So far, 2012 has proven to be a productive year for SOL. We’ve introduced many big, user-oriented, changes. We replaced the library’s custom lists, types, and keywords with Tags. And we’ve added Story-Read flag and Flagged-story flag. All good and dandy.
But, that was all reader stuff; what about authors?
Well, I’m pleased to report that the site’s income has risen sufficiently to cover costs and a reserve fund for emergencies and future hardware upgrades and a bit more.
So, I’ve decided to share some of the excess income with authors. However, due to how small the actual amount is, it’s not possible to pay everybody. Well, we can pay everybody, but I don’t think few pennies a month would make much difference to anybody.
So, I’ve decided to institute a monthly prize for stories posted for free here on the site. There will be separate prizes for short stories and long serials.
I haven’t hammered out all the rules for eligibility yet, but that will come later.
However, while thinking about the rules, few issues stood in the way and they need addressing before anything can move forward. Those issues will affect how things work now, and the changes needed to fix those issue will affect authors generally. There are other issues that I want to address with the site.
Winners of the monthly prizes will be decided by reader votes and downloads. That creates a problem with long serials.
Authors’ ability to turn off voting when they feel like has always given authors the means to manipulate their scores in a way. Turning off scoring on a serial from the start until almost the end or until posting the final chapter always ensured that the serial will score high. After all who would vote then other than those who stuck with the serial? And how likely would it be for somebody to stick with a serial for a while and then at the end give it a low score? This makes it unfair to those authors who keep voting always on for their serials.
So, to solve this issue, I need to make a choice:
1 – Take away authors’ ability to change voting. Voting stays on for all stories.
2 – Mark a story as permanently ineligible any time its author changes its voting status to none.
Another issue is download counts. Currently, download counts are cumulative and that gives a big boost to stories with frequent updates, no matter how small the updates are or how frequent they are.
There is a simple solution for this. Divide the total download count for every serial by the number of instalments made to post the whole thing. It’s easily doable as the site keeps track of each individual part, and it’s easy to count how many instalments the author made. So when I make the change, download counts will change dramatically from what they are now.
Another issue that will affect some authors this year: Serials that lapse into ‘incomplete and inactive’ status will stop counting towards premier status.
One thing that will probably change on the site too is TPA voting. So far, from what I can see looking at the large set of data that has accumulated over the last 5 years, is that TPA voting is effectively useless. The vast majority of readers using the TPA are not even qualified to use it. There are some who definitely are qualified, but the 1% qualified to use it is usually ridiculously overshadowed by those who aren’t.
I put in some safeguards into the TPA, like automatic banning from using for anybody who casts mostly identical scores. Like casting 10.10.10 or 9.9.9 or 8.8.8, basically using the TPA as a glorified basic voting system. The percentage of users banned was surprising.
So, I’ll probably remove the TPA system from the site and keep the basic one only.
I’m open to your thoughts on these issues. If I encounter other issues while making the changes and hammering out the rules, I’ll update this post.
