Weekly Download Counter Change
I've made an important change to the site today. Tonight will be the last night that weekly counters are all reset to zero. From now on the system will keep track of the last seven days individually for each story.
So, the weekly counters will now reflect a story's downloads in the last seven days regardless of which day you view the listings.
Previously, the site kept track of weekly downloads starting from the weekly reset time of Sunday night. So, if you view the download listings on Tuesday, you get the tally of two days' worth of downloads. With the new system, viewing the top downloads list on Tuesday will give you the cumulative downloads since last Wednesday.
The current system had the effect that any story posted around midnight on Sunday, had the biggest chance of staying on top of the download list of the rest of the week. Some authors took advantage of this by posting their updates and new stories on Sunday after 9pm EST; which of course is completely understandable, who wouldn't want to have the biggest possible advantage.
With the new system, that changes completely and closes a long standing loophole. Posting time has no advantage at all anymore. And posting in the middle of the week has no more disadvantage.
The full effect of this change will only be felt next Monday. The system doesn't have the daily stats for the last 7 days. It starts counting tonight. For this week, the weekly downloads will behave exactly like the previous system.
So, the weekly counters will now reflect a story's downloads in the last seven days regardless of which day you view the listings.
Previously, the site kept track of weekly downloads starting from the weekly reset time of Sunday night. So, if you view the download listings on Tuesday, you get the tally of two days' worth of downloads. With the new system, viewing the top downloads list on Tuesday will give you the cumulative downloads since last Wednesday.
The current system had the effect that any story posted around midnight on Sunday, had the biggest chance of staying on top of the download list of the rest of the week. Some authors took advantage of this by posting their updates and new stories on Sunday after 9pm EST; which of course is completely understandable, who wouldn't want to have the biggest possible advantage.
With the new system, that changes completely and closes a long standing loophole. Posting time has no advantage at all anymore. And posting in the middle of the week has no more disadvantage.
The full effect of this change will only be felt next Monday. The system doesn't have the daily stats for the last 7 days. It starts counting tonight. For this week, the weekly downloads will behave exactly like the previous system.
Comments
Allen Wilson
-- AStrangeGeek
Just to disagree with AStrangeGeek a bit, people do pay attention to that toplist. Whenever I have a high rate of downloads on a story, I usually see a surge in reads and votes again whenever it edges into the bottom of that toplist *laugh*
This should level things out and make it more logical.
Funny thing how one of my most downloaded stories is also one of the lowest-scoring.
So my view is, these metrics are of passing interest, but nothing to live one's life by.
I do have a question as to how the downloads are counted though. Until this whole "vote counting" thing erupted, I had assumed that the "number of downloads" was the number of unique users that had "openned" the story. I didn't realize that if I read all 5 parts of a 5 chapter story that it got counted as 5 downloads.
This seems sort of strange to me, especially if you are showing a "top downloads" list. It seems that the more parts a story has the more it gets "downloaded".
Also, if I start to read a chapter and have to stop for some reason, does it count as a new download when I get back to it again?
Obviously these things are minor, but if you are going to maintain a "top" list it might be more meaningful to track "top downloads per chapter" or "top downloads of the most recent chapter" instead. These might be more useful stats if you are looking for the stories that "have been read the most".
On top of that the scores are dropping on newer sories, so a lot of authors who have recently started stories will no longer appear on the top scores of the week list.
That means those author's names will never appear on any list and will never get the benefit from the boost that having their name on a list provides.
Congratulations, I can see authors deciding to post no new stories on this site. I can also visualize them lining up to join other sites. Now perhaps they can all understand some of what cmsix felt. I know I do.
I'm not certain just how this will effect me, but since I only post once a week and seldom get 2000 downloads, I suppose that eliminates my name from appearing on the list, that is if 'Anonymous' is right. I do know that unless I happen to catch the downloads just before you post my story, my figures for weekly downloads are bound to be wrong. That certainly doesn't make me jump for joy.
Oh well, I'll try to be patient and see how it shakes out.
.B
Previously, if an author updated an older story on Monday, paying members would see the update in their library, read the story, get it in the Top 20. Then there would be a second boost as non-paying members would see and read it. However it sounds like under the new system, unless your update somehow gets above 1800 (extremely unlikely for most authors), it could slip through the cracks and be almost completely ignored.
I'm not sure when this change happened, but it looks like you extended the "New Stories" and "Updates" pages to include updates in the last 30 days. This may help give a compensating boost to smaller authors, but it requires more work to find new stories and for non-paying readers to actually stay on top of which authors are updating.
Possible, though imperfect solutions:
* Extend the number of stories on the "Top downloads" page. Maybe if you offered a "Top 50" page some of the smaller author could compete.
* It sounds like you'll have the data to offer multiple "Top downloads" pages and conceivably have a "in the last day" page would be the equivalent of posting on a Monday.
On the whole, I trust Lazeez and am willing to give the new system a chance. Though it is reversible, right?
~Slowpoke
In reguards to an earlier post that talked about the number of downloads my understanding is a little different.
No matter how many chapters you read online in a day it will appear as one download. It will only count as separate downloads in a page where the authors can keep track of the number of downloads per chapter.
So, every week, a reader can give a five chapter story either 1,2,3 and so on up to 7 downloads a week.
I wonder if it would be possible to keep track of the number of "new uploads" per week.
The reason for that is when one or more new chapters are added, it pops back on top of the "new updates" listings.
In other words, a story updated weekly with about 1500 readers/week probably has more unique readers than one with 4000 readers/week that has been updated 3 or more times.
Or maybe this would need to be a new list.
KR
- When I am a "reader", I look at New Stories and then look for updates on Chapter stories. I pay no (or rare) attention to download counters.
- When I am an "author", my most recent story will often show on the weekly counter list. I find when I look at Author Story Stats during a week, the top ten stories list alphabetically are the ones with higher download counts.
I strongly lean to believe that story codes and the brief story intro are most important to a reader.
KR
Hoo boy! No matter what you do, people aren't happy. I actually laughed out loud at some of the complaints above. No more authors posting new stories!? HAHAHA! People who are scared away by getting lower scores and downloads will not be missed at all. Not by me anyway. SOL is not supposed to be a popularity contest, people! Snap the f*ck out of it! It's about stories! If your stories are good, they'll be read, and appreciated. If they're not, fix 'em. Don't sit there complaining that Lazeez is taking all the loopholes away so you can't be king of the hill anymore. -end of rant-
I appreciate the new change myself. It means more authors have a chance at being recognized than just those who knew to exploit the loopholes. I knew about the loophole, but never much bothered with it. I just post whenever the chapter's done. My readers are waiting expectantly, and I'm not gonna wait until Sunday night just to jump in on the popularity contest.
But now the loophole is fixed, so we'll see what changes it effects. Good job, Lazeez, as always.
.B
I find that in SOL and other sites, the updates page are where you get more and more readers to give you a shot.
The list keep you visual but for a reader like myself (and it think there's a lot like me)... the top lists are meaningless ESPECIALLY with the way things scoring problems.
But I do go to the updates page on a daily basis or back up to the last update I caught to see what has been posted.
I found the 'top lists' to be helpful when I first started looking for authors and figuring out how this site (and others) work. After that I went on a long journey of looking at favorites of Authors that I read and liked as well as visiting forums and chats with other readers/authors. This lead me to more stories and different authors and on and on.
Now I find most new stories/authors on the daily update pages and only visit the top lists every few months to see if I missed something really good.
My primary method of choosing a story is in this order:
1. recommendations
2. description/codes
3.do I recognize the authors name? (not necessarily one I've read before, but have I seen the name around the web)
4. Voting score
5. reviews
6. # of downloads
I think Lazeez's changes will be an improvement in the long run. Certainly with an adjustment period for old users. I trust Lazeez to try the changes and if they need modification down the road, then he will do it as needed. I feel this way because of all the many sites I've tried on the web, this is the best by far. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Thanks Lazeez!
co2
This whole "I have to win at all costs" thing is getting out of hand. There was a time when we had a great community of writers that really cared about their writing. Now, they care about their scores/downloads, and how they can manipulate their values to be the best.
Nothing like saying "Hey, that's not fair! Now I have to play by the same rules as everyone else!" to really come across sounding like an idiot.
More important, however, is that the Top Score listing is already closed to most new authors, which leave Top weekly downloads list as an option to gain visibility for the author or his story, and I think this will eliminate that visibility.
Another advantage of Top XXX lists is perhaps a psychological effect on readers by letting them to consider or favor stories in those lists.
However, when both lists begin to be dominated by not more than 30 stories or so in total (some stories would be listed in both Top xxx lists), with hardly any variations in the list content from day-to-day or week-to-week (after a short period of time), I suspect the lists will lose some of their appeal or value. When that happens (and I hope it does happen), perhaps the readers would begin to pay more attention to daily updates and other lists.
I'm also wondering if the new change to the "top weekly downloads" list doesn't require more resource allocation than the old system. There's a difference between resetting a counter and then starting a new count every so often, and continuous tracking, isn't there?
I mean, in the old system, you just keep tack of the data for a story for 7 days and reset the counter. In the new system, you throw away the old values that are beyond the 7-day-history to keep a current 7-day count. Hearing Lazeez talk about the problems of implementing some things because they are too resource hungry, etc. it makes me wonder how easy this new implementation will be, and if resources could be allocated for something like that, why is it difficult to allocate resources for other proposed solutions to more serious problems?
anon_123
As someone who writes a lot and posts frequently, four or five chapters a week, I have benefitted from always having my current serial at or near the top of the top twenty download list.
In my mind, this was a reward I earned by concentrating on writing something every day. In my early writing, I made each chapter a separate, stand alone story, and wound up with fewer readers, and this was disappointing to me.
Whatever system Lazeez puts into place, writers will look at it, and then post their stories in the way that best satisfies them.
In the end, I agree with most of the posters, good stories will get read.
I disagree that you can't post a story later in the week, and still make it into the top 20. I've seen writers post a chapter that attracts five thousand downloads in a two or three day period. Five thousand usually gets you well up into that top twenty category.
I am guilty of placing too much emphasis on scores and readership numbers, purely an ego thing, I'm sure. The stat that matters most to me is the chapter by chapter readership numbers. Give me my five thousand downloads per chapter, and I'm a happy camper.
Find something you like about the new scoring and concentrate on that. I think letting the authors know the scoring breakdown by individual votes for a category is an excellent improvement.
Write because that's what you like to do, and leave the presentation of your work to the man who is paying the bills.
Why not make the e-score a 5-point system then use stars instead of numbers to display it. With increments of 5% as a quarter of a star you would only need 20 gif's of a 5 star strip to call upon. I have no knowledge as to the efficacy of calling a 25% star rather than drawing it, but it seemed less intensive computational wise to do a compare than to compute and draw an image..
You had wished to have started with a 5 point system a long time ago and now you can have one, sorta. ;)
Just a thought.
r.c.arthur@nettally.com