Holy carp. I'm popular?

[all_ways_bi]

I have 2 stories hold at 4.92 for over a week. I never knew there was a most popular list (s) till recently. I can't find my stories in any top anything list. Popular to me might also mean most viewed? I guess that list is some place.

So it's not just the score it's also number of votes. Both are just over 60 votes. 18.6 k and 12.2k views.

What's the criteria?

 

[iwatchus]

I have 2 stories hold at 4.92 for over a week. I never knew there was a most popular list (s) till recently. I can't find my stories in any top anything list. Popular to me might also mean most viewed? I guess that list is some place.

So it's not just the score it's also number of votes. Both are just over 60 votes. 18.6 k and 12.2k views.

What's the criteria?

There are several different lists. If you go in the category of interest, the first section is new stories and the second is popular stories. Without clicking the blue "More Popular --- Stories" bar at the bottom, you can choose 7 day, 30 day and all-time lists. These are only 10 stories long and a little flaky and have little to no minimum votes, meaning they shift constantly.

If you click the bar at the bottom, you will see very different looking list. There are 30 day and 1 year lists, with I think 10 vote minimums. The overall time has a 100 vote minimum. New stories pop in regularly when they pass that vote mark, before they get 1 bombed off the front page usually.

I hope this helps.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Shouldn't that be "We're popular" ? Catfish confirmed!

No, I (Annie) wrote that story. The person (or persona, my name is not "Annie") posting. Eddie, Rocco, and Billie were readers, but didn't write it.

--"Annie"

 

[CalBishForNow]

This is why I stay away from LW.

I have enough insecurity about the quality of my writing that I don't need to get depressed even more by such a low score.

It's up to you, of course, write and publish wherever you feel like. But the infamous LW readership has bothered me less than I would have expected. More here, here, and here.

 

[DEFCOM5]

It's up to you, of course, write and publish wherever you feel like. But the infamous LW readership has bothered me less than I would have expected. More here, here, and here.

It is not just the toxicity of the category.

I don't read LW story because wife sharing is not something I find interest. It is the same with T/I and BDSM.

So I am playing in the smaller ponds. I have done mainly R/NC to get viewership. It is kind of like selling out but I am trying to create a following so I can write other stuff.

 

[ChloeTzang]

This is why I stay away from LW.

I have enough insecurity about the quality of my writing that I don't need to get depressed even more by such a low score.

LW isn't for the neophytes.

Best only go there when you have developed a "fuck 'em all" attitude. Speaking from experience LOL.

I enjoy dabbling there now and then.

 

[iwatchus]

It is not just the toxicity of the category.

I don't read LW story because wife sharing is not something I find interest. It is the same with T/I and BDSM.

So I am playing in the smaller ponds. I have done mainly R/NC to get viewership. It is kind of like selling out but I am trying to create a following so I can write other stuff.

I will say, in my one unplanned foray into LW, the toxicity was much less than I expected. But I have no interest in the arena and certainly not the community. I have a few other categories that hold no interest. I always want a strong emotional bond as the basis --T/I, MC, R/NC are probably no gos for me. Although I could end up with one of those. On a lark, I wrote a T/I story that I might submit as a second (joke) entry for the winter contest (Santa's Lap). Not sure if I want to actually publish or not.

I have only written one story there, but BDSM can offer the emotional connection that I am looking for. But that one story has by far the least interaction of any story I have written. Good rating (4.8) but only twenty votes and three comments. On 6K views.

So I would not call BDSM a big pond. And R/NC is a bigger than average pond, although it is one of the ones that dropped notably between 2018 ad 2023

 

[AwkwardMD]

No, I (Annie) wrote that story. The person (or persona, my name is not "Annie") posting. Eddie, Rocco, and Billie were readers, but didn't write it.

--"Annie"

I was totally kidding, and my bad if it got taken seriously.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Holy carp. I'm justly popular!​

Fixed that for you. Congratulations!

 

[THBGato]

It may be time to archive those all time lists and start again. At the moment they mostly seem to function as barriers to entry for new authors.

Well that's simply not true, at least in Lesbian. @SugarStorm and @BeneathHerBraid have both had number 1s in the category, and they only started publishing this year.

What stops them staying there is the trolling, which keeps the score profile in the top two hundred flat and means those older stories with more votes dominate.

 

[Actingup]

Well that's simply not true, at least in Lesbian. @SugarStorm and @BeneathHerBraid have both had number 1s in the category, and they only started publishing this year.

What stops them staying there is the trolling, which keeps the score profile in the top two hundred flat and means those older stories with more votes dominate.

My apologies - let me rephrase. If the trolling is being driven by authors wanting to preserve their place in the all-time list, then maybe it would be good to do a circuit breaker with a generation of stories retiring to the old rock 'n' rollers' hall of fame, and a new generation be allowed to come up. I know that's not really a solution... more just an idle fantasy.

(I haven't read SugarStorm, but BHB is amazing!)

 

[THBGato]

If the trolling is being driven by authors wanting to preserve their place in the all-time list, then maybe it would be good to do a circuit breaker with a generation of stories retiring to the old rock 'n' rollers' hall of fame, and a new generation be allowed to come up.

Well...

1. It's not authors doing the trolling, or even their hardcore fans. Onehitwanda, BrokenSpokes et al have all had their stories voted down from 4.92+ to 4.85. No writer is immune; everyone has been hit. (They aren't the type to do that anyway.)

2. I think the point of the last 12 months Hall of Fame is to give new writers that exposure. I think this is what you see on the new version of the category pages, whereas the classic view gives you the all time hall of fame view.

You should totally read SugarStorm.

 

[StillStunned]

If the trolling is being driven by authors wanting to preserve their place in the all-time list,

1. It's not authors doing the trolling, or even their hardcore fans. Onehitwanda, BrokenSpokes et al have all had their stories voted down from 4.92+ to 4.85. No writer is immune; everyone has been hit. (They aren't the type to do that anyway.)

In E&V, it's the authors. As soon as you get into the HoF, the bombs come. Who is it? Well, there's one author who has about a dozen chapters with identical scores and suspiciously similar numbers of votes, and they always seem to benefit from the list returning to the status quo.

 

[Actingup]

In E&V, it's the authors. As soon as you get into the HoF, the bombs come. Who is it? Well, there's one author who has about a dozen chapters with identical scores and suspiciously similar numbers of votes, and they always seem to benefit from the list returning to the status quo.

Oh yes, and separate the chapters out from the rest for pity's sake!!!!

 

[DEFCOM5]

LW isn't for the neophytes.

Best only go there when you have developed a "fuck 'em all" attitude. Speaking from experience LOL.

I enjoy dabbling there now and then.

@ChloeTzang

I hope one day to have enough confidence in my limited writing abilities to have your "fuck them all" attitude

 

[sirhugs]

LW isn't for the neophytes.

Best only go there when you have developed a "fuck 'em all" attitude. Speaking from experience LOL.

I enjoy dabbling there now and then.

I started there, lo those many years ago, way too innocent to know better, or care about scores. I had a story occupying too much space in my brain and needed to get it out. Somehow, I survived. Even decided to revisit the category many years later, and survived that too.

but as one who has hung around these parts for a long while, I would agree that the hostility has increased. Not for the faint of heart.

 

[sirhugs]

My apologies - let me rephrase. If the trolling is being driven by authors wanting to preserve their place in the all-time list, then maybe it would be good to do a circuit breaker with a generation of stories retiring to the old rock 'n' rollers' hall of fame, and a new generation be allowed to come up. I know that's not really a solution... more just an idle fantasy.

(I haven't read SugarStorm, but BHB is amazing!)

we old rock and rollers deserve our fame (even those of us who have none).

 

[Actingup]

It is not just the toxicity of the category.

I don't read LW story because wife sharing is not something I find interest. It is the same with T/I and BDSM.

So I am playing in the smaller ponds. I have done mainly R/NC to get viewership. It is kind of like selling out but I am trying to create a following so I can write other stuff.

This has been discussed in many other threads, but just for clarity, many LW readers are not into wife (or husband) sharing (and even less into cuckold). More likely*, they* want you to reactivate their trauma, and then make it go away as their ex dies in a spectacular explosion#.
*huge generalization
#the bigger the better

More positively, many of them are also generous and obsessively analytical commentators who will indirectly help you improve your writing, particularly in terms of the strategies that you might use to take an indifferent or hostile audience with you. I've got some of that happening with my most recent LW story, and it's been really useful at helping me think how I could have improved the story.

 

[DEFCOM5]

More likely*, they* want you to reactivate their trauma, and then make it go away as their ex dies in a spectacular explosion#.

Yep. The Burn the Bitch crowd. Not my cup of tea but I respect people who like to write/read it

I don't need a score < 3 and a string of nasty comments to help me with my writing

 

[Actingup]

Yep. The Burn the Bitch crowd. Not my cup of tea but I respect people who like to write/read it

I don't need a score < 3 and a string of nasty comments to help me with my writing

Okay. As an example though, have a look at the 300+ comments on @NoTalentHack's superb 3BR, 2BA, 1 Story When something hits the mark, as this one does so poignantly, you get an enormous, richly chorded response. It's not always positive, but it's very insightful.

 

[iwatchus]

Okay. As an example though, have a look at the 300+ comments on @NoTalentHack's superb 3BR, 2BA, 1 Story When something hits the mark, as this one does so poignantly, you get an enormous, richly chorded response. It's not always positive, but it's very insightful.

I'm going to push back a bit on this. LW gives lots of comments, sure. And maybe if you write the perfect story, you get useful ones. If I could write perfect stories, maybe I wouldn't need the comments. Both Romance and LS give lots of comments (many more per view than LW does) and they have a very high average quality, consistently across all the stories. If you want meaningful feedback, LW would not be high on my list.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Okay. As an example though, have a look at the 300+ comments on @NoTalentHack's superb 3BR, 2BA, 1 Story When something hits the mark, as this one does so poignantly, you get an enormous, richly chorded response. It's not always positive, but it's very insightful.

Some of thse BTB stories are really good too. Very cathartic for the authors, I'm sure

 

[JayHawnee]

Yeah, but 4.42 and 4.92 is huge! (Kidding) And why is it literally getting less than half the readership? I should probably compare the tags, now that I think about it. Part 2 had Incest as a tag, for instance, but 5 does not.

--Annie

Currently, Part 5 has an incest tag, Part 4 doesn't, interestingly it's the most read after part 1 and 2. The most prominent difference, I can see is, that the description of the first 4 parts contain the word "slave", but part 5 lacks it. And I'm quite sure, that slave is a keyword, that drags readers into clicking a story.

Interestingly part 4 has still double the views of part 3, what I find unexpected, as I would rather expect a decline from part to part and it doesn't have the incest tag.

Part 4 is though the only part that has an exhibitionist and a voyeur tag. Maybe this did something? Maybe it's that the description says "pleasure slave" instead of "slave", what could have an additional charm. Unfortunately one will never find out ultimately.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Interestingly part 4 has still double the views of part 3, what I find unexpected, as I would rather expect a decline from part to part and it doesn't have the incest tag.

That confuses me, too.