*Puzzled Expression* · 8:26pm Feb 20th, 2014
So... I thought I understood how the three update slots in the Featured Box worked. I thought that whenever a story that met a certain minimum threshold of likes and favs got a new chapter, it would go in one of those update slots. That's why those bottom three slots have a quicker turnover than the rest of the box.
But there must be something I'm missing. I put up a new chapter of Bitter Harvest today, and expected it to enjoy a brief 5-minute jaunt to the part of the Box that nobody pays attention to anyway. But it did not. And it can't be that it doesn't have enough likes or favs to qualify, because there's currently two stories there--some kind of HiE story and something about Nightmare Moon--that are much lower-rated than Bitter Harvest.
I'm not complaining. I am very pleased with the reception my story has gotten, and honestly the update slots in the Featured Box never net a story very many additional viewers anyway. Not like making one of the real slots would. But I am puzzled, because I thought I had understood the criteria for those update slots. I can't seem to figure out what would make them behave in that particular way. Is it... is it on a timer, maybe? After a set amount of time, it just grabs the highest-rated fic off the Latest Updates pile?
Anyway. In other news, we are halfway through Bitter Harvest. If you haven't read it yet, maybe you should. I hear that some people really sorta kinda like it.
And if you have read it, and think, as I do, that Golden Harvest is a pretty swell pony, perhaps you would be interested to know there is a group for her. After all, who doesn't like carrots?
Next chapter will be posted on Tuesday. Til then, I hope you all have a lovely time!
I fucking like carrots, that's who.
I mean... um...
Right. So, I guess the only one who can REALLY explain how that mysterious box works is the guy who programmed it. The rest of us remained confused and a bit itchy.
Now, as I understand, it has nothing to do with your current likes or views. The same reason why stories with extremely high likes and views and faves do not stick around in the 'popular fics' list on the right. It's all about that mysterious thing called heat.
A fic gains heat through a number of things -- favourites, reads, likes, comments and people wanking off furiously to it if it happens to be clop.
A fic loses heat naturally over time, and is sped up by thumbs downeseseses.
The fics, both for recent updates AND for new fics, stay in the box due to this 'heat'. It drops off as others get more attention, and it eventually wanes, like the petals of a spring flower and drops to the popular fic box. Then later a cow comes along and eats it and it fuckin' dies forever and goes into the archives where no one will ever see it again.
Oft times, you'll notice that when a popular fic is posted, if it has an 'original fic' or some kind of spin off, that suddenly can jump into the popular box too. It'll never hit the FEATURE box, because those aren't NEW, and they themselves haven't been updated, but heat is what brings it back into 'popularity'.
So for these chapter updates and the bottom 3 slots, after a certain time has passed, heat returns to 0, and all fics that require updating, regardless of thumbs or comments or faves, will have to fight AGAIN to make it into those three slots. The churn for these three slots are a LOT faster than the others because, well, more competition and fewer slots, but yeah. In essence, what gets a fic into those slots is rabid fanboyism jumping on your story immediately as the new chapter is released, and like 50 people going "OMGGG LULZ" and posting gifs of frogs in the comments.
I might be wrong, so if someone would like to correct me, by all means. But I believe this is how it works.
Also, be wary that you can only enter the feature box once every 24 hours. There is a roll-over cooldown thingie, One or the other, but I don't know when that is.
I can't say I know how exactly a story makes it to the elusive feature box but I think this could make it there soon. Story just needs a bit more attention, not just to get featured but because people need to see it's awesomeness.
The update slots, as I understand it, are for two kinds of stories: stories older than the most recent revision (or some arbitrary date that I don't know) to the feature box, and stories that didn't get featured initially.
It has to do with the speed the story gets the likes, the ratio of them, since one dislike is the equivalent of like, four likes or something. It literally takes all the fics of that day, pairs then against each other and sees which ones are gaining the thumbs blah blah blah faster. Or at least, that is what I was taught. I may very well be wrong.
As far as I know, any previously featured fic goes there when it updates with a chapter over a certain length.
However, it can get bumped out almost immediately if several former features update at once.
Of course I could be wrong. Knighty aint spillin.
1857544 The thing with Nightmare Moon only had 41 upvotes on it, so I doubt it was ever previously featured. And I've had Teatime Visit and Z-Clop hit the update slots every time I've put up a new chapter for them, but they never touched the regular slots when they were launched.
*shrug*
Like I said, it isn't a whole lot of skin off my back. It just seems really inconsistent.
1857595 I myself have this same issue...
Lemme share something with you.
No response since then.
1857635 Hmm. Maybe having a longer time since the last update increases the odds of featuring? That would explain why it tends to be older stories, since they necessarily tend to have longer periods of time between updates than newer stories if they're updating at the same time.
I suppose there would be a certain amount of sense in making that a factor, since if a story has been off the front page for a while, it can benefit from the extra exposure more than a story that updates every week can. It might explain why the issue of non-story chapters was such a big deal, since those tended to happen mostly on fics that hadn't updated in a while, inflating the number of stories hitting the Box with non-content updates.
If it does work like that, though, it's kinda a disincentive against finishing a story before posting it.
its all about the ratio, man.. like.. the ratio!
If it's any help, my story Sideboard of Harmony always seems to make it onto the lower three slots when it updates. As of this writing, it has 120 likes, 8 dislikes, 212 comments, and 2,094 views. It was also first published almost two years ago, which should put some of those numbers into perspective.
1857635 1857665
As a further data point: my current story Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder, publishing once a week with almost 700 upvotes, featureboxed when it first posted, and not a single one of its updates since has been in the bottom three slots, not even for a moment. It's regularly getting 1000+ reads and ~50 comments with each new chapter.
My story Princess Luna Picks Up Hitchhikers, which never originally featureboxed, posted a new chapter after 7 months and immediately shot to slot #8 and stayed there for almost a full day. (That was 6 months ago. I haven't updated since.
)
I think I've seen stories in the Bottom Three that featureboxed originally (Starlight Over Detrot comes to mind). I know I've seen the same story in the Bottom Three more than once (Starlight Over Detrot).
My best guess is that it weights positively based on time since last update, and probably weights positively based on accumulated upvotes since then.
1857965
Also worth noting: Hard Reset 2's longest chapter so far has been 5,715 words. The update that put Hitchhikers in the bottom-box was 6,277. It's possible that there's a cutoff at 6k words?
(Starlight over Detrot's chapters are universally 8k+.)
Hey 1857878, what are the chapter lengths on Sideboard of Harmony that made it bottom-box? Are there any SoH chapters which didn't, and how long were they?
1857981 I can guarantee there isn't. I got featured on I Love to See You Smile for an epilogue of less than 300 words which was just done as a bridger chapter to the main story.
Oh, and Obs responded.
1857965 Oh, also, I am noting the stories that did bottom feature are below story ID 70,000, and your hard reset sequel did not refeature.
1857665
Yes. I can confirm this through personal experience. Newer stories rarely get into the update section of the feature box. It's almost always older stories.
1857981
The shortest one that I'm certain made the feature box came in at 3,006 words, though it was published concurrently with a 1,028 word chapter.
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1857665
That's pretty interesting. Thanks for posting that, Steel. Somehow, I feel that probably Knighty just doesn't want to say what powers it, and we're guessing based on nothing.
I can tell you, though, that from experience, waiting longer did not help one of my stories.
I have updated one of my long-fics 3 times in its publication history (not counting the first). Now, one thing of note is that it has NEVER been in the feature box for the initial pub. It was barely in the popular fics box either.
The first update, it was never in the feature box. The second update came about a month after the first, and it actually hit the very bottom slot of the feature box for about... 4 minutes. Then the third update was about HALF A YEAR after, and it didn't feature once again.
Surely it had more thumbs (and a better 'rating') during the 3rd update than the 2nd, and it was a LOT longer in terms of how long had passed between updates.
Based on this, at least, it seems that we can't really say that Knighty is wrong, but we can surely say that there's more to it than just 'rating' and 'time between posting'.
I do remember the time when stories didn't use heat at all to get up into the box, but I can't really remember the details. I do remember it being a bit weird, and very easy to game, (Not to say the current system isn't weird and easy to game, but this is because people know the rules).
Perhaps some things are meant to be a mystery.
Perhaps there's a very fair system in place, and all that's happening is that the AMOUNT and SPEED of updates just overwhelms the system, so when the site 'ticks over', it actually skips past some fics that should have been there in the first place.
Perhaps it's actually broken, and Knighty just didn't really want to bother because of the inherent flaws in the feature box system in the first place.
Perhaps it's controlled by giant space-age squid beasts.
Only one person knows, and it seems like he isn't willing to give up the goat.
Point is, though, maybe it's not that important. Good fics are good fics, and bad is bad. The feature box has never been a good indication of what is 'good' or 'bad'. I've seen great stuff get generally ignored DESPITE being in the box, and I've seen absolute crap get rocketed up to the top because people generally like a soft chuckle and a box of popcorn over 2 hours with something deep, insightful and challenging.
Although personally, I still think posting loads of gifs of frogs helps because of cosmic heat karma.
P.S.
Just to make it absolutely clear - I do not mean it in a bad way to suggest that people are not being completely forthcoming with their data. Knighty has a perfectly good reason for not telling us how things work, especially in the fact that he was honest about it twice (for the regular slots) and people abused the shit out of it and played the game. So, yeah. I think that he isn't giving the whole picture. And I think that's perfectly fine, and actually quite smart.
1858675
Certainly, no one here is arguing that being in the Featured Box means that a fic is any good, nor the reverse. But it does hold a certain psychological value, regardless. We are irrational creatures, and it gives us a certain vindication to say that the arbitrary number machine picked our story to put up on the front page in flashing lights.
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Yes, the sleepless nights. The anxiety. How we've all had them.
Alright, let me be more direct. Your fic is really good. Don't worry about it not being in the feature box. It'd be nice if it had more views and more likes and more readers. But that applies to everything. I mean, shit. I struggle daily that the fic I put in the most work into and the one that everyone I know likes the best is the one that others basically use as toilet paper while reading a fic about robot dinosaurs crossing over with naruto and some ponies while on the can.
But yeah. Your fic is really good, and people like it, and I like it a lot. So while this is true, that the feature box is this thing that can either cause amazing elation or bouts of depression, it doesn't affect the fact that you wrote something good and the box isn't a reflection of it.
I guess that's what I wanted to say. I'm sorry if it's a bit too frank.
I just really hate it, for myself and others, when a writer has to feel bad because of these 'arbitrary numbers' that... in the end, we're all affected by. No one should have to feel that way and it suuucks that people do.
Now I'm raging.
Against the machine.
Against the powers. Against the world.
#Raaaeeeegggggggggg
The Featured Box works in mysterious ways. It's not wise to try to unravel its inner secrets too closely, lest you drive yourself mad.