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I wonder whether there's any chance of enabling a sort by Kudos on the My Stories page?
For me, this is the most important order - ie which of my stories are popular and which are not - but paradoxically, it's the only column which can't be sorted! It's by examining Kudos counts that I can really tune in to what readers most enjoy.
Until recently, my SIGHS series were the most popular of all my dozens of stories - and it was only after receiving my highest number of Kudos ever for the first story set at SIGHS that I decided to write several more stories with the same theme. Now that has been surpassed by another type of story. Hmm. Where to go now?
Any chance? Or is there some technicality which prevents it?
Charlotte
Comments
Sorting by Kudos
So far, I have not figured out how to make sorting by Kudos work without making it impossible to sort the columns by anything else. Kudos are actually what is called a widget, not just a stored value, so they behave differently than other fields. Sorry, perhaps a future update will add this capability.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Star rating system?
I am sure this is a big ask and may be difficult to implement if not impossible. But how about having a star rating system such as used in Amazon for stories (at story level - not chapter)? And for this to be accessible as a sorted list linked to from the home page?
The reason Amazon can do this
The reason Amazon can do this, is because they have people policing ratings, and while not always perfect, they have such volume that the system works.
When similar rating systems have been implemented on BC in the past, it lead to fighting and many users going in and "down voting" stories by authors they don't like, and creating many many "sock" accounts to do down voting with. The Kudos Widget is the best solution we've been able to come up with as a happy medium. You can vote UP or not vote, but you CAN NOT vote down.
-Piper
It would be highly inaccurate.
Older stories tend to have less kudos/thumbs up/etc. simply due to being from the times before the system was implemented. This means that, unless you set an arbitrary date for when Kudos start to matter, you'll be likely ignoring some very good stories in favor of others that simply were in the right place at the right time.
Personally I find comments to be the best way to judge how well a story is received, and no, not the number, but the content. BC is one of those rare sites where the user-base will reliably let you know if they like your story or not, so why not use that?
Melanie E.
Actually, it's far more accurate!
Obviously, you can't compare stories written before the kudos system was introduced, but that was several years ago.
But far more readers give kudos than write a comment. Indeed, comments tend to come from a relatively small percentage of readers so if you only listen to comments, you're not hearing the silent majority. Statistically, you will get more accurate results from a much larger sample of readers.
Paradoxically (that's twice I've used that word in this blog!), I received probably my most negative comment in the very story which had the highest kudos rating, and subsequently caused me to start a series of stories with the same theme, and which until recently has gone on to generate my highest kudos ratings. If I'd only listened to comments, I'd have given up on that theme.
Positive comments are nice, but to get an objective feedback, kudos are far better.
But Kudos/thumbs up are FAR from objective :P
It's a positive-only form of feedback. Yes, there are reasons for that, but it really is, at least to me, a borderline worthless measure of a story's value, since it does little if nothing to tell you WHY people do or do not like a story.
*shrug*
Maybe it's just a difference in the type of feedback you're looking for. I'd rather have a few people give me more varied, usable feedback rather than a lot of people giving me generic, positive-only feedback. Plus, again, the time thing on when the currently-counted votes/kudos/thumbs thing is applicable messes it up for me. I've been posting to the site going on eight years now, so only about half of my stories -- if that many -- have anywhere near reliable kudo/vote/thumb counts for how popular they were, are, or could be.
If the vote/kudo/thumb stuff works for you, than good on ya. For me, though, I value comments or, to a lesser extent, hits far more.
Melanie E.