Story number limits

[Ginger Herten]

I know we have visited this subject before, but I think it is worth discussing again.

Currently there are 13 “stories” by one single author on the main page.

10 of the stories, are actually just the chapters of a single story. Now I have published in chapters myself plenty of times, but when I have they’ve been long chapters and I spread them out publishing as I finished them over weeks. These are 10 short chapters each just a few paragraphs, and all put up the same day, there is no reason they should not have been posted as a single story.

I did consider going in and removing as a moderator, but on a cursory glance it they don’t seem to be a bad story, and editing the entire thing into a single story seems more than just a little heavy handed (not to mention a LOT of work.)

If there was a simple limit on number of stories per day it would motivate authors to publish single stories as single stories. Plus just keep the main page with a diverse range of authors.

[f35h]

Makes sense to me, on all counts. Personally, I’d set it at one story per day. I don’t see that anyone can write faster than that, and still give stories the care and attention they deserve.

Of course, if you’re not writing them yourself, but getting AI to do it, then it’s easy to make them faster than that, but in that case, a little restraint doesn’t seem like a bad thing.

[wozziewoo]

I concur. It’s even worse then originally posted. That same author now has 14 stories, all AI Written on the main page. There’s another author with 9, including 7 in a row. At least 2 other authors have 5, but they are a bit more spaced out & not nearly as egregious. I agree there should be some kind of limit, & maybe a bit of “quality control” although, I admit that’s probably much harder to enforce & is more subjective. The Main Page was recently lengthened to include more stories, but it is still rather difficult to find stories once they “fall off” the main page, especially if you don’t know to look for them. So “Spamming” the board, which is what I would call what’s happening, also isn’t fair to the other authors, & readers who want different perspectives.

Personally, I write ahead of time. I have about the next 5 or 6 chapters in my story already written. They just need editing. I could post them all at once but I don’t think that does anyone any good. So I space them out, so that people have something to look forward to & that I don’t crowd the page with the same story. I don’t know what kind of limit there should be, but I agree there should be something & maybe variety needs to be a factor as well.

[klaatu48]

I certainly wouldn’t object to a limit, but maybe add an explanation to the front page saying we appreciate everyone’s contribution, but limit it to one a day to lighten the load on servers (I have no idea if it’s true, but it sounds good) and to give every story a chance to get noticed?

[Hairfan30]

As someone who isn’t a writer but is a frequent reader I fully support a daily limit, especially with how quickly AI can pump stories out. We’re up to 16 AI stories on the main page from one author in four days.

I agree with wozziewoo’s concern about stories being pushed off the main with rapid posting. If this became a regular thing, stories that might sit there for a week or two might only be visible for a few days. Especially for unregistered users.

[anonymous user]

I definitely agree that there should be a story posting limit. I’m checking this site less often and now I don’t have time to read every story it is getting harder to find the good ones especially when some days there’s nothing posted and other there is like 20 and most are very short.

Ideally there could be better ways to look for stories but I know that’s very hard to implement. Normally I just read the new stories and check the author page on stories I like. I think if there was ‘recommended tags’ similar to the categories so you can click on them when posting a story and it creates a standard tag it might help site navigation. I don’t know how hard something like that would be to implement but I often find I’m wanting to sort by stuff other than the categories, like one-shot multi part short story long read etc.

[Twig]

I agree. I appreciate the people that take the time to post stories, but it is hard to find new stories sometimes when someone posts a bunch of new stories in a row and some of the stories posted by one author gets pushed way down or even to the next page.

[Shroudedone]

I think one a day may be too stringent,though…someone may join the site with several stories to publish,or have a series finally all set that have a reason for being separate stories but should still be made available together.

Can the number of stories on a display page be increased,either by admin or with a setting users can pick?

I tend to avoid anything “AI Written”.

[Marquis.d.ayre]

The number of stories is not the problem, if Jamfart decides to publish all his stories or Stacey decides to come back, they should be allowed to do so. However, too many ‘trash’ stories (likely written by AI) is killing it a bit for the good writers. For me it’s demotivating to write another story as it will get swamped by unreadable stories. It’s a tough problem to solve.

[Ginger Herten]

Sorry that I pop this up, then just ignored it for a couple of weeks. The last few weeks have been… Well, they’ve been.

ANYWAY…

I definitely wasn’t thinking 1, because as Marquis.d.ayre says, if Stacy came back and only had a day now and then to post stuff and wanted to post a few stories she’d been hanging onto, it would be good for her to be able to. I don’t remember Jamfarts…

I was thinking 3 was a pretty reasonable limit.

Quality is a lot harder to enforce, since it’s a matter of opinion.

Also I have found that my tolerance for quality varies by how well a story aligns to my taste. I will read a fairly poorly written story if it happens to be really similar to the stuff I fantasize about in a genre I enjoy. I will also read a really well crafted story that isn’t my exact taste, like there are some really good authors here I will read even though they frequently do full shaves, which isn’t my thing, just because the stories are good. But a lot of it falls on a spectrum, and I suspect my opinion about story quality is probably skewed by my taste.

I suppose there could be a thing where new authors can only post 1 story per day, but established authors who have crossed some threshold can post more. But I hate to make things more complicated.

[anonymous user]

It’s slightly off topic but I’ve seen quite a few people talking about quality control and thought I’d give my 2 cents.

As much as I find it annoying to try and find good stories I think we should be careful to try and make sure we aren’t discouraging new writers. I think me and quite a few writers fit into a category where most our stories wouldn’t pass a quality control but a few would. Also given a few authors whose stories I originally didn’t think where any good have got a lot better. I worry if we remove “bad stories” excluding obvious spam we will be discouraging writers from posting more and getting better.

Also looking back at it I think I a weird way the number of bad stories made it easier for me to post here. I appreciate that most the writers on this site started of posting in other places but as someone who’s not a confident writer (very bad dyslexia, some not great teachers and not being able to read or write for most my life does that) I like how low standards/pressure there is on this site. I don’t think I would have ever started writing if this site had quality control. Even though nearly all my stories haven’t been great I have atleast enjoyed writing them and being able to post bad stories and get feedback has made me a better writer.

I think the solution maybe if there’s a way to search most liked in the last 30 days so people who only read a few stories can find the best ones easier.

[Marquis.d.ayre]

Ah, Ginger, it’s normal that you don’t know Jamfart, don’t think his stories would interest you. He is the Godfather of the mature perm stories, main work is ‘Podash’, kinda an American version of F35H. (Also contributed with Karenbouf – British writer – who was one of the best story writers in the old days.

It is indeed a good idea to give certain, well established authors the possibility to post several stories at the same time. Though that would only be worthwhile if it were somebody posting a backlog of older material, good authors rarely have several stories to post, it requires editing and writing does take a long time if you want to do it correctly.

My main problem is that with all those stories, I rarely pick out any to read, so many. But then I usually cherry pick and only read my favourite authors 😉

[Ginger Herten]

Anonymous user, you are very very far from a bad writer. My one criticism is that since your nom’d plume is so generic I sometimes accidentally skip over your stories, because I forget you are you, if that makes any sense.

I’m sure, they probably have few spelling errors, or grammatical mistakes, but not to a degree that it makes them hard to read or takes one out of the story. I’m pretty sure that if I went to the trouble of looking though, I could find at least one error in every single story on this site, but I don’t go looking, because I don’t really care.

Readability, plot, details that paint a picture, and compelling characters are vastly more important than the stuff teachers always marked up with their red pens.

Professional authors all hand in manuscripts with typos, errors, and stuff, but then a professional editor (or even multiple editors) go through and fix those. And even after all that, it is not uncommon for an error or two to still be there in the published edition.

I’m lucky that I have had people offer to edit for me, though I try not to ask to often and drive anyone insane. Plus spell checker and grammar checker, help. Even here in the forum my computer has corrected me at least half a dozen times already.

So don’t sweat the small stuff, just keep writing.

[anonymous user]

Thanks, rereading my post it came across allot more self critical than I meant it but the point I was trying to make is I think if we remove stories for quality those writers probably won’t come back even if they write a good story later.

[klaatu48]

I agree that removing stories for quality reasons (except in egregious cases) would be a slippery slope. However, saying “You’re a newbie, so please only post X per day!” isn’t the same thing, I don’t think. Then when they hot 10 or 20 stories, maybe they go up to 3 a day (again, judging on quality could be slippery).

The purpose isn’t to discourage people from writing, but to make sure people aren’t discouraged from visiting the page because of a slew of stories from a single source taking over the front page. At least in my opinion.

[Author]

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