posts should help readers.

This will probably require adding a new housekeeping routine to the site.

On the "New" list, only the icon for "final chapter" is displayed. On the author's submissions page, only final chapters have the icon. All chapters are still listed as they are now in these two locations.

In the category listings, only the title of the story is displayed -- not the individual chapters. The icon will denote whether the story is in progress, abandoned, or complete. The link here will point to chapter 1 of the story. This addresses complaints I've heard before about wading through a whole page of one chaptered story to find something to read using the category listings.

Again, that never-ending category needs something different, but your idea of letting the author declare that status means a simple IF statement could handle the issue.

This could be a problem in some cases. For example, my story Danica has both a "prelude" and "epilogue" chapter. The new code to display series catches both of them and lists them in the proper sequence, so it's quite possible that the code is advanced enough to pick up on things like that. It probably won't be perfect, but tweaks for the things that slip through the cracks could come later.

Here comes the part that would probably require the most coding, but could also provide a lot of balance, and benefit to readers using the toplists as a means to find stories to read.

The score-based toplists will only display the title of the series, not the individual chapters. The link will once again lead to the first chapter of the story, and display the appropriate icon for the chaptered story.

If the episodes are complete stories (as declared by the author, using your suggestion) then the link could be to the latest one. If the episodes are already being linked, a [previous episode] link, as well as a [next episode] one shouldn't be that hard to code.

The position of the story in the toplists is based upon an average of the scores and vote totals for the individual chapters. Let's take a four chapter story as an example:

Ch. 01 - 4.50 65v, Ch. 02 - 4.55 60v, Ch. 03 - 4.65 50v, Ch. 04 - 4.75 40v

The average score of the story is 4.61, and the average of the vote totals is 54. These averages are used to rank the story in the toplist. This helps eliminate some of the skew in the toplists that chaptered stories can cause.

That average of 4.61 (4.613 to 3 d.p.) doesn't take into account that the higher scores reflected fewer votes. If you weight each chapter according to how many votes they got, the average is 4.595 rather than 4.613. Now I don't know just how the calculations are done now, but I think it would have caused comment if it wasn't something like total score divided by total votes. Given that there is a means of linking chapters - I take your word for that, since I personally simply ignore all chaptered stories, since I don't have time to read the lot - then adding all the scores and dividing by all the number of votes shouldn't overload either database, or CPU calculation time.

For the never-ending series, the calculation is simpler, but the storage requirement is slightly higher - by one REAL. One then calculates the new series score as 90% (or whatever) of the score from the last episode, plus 10% (or 100% minus the previous episode weight) times the new one. That only requires 2 db requests rather than n (for n episodes) more than paying for the multiplication operations instead of the additions.

Having said that, if I, as a reader, knew whether each episode was compete in itself, I might well read them. And the same goes for competitions, IMHO. Again, let the author declare that status. If they misrepresent their offerings, then the readers will vote them down.

The views toplist would use much the same points, except the average of the views for the chapters would determine rank of the story in the list.

Because these lists only update every so often, I think the time and processing power required should be manageable.

Now, let us move on to monthly contests. Only complete stories are eligible to win awards. My thought is that the month in which a final chapter comes out is the month of eligibility for a monthly award. This could be done without everything else, but utilizing the radio buttons way up there in this post will streamline and automate the process. Once again, the average vote/score is used to rank the story for the month.

Ditto for the year-end awards.

Thoughts, anyone?

Again, I'd suggest that if an episode is complete in itself - re-utilising existing characters and situations, but forming a stand-alone story - then each episode should be a valid entry. Yet again, making the author declare whether that is the case should be sufficient - readers who are misinformed that an episode stands alone seem to me to be more likely to voice their dissatisfaction in a low vote.

Almost all of my comments are driven by that never-ending model. For stories that follow a long, but complete, story arc, I agree with your original proposals (excepting weighting by number of votes).

One final comment on that: the numbers you gave show a declining number of votes associated with a rising score - the opposite scenario (or any other) seems to me to justify weighting just as much. If votes are increasing, then it seems to me that the later scores should get more weight.

 

[Darkniciad]

I've never really understood the never-ending thing *laugh* I've never come across one, but I do know that they exist. The idea of an infinity icon for unending seriels is valid, and duly noted. It should also be subject to the "no updates in a year" rule and get marked as abandoned if the author stops posting.

Reminds me, there needs to be a trap in there to catch people trying to remove the "abandoned" notation through the control panel when they haven't added to a story in over a year.

The one thing that's going to happen there is that the never ending story is never going to have an opportunity at monthly/year end awards. There's simply no way to automate a determination on an infinite story efficiently. If someone wants to write an infinite seriel and use chapter designations, they're pretty much opting out of the monthly contests.

As to a more complicated formula for weighing the score, I've seen that approach, and it never fails to draw screams of protest from authors and all sorts of drama. A straightforward average usually doesn't draw much protest, but the moment you start with anything more complicated, large numbers begin believing that it's designed specifically to hurt them.

An average is something anyone can calculate. They can do the math from their list and come up with the same score displayed on the toplists. When someone can't come up with the same answer due to a complicated formula, they suspect some sort of conspiracy.

I think we have enough drama in the AH *laugh*

As to linking the latest episode, I think that's pushing the boundaries of the minimal coding model I'm aiming for. Linking the first episode is something that only has to happen once, and doesn't require checking that link every time the update runs on the toplist/category listing.

The necessary time/processing power may not seem like much, but when you consider the size and scope of Lit, it adds up fast.

Previous/Next links at the end of a chapter are another thing entirely ( it has come up in this thread ) Everybody thinks that's a good idea, even though there's already a series listing showing all the chapters on the last page of any chapter.

The sequel opposed to chaptered story thing is more or less designed to eliminate all argument. If anything with a "Ch. xx" is allowed, even if every chapter is a self contained story, then somebody else who's writing chapters that require reading the previous ones to understand is going to get in a huff.

Lowest common denominator -- nothing with a chapter designation that isn't marked as "complete" can compete. Anyone wanting to do this will just have to pump up the creativity and make unique titles for every tale.

 

[DeeZire]

An idea for differentiating between sequential chapters and standalone chapters in a series - perhaps the standalone stories could be titled within parenthesis, and sequential ones could be preceded by a dash or something indicating that it's in a sequence.

I like the idea of cleaning up the top lists. I'm a standalone story fan myself, and I never even bother clicking on chaptered stories. I would be more likely to do so if a chapter was defined as a complete story.

 

[fifty5]

I've never really understood the never-ending thing *laugh* I've never come across one, but I do know that they exist. The idea of an infinity icon for unending serials is valid, and duly noted. It should also be subject to the "no updates in a year" rule and get marked as abandoned if the author stops posting.

Reminds me, there needs to be a trap in there to catch people trying to remove the "abandoned" notation through the control panel when they haven't added to a story in over a year.

Not necessary - if the latest story in a series is over a year old and hasn't been marked as a finish, it gets the icon automatically.

The one thing that's going to happen there is that the never ending story is never going to have an opportunity at monthly/year end awards. There's simply no way to automate a determination on an infinite story efficiently. If someone wants to write an infinite serial and use chapter designations, they're pretty much opting out of the monthly contests.

What I was suggesting was letting authors declare (click a box) that an episode is a complete story. If it isn't, then readers will complain and the score will be low - it isn't going to win anything. To get a high score, authors would have to be accurate.

As to a more complicated formula for weighing the score, I've seen that approach, and it never fails to draw screams of protest from authors and all sorts of drama. A straightforward average usually doesn't draw much protest, but the moment you start with anything more complicated, large numbers begin believing that it's designed specifically to hurt them.

An average is something anyone can calculate. They can do the math from their list and come up with the same score displayed on the toplists. When someone can't come up with the same answer due to a complicated formula, they suspect some sort of conspiracy.

The average for a story/episode is total score / number of votes, for brevity, chapter 3 is s3/n3 etc.

The average score over 3 chapters is thus:
(s1/n1 + s2/n2 + s3/n3) / 3

The accurate average is:
(s1 + s2 + s3) / (n1 + n2 + n3)

Make up your own mind which is simpler. The fact is that averaging averages gives an incorrect answer.

To convince yourself, think about the average value of the 100 whole numbers from 1 to 100: they add up to 5050 and there are 100 of them, so the average is 50.5 exactly. Now split them into different sized groups, work out the separate averages for each group, then try to put those averages back together to give the right answer without using the original numbers (or their raw sums, which is equivalent). You'll find it can't be done. (And also which average is simplest to calculate.)

The exponentially smoothed average is even simpler:
a(n-1) * 0.9 + a * 0.1

Its advantage, particularly for never-ending sagas (Ogg cited one of his own IIRC) is that the most recent stuff counts more than episodes from ages back, but it isn't a killer.

I think we have enough drama in the AH *laugh*

As to linking the latest episode, I think that's pushing the boundaries of the minimal coding model I'm aiming for. Linking the first episode is something that only has to happen once, and doesn't require checking that link every time the update runs on the toplist/category listing.

The necessary time/processing power may not seem like much, but when you consider the size and scope of Lit, it adds up fast.

I see this as being in the database, calculated once, when the story is added. Then it's part of the lookup, just as for the first chapter option. No extra processing whatsoever at read/competition time, just a different answer.

It does need extra storage, but in these days or terra-byte disks (1,000,000,000,000 characters) even multiplying up by the number of stories on Lit doesn't give a significant issue. For each story, the extra is a few flags (1 byte each) and a couple of story reference numbers (4 bytes each gives a capacity 10 times the size of Lit today) - total about 6,000,000 bytes.

Previous/Next links at the end of a chapter are another thing entirely ( it has come up in this thread ) Everybody thinks that's a good idea, even though there's already a series listing showing all the chapters on the last page of any chapter.

The sequel opposed to chaptered story thing is more or less designed to eliminate all argument. If anything with a "Ch. xx" is allowed, even if every chapter is a self contained story, then somebody else who's writing chapters that require reading the previous ones to understand is going to get in a huff.

Lowest common denominator -- nothing with a chapter designation that isn't marked as "complete" can compete. Anyone wanting to do this will just have to pump up the creativity and make unique titles for every tale.

Or mark them accurately as complete - if that's a lie, it seems to me that they won't win anything - I think the readers will take care of that.

I hope you don't think I'm criticising, just, in the spirit of your OP, trying to think behind the front-end to the back end and come up with suggestions to refine your idea.

 

[Darkniciad]

An idea for differentiating between sequential chapters and standalone chapters in a series - perhaps the standalone stories could be titled within parenthesis, and sequential ones could be preceded by a dash or something indicating that it's in a sequence.

I like the idea of cleaning up the top lists. I'm a standalone story fan myself, and I never even bother clicking on chaptered stories. I would be more likely to do so if a chapter was defined as a complete story.

Actually, a more elegant solution would be to add yet another radio button for "Series", with the story always marked as complete, and putting "Pt." for part instead of "ch." for chapter.

A minor problem with that is the additional coding. Might not be enough to push over the edge into "too much"

The big problem is pilot error/cheating. You're going to have people incorrectly marking chaptered stories as a series in order to win elegibility -- probably in large numbers -- and people simply goofing up and ticking the wrong circle. Granted, this can happen with the "completed" designation as well. In either case, the readers will probably police this with nasty comments and low votes.

Doing that is going to leave the same drama about "Another chapter wins!" though. That's one of the big things I'm trying to eliminate. Once you take it down to only complete stories having eligibility, you leave complainers without much of a leg to stand on.

Back to the author delving deep into the creative well to title each part of a series in such a way that they're obviously seperate stories with the same characters. With a little luck, we'll see a means to designate series stories in your list at some point. It has been mentioned with respect to the series programming that we saw implemented not so long ago.

 

[Darkniciad]

What I was suggesting was letting authors declare (click a box) that an episode is a complete story. If it isn't, then readers will complain and the score will be low - it isn't going to win anything. To get a high score, authors would have to be accurate.

Most likely, but if you take a story in a low-readership category ( my stomping grounds are a perfect example: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Humor ) Then you have a distinct possibility that not enough people other than the fans will find it to stomp it down with low votes for trickery.

As I mentioned in the post above, this can also happen with the "complete" icon, but at least that's more of a "they're definately cheating" than "they screwed up" thing. Having every episode of a never-ending series come out with a "complete" icon next to it in the New list could also be considered an unfair advantage.

The average for a story/episode is total score / number of votes, for brevity, chapter 3 is s3/n3 etc.

The average score over 3 chapters is thus:
(s1/n1 + s2/n2 + s3/n3) / 3

The accurate average is:
(s1 + s2 + s3) / (n1 + n2 + n3)

Make up your own mind which is simpler. The fact is that averaging averages gives an incorrect answer.

The exponentially smoothed average is even simpler:
a(n-1) * 0.9 + a * 0.1

Its advantage, particularly for never-ending sagas (Ogg cited one of his own IIRC) is that the most recent stuff counts more than episodes from ages back, but it isn't a killer.

The way I'm looking at it is the way the toplist ranks stories. The first criteria is the score. Higher scores are higher on the list. It then uses the vote totals as a second means to sort stories with the same score -- higher vote totals first. It treats these two numbers as seperate for the sort, so I went with the same formula, determining the averages for both parts individually.

Giving more weight to the later chapters is going to bring up the drama that gets cited often. "You get rid of all the people who don't like the story in the first couple of chapters, then it's only the fanboys voting 5 from that point on"

A lot of people looking at that last formula aren't going to see anything but a random series of letters, numbers, and characters. There comes the "they're cheating me!" thing.

This part of it is an attempt to reduce drama, as much as anything. If you keep things as they are, people who don't like chaptered stories are going to scream. If you go the other way, people writing chapters are going to scream. What I'm aiming for is a middle ground where both sides just grumble a bit and it doesn't blow up into a hissy fit *laugh*

Certainly not offended, and I need holes blown into this to try to debug it in my head as much as possible. The cleaner the pseudocode is if/when I present it via PM to the programmers, the more likely it is that it might get implemented.

 

[MarshAlien]

I think this is a good idea, though the math is well beyond me. I was always puzzled by the voting on chapters or parts anyway. I never stop halfway through a book and try to assess the last three chapters. I am working on a chaptered story now, and am tempted to leave voting "off" on everything but the last chapter. The only bad thing is that the early chapters won't have the little red H's that let people know it might be a good story. But that seems a small price to pay. That way, people will be voting only on the whole book, which is all I really care about. They'll still be free to leave comments on individual parts, along the lines of "I can't believe you killed off Geoffrey. You'll pay for this at the end, you bastard."

 

[cloudy]

Giving more weight to the later chapters is going to bring up the drama that gets cited often. "You get rid of all the people who don't like the story in the first couple of chapters, then it's only the fanboys voting 5 from that point on"

The average that fifty has suggested is the true average for the story as a whole. The way you're suggesting is an average of averages, which is going to be way off.

Its very simple: total votes ranking the total story.

C'mon....this is elementary math.

 

[scouries]

No cloudy in this case db is correct.

An average of the chapter scores addresses the problem much better than your idea. It's not perfect but an improvement.

Even under db's system the Chaptered Story's score will be higher and have an advantage over stand alone stories (due to the fact you lose the bad votes in the first few chapters while retaining the good).

jrs

 

[cloudy]

No cloudy in this case db is correct.

An average of the chapter scores addresses the problem much better than your idea. It's not perfect but an improvement.

Even under db's system the Chaptered Story's score will be higher and have an advantage over stand alone stories (due to the fact you lose the bad votes in the first few chapters while retaining the good).

jrs

I'm so sorry you don't understand mathematics or basic statistics, but no, he's not correct. An average of averages is off. Period.