The Official Authors' Hangout Valentine's Day 2018 Support Thread

SimonDoom said:

Let's get really imaginative. One story, three loving wives. The trolls' heads will burst.

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I'll donate my April Fools Trans girl, if it'll help

ChloeTzang said:

Oh, your "Fifteen Love" came 25th on the bombed list, Ogg, nowhere near the top of the trollled. "Broke" only came 28th on the bombed list,jJumped from 4.26 to 4.52. Magic Lamp was 68th. Barely a blip.

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I don't know that changes in standing during the sweeps are evidence of trolling. I recorded all the scores on Tuesday morning before the first post-closure sweep, then again this morning. What I noticed was that a lot of the stories that lost standing had a lot of votes, so the sweeps didn't effect them very much. Conversely, a lot of the stories that moved up in the standings had relatively small numbers of votes so the sweeps gave them a big effect.

I knew that by posting my story in I/T I'd get a lot of views, but I was not likely to get anywhere near winning, so I watched how my story ranked among the other I/T stories. "Comforting Mom" was leading me in the standing by quite a ways and "Yes Ma'am" was right behind me. They both had 1000+ votes, while I had ~630.

All of our scores went up in the final sweep, but mine went up the most (+0.12), and probably just because I had fewer votes. My story left "Yes Ma'am" behind and passed "Comforting Mom," so I ended up first among the I/T stories.

Despite jumping to first among I/T stories, I lost several places in the overall rankings, which I expected would happen. That was probably because lots of stories in other categories had smaller vote totals.

I used the 30-day toplists to check the #of votes on a few of the big gainers and losers. The pattern was there at both ends of the range, but it wasn't universal.

I thought it was interesting that nine of the top ten stories from last week were in the top ten in the final rankings. Sweeps moved them around relative to each other, but there were no big jumps into the top ten.

The top ten stories were all in GM, Romance, SciFi&F or Novels and Novellas. Glaze72 had two of the top ten. I thought that was pretty remarkable.

SimonDoom said:

Let's get really imaginative. One story, three loving wives. The trolls' heads will burst.

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yukonnights said:

I'll donate my April Fools Trans girl, if it'll help

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You're on, but I might need some help with the Trans Girl. Never done that one before but why not. I think I have something in my head now. I think on Tex's Coffee Shop I posted something about troll hunting in Texas. Combine that with three loving wives, a trans girl and a Lahti 20mm and we have a story that will literally make the troll's heads burst. Like pumpkins. LOL.

Okay that was a bit off topic but why now....

NotWise said:

I don't know that changes in standing during the sweeps are evidence of trolling. I recorded all the scores on Tuesday morning before the first post-closure sweep, then again this morning. What I noticed was that a lot of the stories that lost standing had a lot of votes, so the sweeps didn't effect them very much. Conversely, a lot of the stories that moved up in the standings had relatively small numbers of votes so the sweeps gave them a big effect.

I knew that by posting my story in I/T I'd get a lot of views, but I was not likely to get anywhere near winning, so I watched how my story ranked among the other I/T stories. "Comforting Mom" was leading me in the standing by quite a ways and "Yes Ma'am" was right behind me. They both had 1000+ votes, while I had ~630.

All of our scores went up in the final sweep, but mine went up the most (+0.12), and probably just because I had fewer votes. My story left "Yes Ma'am" behind and passed "Comforting Mom," so I ended up first among the I/T stories.

Despite jumping to first among I/T stories, I lost several places in the overall rankings, which I expected would happen. That was probably because lots of stories in other categories had smaller vote totals.

I used the 30-day toplists to check the #of votes on a few of the big gainers and losers. The pattern was there at both ends of the range, but it wasn't universal.

I thought it was interesting that nine of the top ten stories from last week were in the top ten in the final rankings. Sweeps moved them around relative to each other, but there were no big jumps into the top ten.

Glaze72 had two of the top ten. I thought that was pretty remarkable.

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Yes, that was a good result for Glaze72 for sure - a "well done" there. You don't see that too often.

I didn't tally up the vote counts at all, too much time to record them as well as the ratings but yes, I can see that.

Congratulations to the winners. I got to read some great stories because of this.

YouDidWhut said:

Congratulations to the winners. I got to read some great stories because of this.

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Ditto! I read some really wonderful stories and got to know some new writers to watch. I didn't expect to get so much out of entering a contest. Now I'll have to decide if I have a story for the next one...

I was nowhere near placing in the contest. Despite that, it was a very successful contest for me.

My story was in I/T so I was pretty sure I wouldn't get the score to win, but I was really interested in how this story compared to my story from last year, which finished in the money.

How do you measure success? This year's story doesn't come close to last year's in score or in the number of comments. But it's already eclipsed last year's story in views, votes and favorite.

What's maybe more important, I've read the story a couple times since the contest. Despite the typos and such, I still like it. I can't explain why anyone else would like it, but that's not so much my problem.

NotWise said:

.. How do you measure success? This year's story doesn't come close to last year's in score or in the number of comments. But it's already eclipsed last year's story in views, votes and favorite... .

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Guess it depends what you go in there thinking doesn't it. I threw three stories Onto the mat and they did okay on scores, views and getting favorited. I didn't expect any of them to come near the top and I didn't write them with that in mind so I was totally pleased by how they did. So that was success for me.

This next one, I'm writing for laughs (for April Fools), not to be competitive so as long as it entertains and gets people laughing, I'm good. There's far less sex than my usual stories so I don't expect it to score that highly but I'm really enjoying myself writing it.