Ace_Arriande
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2019
- Messages
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- 133
Alright, so after catching up on some of the recent conversations regarding trending, I figured I’d try to give an actual suggestion myself. But first, let me make this clear: I am biased. I am going to try my best to be as objective as possible here, but it is very obvious that I am biased and I am not going to try to claim that I am not.
Moving on, it seems like the main issue is that people are concerned about what is “fair.” It is not “fair” that people who post long, less frequent chapters will struggle to get onto trending more than people who post shorter, more frequent chapters. Now, if Scribble Hub’s primary mission is to show off all new authors equally, then that’s a problem. That’s also unrealistic and impossible to achieve because somebody is always going to feel slighted no matter what. That sort of thing might be possible for small and semi-private communities, but it isn’t exactly feasible for larger platforms. Royal Road isn’t the biggest of web novel sites and it has over 25k stories. Even the people on there who have read literally thousands of stories on RR most likely have never even heard of 90% of the stories on the website. That is an unavoidable “problem,” if it can even be considered a problem, when it comes to platforms of any significant size.
Now, why is it less fair for stories with bigger-but-slower chapters? Because the more short, frequent chapters you release: the more visibility you have on latest updates, the more views you get, the more followers you get, the more ratings you get. Somebody who posts 3 short chapters a day gets 3 windows of visibility a day versus somebody who only posts 1 chapter in an entire week. The person posting short, frequent chapters gets 21 times more potential visibility in that case. I think. I’m really bad at math. Anyways, because that person is getting 21 total windows of potential visibility a week, that means they are more likely to gain a fanbase which can propel them to trending. Once you get on trending, you go from only being visible when your story is new or when you just posted chapters to being visible all day potentially every day. Since trending is, as far as I know, based off of views, more chapters = more views = more trending potential.
And that’s alright.
This is where I risk sounding off-putting to some people, and you are welcome to disagree with me. If you do, please, let’s keep it civil and not start any moderation-worthy drama or anything. Anyways, everybody has the opportunity to be successful, but that does not mean everybody deserves to be successful. People who are writing short, frequent chapters are giving the readers what they want. It is blatantly obvious that the average, mass-consuming web novel reader prefers a fast release rate for chapters. This can be seen in other creative fields, too. People like artists who post frequently better. If you want to be successful on YouTube and really hit it off, you have to upload videos every single day if not multiple times a day. If you want to be a popular streamer, you have to stream for hours every single day. That’s just how the creative market is. Quantity + quality > quantity > quality with rare exceptions, and not everybody is that rare exception as much as we like to believe that we are.
The most limiting thing I have done for my career so far is stopping daily uploads for my stories. Most of my readers prefer my longer chapters now since we agree that they are of higher quality, have better pacing, and are more satisfying to read, but I lost quite a few patrons when I made the switch from daily to weekly. Not only that, but I fell off of the “popular this week” list on Royal Road, I’m not on SH’s trending list as much as I was at the beginning, and my overall potential visibility has been drastically reduced. The rate at which I gain new patrons struggles to meet the rate at which I lose them, too.
And that’s alright.
It was a business choice I made. I don’t regret it in the slightest. I’m just saying that to show that it is 100% true that daily, short releases are generally better in almost every single way. The people who release chapters like this should not be shamed nor guilt-tripped for writing how they want and giving the majority of web novel readers what they want. Regardless of how you treat your own writing, your story is a product to readers. Readers want more of your product. Yes, it is possible to be successful and gain popularity with a limited product, but people want your product now. Authors who give readers what they want are rewarded for it and should not be guilted nor punished for it.
Does that possibly suck for people who can’t meet that pace of releases? Yes, it does, but that’s just how the creative field is. The minority hogs the spotlight while the majority wishes to join them.
And that’s alright.
Why is that alright? Let’s look at it this way. Let’s say that we replace the trending list with a truly randomized list of random stories with no qualifications, which I have also seen recommended. This would be the most fair thing to do since it would be 100% random. Somebody brand new to the website will see that list at the top of the page first. They might see a selection of stories with all under 10 followers, and then they will assume that the site has little to no activity. They might see a list with some dead stories on it, and then they will assume that the site has little to no activity, and trying to define when a story is “dead” or not is a whole new can of worms given how spread out some people release their chapters. They might see a selection of stories that all only have under 10 chapters each, and then they will assume that the stories on the website do not have much content. Or, they might see what we have now: an assorted list of successful stories with large follower counts, many views, numerous reviews, and large chapter counts. People see that and they see a website that is doing good for itself. When they believe that the website is successful, they are more likely to stick around and poke around to look for more stories.
Showing off the “hottest” stories is the best way, in my trying-to-be-objective analysis, to retain new visitors. Those new visitors then go on to read other stories. They get involved in the community. They spread out and promote the website. More readers. More viewers for everybody. A website that immediately goes, “Hey! Look at these stories that people seem to really like reading! See those high view counts and followers on there? Yeah, we’re alive and kicking and popular!” is going to be more successful than the website that goes, “Hey, here are some stories that may or may not be popular at all, split into multiple lists to confuse you so that we can try to be fair.”
My point is that it is alright if people who “game” the system dominate lists like trending because they end up doing more good for the website than harm, and that good benefits everybody.
When you go to Royalroad.com for the first time, the only books you see on the landing page are the best rated and testimonies from published authors. When you go to Webnovel.com, you see new, translated releases that are steadily growing in follower counts and ratings, and then you see the recommended and featured novels. When you go to Wattpad, you see a book that got a movie deal, awards, testimonies, and so on. These are the kinds of things that not only attract more readers, but they attract more authors. Success brings more success. When you try to be fair to all the stories on the platform, you are forced to show off unsuccessful stories to give them a chance (surely they would be more popular if they got onto trending, right?), and then the platform as a whole appears less successful. That means less readers. Less authors. Less community. Less platform.
I’m trying to look at this as what is best for Scribble Hub. What is the best for Scribble Hub will positively affect both authors and readers in the grand scheme of things.
Now, before I spend any longer trying to justify my suggestions, I’ll just go ahead and jump into them.
Trending
Honestly, the best solution that I can think of is to copy RR’s system, but I can’t just recommend that. What I will recommend, however, is to show stories with the most growth. Even just going by the largest amount of followers gained within a week would be better than views. There are only so many readers, so those who gain many will eventually slow down and fall off of the trending list. It could even be done in a way so that stories that have appeared on the list once will need a higher rate of gained followers than before to stay/get back onto the list. If a story gets onto the list by getting 50 followers in a week, it would have to get 75 – 100 followers the next week to stay on.
It also kind of helps with the whole “short chapter vs long chapter” thing. While short and frequent chapters are always, and should always, get more potential visibility, that does not mean they will get more followers. Views? Yes. Followers? Not necessarily. There are many stories on RR that did mass releases for their first months. Sure, they got some views… but I’ve seen stories with 100+ chapters that only had ~30 followers before after being years old. Short and frequent is not a guarantee for followers. It only guarantees more potential views. Oh, and despite RR having 25k+ stories and not even being able to stay in recent releases for more than an hour if you’re lucky… there are numerous stories that have gotten to the top of its very competitive trending list (which is based off of the growth rate of ratings over 30 days) with under 10 chapters in a month. For web novels, that is a very small amount of chapters.
Oh, and just as a somewhat related note: my first ever web novel was posted 2-4 times a day for the first month on RR. I only got 40 followers in a month and was on the trending list for all of one hour before losing my spot and never getting back on with that story. My second story got 14 followers in a few hours of being approved and with only one chapter. So, seriously, short and frequent chapters might be generally better but they are in no way some lifehack that just instantly makes you more successful than other release rates. Even though I was posting 2-4 times a day and writing for 60-80 hours a week every week at the start, I did not make it onto any lists nor did I gain any significant views. Just because I put the work in doesn’t mean that I deserved any success.
Anyways, yeah. Maybe just as a temporary solution, go off of the rate of follower growth over a week or two instead of views. I think that would be a much more honest way of evaluating how “trending” a story is, and this would also keep the most successful stories from dominating the list since there is only a finite amount of readers. If you are a decent writer and, most importantly, writing what people want to read, you will be more successful than somebody pumping out as many chapters as they can as quickly as they can. The problem is that most people aren’t writing what most readers want to read. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. I am a 100% believer of writing what you want to write and not caring about what the audience wants. I’m fortunate because what I want to write is what people want to read, AKA weebshit. But if you want to write cupcake baking thriller horror, you could write the best novel of that genre in the entire world… and you’re probably still not going to get many views on sites like these.
Now, since SH’s most popular stories wouldn’t get to be on trending anymore if done how I’m imagining it… we need another way to show them off. Yes, I’m biased, but I’m trying not to be. The best-rated / most-followed stories deserve to show on the main page both to reward them and motivate them while also showing off the (subjective alert) “best” stories that SH has to offer.
Because there may or may not be a certain somebody who would take up most of the top spots of such a list… coughcough, I will also suggest limiting the stories. Objectively, I don’t like this idea, but I’m pretty sure I would be the only one affected by it which is why I’m comfortable recommending it. If authors are limited to only having one story in the best rated list, that will help show off a more diverse cast of authors and stories. It should also, hopefully, alleviate any potential drama regarding one or two people dominating the list. Once there are more stories to break up the list some more so that one or two authors aren’t taking up all the spots at the top, this limitation should be removed. For now, just show whichever that author’s best story is. That would be The Queen’s Hound in my case since it has the most followers. My logic for the limitation being removed later on is that if somebody can still get multiple stories into the top while having strong competition, they deserve it. Right now, I don’t deserve to have multiple of the top spots. That is not an insult to my competition so much as it is me having a large, preexisting viewer base that I have brought over to SH. Things are starting to balance out on their own, but I don’t think it’s completely balanced yet.
Alternatively, the list could go off of the best average rating, but that requires a lot of math-y stuff to do well that I don’t know about. I just know that it would have to be done in a way so that one story with one 5 star rating doesn’t appear higher than a 4.5 star story with 500 ratings, as an example. I do advise against using view counts for this, though. Best average rating with math stuff > followers > views.
Next, a review list. This list should show the most liked reviews within a certain timeframe, and it should be applicable to all stories regardless of their popularity. This way, a reviewer who genuinely wants to help bring attention to new stories could go around leaving legitimate reviews on stories that they might want to give a boost to, the review gets liked, and then that review gets featured on the page which brings more visibility to the story. There is room for bias and more accusations of unfairness here, but I think it would do more good than harm. RR also does this in a way that only positive reviews are shown so that people don’t all pile onto a bad review which could do a ton of harm to a story and an author’s confidence, but I personally feel like reviews should be shown regardless of their judgement. From a more objective view… only showing reviews that are at least 3 stars or so would probably be better to foster a more friendly and helpful system while avoiding new viewers coming to the site, seeing a super negative review with hundreds of likes, and going, “Wow, this place is toxic af, bai.”
Latest Series and Latest Updates are both fine and neither should be touched in any way. They are perfectly fair as they are right now. Well, if anything, there should be less focus on latest updates. I would rather see that list cut in half so that different lists could have some room on the page.
No randomized lists though. The space on the page is better used for showing the hottest stories, the “best” stories, latest releases + updates, and potentially hot reviews. Add another list and things start to get messy and cluttered. Having all of the above already risks looking messy.
Anyways, that’s all I can think of. This is at 2867 words, so it’s basically the size of a chapter when I have more chapters I’m supposed to be writing. I am also very tired, so it’s time to sleep.
Thank you for attending my SHF talk.
pls no drama
EDIT: Also, from my own Discord server, the biggest complaint I see people bring up regarding SH is how "stale" the trending list is. No matter what solution ends up being implemented, I think it is important to make it so that stories cannot stay on there for more than a couple of weeks at a time. It should give a temporary boost to stories and then kick those stories out of the way so that newer stories get a chance to show off and get boosted. Even so, only the "hottest" of the newest should make it onto there and stay there (and only for a couple of weeks at most).
Moving on, it seems like the main issue is that people are concerned about what is “fair.” It is not “fair” that people who post long, less frequent chapters will struggle to get onto trending more than people who post shorter, more frequent chapters. Now, if Scribble Hub’s primary mission is to show off all new authors equally, then that’s a problem. That’s also unrealistic and impossible to achieve because somebody is always going to feel slighted no matter what. That sort of thing might be possible for small and semi-private communities, but it isn’t exactly feasible for larger platforms. Royal Road isn’t the biggest of web novel sites and it has over 25k stories. Even the people on there who have read literally thousands of stories on RR most likely have never even heard of 90% of the stories on the website. That is an unavoidable “problem,” if it can even be considered a problem, when it comes to platforms of any significant size.
Now, why is it less fair for stories with bigger-but-slower chapters? Because the more short, frequent chapters you release: the more visibility you have on latest updates, the more views you get, the more followers you get, the more ratings you get. Somebody who posts 3 short chapters a day gets 3 windows of visibility a day versus somebody who only posts 1 chapter in an entire week. The person posting short, frequent chapters gets 21 times more potential visibility in that case. I think. I’m really bad at math. Anyways, because that person is getting 21 total windows of potential visibility a week, that means they are more likely to gain a fanbase which can propel them to trending. Once you get on trending, you go from only being visible when your story is new or when you just posted chapters to being visible all day potentially every day. Since trending is, as far as I know, based off of views, more chapters = more views = more trending potential.
And that’s alright.
This is where I risk sounding off-putting to some people, and you are welcome to disagree with me. If you do, please, let’s keep it civil and not start any moderation-worthy drama or anything. Anyways, everybody has the opportunity to be successful, but that does not mean everybody deserves to be successful. People who are writing short, frequent chapters are giving the readers what they want. It is blatantly obvious that the average, mass-consuming web novel reader prefers a fast release rate for chapters. This can be seen in other creative fields, too. People like artists who post frequently better. If you want to be successful on YouTube and really hit it off, you have to upload videos every single day if not multiple times a day. If you want to be a popular streamer, you have to stream for hours every single day. That’s just how the creative market is. Quantity + quality > quantity > quality with rare exceptions, and not everybody is that rare exception as much as we like to believe that we are.
The most limiting thing I have done for my career so far is stopping daily uploads for my stories. Most of my readers prefer my longer chapters now since we agree that they are of higher quality, have better pacing, and are more satisfying to read, but I lost quite a few patrons when I made the switch from daily to weekly. Not only that, but I fell off of the “popular this week” list on Royal Road, I’m not on SH’s trending list as much as I was at the beginning, and my overall potential visibility has been drastically reduced. The rate at which I gain new patrons struggles to meet the rate at which I lose them, too.
And that’s alright.
It was a business choice I made. I don’t regret it in the slightest. I’m just saying that to show that it is 100% true that daily, short releases are generally better in almost every single way. The people who release chapters like this should not be shamed nor guilt-tripped for writing how they want and giving the majority of web novel readers what they want. Regardless of how you treat your own writing, your story is a product to readers. Readers want more of your product. Yes, it is possible to be successful and gain popularity with a limited product, but people want your product now. Authors who give readers what they want are rewarded for it and should not be guilted nor punished for it.
Does that possibly suck for people who can’t meet that pace of releases? Yes, it does, but that’s just how the creative field is. The minority hogs the spotlight while the majority wishes to join them.
And that’s alright.
Why is that alright? Let’s look at it this way. Let’s say that we replace the trending list with a truly randomized list of random stories with no qualifications, which I have also seen recommended. This would be the most fair thing to do since it would be 100% random. Somebody brand new to the website will see that list at the top of the page first. They might see a selection of stories with all under 10 followers, and then they will assume that the site has little to no activity. They might see a list with some dead stories on it, and then they will assume that the site has little to no activity, and trying to define when a story is “dead” or not is a whole new can of worms given how spread out some people release their chapters. They might see a selection of stories that all only have under 10 chapters each, and then they will assume that the stories on the website do not have much content. Or, they might see what we have now: an assorted list of successful stories with large follower counts, many views, numerous reviews, and large chapter counts. People see that and they see a website that is doing good for itself. When they believe that the website is successful, they are more likely to stick around and poke around to look for more stories.
Showing off the “hottest” stories is the best way, in my trying-to-be-objective analysis, to retain new visitors. Those new visitors then go on to read other stories. They get involved in the community. They spread out and promote the website. More readers. More viewers for everybody. A website that immediately goes, “Hey! Look at these stories that people seem to really like reading! See those high view counts and followers on there? Yeah, we’re alive and kicking and popular!” is going to be more successful than the website that goes, “Hey, here are some stories that may or may not be popular at all, split into multiple lists to confuse you so that we can try to be fair.”
My point is that it is alright if people who “game” the system dominate lists like trending because they end up doing more good for the website than harm, and that good benefits everybody.
When you go to Royalroad.com for the first time, the only books you see on the landing page are the best rated and testimonies from published authors. When you go to Webnovel.com, you see new, translated releases that are steadily growing in follower counts and ratings, and then you see the recommended and featured novels. When you go to Wattpad, you see a book that got a movie deal, awards, testimonies, and so on. These are the kinds of things that not only attract more readers, but they attract more authors. Success brings more success. When you try to be fair to all the stories on the platform, you are forced to show off unsuccessful stories to give them a chance (surely they would be more popular if they got onto trending, right?), and then the platform as a whole appears less successful. That means less readers. Less authors. Less community. Less platform.
I’m trying to look at this as what is best for Scribble Hub. What is the best for Scribble Hub will positively affect both authors and readers in the grand scheme of things.
Now, before I spend any longer trying to justify my suggestions, I’ll just go ahead and jump into them.
Trending
Honestly, the best solution that I can think of is to copy RR’s system, but I can’t just recommend that. What I will recommend, however, is to show stories with the most growth. Even just going by the largest amount of followers gained within a week would be better than views. There are only so many readers, so those who gain many will eventually slow down and fall off of the trending list. It could even be done in a way so that stories that have appeared on the list once will need a higher rate of gained followers than before to stay/get back onto the list. If a story gets onto the list by getting 50 followers in a week, it would have to get 75 – 100 followers the next week to stay on.
It also kind of helps with the whole “short chapter vs long chapter” thing. While short and frequent chapters are always, and should always, get more potential visibility, that does not mean they will get more followers. Views? Yes. Followers? Not necessarily. There are many stories on RR that did mass releases for their first months. Sure, they got some views… but I’ve seen stories with 100+ chapters that only had ~30 followers before after being years old. Short and frequent is not a guarantee for followers. It only guarantees more potential views. Oh, and despite RR having 25k+ stories and not even being able to stay in recent releases for more than an hour if you’re lucky… there are numerous stories that have gotten to the top of its very competitive trending list (which is based off of the growth rate of ratings over 30 days) with under 10 chapters in a month. For web novels, that is a very small amount of chapters.
Oh, and just as a somewhat related note: my first ever web novel was posted 2-4 times a day for the first month on RR. I only got 40 followers in a month and was on the trending list for all of one hour before losing my spot and never getting back on with that story. My second story got 14 followers in a few hours of being approved and with only one chapter. So, seriously, short and frequent chapters might be generally better but they are in no way some lifehack that just instantly makes you more successful than other release rates. Even though I was posting 2-4 times a day and writing for 60-80 hours a week every week at the start, I did not make it onto any lists nor did I gain any significant views. Just because I put the work in doesn’t mean that I deserved any success.
Anyways, yeah. Maybe just as a temporary solution, go off of the rate of follower growth over a week or two instead of views. I think that would be a much more honest way of evaluating how “trending” a story is, and this would also keep the most successful stories from dominating the list since there is only a finite amount of readers. If you are a decent writer and, most importantly, writing what people want to read, you will be more successful than somebody pumping out as many chapters as they can as quickly as they can. The problem is that most people aren’t writing what most readers want to read. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. I am a 100% believer of writing what you want to write and not caring about what the audience wants. I’m fortunate because what I want to write is what people want to read, AKA weebshit. But if you want to write cupcake baking thriller horror, you could write the best novel of that genre in the entire world… and you’re probably still not going to get many views on sites like these.
Now, since SH’s most popular stories wouldn’t get to be on trending anymore if done how I’m imagining it… we need another way to show them off. Yes, I’m biased, but I’m trying not to be. The best-rated / most-followed stories deserve to show on the main page both to reward them and motivate them while also showing off the (subjective alert) “best” stories that SH has to offer.
Because there may or may not be a certain somebody who would take up most of the top spots of such a list… coughcough, I will also suggest limiting the stories. Objectively, I don’t like this idea, but I’m pretty sure I would be the only one affected by it which is why I’m comfortable recommending it. If authors are limited to only having one story in the best rated list, that will help show off a more diverse cast of authors and stories. It should also, hopefully, alleviate any potential drama regarding one or two people dominating the list. Once there are more stories to break up the list some more so that one or two authors aren’t taking up all the spots at the top, this limitation should be removed. For now, just show whichever that author’s best story is. That would be The Queen’s Hound in my case since it has the most followers. My logic for the limitation being removed later on is that if somebody can still get multiple stories into the top while having strong competition, they deserve it. Right now, I don’t deserve to have multiple of the top spots. That is not an insult to my competition so much as it is me having a large, preexisting viewer base that I have brought over to SH. Things are starting to balance out on their own, but I don’t think it’s completely balanced yet.
Alternatively, the list could go off of the best average rating, but that requires a lot of math-y stuff to do well that I don’t know about. I just know that it would have to be done in a way so that one story with one 5 star rating doesn’t appear higher than a 4.5 star story with 500 ratings, as an example. I do advise against using view counts for this, though. Best average rating with math stuff > followers > views.
Next, a review list. This list should show the most liked reviews within a certain timeframe, and it should be applicable to all stories regardless of their popularity. This way, a reviewer who genuinely wants to help bring attention to new stories could go around leaving legitimate reviews on stories that they might want to give a boost to, the review gets liked, and then that review gets featured on the page which brings more visibility to the story. There is room for bias and more accusations of unfairness here, but I think it would do more good than harm. RR also does this in a way that only positive reviews are shown so that people don’t all pile onto a bad review which could do a ton of harm to a story and an author’s confidence, but I personally feel like reviews should be shown regardless of their judgement. From a more objective view… only showing reviews that are at least 3 stars or so would probably be better to foster a more friendly and helpful system while avoiding new viewers coming to the site, seeing a super negative review with hundreds of likes, and going, “Wow, this place is toxic af, bai.”
Latest Series and Latest Updates are both fine and neither should be touched in any way. They are perfectly fair as they are right now. Well, if anything, there should be less focus on latest updates. I would rather see that list cut in half so that different lists could have some room on the page.
No randomized lists though. The space on the page is better used for showing the hottest stories, the “best” stories, latest releases + updates, and potentially hot reviews. Add another list and things start to get messy and cluttered. Having all of the above already risks looking messy.
Anyways, that’s all I can think of. This is at 2867 words, so it’s basically the size of a chapter when I have more chapters I’m supposed to be writing. I am also very tired, so it’s time to sleep.
Thank you for attending my SHF talk.
pls no drama
EDIT: Also, from my own Discord server, the biggest complaint I see people bring up regarding SH is how "stale" the trending list is. No matter what solution ends up being implemented, I think it is important to make it so that stories cannot stay on there for more than a couple of weeks at a time. It should give a temporary boost to stories and then kick those stories out of the way so that newer stories get a chance to show off and get boosted. Even so, only the "hottest" of the newest should make it onto there and stay there (and only for a couple of weeks at most).
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