After following many discussions on the forum about the scoring system, it became evident that everybody notices that serial stories tend to score higher than single shot stories for various reasons. The most obvious reason for this trend is that those who do follow serial stories tend to be those who like them to begin with, so they will definitely score them higher.
Due to this fundamental difference in reader behaviour, it makes it unfair to compare single stories’ scores to serial stories’ scores when weighing each story’s score.
The change that I’ve decided to make to the weighing formula is to make it aware of the story’s serial status.
So the system will have two separate medians for the each scoring period. One for single shot stories and one for serial stories last updated in this time period.
I’ve tested this change already in the development environment and one thing became clear: serial stories’ scores will drop after this change and single shot stories’ scores will rise after the change.
I believe this change will make for a weighing forumla that is more fair for single shot stories that don’t benefit from inherent reader bias.
Although my mind is kind of set on making this change, I thought I would get your opinion about it first.
Please use the form below to voice your opinion.
Update: Before you post telling me that longer stories are better, this algorithm change isn’t about Long vs. Short. This is Serially posted stories vs stories (long and short) posted in a single shot. This isn’t about giving advantage to short stories, this is about removing formula bias against stories (Long and Short) posted in one shot. The change in algorithm does not look at the story’s length, it only looks at whether the story is posted in one shot or over time.
Update 2: Since most replies were negative, I cancelled the change.