A Simple Solution to Chapters

[LexxRuthless]

There have been several threads on the topic of long, chaptered stories dominating the top lists / Halls of Fame for various categories on the site. While I agreed it was ridiculous, I did not think there was anything to be done about it. However, it occurred to me that there is a fairly simple solution:

The site could move all stories with more than three chapters into Novels / Novellas.

This gives authors the opportunity to add a sequel when readers request it, and even a third chapter before subsequent chapters would be "bounced" into Novels / Novellas. That category could then be the place for all those lengthy chaptered stories to compete for a single Hall of Fame, while clearing the way for other categories to display more representative works.

What do you think?

 

[NotWise]

There have been several threads on the topic of long, chaptered stories dominating the top lists / Halls of Fame for various categories on the site. While I agreed it was ridiculous, I did not think there was anything to be done about it. However, it occurred to me that there is a fairly simple solution:

The site could move all stories with more than three chapters into Novels / Novellas.

This gives authors the opportunity to add a sequel when readers request it, and even a third chapter before subsequent chapters would be "bounced" into Novels / Novellas. That category could then be the place for all those lengthy chaptered stories to compete for a single Hall of Fame, while clearing the way for other categories to display more representative works.

What do you think?

"All stories more than three chapters" could be most of the Lit content -- all stuffed into Novels and Novellas.

 

[GinnyPPC]

I disagree. Better would be to have a series summarized into one row and then a weighted average score for all parts shown.

 

[Bramblethorn]

There have been several threads on the topic of long, chaptered stories dominating the top lists / Halls of Fame for various categories on the site. While I agreed it was ridiculous, I did not think there was anything to be done about it. However, it occurred to me that there is a fairly simple solution:

The site could move all stories with more than three chapters into Novels / Novellas.

This gives authors the opportunity to add a sequel when readers request it, and even a third chapter before subsequent chapters would be "bounced" into Novels / Novellas. That category could then be the place for all those lengthy chaptered stories to compete for a single Hall of Fame, while clearing the way for other categories to display more representative works.

What do you think?

IME, most readers depend heavily on categories to find stories that suit their tastes. If I'm posting a series that starts out in Lesbian Sex, readers aren't going to be looking in N/N for the updates. Even if they were aware of this change, you'd be putting about a third of all posts in N/N, making it hard for people to filter down to what they're interested in.

It'd be nice to fix the scoring biases, but let's not break navigation for the readers. Better to leave chapters in their original category but establish a separate toplist for series.

 

[RejectReality]

Nope. Would destroy readership for authors, and make finding stories too difficult for readers.

The problem is chapter stories taking up multiple spots on the toplist. This is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

 

[SimonDoom]

Terrible idea, Lexxx. Sorry.

The point of all this categorizing is to make it easy for readers to find the stories they want. This would make it immeasurably more difficult. You'd be cramming stories of completely different types into a category that tells you nothing about the type, other than that it's long.

 

[LexxRuthless]

The first three chapters would still remain in the category or categories in which they were intended, so readers would have no trouble finding them. Subsequent chapters in Novels & Novellas would still be linked to those initial chapters, so readers would have no trouble following the series. As it is, chapters in a long series get far fewer views than standalone stories in each category, so authors wouldn't really be losing views, particularly if Novels & Novellas becomes the "one stop shop" for readers who really enjoy longer series.

That was what the category was intended to be, wasn't it? Instead, it has become a category of last resort, with a really low readership base. Most authors who post there would be better served posting in other categories.

As it is, some longer-running series will have chapters posted in several different categories. Just look at the Non-consent Hall of Fame; half of it is later chapters from sci-fi / fantasy series. How is that helping readers find what they are looking for?

Now, the one thing that would make this anything but a "simple" solution would be if Laurel has to track down every single chapter individually and move them. In that case, it would truly be a terrible idea.

If this change were instituted, authors could adjust how they package their ongoing storylines. With a little creativity, you could still have multiple stories featuring the same characters. Readers who really enjoyed them would be able to find the rest of the stories featuring those characters easily enough, and it would actually increase the number of views those stories would receive. Really, how many readers will bother with "Loving Mom Ch. 21" when they could read "Mom Blows Me in the Grocery Store!" Never mind that it is the same story.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

There have been several threads on the topic of long, chaptered stories dominating the top lists / Halls of Fame for various categories on the site. While I agreed it was ridiculous, I did not think there was anything to be done about it. However, it occurred to me that there is a fairly simple solution:

The site could move all stories with more than three chapters into Novels / Novellas.

This gives authors the opportunity to add a sequel when readers request it, and even a third chapter before subsequent chapters would be "bounced" into Novels / Novellas. That category could then be the place for all those lengthy chaptered stories to compete for a single Hall of Fame, while clearing the way for other categories to display more representative works.

What do you think?

The impetus for your idea appears to be related to how long, chaptered stories dominate top lists. That is a scoring issue, not a categorization issue.

Scoring needs to change to correct the issue.

The majority of my stories are broken into chapters or parts when I submitted them and I have considered for some time how I could make the scores more accurately reflect readers' rating of the story as a whole rather than by individual chapters or parts. Voting on individual chapters or parts of a story is like writing a book review after only reading a few chapters.

One idea that I am toying with is to turn voting off until the final chapter/part is submitted. I would include a comment in all the prior submissions that I wanted votes only on the complete story to explain why readers couldn't vote until the end.

I understand that a lot of writers here post as they write and factor reader scores and feedback into future parts of their stories. The variety in writing styles makes scoring changes even more challenging for the admins.

 

[LexxRuthless]

The impetus for your idea appears to be related to how long, chaptered stories dominate top lists. That is a scoring issue, not a categorization issue.

Scoring needs to change to correct the issue.

The majority of my stories are broken into chapters or parts when I submitted them and I have considered for some time how I could make the scores more accurately reflect readers' rating of the story as a whole rather than by individual chapters or parts. Voting on individual chapters or parts of a story is like writing a book review after only reading a few chapters.

One idea that I am toying with is to turn voting off until the final chapter/part is submitted. I would include a comment in all the prior submissions that I wanted votes only on the complete story to explain why readers couldn't vote until the end.

I understand that a lot of writers here post as they write and factor reader scores and feedback into future parts of their stories. The variety in writing styles makes scoring changes even more challenging for the admins.

Vote manipulation and shortcomings of the rating system are entirely separate issues from this one. Both issues you bring up here have been addressed pretty much every month since the Author's Hangout began. There have probably been hundreds of proposed "solutions" to the rating system, but not one of them has actually been superior to what we've got.

The scoring system itself is not the problem here. It is the inherent viewing and voting pattern that gives later chapters in a series an unfair advantage when it comes to these top lists. I don't begrudge authors writing long chaptered stories, even if they were consciously "gaming the system" for a place in one of the Halls of Fame. The way things work now, you still have to write really good chapters to earn those high marks.

My suggestion is to move later chapters to a category that is supposed to exist for that purpose, to clear the clutter of chapters from the various Halls of Fame and perhaps help Novels & Novellas draw more viewers than it does.

This may all be moot anyway. The Literotica Beta doesn't even have any "Hall of Fame" listings in any category. Instead, it has "Popular Stories" and that is a completely different list, thoroughly dominated by people who have allowed voting just long enough to grab a really high rating before turning voting off. Since "Popular Stories" doesn't have that 100-vote threshold requirement, it rewards that behavior.

The way things work right now with both the existing system and the Beta, readers quickly learn to ignore the Hall of Fame or the Popular Stories list. They will look at a couple of stories there, figure out that they aren't really any better than other stories with a "Hot" rating, and then they'll use story tags to browse the site for what they really want to read. The vast majority of them aren't reading later chapters of anything, even if it is in some Hall of Fame listing.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The first three chapters would still remain in the category or categories in which they were intended, so readers would have no trouble finding them. Subsequent chapters in Novels & Novellas would still be linked to those initial chapters, so readers would have no trouble following the series.

Maybe I'm missing something here.

Bob likes Gay Male stories. That's the only thing that does it for him. He checks the GM Hub for new stories once a week. Chapter 1 of a new series shows up there, and Bob reads it. A few weeks later, Chapter 2 shows up. A couple of months later, Chapter 3 shows up.

Then, some time later, Chapter 4 is posted in a completely different category, where only a tiny percentage of the content is Gay Male.

Why would Bob be following N/N when most of the content there just isn't relevant for him? If Bob isn't following N/N, how does he find out that there's a new chapter up?

Does Bob even know that chapters 4+ of series get posted to N/N? That's not at all an obvious thing, this site isn't exactly known for keeping its documentation up to date, and even if it was, it's easy for readers to miss changes.

If he's favourited the author, then sure, he'll get a notification. But I suspect most readers aren't in the habit of favouriting every author they enjoy - most probably don't even log in.

And, again, what does this achieve that couldn't be achieved equally well just by splitting the top-lists into "series" and "stand-alone" lists?

As it is, chapters in a long series get far fewer views than standalone stories in each category, so authors wouldn't really be losing views,

I suspect it's more likely to be "chapters in a long series get far fewer views, and this change would greatly exacerbate that". It seems like a huge stretch to assume that readers will easily follow a series from a topic-specific category into a great big catch-all category.

particularly if Novels & Novellas becomes the "one stop shop" for readers who really enjoy longer series.

That was what the category was intended to be, wasn't it? Instead, it has become a category of last resort, with a really low readership base. Most authors who post there would be better served posting in other categories.

Yep. Because "Novels and Novellas" was always a bad idea as a story category.

Bookshops don't arrange their books by length. They arrange them by subject matter. Because nobody walks into a bookshop thinking "I want to read something at least fifty thousand words... don't care if it's history or religion or romance or horror, just as long as it's long." And nobody comes here thinking "what really turns me on is story length".

If this category of "readers who really enjoy longer series" was a thing, N/N would be a much more popular category. It's not, because they aren't. Forcing more stories into that category isn't going to fix the fact that it just isn't a useful category for navigation.

As it is, some longer-running series will have chapters posted in several different categories. Just look at the Non-consent Hall of Fame; half of it is later chapters from sci-fi / fantasy series. How is that helping readers find what they are looking for?

This site doesn't deal particularly well with stories that straddle more than one category, multi-part of otherwise.

But that's not an argument for forcing more stories to straddle multiple categories.

If this change were instituted, authors could adjust how they package their ongoing storylines. With a little creativity, you could still have multiple stories featuring the same characters. Readers who really enjoyed them would be able to find the rest of the stories featuring those characters easily enough, and it would actually increase the number of views those stories would receive. Really, how many readers will bother with "Loving Mom Ch. 21" when they could read "Mom Blows Me in the Grocery Store!" Never mind that it is the same story.

Authors can do that now, if they want. Many of us don't want. The approach you're describing works fine for highly episodic stories where the order of reading doesn't much matter; it's much less useful for a story with a long-term arc that needs to be read in order.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Better just to do away with scores altogether than to get so obsessed with them that we break the site's navigation functionality more than it already is.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think Bramblethorn nailed the problems with this approach.

The overwhelming criterion for any category change should be this: does it improve the readers' ability to find stories they like, or does it (even slightly) detract from it? Only changes that make improvements should be undertaken.

The problem that you're trying to address is the predominance of chapters on toplists, which everyone agrees is a problem. The answer to that is to change the criteria for appearing on toplists, so that mulltiple chapters of one story won't clog up the toplists. However that might be done, it would improve the site in BOTH ways -- enhancing the readers' ability to find stories AND giving more authors a chance to show their stories on toplists.

 

[AvroAnson]

Wouldn't it be easier to just count a series as a single entity for the purpose of top list scoring (aggregating the scores). Of course many (like moi) wrote 100 stand alone stories with the same cast of characters. IE. Mary Jane and Panama Red in XXX. (He was an Irishman who always wore a Panama Hat and she always wore a particular type of shoe. Quite frequently that was all they wore.)

 

[Bramblethorn]

Wouldn't it be easier to just count a series as a single entity for the purpose of top list scoring (aggregating the scores).

That reduces the problem (any given series only shows up once per toplist) but doesn't entirely fix it. A long series or a long stand-alone will average higher than a short stand-alone, all else being equal, because the ones who don't like it drop out along the way and only the ones who like it will stay to the end for voting.

There's also some potential for gaming there - an author could switch off voting on the first few chapters of a story and only leave it active on the most popular bits in order to maximise their aggregate.

 

[NotWise]

That reduces the problem (any given series only shows up once per toplist) but doesn't entirely fix it. A long series or a long stand-alone will average higher than a short stand-alone, all else being equal, because the ones who don't like it drop out along the way and only the ones who like it will stay to the end for voting.

There's also some potential for gaming there - an author could switch off voting on the first few chapters of a story and only leave it active on the most popular bits in order to maximise their aggregate.

Aggregating the scores could remove a lot of stories from the toplists -- not just chapters. A story that now has one or two chapters in the toplist is likely to have none after the scores are aggregated. A lot of other chaptered stories will at least drop in the ranking.

The gaming could be avoided by requiring voting to be enabled on all chapters.

 

[MelissaBaby]

There have been several threads on the topic of long, chaptered stories dominating the top lists / Halls of Fame for various categories on the site. While I agreed it was ridiculous, I did not think there was anything to be done about it. However, it occurred to me that there is a fairly simple solution:

The site could move all stories with more than three chapters into Novels / Novellas.

This gives authors the opportunity to add a sequel when readers request it, and even a third chapter before subsequent chapters would be "bounced" into Novels / Novellas. That category could then be the place for all those lengthy chaptered stories to compete for a single Hall of Fame, while clearing the way for other categories to display more representative works.

What do you think?

I think it's a solution looking for a problem.

Yeah, if we write long series, we are likely going to get high scores for later chapters. We also have to accept lower readership. Those of us who write long series accept the tradeoff and don't bellyache about it. I don't see why others can't as well.

 

[RejectReality]

I think it's a solution looking for a problem.

Yeah, if we write long series, we are likely going to get high scores for later chapters. We also have to accept lower readership. Those of us who write long series accept the tradeoff and don't bellyache about it. I don't see why others can't as well.

There's a legitimate complaint about the toplists. They're utterly dominated by later chapters of long stories, and that's a disservice to readers and authors alike. It's also fundamentally unfair for a piece of a story to be competing with complete stories.

The key is not to punish people for writing multi-chapter stories, as the original suggestion of the thread certainly does. The goal should be to level the playing field where it's a problem.

 

[MelissaBaby]

There's a legitimate complaint about the toplists. They're utterly dominated by later chapters of long stories, and that's a disservice to readers and authors alike. It's also fundamentally unfair for a piece of a story to be competing with complete stories.

The key is not to punish people for writing multi-chapter stories, as the original suggestion of the thread certainly does. The goal should be to level the playing field where it's a problem.

So, if getting on the topmost is important to you, write a long series.

Not directed at you, but I'm sick and tired of people acting like I've done something wrong by writing a long series that got high ratings.

 

[NotWise]

So, if getting on the topmost is important to you, write a long series.

Not directed at you, but I'm sick and tired of people acting like I've done something wrong by writing a long series that got high ratings.

Well, umm. Don't take it personally or anything.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Well, umm. Don't take it personally or anything.

It just gets old. I've read a thread like this about once a month since I got here.

 

[RejectReality]

So, if getting on the topmost is important to you, write a long series.

Not directed at you, but I'm sick and tired of people acting like I've done something wrong by writing a long series that got high ratings.

I do. My list as Dark is primarily chapter stories, and it has a fair dominance as Les as well. At the time when I first took up advocating for change to the toplist years ago, chaptered stories was about all I had. It's a big part of the reason why I put myself forward. I have skin in the game, and I don't want to see people punished for formatting their work in a manner they believe best presents it.

Readers use the toplists as a major selection criteria after the new story lists. Having them dominated by chapters — especially multiple chapters of the same story — is limiting author exposure and ease of locating new work for readers. Having each chaptered story only occupy one spot on the toplist opens up a vast swath of real estate for authors and readers to connect.

 

[SimonDoom]

So, if getting on the topmost is important to you, write a long series.

Not directed at you, but I'm sick and tired of people acting like I've done something wrong by writing a long series that got high ratings.

That's not what anybody is saying. Nobody is saying you've done anything wrong. This isn't about you.

For that matter it's not about any of us authors.

The point of a toplist is not to pat authors on the head. It's to convey information to readers who are looking for the top-rated stories within particular categories.

If those toplists are crowded with many, many chapters of particular stories, with the high scores in many cases being the product of reader attrition rather than quality, then readers are short-changed.

Look at the Sci Fi toplist, for example. Its toplist is overwhelmed by chapters by Tefler's long-running story. Bully for Tefler that he has done so well; this is no knock on him. But he's written over a hundred chapters and a huge chunk of them fill up the Sci Fi toplist. That makes no sense, from the standpoint of readers looking for stories. If all of his chapters are averaged, and the story as a whole is counted rather than its chapters individually, his story will remain on the list and readers will have ample opportunity to find his story. But many, many other stories will be exposed to the view of readers, and that works to the benefit of both readers and authors.

 

[PennameWombat]

<snip>
Look at the Sci Fi toplist, for example. Its toplist is overwhelmed by chapters by Tefler's long-running story. Bully for Tefler that he has done so well; this is no knock on him. But he's written over a hundred chapters and a huge chunk of them fill up the Sci Fi toplist. That makes no sense, from the standpoint of readers looking for stories. If all of his chapters are averaged, and the story as a whole is counted rather than its chapters individually, his story will remain on the list and readers will have ample opportunity to find his story. But many, many other stories will be exposed to the view of readers, and that works to the benefit of both readers and authors.

Before I saw this thread I'd paid exactly zero attention to the top lists. Looking at SciFi then, this is also my first exposure to Tefler's work. Since I have a spreadsheet and I'm not afraid to use it, the 'Three Square Meals' chapters in the toplist are 4.90+ (25 of the 135 and counting). Averaging across all chapters would drop that to 4.87. So it's half the first 50 SF&F top list.

RipperFish's "Upon a Savage Shore" would drop to aggregate 4.84, from a high of 4.91. But it seems long idle, so picking something more active (but claimed to be finished recently) "Fourth Vector" is at aggregate 4.85, it currently has six chapters at 4.90+.

Only five of the first fifty all-time SF&F top list entries are not chapter entries (based on looking at the titles, I've not read them). Everything from 128th entry to the 250th entry all-time SF&F are 4.89. But you'd have to calculate all of the chaptered entries to really know the changes.

For last 30 days it's only two entries (of first 50) that aren't chapters. It's not THAT time consuming to calculate the aggregates but I can't do it for all of them to really know how much the lists would change. And that's only SF&F.

This is mostly academic, best for me is I'm (at the moment) 14th on the last 30 days for Anal (a stand-alone that's open-ended enough for sequels) and I've had other fleeting appearances but that's about it. And my chaptered story is, um, a massive five chapters and counting (in SF&F). But it was easy enough to gen some actual data from at least a few works. (Copy from author's page and paste into libre office spreadsheet then a bit of manipulation to isolate the individual story ratings.)

I'm resolutely opposed to the suggestion that started this thread - forcing later chapters to Novels & Novellas. My chapters are growing slowly but I'd already have two forced over and that makes no sense.

But otherwise, a change that exposes more stories from more authors seems good. Fairest (because it doesn't change HOW lists are calculated) seems two toplists for each category, anything with "Ch" or "Pt" in one list and others. Now, not all 'others' aren't some sort of serial, I have some of those. But they're truly serials, same characters but stand-alone adventures, start wherever. My "Ch" entries are readable alone, more or less, but carry a continual story arc.

 

[Emberto]

A long series or a long stand-alone will average higher than a short stand-alone, all else being equal, because the ones who don't like it drop out along the way and only the ones who like it will stay to the end for voting.

IMHO this is a significant reason why longer stories by the same authors currently score higher than shorter stories in the same genre.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I do. My list as Dark is primarily chapter stories, and it has a fair dominance as Les as well. At the time when I first took up advocating for change to the toplist years ago, chaptered stories was about all I had. It's a big part of the reason why I put myself forward. I have skin in the game, and I don't want to see people punished for formatting their work in a manner they believe best presents it.

Readers use the toplists as a major selection criteria after the new story lists. Having them dominated by chapters — especially multiple chapters of the same story — is limiting author exposure and ease of locating new work for readers. Having each chaptered story only occupy one spot on the toplist opens up a vast swath of real estate for authors and readers to connect.

Then again, aggregating the scores might raise the average on a lot of series that haven't made the toplists, lifting them up the list, and the tendency of series to get higher scores as they continue will be the subject of a new complaint.

Bramblethorn had the best idea, imo, having separate series and individual story lists.

 

[RejectReality]

Then again, aggregating the scores might raise the average on a lot of series that haven't made the toplists, lifting them up the list, and the tendency of series to get higher scores as they continue will be the subject of a new complaint.

Bramblethorn had the best idea, imo, having separate series and individual story lists.

Doubtful. The early chapters are almost always going to pull down an aggregate score. More votes + lower score virtually assures them having sufficient weight to do so. Nothing that had never made the toplist is going to pop up from aggregation.

Even if the toplists were separated, I still believe chapters stories should be aggregated, in order to provide more exposure for authors and choice for readers.

Even aggregated, chapter stories will still have an advantage in that they'll be much harder to 1-bomb down the listings.