Geek Pride Day! Official Support Thread

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

Looks like there was a sweep, at last, for this event. It helped my story a bit. Did others experience the same thing?

Yep. My vote count dropped by 1. I honestly thought I had more bombs than that. Duly noted, silent voters.

 

[TANSTAAFL58]

I have not been swept. Still 4.41 on 17 votes / 1000+ views. My first vote was a 3 and all the rest are fours or fives. I'm working on a sequel anyways. I like the characters and the direction the story is going .

Thanks to everyone who commented. The comments mean much more than the votes!

 

[gordo12]

I don't think anything has happened with mine.

4.56 with 54 votes and almost 2700 views. It's been in that range all week.

Responses have definitely slowed down.

Sequel of Demon Blood II draft is largely written and closing in on an ending.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Dunno. I think I might have lost the opening one bomb, and the favourable responses are pushing it a little higher every day. Appreciative comments, too. I'm a happy little camper.

 

[JasonClearwater]

Dunno. I think I might have lost the opening one bomb, and the favourable responses are pushing it a little higher every day. Appreciative comments, too. I'm a happy little camper.

I've got a troll nudging at the back end of everything I've left open for them, and boy are they HATE-bonering hard. I feel quite special to get such personalised attention.

I have this image of them flinging their poo at their computer screen as they jam down the 1* button. It must be chilly down in that basement. Wrap up warm, trollazar. Can't have your little fingers getting cold.

 

[TANSTAAFL58]

I've got a troll nudging at the back end of everything I've left open for them, and boy are they HATE-bonering hard. I feel quite special to get such personalised attention.

I have this image of them flinging their poo at their computer screen as they jam down the 1* button. It must be chilly down in that basement. Wrap up warm, trollazar. Can't have your little fingers getting cold.

So what's your take on this? I mean, the category is Gay Male, so, a reasonable person would expect gay male sex, right? So it can't be that the poster doesn't approve of gay sex, right? I mean the vast majority of the content here is, well everything else.

Maybe they don't like literate writing? I mean, I gotta say, I'm about as straight as they come, but you write very well. (And I'm pretty sure I can't catch gay over the interwebs).

So what does that leave? I'm thinking condom company rep who objects to bareback sex no matter who's receiving.

 

[JasonClearwater]

So what's your take on this? I mean, the category is Gay Male, so, a reasonable person would expect gay male sex, right? So it can't be that the poster doesn't approve of gay sex, right? I mean the vast majority of the content here is, well everything else.

Maybe they don't like literate writing? I mean, I gotta say, I'm about as straight as they come, but you write very well. (And I'm pretty sure I can't catch gay over the interwebs).

So what does that leave? I'm thinking condom company rep who objects to bareback sex no matter who's receiving.

Cheers. Look, there's lots of reasons to slam down on someone's work. A rabid fan of another author, another author who's jealous and sees competition, instead of community... a homophobe? Maybe? But this is personal. I'm not unique in getting this attention, but it's targeted. The one story I was kindly nominated for a competition (only time I've ever come close), someone is making sure no matter what votes go down, it stays under 4.5.

That's a personality that has no redeeming qualities. It's the sadistic, childish, cheap and nasty behaviour, likely of someone with a bit of an underpowered intellect.

Attributing rhyme or reason to it other than 'they're a fuckhole that no one wants to fuck' is to place meaning where there is none.

If you've played Warcraft, you know griefing is a hobby for people who have no hobbies. That behaviour is also one of the biggest predictors of whether or not said person will succeed in life. They spend so much time concentrating on other people's successes, they never achieve anything themselves.

Griefers use OP gear, or they're 50 levels above you, or they do nothing but this... stand on your sand castle.

They don't publish successful books, they don't have any passion for anything, other than being a moron. There are trans and gay haters who devote their lives to fucking with the LGBT community. But if you popped into their lives, you won't find their bank account full of money they've legitimately earned through their talents. You won't find a loving wife *snort* in the mix. You'll find TV dinners for one, a lot of Google searches for the kind of porn that'd let 'em locked up as criminals if they weren't so adept at using the two tools of the internet they understand; well, the two loopholes. VPNs to let them cast their temporary (pre-sweep votes), and software that monitors changes on a particular page (i.e. your profile) and then they're actually following a manual process (which is incredibly amusing) where they actually go ahead and slam those votes down using alts and anon access. It's about as clever as... fuck, what's this sad and trivial? Kicking over your neighbour's mail box, while breaking your foot at the same time.

And as they wank up against your scores, they rub their hands together and for a moment, they get a kick of dopamine - I've ruined his day!

But 'he'... me, in this case, I'm getting off on watching them do it. So, it's an effort kinda wasted, which is why I attract it.

It's no effort on my part, and quite a bit of effort on theirs. If I'm going to scroll through a story, it'll be to support my fellow writers and enjoy their work. But then, I enjoy my life.

 

[gordo12]

Cheers. Look, there's lots of reasons to slam down on someone's work. A rabid fan of another author, another author who's jealous and sees competition, instead of community... a homophobe? Maybe? But this is personal. I'm not unique in getting this attention, but it's targeted. The one story I was kindly nominated for a competition (only time I've ever come close), someone is making sure no matter what votes go down, it stays under 4.5.

That's a personality that has no redeeming qualities. It's the sadistic, childish, cheap and nasty behaviour, likely of someone with a bit of an underpowered intellect.

Attributing rhyme or reason to it other than 'they're a fuckhole that no one wants to fuck' is to place meaning where there is none.

If you've played Warcraft, you know griefing is a hobby for people who have no hobbies. That behaviour is also one of the biggest predictors of whether or not said person will succeed in life. They spend so much time concentrating on other people's successes, they never achieve anything themselves.

Griefers use OP gear, or they're 50 levels above you, or they do nothing but this... stand on your sand castle.

They don't publish successful books, they don't have any passion for anything, other than being a moron. There are trans and gay haters who devote their lives to fucking with the LGBT community. But if you popped into their lives, you won't find their bank account full of money they've legitimately earned through their talents. You won't find a loving wife *snort* in the mix. You'll find TV dinners for one, a lot of Google searches for the kind of porn that'd let 'em locked up as criminals if they weren't so adept at using the two tools of the internet they understand; well, the two loopholes. VPNs to let them cast their temporary (pre-sweep votes), and software that monitors changes on a particular page (i.e. your profile) and then they're actually following a manual process (which is incredibly amusing) where they actually go ahead and slam those votes down using alts and anon access. It's about as clever as... fuck, what's this sad and trivial? Kicking over your neighbour's mail box, while breaking your foot at the same time.

And as they wank up against your scores, they rub their hands together and for a moment, they get a kick of dopamine - I've ruined his day!

But 'he'... me, in this case, I'm getting off on watching them do it. So, it's an effort kinda wasted, which is why I attract it.

It's no effort on my part, and quite a bit of effort on theirs. If I'm going to scroll through a story, it'll be to support my fellow writers and enjoy their work. But then, I enjoy my life.

Am I missing something here? Why are we talking about a gay story on the official support thread for Geek Pride? I'm lost. I don't see Jason Clearwater on the story list???

 

[JasonClearwater]

Am I missing something here? Why are we talking about a gay story on the official support thread for Geek Pride? I'm lost. I don't see Jason Clearwater on the story list???

In this case, it was a comment on sweeps that led to that.

 

[NotWise]

Am I missing something here? Why are we talking about a gay story on the official support thread for Geek Pride? I'm lost. I don't see Jason Clearwater on the story list???

Clearwater has been active on this thread a lot longer than you have.

 

[Blind_Justice]

"The Rembrandt Legacy" has the most favorable reception out of all my stories. 4.86/200+ votes, 4.6k views and 17 comments. If there was a sweep, it didn't have much of an impact. No complaints here. Wait, maybe one. I wish for more eyeballs on my other stories.

 

[gordo12]

Clearwater has been active on this thread a lot longer than you have.

Anybody ever seen one of those yappy little yorkies looking for attention?

 

[JasonClearwater]

Anybody ever seen one of those yappy little yorkies looking for attention?

I don't trust anyone who doesn't love dogs.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

I've said before that I'm reading the entire GPD Anthology from the bottom up. I just got to "Mercury Retrograde". Seventeen pages!? If I try to start that now, I might not finish the rest of the list until the 2019 GPD Support thread starts. Apologies MSTarot, but I'm going to skip your story for now, finish the rest of the list, and then come back to it. I'll finish off the anthology with a nice, long read.

Of course now that I've put that in writing, there is probably an even longer story lurking somewhere above.

 

[gordo12]

I don't trust anyone who doesn't love dogs.

Wow so I hate dogs now.

I'll have to go tell Stevie, our second rescue dog we've adopted in the last 5 years, she's not safe with me.

 

[JasonClearwater]

Wow so I hate dogs now.

I'll have to go tell Stevie, our second rescue dog we've adopted in the last 5 years, she's not safe with me.

 

[MSTarot]

I've said before that I'm reading the entire GPD Anthology from the bottom up. I just got to "Mercury Retrograde". Seventeen pages!? If I try to start that now, I might not finish the rest of the list until the 2019 GPD Support thread starts. Apologies MSTarot, but I'm going to skip your story for now, finish the rest of the list, and then come back to it. I'll finish off the anthology with a nice, long read.

Of course now that I've put that in writing, there is probably an even longer story lurking somewhere above.

You won't hurt my feeling to skip me to the last. It put it into word count Mercury R is about a 60k story.

I do hope you enjoy it though when you get to read it.

 

[Voboy]

I've said before that I'm reading the entire GPD Anthology from the bottom up. I just got to "Mercury Retrograde". Seventeen pages!? If I try to start that now, I might not finish the rest of the list until the 2019 GPD Support thread starts. Apologies MSTarot, but I'm going to skip your story for now, finish the rest of the list, and then come back to it. I'll finish off the anthology with a nice, long read.

Of course now that I've put that in writing, there is probably an even longer story lurking somewhere above.

Such a nice comment! Thanks!

And yeah, “head” is the navy term. But a) I’ve never liked it, b) I was in the army, not the navy, and c) I figured there’d have been some linguistic drift in the 300-10,000 years between now and then.

Nice catch, though.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

Do these kinds of events or contests usually have such staying power? The views on my story are still ticking up slowly but steadily three weeks later. I woke up this morning to find a new 'favorite'. Usually, once the "N" tag drops off, my stories go dormant until I publish something else.

I didn't really have much interest in competing in contests before, but if they usually keep your story in the spotlight like this, I'm starting to see the appeal.

 

[NotWise]

Do these kinds of events or contests usually have such staying power? The views on my story are still ticking up slowly but steadily three weeks later. I woke up this morning to find a new 'favorite'. Usually, once the "N" tag drops off, my stories go dormant until I publish something else.

I didn't really have much interest in competing in contests before, but if they usually keep your story in the spotlight like this, I'm starting to see the appeal.

When the event was still new Laurel kept the links in the SF&F hub live, and that helped. She still has a link to the contest entries on the home page. That helps, too.

With contests, the contest entries are linked on the home page and (at least for recent contests) from the story index page. Those links stay until the next contest starts taking entries, and as long as they're there they funnel reads to the stories. Of course, the winners get the biggest boost because they're named, but the benefits are definitely not limited to the winners.

I won't burden you with my graph of views over time for my Valentine's Day entry, which had a middle-of-the-pack finish. Initial interest was very high, as you would expect, then the rate of views remained steady through the contest. The rate dropped abruptly when the April Fools Day contest started taking entries, but that gave it a month-long ride. The ride is longer for some contests (April Fools, for instance) than it is for others.

The story still get's a significant number of reads and votes (including a recent series of bombs) and I'm not entirely sure why.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I didn't really have much interest in competing in contests before, but if they usually keep your story in the spotlight like this, I'm starting to see the appeal.

I'm yet to be convinced that the regular contests change the overall result of a story a huge amount. My last contest story and the geek anthology one steadily received views and strengthening scores for a month so after falling from the front page. The movement is similar to any other story, though - a slow but steady increase. What I'm finding is that older stories are also getting faves - people working through my back catalogue, I guess. But that happens whenever I post something new, regardless whether it's in a contest or not.

 

[NotWise]

I'm yet to be convinced that the regular contests change the overall result of a story a huge amount.

Ideally, being in a contest won't change the story's score, but that's not always the case. Being in a contest does change your number of views and votes.

 

[SimonDoom]

Ideally, being in a contest won't change the story's score, but that's not always the case. Being in a contest does change your number of views and votes.

The two stories I have submitted to contests/events are the least-viewed stories of the twenty I've written. That probably has more to do with the categories in which they were published, however, than anything else.

I need to publish a story for a contest in the incest/taboo or exhibitionism categories to test whether this is true.

I'm curious whether this really is what other people have experienced: that publishing a story for a contest significantly increases its views and votes above what a similar story in the same category would have enjoyed if published outside a contest.

 

[JasonClearwater]

The two stories I have submitted to contests/events are the least-viewed stories of the twenty I've written. That probably has more to do with the categories in which they were published, however, than anything else.

I need to publish a story for a contest in the incest/taboo or exhibitionism categories to test whether this is true.

I'm curious whether this really is what other people have experienced: that publishing a story for a contest significantly increases its views and votes above what a similar story in the same category would have enjoyed if published outside a contest.

If nothing else, the number of troll views and votes you'll get will put all others to shame.

If the rumours are to be believed.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm curious whether this really is what other people have experienced: that publishing a story for a contest significantly increases its views and votes above what a similar story in the same category would have enjoyed if published outside a contest.

I'm yet to be convinced, but I'm not sure how you could ever test it.

My Songs of Seduction - Water (my mermaid story) was published late January in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, outside any contest, and stayed on the category front page for nearly two weeks. In that time it pulled several thousand views and a solid score, and is now up to 8100 views (which I think is pretty good for the category).

By comparison, my Geek Anthology entry, which fell off the category front page in three days because the story title was far down the alphabet, is only just crawling up to 1700 views (with a similar score).

I reckon it might have run stronger if it had been outside the Anthology, and stayed longer on the category front page in its own right. Mind you, it has received a much better vote/view ratio, and proportionally more comments (most from fellow Anthology entrants).