Trending & Other Front Page Lists

[Ace_Arriande]

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).

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

To be honest, I agree with a lot of what you said.
First of all, gaming the system is just normal. Even I do it. There's a reason why I post my chapters the way I do (though it does take into consideration my IRL limitations). But even then, I think excessive abuse should be culled a bit, though thankfully that's rare so far. Daily chapters are fine. You can make an argument for 2+ a day, especially if they're spread apart. Back to back releases is an abuse though, but at the same time, I have a hard time punishing this sort of thing without unjustly punishing those who just managed a great streak over a holiday.

I do like the idea of basing trending on growth, but how exactly is that going to be measured? Unique views? Daily views? Favourites? Reading lists? Is it by hard numbers as you've given examples as? Or maybe percentages?

Personally, I think either favourites or latest chapter views. Most of the other methods seem to be either hard to implement or are pretty exclusive to only a portion of the community. I'm not even sure if unregistered readers can even favourite a chapter.

One of the major reasons why I suggest latest chapter views rather than daily/weekly views is to deal with stories imported from other sites. Though it's really subjective, I'd rather promote home grown stories than something brought over for quick readership and patreon advertisement. That's just me though, as popular stories from RR and other sites will likely increase popularity of SH after all if they show up on the front page.

Random is bad. Full stop. Having stories that are dead, have low author motivation, or are just bad advertised on the front page is a quick way for the site to be abandoned. Normal updates and new stories are an obvious exception to this.

The staleness of the trending list is pretty bad for the site for sure. While I'll miss being a regular on it if Ace's system is implemented, I can smile if I can keep a decent spot on a separate rankings page. Promoting increased readership as well as new talented authors should be the priority of SH, and it'll promote those of us with established readers to work harder at improving our craft.

That said, I do have one last suggestion. Ace mentioned that reader activity should be a high consideration, but never mentioned using comments as a metric for that. Lots of series have high number of comments on each of their chapters, and I think that readers commenting a lot is very indicative of how much they like the story.

There is the risk that stories that drive up tons of debates by a small number of commenters being driven to the top, it could easily be fixed by relying on unique comments?

 

[Ace_Arriande]

Trending based off of growth, without just ripping off RR, would be best done with followers in my opinion. It would require some mathing which I am extremely horrible at, but something like Story A going from 50 to 100 followers in a week would be more trending than Story B which goes from 25 to 40 followers in a week. Then, if a growth of 50 followers is what made Story A reach the top of trending for one week, it would have to have a growth of 100 followers (100 to 200) the next week to stay there. Not that simple, but I think it would work nicely with some more complicated calculations to determine what is growing the fastest.

My problem with favorites is that it returns to favoring large chapter counts. There are also plenty of people who don't even know about nor understand favoriting individual chapters, whereas something like following a story is much more common sense. I would rather see the favorite system turned into a system for favoriting series instead of individual chapters, but that's an unrelated discussion.

Latest chapter views is kind of tricky. I don't think that it would help against imported stories (many of my readers who came from RR prefer reading here, so they're still counting for views), and I don't think it would be any better than just counting total views in the past 24 hours or so. I do agree with wanting to see "home grown" stories on SH making it, though. That would be awesome. I really am excited to see more SH-original stories make it big and would love to get passed up by one of those instead of another imported story.

And yeah, it's nice to be on lists and all, but they're supposed to be for the readers instead of us. As long as there are still best ranked/most followed/most viewed and etc lists, though, we'll have a playground.

As for comments, I both agree and disagree with you. High comment counts are indicative of reader activity, but not always in any worthwhile way, and there are plenty of stories with small follower counts that wouldn't really count as trending that get high comment counts. 90% of the comments I get are which, honestly, I love. The blob comments are cute and I have nothing against them, but they're not exactly thoughtful comments nor promoting any sort of discussion. They're just cute and awesome. Furthermore, the stories themselves might have high followers and page views but little to discuss. This is especially true for my stories. I write in a very simple way and I try to make everything as clear as possible to my readers, so outside of a couple of jokes and random theories every dozen chapters or so, there is very little to actually discuss in my chapters. Stories with a fourth of my followers that are full of mysteries, plot twists, and so on, would most likely have many more thoughtful comments whereas I just get blobs. Now, a list that goes off of comments could be interesting, like a "Hey, look at this story that has a lot of people talking!" list, but I wouldn't say that it should be used for measuring trending. And then we're back at potentially having too many lists.

 

[Jemini]

Personally, I find the favoriting of individual chapters a valuable source of information for what the readers are enjoying. (I seem to get most of mine on the less serious and more cute chapters, although I think the fact that they are set there in contrast helps with that a lot. Desert after the meal Vs. tooth-rotting levels of constant sweetness.) Anyway, yeah, it's a valuable piece of information for the author but I agree it's entirely useless as a mechanic by which to rate a series.

So far as how to handle the trending list goes, I think the ultimate decision should be what the actual goal of the site is. Does it want to attract more readers, or does it want to attract more authors? The current system does an alright job of attracting readers, especially after the temporary fix. However, it could do for an update to add a 3rd list for weekly release trending. It would be the same thing as the daily trending we have now, except it ONLY tracks series that have 1 chapter/week release rates and, of course, would make it a weekly trending. This would expose readers to the really good series that only release at a rate of 1 per week.

For the content of the trending lists, it needs to change in order to keep the readers' interest, but it shouldn't change too frequently. The current every other day system is pretty good.

Growth is a fair system to measure by, it gives the authors more exposure opportunity. Also, authors who have already grown a lot are presumably no longer in such need of exposure. It will, however, mean much more frequent changing of the listed series and also remove some of the best and most attractive series from the list once they have grown to a certain critical mass if we are going to add the adaptive system into it.

I do very much like the idea of the increase to follower count being what's tracked if it is without the adaptive deranking (or maybe add that in later once the site gets a lot bigger.) If it tracked increase in followers instead of increase in view count then about the only way I can see to cheat that system is to have a bunch of bots or multi accounts subscribe to your story. I think that sort of thing could be discovered.

About the only disadvantage to the follower method is that people who do not have an account do not have that option to start following the story. However, the mere fact that account holders liked it enough to start following should also mean it's good enough for the non-account holders to like reading it.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

I think that the favoriting-chapter system has the potential to be useful. My problem with it is just that it is really, really underused. There is a very small sample size when compared to how many readers a story might have.

Attracting more authors and attracting more readers goes hand-in-hand. More readers will tempt more authors to come here. More authors will tempt more readers to come here. This is only really something to think about for very small and private communities, in my opinion. 95% of users on sites like these are going to be strictly readers and that is likely already the case, especially when considering non-registered readers. Basically, YouTube but with stories. To try and be anything else would require a serious change in its current direction. I do, however, agree that an official goal - a mission statement of sorts, should be somewhere that outlines the intention of the platform. Even if it doesn't change what SH already is at all, it would help to clarify things and serve as a reference point.

However, it could do for an update to add a 3rd list for weekly release trending. It would be the same thing as the daily trending we have now, except it ONLY tracks series that have 1 chapter/week release rates and, of course, would make it a weekly trending.

I am 100% against any sort of system that caters only to a specific group of people like this. Anybody can make it into trending. Anybody can make it into best rated. Anybody can make it into most followed. Only people who post once a week would make it onto this list, and I'm one of those people since my stories average out to 1 chapter a week after the initial chapter dumps are over. This is much less fair than the current system and would basically encourage people to artificially reduce their rates to only once a week so that they can potentially double dip in both trending and weekly trending. Then there's the whole slippery slope thing. What about stories that only release once every two weeks? What about people who only release once a month? Many of the top web novels on the internet release massive chapters ranging from 20k-50k words each once a month and no more. How do they fit into this? Their release rate would be lower than 1 chapter/week average. When you try to cater to one specific group to make things "fair," you start descending down a slope where you have to try and make things fair for every single group. What about people who post two chapters a week? They might not be posting fast enough to compete against the daily posters, but they wouldn't be posting slowly enough to make it onto this proposed list.

Don't get me wrong. I respect trying to balance things out to make it fairer for different authors, but I cannot see an exclusive list like this doing anything other than causing more drama in the long run. Royal Road has a "popular weekly" list. It counts total views in the past 7 days. The Queen's Hound is the 21st most followed story on the website. If I split chapters into smaller parts, I would be able to stay in the top ten for most popular every single week. But I don't. I only post once a week. If I can get 8k views with one chapter a week, it is safe to assume I would get 40k views with five chapters a week. But it is my choice to release one big chapter instead of multiple smaller ones, and I do not expect them to cater to my personal choice. If I want to make it onto the popular weekly list, then it's up to me to get there myself by releasing more chapters.

The every-other-day system is a good temporary fix to deal with the drama that was brought up, but it doesn't change the core issue: it's stale. All it means is that readers see the same 16 stories every two days instead of the same 8 stories every day. All this really does is help the people out who were almost making it to trending before but not quite. Now, what about the people who are almost making it to the new trending? And then if we accommodate them, what about the people who are almost making it to the new new trending? There are always going to be people disappointed that they're not on trending, both with the current system and my proposed system. The more the line gets moved to accommodate people who dislike the system, the more drama there will be, and the more useless the trending list becomes. Showing off the "hottest" stories relative to their growth in a week is an effective way of keeping the trending list flowing while preventing stories from sticking on it for too long. It should be progressively harder for a story to stay on there to the point where it essentially becomes impossible to take up any more space. If eight stories can go through trending for a week or two at a time, and then they get kicked out to never return and replaced by a new batch of stories, that would be ideal.

Growth is a fair system to measure by, it gives the authors more exposure opportunity. Also, authors who have already grown a lot are presumably no longer in such need of exposure. It will, however, mean much more frequent changing of the listed series and also remove some of the best and most attractive series from the list once they have grown to a certain critical mass if we are going to add the adaptive system into it.

That's the whole point \o/

Regarding cheating this system, that would be extremely easy to catch. People who use bots really underestimate just how pathetically easy that sort of behavior is to detect. If it's done well enough to not be detectable, it won't help out anyways and would still end up being obvious over a long period of time.

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

I'm on your side of this Ace. Not to be an ass, but catering to a once-a-week crowd is extremely problematic. First, it's way too narrow, and second, like Ace said, it really is a pretty slippery slope. I think it'll do very little aside from just creating a second group of 8 that stay at the top every day and make even more people complain because they'd feel they were forced into the multiple-a-day format or the once-a-week format.

Not to brag, but it seems like the very fact that mine is a two a week yet maintain a high post on the current (and former) trending list every day (or every other now) was used as an example for the potential of better lists, but I really want to point out just how much of an outlier my story is. Aside from me, and Ace (who's basically been here since the beginning and well established), almost everyone on the top 20 ranks are people who are daily/bidaily posters.

But the very fact that some of them are high posters but managed to get within the top 20 after a small hiatus speaks mounds, I think. In Ace's favour at that. High post count does help get you on to the trending list early on, but being actually liked keeps you there. At least in the current system.

The current system is far from idea, but the fact that this latter bit is true, I think it means that there's not much need to cater to any specific group. At the worst, maybe include a factor in the algorithm that helps out slow releasers a bit, but that's it.

I also think that any author that releases slower than a week is either too unmotivated or too casual for consideration of anything that would cater to them specifically. It sounds harsh, but I personally follow a few stories that posts at a very slow rate (both here and NU), and it's a pain to read. I've been tempted to just remove them from my list a few times already.

The favourites thing...huh...people favourite my stories at pretty much the same rate every chapter. It's entirely useless for gauging anything beyond general popularity for me. I'm a bit jealous you have a useful metric like that Jemini.

And comments, I didn't realize that your stories barely have any comments. I just presumed you'd get at least a ton of "first" and smilie comments at the worst, not a drought of anything in general. The few stories I do read here made it look like the number of comments spoke of their popularity, but I guess I'm wrong. Sorry for not reading any of your stories, but I have so many on my NU list, it's hard to keep up with even more here.

Anyways, to reitterate, I do like the growth thing, but one that makes it harder and harder as you grow bigger? I mean, if it's based on percentage like (ViewB/ViewA) = Growth, and just compare Growth, it's pretty self limiting as the previous day/week's views gets bigger. Big growing stories would have a Growth of 1 or bigger, but big yet slow growing ones would have one of less than 1, automatically lowering their position on the list.

I do think that the views should be counted on the week rather than day though, as daily views tend to vary wildly, especially for stories that don't post daily.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

I also think that any author that releases slower than a week is either too unmotivated or too casual for consideration of anything that would cater to them specifically.

To be fair, there are numerous examples of people with slower posting schedules than this with good popularity and success. In fact, most of the highest-earning, English-original web serials only update once to twice a month. Tefler makes six figures via Patreon while only posting once to twice a month with 20k+ word chapters. Deathworlders posts one chapter a month that is as large as a full book. Mother of Learning is another big one that I know people like that only updates once a month and has been popular for the better half of a decade now. All of these are stories that would be far more "trendy" than anything currently on the list, my own obviously included. Even so, they would probably struggle to stay on trending in a view-based system for more than a few days of each month.

That is why I would like to see a system that goes off of followers. The stories I just mentioned only update once a month, but they have insane follower counts.

Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that I am 100% against any sort of list specifically catering to unique groups of people. Otherwise, we might as well start having lists for every single genre and tag, too. I just wanted to point out that most of the top web serials in English update slower than once a week = P. I also think it's important to keep in consideration that the average writer only writes between 500 and 1,500 words a day. Even professional authors who have made historic books claim to write that "little." The web novel industry is just unique (in a bad way) in that there is a high expectation on authors to write far faster while also editing which is something that the world's top authors don't even really do.

Sorry for not reading any of your stories

This is never something to apologize for. Time is valuable and not every story is for every person. But yeah, both here and on RR, I probably get far fewer comments than the majority of other authors with the same level of popularity as me. My Patreon chapters are lucky to get one comment per chapter.

I mean, if it's based on percentage like (ViewB/ViewA) = Growth

You already lost me. I am really bad at math. Anyways, what I want is basically RR's system but with readers instead of ratings. RR has three requirements to be on trending:
1. A 30-day timer after the story reaches a total of 10 ratings or 25 total stars.
2. A cover.
3. Basically, have twice/thrice as many ratings/total stars than you had at the start of the 30-day timer.
So, let's say a story gets 10 ratings on their second day of being posted. A 30-day timer starts counting down. If that story, after 30 days, has 100 ratings, that is a 1000% increase in ratings which means that the story is most likely going to be in a decent spot on the trending list. I've been at the top of RR's trending list several times now and usually going from about 10 ratings to 400+ within 30 days was enough to get the #1 spot. It depends on who else is competing for trending, too. If Person A goes from 10 ratings to 400 ratings in 30 days, and Person B goes from 10 ratings to 401 ratings in 30 days, then person B is more trending and gets the #1 spot. Then you need to maintain that growth %. Both people then have to keep up their rate of ratings growth if they want to stay at the top which is easy at first because of how much exposure/ratings being on trending brings, but it wears off. You go from having 1000% more ratings than what you had 30 days ago to only having 300% more ratings. Then you go to 80% more. With every day that passes, it gets harder to stay at the top. Getting too many ratings early on is actually negative because it reduces how long you can stay at the top. My preferred strategy for RR is to wait 20-25 days after the timer starts before asking for ratings, because then that % of growth compared to 30 days ago is greater. Either way, it's extremely difficult to stay at the top of RR trending for more than 2 weeks. And, depending on competition, anybody can pop up at any time with a story that has a greater % growth in ratings than you to knock you down some spots.

Basically, I want that for SH but replace ratings with readers. RR weighs ratings and what stars those ratings are, so a 5-star rating is worth 5 times more than a 1-star rating. I think that's kind of irrelevant to trending since stories that aren't rated highly can still be popular and trendy, so I would rather see a system that goes off of readers instead of ratings. Either of these are better than going off of views.

Something like:
1. Story gets 10 followers. Yay, it's officially eligible for getting onto trending in the future.
2. A 15 or 30 day wait begins.
3. At the end of the wait, the system automatically compares current readers against how many readers it had 15/30 days ago.
4. Whatever % of growth it has compared to 15/30 days ago is how trendy it is. The higher the %, the higher on the trending list.
5. From every day after this, the system continues checking against 15/30 days ago - not the beginning of the wait, just 15/30 days prior to whatever the current day is.
6. The story has to maintain a high % of growth in readers if it wants to stay on the trending list. The lower that % of growth drops, the less trending the story is.
7. Eventually, it gets to the point where it would be impossible to stay on trending. Using The Queen's Hound as an example, it has 1,932 readers right now. 30 days from now, it would need over... let's say 5,000 readers if it wants to be on trending. Since that's pretty much impossible given the site's current size, it would be impossible to get that many readers in a short enough time to qualify for trending again.
8. New stories take up residence on trending until they, too, eventually fall off.

Stories get exposure.
Readers get a list of newer and frequently-refreshing stories to choose from.
The list doesn't become stale because it becomes impossible to stay on it for an extended period of time.
The system works off of how popular a story is via readers instead of something less reliable such as views or ratings. Chances are that if a story has high readers then it's probably going to have high views and ratings anyways.
The majority of stories will never make it onto trending, but that's alright. Not every single story is a popular and trending-worthy story. One of RR's most highly rated fictions only has a few hundred followers and got barely any time on trending because it wasn't exactly the type of story that RR's audience cares about. The people who read it loved it and thought it was incredible and one of the best on the website, but it just wasn't that trending-worthy because that's what the website's primary audience decides. No matter how incredible a story might be... if it's not popular with the website's general audience, it doesn't deserve to be on trending.

Back to writing what I'm supposed to be writing. I can't sleep until I finish one more chapter.

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

To be fair, there are numerous examples of people with slower posting schedules than this with good popularity and success.

I understand that there are outliers like this, but I can't help but feel that because they're such outliers, that rather than doing something specific to cater to them, either they should instead take the initiative to promote their stories in other ways, or they'll manage to reach trending on their own merit. I mean, there's the forums along with other sites (not just novel sites as well), and there's the discord server as well?
I don't know how much of a difference it makes, but if you become popular on the forums and there's a link to your story in your signature, then I expect that at least some people would check it out? The less well known your story is, the more likely that it would work as well I think?

Basically, I want that for SH but replace ratings with readers.

Hmm...I do like the idea quite a bit. I think it might be difficult due to SH's size though, but then again, it would make any new story that gets even a little bit of popularity to shoot up in an instant. I'm just worried that we get a flood of bad stories that stick around on trending just because it only took a handful of readers to beat out the growth of long-standing top rated stories.

It works great for RR because it's so big. I think SH might need to compromise with a weaker system until it gets the readership it needs to make something like this a reality?

Edit: I just remembered, but I think something needs to be done with NU's sidebar links as well once all this is fixed up. Rather than putting on notable updates, it should be something like 3 random picks from the top 20 of the new trending list or something. That way as people go through NU's pages, they'll keep getting different stuff, and more likely to almost always be strong series.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

I'm just worried that we get a flood of bad stories that stick around on trending just because it only took a handful of readers to beat out the growth of long-standing top rated stories.

It works great for RR because it's so big. I think SH might need to compromise with a weaker system until it gets the readership it needs to make something like this a reality?

Yeah, that's definitely a valid concern. I'm personally of the opinion that there is no such thing as a "bad" story since everything is good to somebody, but from a more objective and business point of view, there certainly are stories that can push people away. Even with RR's size, I see people complain about how boring and low-quality the list can be at times. A compromise would definitely have to be implemented somehow. As for what that compromise is, I'm not sure.