Author:
A few days ago, someone made the suggestion that if it would help the site run more efficiently that the tallies for hits could be eliminated. Erin mentioned that these tallies consume large amounts of computer capacity. Maybe we should discuss this more.
This is Erin's site. She has the most at stake. More importantly to us users, through her leadership, this site has survived. She knows more about what her customers want than anyone and has skillfully implemented and monitored.
She also listens to comments.
Personally, I think the number of hits is a meaningless statistic. The number of hits for my stories has a very small correlation to a more meaningful measure - number of kudos. The number of hits for my stories has a very small correlation to a more meaningful measure - number of comments.
I don't care about "number of hits" and even less about "daily hits."
Number of hits often has more to do with things like the length of the story -- than anything else.
By the way, for the millionth time - number of hits, number of comments, and number of kudos have had NO meaningful correlation to the quality of the writing in my stories that I can discern.
I love to have comments and kudos. They keep me enthused about writing.
What's your opinion?
Jill
Comments
Personally
I like having number of hits up there. And kudos, btw, are about as big a hit to efficiency as the hit counter.
In fact, it was Mindy deciding to take the hit counter down at FM that was part of the reason I launched BC. :)
We've got new hardware that we think can handle the load. It will take a month or so to work out the kinks and get the configuration tuned but you should soon not be seeing those out-of-sync errors.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Don't agree
I'm here because I like both reading and writing.
If I'm reading, then the number of hits I generate is immaterial: I came, I saw, I read.
If I write, it is useful to me to know if anyone is reading what I'm writing. Numbers let me know if I'm doing the right thing or if I should drop the elf-and-mango story and try something else. It also lets me know if people are continuing to read my stories after the event.
As it happens, they are and they do, even though my output has dropped over the last year for reasons beyond my control. It happens to all of us. But, people keep coming back and reading my stuff. I wouldn't know that without a hit counter.
As for the hit counter itself, it is a Drupal built-in function. Presumably, if Erin is proposing removing it, there is a way of doing that, but it might not be that easy. I don't know, I don't speak Drupal.
I would sorely miss the hit counter or any equivalent should they be removed. If someone comes to the site to read, then I would agree that hits are immaterial. For writers, though, it can be a useful tool.
Penny
A Hit May Not Equal a Read
I have been told that many of what appear to be hits on my old stories are really bots, who never leave opinions or kudos. Often, in the past, I have had days where almost all of my old stories, over 100, each received a hit. The odds of those all being humans is quite low.
My apologies to all AI, in case you're close to a takeover.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
"I'll be bach" why not Mozart?
Heck Jill,I'll even take AI hits !
Karen
Hits
Jill I agree only if recording hits and kudos are overtaxing the site, however, the reads give me an indicator of how well I'm doing with telling an entertaining story. I have my base, and if that drops, I need to change. The amount of reads isn't as important as kudos though.
Erin feels the site can handle it, that's good enough for me.
Karen
Never a famous writer?
We write and publish for a variety of reasons, and I'll flatly admit that my first stories were about "expressing my pain". The experience at first was quite therapeutic. Somewhere along the line I began to suppose that there was more to the stories than just that, perhaps talent even?
Historically, my hits, kudos, and comments have been low and I've felt hurt. Inexplicably, there is a small circle of readers who really seem to enjoy my stories. The rest of the readers seem to simply ignore, without comment, whatever I write. I don't even seem to get bad comments, and that is a blessing perhaps. I've tried to soothe myself by rationalizing that my stories simply do not fit the larger readership demographics. And both my devotees have alluded to the idea that my stories are informative and educational, but I have not understood what interests the other readers. Until recently, I've not seen stories that people masturbate by. There have been numbers of them that express adolescent aggression fantasies.
In the future, I'll likely simply turn all that off, and try not to think of it.
I'm in the "hits are meaningless" camp
I think I was that "someone" a few days ago ;-)
I'm in the "hits are meaningless" camp. I won't rehash the reasons why.
But whatever Erin decides is best for the site is good for me.
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
As a writer hits are a feedback that many of us need.
The kudos and comments are much welcomed too! If it's needed to keep the site up, stop them, but I'd like to see them continue for author satisfaction.
Boys will be girls... if they're lucky!
Jennifer Sue
If you're looking for feature requests....
with regards to stories, I would love a star rating system and a way of using that to search and sort out the stories.
Tried that
Cabals formed to lo-ball stories. No thanks. The Kudos software has a star system variant and we are not going to use it.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
If I went by the Total Hit
If I went by the Total Hit count I'd not be publishing any more chapters of my current story, "Tommy." The first chapter has 5,600+ hits, and the last 4 chapters have less than 1,000 each. Meanless? Yes
The Kudos, on the other hand, started out high with the first chapter currently having 231 and the later chapters averaging about 140. That's cool. It means that I'm doing a fairly good job.
The comments haven't been bad, in fact, that's what's kept me writing. I've received a few comments on each chapter and even some PMs. I even get some comments from "Guest Reader", and they started appearing after I started adding instructions on how they can sign on and leave comments.
To me, comments mean the most followed by the Kudos.
Erin, as always it's your call.
Teddie
Stars
The Hit Count/Kudo ratio interests me. Do people not push the kudo button because they didn't like it, didn't finish it, or were apathetic? Who knows? But if there was a star rating, I could then determine that some readers who didn't give me a kudo did so because they absolutely didn't like it. Of course, putting a star system will inevitably lead to authors being crushed when they are given low stars deserved or not. What I do notice about the hit counter is that when I put out a sequel, the original story gets a sudden uptick in hits which is nice.
See note above
There's a reason we don't have a star rating here. I'm not going to have authors quitting because six or eight people get together to lo-ball all stories that do not meet some arbitrary criteria.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Hit count/Kudo ratio
You can only kudo a chapter once, whether that's when you first read it or later. Any future reference to that chapter will increase the hit count, though.
That includes going back to re-read the chapter, or more likely, going back to read new comments. If you have commented on that chapter then your 'track' function will alert you when someone else comments as well. One or more of those might be a reply to your comment; I have seen long conversations carried on on some of my chapters, the highest being 133 comments on SEE Epilogue 1.
Hit counts per se don't really tell you how many people read your chapter. What they do do is tell you if there is continued traffic to that posting.
Penny
Started to Write This Before...
...but figured that serial writers already knew it. Total hits generally go down the longer a story continues, for several reasons. Among them:
- Some people go back to re-read previous chapters when a new one appears, raising the old numbers.
- Some people who read the early chapters (especially the first one) decide the story isn't for them and don't continue.
- Some people leave the site, or no longer check in regularly and don't want to spend their now-limited time trying to catch up on a multipart story.
- Many of the new visitors who replace them see Chapter 32 (or 3200!) of a story and decide it's more time and trouble than it's worth to them to start from scratch and catch up, so they skip the story.
So your drop in hit count isn't meaningless, but it's pretty normal and not unexpected.
Eric