Chaptered stories: Possibilities

[Saucy_Sage]

Any average is going to be "off" as a measure of what people thought of the story as a whole. The most accurate measure is the votes of the people who actually voted on the whole thing - whether they read it all or not. If they made it through to the end, fine. If they can't get past the first page, they should be able to click to the end and rate it accordingly - that's what one star ought to be for! And the same if they slogged through the first chapter but can't stomach what comes after. I don't see the difference in doing that in a three-page story or a hundred-page novel. The vote of each reader should count once, not once per chapter. Maybe this'll make me finish my own story, lol, which currently only has chapter one. Bad sage, bad.

 

[sxwriter42]

*****

*****

 

[Darkniciad]

Any average is going to be "off" as a measure of what people thought of the story as a whole. The most accurate measure is the votes of the people who actually voted on the whole thing - whether they read it all or not. If they made it through to the end, fine. If they can't get past the first page, they should be able to click to the end and rate it accordingly - that's what one star ought to be for! And the same if they slogged through the first chapter but can't stomach what comes after. I don't see the difference in doing that in a three-page story or a hundred-page novel. The vote of each reader should count once, not once per chapter. Maybe this'll make me finish my own story, lol, which currently only has chapter one. Bad sage, bad.

Ultimately, the best way to deal with chaptered stories is for them to all conglomerate with each new submission into one file, with one vote score. Perhaps with the ability to change your vote with each new chapter, to give those who don't like to comment a voice in how the story is going.

The reason I'm not suggesting that is because of how much modification it would require to the existing databases and code. I'm trying to work out a solution that utilizes as much of what is already there as possible, while still leveling the playing field.

For those suggesting a true average, how then do you determine how many votes are used to calculate that part of the ranking?

 

[cloudy]

For those suggesting a true average, how then do you determine how many votes are used to calculate that part of the ranking?

It would be a simple average determined by the total number of votes (Ch. 1 votes + Ch. 2 votes, etc). The same way the score is determined on each individual story, just combined for a total score on the total story.

 

[fifty5]

Ultimately, the best way to deal with chaptered stories is for them to all conglomerate with each new submission into one file, with one vote score. Perhaps with the ability to change your vote with each new chapter, to give those who don't like to comment a voice in how the story is going.

The reason I'm not suggesting that is because of how much modification it would require to the existing databases and code. I'm trying to work out a solution that utilizes as much of what is already there as possible, while still leveling the playing field.

For those suggesting a true average, how then do you determine how many votes are used to calculate that part of the ranking?

That's already there. I'm afraid I'm a vote-whore; I keep a spreadsheet recording how many reads and votes and scores every time I update it - and the current totals are all there on my Submissions/View page: Rating, Votes and Views (amongst other info).

I'm right behind you in what I see as your main push - excluding single chapters that aren't complete in themselves, so making multi-chaptered stories that are only complete (if they ever are completed) when the last chapter is posted only count when they are finished works. Multiple chapters really shouldn't be a ploy to get more lottery tickets.

What I think we are all trying to do is to allow genuinely good authors - who care about their work and their readers - to get their just deserts.

If the votes drop off as a 'part work' develops, then that ought to be reflected in the overall score - if it's only a handful of fans left, that shouldn't be allowed to skew the overall score (which a crude average of averages would do).

I suspect I've been influenced too much by Ogg's catalogue, which includes series with the same characters and situations (as opposed to a single story arc) and, particularly, those never-ending ones. In comparison with the 'ordinary' multi-chapter stories, I suspect those two categories are rare, so don't actually matter that much in the whole scheme of things. Since I respect him and his work - and I'm pretty sure he isn't much interested in using chapters/series as a numbers game to win prizes - I don't want him or any other 'genuine' authors (as opposed to competitors who do want to manipulate the system) to lose out.

I really do think that giving more weight to the number of voters could help here - and since, as Cloudy says, the mathematics is unambiguous on this issue (even if some participants need that explaining - which is perfectly possible, since the maths is right, so is amenable to explanation) going for a true overall average is not only mathematically accurate, but also brings the 'numbers games' competitors back into line.

Like everyone else, I think that using chapters as an artificial ploy to generate an artificially high chance of winning competitions is wrong. Most of your suggestions about how to circumvent that are excellent.

My suggestions were about ways to make that more effective, whilst not unduly penalising the fairly few folk who write serials that do have episodes that stand alone.

Marking incomplete works as inadmissible seems admirable. Penalising complete stories because they are part of a series seems to me less so. As I've said before, leaving the voters to decide seems to me to be sufficiently reliable (if the authors are compelled to declare the completeness) - as long as the number of voters gets its due weight.

 

[Darkniciad]

Hi Darkniciad,

I really love the suggestions. I joined Lit not too long ago, and found chaptered stories the most perplexing part. The fact that a chapter could win a contest; how exactly to list them, etc.

I think your suggestions are spot-on. First, the ability to mark something as a chaptered story would allow it to be listed in a genre category. Second, the button to let folks see if it is done, in progress, or abandoned is terrific.

Thinking like a code-monkey, I think the main barrier to this change is the age-old proglem, legacy code. Addressing this with the new material is no problem - sweeping through the old stuff, especially with 'inactive' writers will be the biggest hurdle to getting this very good idea implemented.

There's really no way, short of looking at the last existing chapter of everything already posted, to determine whether existing chaptered stories are complete unless the author marks them him or herself.

Perhaps another icon -- a question mark in the circle or something -- for existing chaptered stories that the author hasn't marked in one way or another?

I mentioned in an earlier post the possibility of adding "Is this story incorrectly marked complete/incomplete?" to the "report this" link. That could very well produce an overwhelming strain on the powers that be, though. It all depends upon how enthusiastic the fans of older stories are about hitting that report link.

Maybe an entirely new link on the last existing chapter of legacy stories ( only legacy stories ) that doesn't go to the normal report link, but instead changes the question mark to an asterisk that indicates "marked complete by readers"

That's getting into adding a lot of code to the story pages, though. May just have to stick with the question mark for legacy stories, until such time as an author marks it him or herself.

==========

Pardon a few little self-notes. I don't have any of this written down anywhere except in this thread, and I don't want to forget this *laugh*

There may be an issue with putting the icon on the category page and the submissions page. Depending upon how those pages are updated from the website end, and generated for viewing, there could be issues with the way I'm thinking about displaying those icons.

Depending upon how the database stores the individual votes, generating the true average for the toplists may need to work off multiplying the score by the number of votes instead of actually totalling the individual votes. Shouldn't be off by anything more than the rounding.

 

[Darkniciad]

Marking incomplete works as inadmissible seems admirable. Penalising complete stories because they are part of a series seems to me less so. As I've said before, leaving the voters to decide seems to me to be sufficiently reliable (if the authors are compelled to declare the completeness) - as long as the number of voters gets its due weight.

The only thing I'm looking at is simplicity of understanding. In the way I'm suggesting, my own Arts Ardane series would be ineligible, because I have a number designation on each of them, even though they're complete episodes. All I need to do to fix that issue is change the way I'm titling them, though. Instead of "The Arts Ardane 01", I change it to "The Arts Ardane: Devan's Decision"

Sort of cheating, because all of those stories already have their own individual titles *laugh*

Even better, if this comes to pass (from Planet Manu):

One obvious future improvement is to show “series” works together on each author’s submissions page.

No need to worry about adding the "Arts Ardane" to it at all.

Considering how close it is to the end of the year, and how long it would take to code/debug any of this, it wouldn't start until the beginning of 2010, at the earliest. That's plenty of time for advance notice to ensure that complete stories that are part of a series get a title that doesn't have "ch." or "pt." or a number in the title, so they're eligible for monthly awards. Starting a new rule mid-year on a monthly contest just ain't gonna fly. It would have to be a Jan. 01 thing.

I just foresee massive bouts of angst from people that don't want to discern the difference between a complete story in a series and a chapter of "wanking to the neighbor next door"