There are many very accomplished writers who have posted works here in years past; however, their works languish under layers of dust, and are relegated to the seldom accessed stacks. Our membership has increased greatly over recent years, and tastes of the readership have changed quite a bit. The stories with a few exceptions are leaning towards themes that are reflected in younger society in general. Vampires, gothic adventure, super heros seem to dominate the contributions. A few authors are still successfully contributing closer to real life stories; however, they seem to be in the minority.

A great resource of excellent writing exists in the relatively inaccessible coffers of this site. When some very needed changes were made to the site, several systems changed, and one was the voting/kudos system. Stories that had accumulated a fair amount of votes suddenly had to start over. It is now possible to see under each author the number of kudos they have received. I imagine that vote totals are one of the things that attract readers to a particular author or story. Some daily entries accumulate more kudos than a 40 chapter novel apparently received during its entire posting history. Some early authors have apparently accumulated fewer kudos over their entire posting history of many stories than one newer serial has received.

An example, ignore the assumption that I just may be an inferior writer, my latest story consisting of six posting I believe has received nearly 400 kudos. The first posting received over 60, as did the second. I thought the story was good; however, I think several of the previous stories in the series were equal to it or better. They didn't receive a quarter of the kudos. What happened? They system changed and the readership has increased and changed profile a bit as well, I imagine.

How do we get the newer readers to go back and read some of the excellent stories languishing in the achieves? Random singles works a bit. At least for the single entry stories; however, there is no way to direct readers to the longer multi-posted novels and serials that deserve attention. Short of the authors going through the tedious process of reposting their stories, I don't see any way to do it. Some of these authors are deceased, and their stories merit readership attention. Other than inadvertently stumbling onto a story, most of their stories are going unread.

I feel, and have some pretty good evidence, that many newer readers have no idea what a treasure house we have here. We've led them to the water. Where do they go from there?

Portia