I just went on to the new stories, last check there are 5 slots but they are only showing 3 stories… last check 
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This whole ranking thing is getting crazy. The high stories go the bottom and the lower ones go high. Of course there is a pattern and it’s easy to understand the bug but why it’s still happening is the question. I have been writing for almost two years and this has ALWAYS happened but never ever this bad. These glitches just won’t go away. 
And it’s causing some serious and unwanted tension so let’s just fix this quickly, s’il vous plait. Merci! 
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I read it started with a bra, ran into a glitch in chapter 15 I think… was reverted all the way back to episode 3 and was like “nope, nope, nope” next
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should trending rank be high or be low? that I am not understanding at all…… and what is the trending user rank exactly, how many people are reading your story? finding it? or ?
I should’ve added fudgity fudge that… 
Yeah, that’s my bad. Techinally, you want a low Trending Rank but I say high cause your high on the leaderboard in my head. When I say high, I mean numbers like 1, 15, or 100 (which you’d say are low numbers). The Trending Rank is all the genre boards combined together in order. It’s a combination of every single story the Episode Community has it’s ranked by the likes you get and how many readers. You can scroll through it and find every single story ever but it’d take a long long long long time Me in particular, my storys all together have been read over a million times (I have 4) and for one of my stories, CSI, it’s Trending Rank is 307 (which is good I guess) but with this glitch it’s like 5000 something or worse now. I can’t even look. Finding is the hard part with the Trending Rank. The small authors can never be found there and it SUCKS! It’s not fair to them. They have that small “New Stories” bar underneath trending but it’s pathetic. Only 3 stories out of hundreds (maybe thousands) show up there and it’s not fair.
Sorry that’s super long. I hope I answered what you were asking
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no worries about length lol, yeah my story which is ranking 78 today is trending user rank 246… but I have seen that jump all over the place before the update, so I never knew what it really meant. thanks for the explanation.
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I know you guys stated that the ranking section would not be affected, but that’s not remotely true. Your researcher was clearly wrong. If the system was the same as before, the ranks would be the same as before. Right now there are numerous stories with 100 - 25K reads ranked VERY highly and that is not reasonable nor logical. There is simply NO way all those stories receive collectively more reads in a 24-hour interval than some of the originally trending stories. There is absolutely no way a story with 100 reads obtains more reads than my story and many others, lol. It just makes no sense. A lot of those stories have never been up there and some of them haven’t even updated in a while. You guys mentioned your intentions for this new system were due to the old one glitching. Rather than implementing a new system that hurts and demotivates others, why don’t you just fix the “glitches” the old one had? Because frankly, none of us noticed a major problem with the previous ranking method. If something was up, us authors would know. Just like we know now that the current system is absolutely ludicrous. Also, in regards to the solution you provided to new stories having to wait 48 hours: the new stories trending section is the most inconsistent system ever that makes absolutely no sense. Most readers don’t even look there or are aware of it’s existence, so how is it a help? I hope you guys take the time to address this issue and provide a proper solution. Thank you.
Best,
Sai Keyhart
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Warning ahead: this is my personal opinion and my personal two cents on the update.
Clearly everyone is upset because they either think that now your reads are calculated not in a time frame of hours but days which makes a significant difference as this causes fewer in-between updates of your rank or how certain stories used to be Trending (Top 20 or highter) for over ten months but now suddenly got pushed all the way down to, like, rank 100 or below. I mean, I’ll admit the new system is a bit odd and Episode has yet to explain its precise algorithm but isn’t this exactly what people have been asking for? We’re all so caught up by the amount of reads a certain story has but time and time fail to realize how Episode is all for rating on reader engagement. With this new system, I think they calculate our ranks based on how high our reader engagement was the past 24 hours. Before, the stories that simply got the most reads every now and then would be pushed up/go viral/trend high in the ranks. Now, they actually take the time to take into account not just how many people read your story but also how many of those actually continued reading and read until the most recent chapter you have published. This is a theory, but to me it’s seems pretty legit based on the way Episode goes about things (like how they rate the contest entries for example).
To explain and elaborate on this for those who still don’t see the link between those points:
This whole community used to complain about how the same bad boy, pregnancy, gang and mafia stories were flooding the Trending Section and the same Top 20 stories or so always remained there, not allowing other ‘hidden gems’ to ever get that same kind of exposure because they always get overshadowed by the SAME trending stories, with maybe the exception of a handful to ever steal one of those ranks every once in a while. Sure, most of them must have deserved that spot that’s not what I’m saying. But I think it’s only fair for those who simply have a brilliant story but never get the chance to get the same amount of exposure as those trending ones, unless they get featured on a shelf or something, to get the chance to actually rank high sometimes. You might think this is contradictory to the way the new system calculates those ranks but the way I see it it’s actually pretty obvious. Let’s say, a certain story has over 1M reads and is literally always trending (again, not saying the story doesn’t deserve the recognition it is getting or has gotten) you might want to think about WHY it is always trending. Yes, it might be because the author updates often and that is a point I’ve been taking into consideration. But I just scrolled through some stories that were trending and as I’ve read a good portion of those, I can confidently state that that is often not even the case. I see stories that have been trending for over half a year but have only been updated a few times in that period of time. So no, the reason isn’t just because they always work hard and update every other day. The most common reason is because they once trended, went viral and people started mass-reading that now it has become more of a rigid rank because every time someone goes into the trending section, they see that story and check it out. Simple, right? Now that spot is basically pretty much forever taken unless another story tops that viralness (and at most that said story will probably just drop down a few ranks and still be trending). When it comes to retention rate however, it doesn’t matter if that story has 1M reads or another 1K. With the new system, the story that has 1M reads and has been trending for a good portion of MONTHS, could easily drop down the ranks because, let’s say, 40% of those readers just read the first (few) episodes out of curiosity (because it is trending at the end of the day) and then moved on because they decided it wasn’t for them. That means they have accumulated a lot of reads but not all of those readers continued reading. Put that side by side with the story that has 1K reads but with a retention rate of 80%, that story ranks much higher because more people continued reading.
Episode has applied this system, I think, because so many people always complain that the same stories are trending and in the top ranks. Retention rate, as we all (should) know, statistically tells more about the quality of a story and quantity is less of an important factor. It might not be the IDEAL and perfect way to rate and such, but it is much more fair in the long run for sure.
Can you honestly tell me that you do not see a more diverse range of stories now ESPECIALLY in the Romance genre section that was previously swamped with, well, the usual bad boys, billionaire and pregnancy stories?That, like someone told me, you suddenly weren’t assaulted by weird horny covers? In the Fantasy genre section, I suddenly saw stories like Dripping Mascara and Betrothed who, sure, have a lot of reads but what’s the most important factor here is that they have a super loyal reader base. Their readers are so invested in those stories that they read every chapter and beyond (don’t take this too literally, you get the point). Those are the type of stories (I hope) Episode is now trying to shed more light onto and give small authors a chance too. No, I’m not saying the authors of DM and Betrothed are small authors in any way but they are a good example of what is quality work that should be showcased instead. In addition, I saw a lot of stories that I had never seen before but from their description I could already tell most of them were decent stories at least (with proper grammar).
I have always found the argument about how the new system works it’s bad for smaller or newer authors very unjust. Because it’s not. The opposite, even. I feel like a lot of authors who always trend high are being the most affected by this because 1) they dropped down when they haven’t in sooo long which I get is upsetting, but don’t rain on others’ parades as a result 2) they earn less money because of it which is simply an effect of dropping down in ranks and I’m not going to justify your need to always rank high just because you need to pay your rent with that money, you chose your job as a freelancer so these are the risks 3) they were the first ones to speak out and really heavily complain about the new system, claiming it’s bad for smaller authors too when they were the ones overshadowing those smaller authors…? 4) and now everyone has jumped on the ranting bandwagon just because they were actually told the new ranks are hurting ‘literally everyone’ (spoiler: they are not). I mean, think about it, if the new system would indeed hurt literally everyone, then who else remains and what’s in it for Episode lol. Surely there are people profiting from this, and it’s the ones that
gasp haven’t been trending for ages. This is in no way an attempt to degrade or miscredit all trending authors for their hard work. I once was a trending/featured author myself but even I could see (even though it took a while for me to fully realize) the privelege I had when it came to endless exposure, blinding me by having me think my story deserved that spot purely because of its quality when I did not necessarily. I just hope we can all agree on the idea of more diversity in ranks. <-- not diversity as in the amount of times the rankings get refreshed every day, but the variety of stories that trend high. Whether that be every hour or every day, the point is that more stories are getting that kind of exposure.
Lastly, I do want to address a particular flaw the old system had. I have discussed this with another author before and today we saw it come forward clearly. I can’t tell you enough how many authors actually abuse the way the old trending system worked. Great, so we all found the secret to getting the most reads and I mean THE MOST reads by applying certain methods. These are not necessarily but can include writing about the same damn thing any other trending author is writing about, overly sexy covers that sometimes get close to eye pornography or you name it. I get that it has become a popular method for authors to make a lot of money off their stories. But I think Episode is trying to change that. Even if it will be a small change, I feel like with the new system their intentions have been good. Again, I can’t stress enough how certain authors would pretend they posted an empty chapter by ‘accident’ or literally make their chapters 300 lines short just to get reads and rise in ranks. Now they can’t and those are the same authors getting mad. Reminder: not talking about anyone in specific or stereotyping ALL trending authors - just observation from certain stories.
PS: I am open for debate and other opinions, but I’m not digging a fight. So don’t come at me with your sassy responses and let’s stay civil.
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See, my understanding of the new system is that the calculation happens exactly as it did before except once a day rather that frequently. I didn’t pick up anything about retention having anything to do with the ranks? And I really do think that the current ranks are glitches. The ranks of my own stories are too weird and don’t seem to support the retention theory either.
But if that’s the case, it would be nice to get some clarification.
For the record- I don’t think the “old system” was perfect or anything but my understanding is that nothing has actually changed with the calculation except the frequency.
If that’s not correct, I think it should definitely be clarified!
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Great explanation. I applaud 
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I agree with this 100%.
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Gosh, why the heck did I sound so sarcastic with that comment?
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Of course I can’t tell you exactly how they calculate stuff, no one but Episode themselves can so just like you I’m still waiting for that explanation. At first, I thought so too. But then it wouldn’t make sense why stories have shifted so tremendously much in ranks just because it got updated a day instead of a couple of times a day. Like, if a certain story has been trending for months, it wouldn’t matter if they refreshed the ranks multiple times a day or just once you know? That’s why I think they actually changed up the system a bit, like entirely. But again, I too am still waiting for an elaboration on this whole thing. The new system definitely has its flaws and I think it is just having a few issues because it’s like new. Still, I think people are getting way ahead of themselves and assuming things that are not even true. I think we should all wait it out at least 5 working days to see if anything changes accordingly 
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I agree. This makes sense.
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You know what? I think it’s great that these stories are being ranked high! Other authors deserve to be seen and their stories read too. Not just the ones that already have thousands and millions of reads! This glitch, even if it’s just for today, is amazing in my opinion.
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Lmao the triple handclap makes it a tiiiny bit suspicious.
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Yeah but I meant what I said. It was a nice explanation.
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I legitimately think it’s a glitch but I guess we’ll find out in a few days. 
Or at least on Monday when people go back to work.
Similar glitches have occurred before where really old stories suddenly come out of nowhere and start trending again but then those glitches usually get rectified in a few hours (although sometimes it does take a day or so longer). But if the trending section is only getting refreshed once a day now, it would probably take longer for any glitches to be fixed?
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Hi there! I think you brought up some very good points, and it would be wonderful to have a diverse range of stories for sure! I believe the original intention was good, but the execution of it might be flawed.
I’ve recently published my first story ever with the College Days contest, and by some miracle, I was on the shelf 
Which I’m so thankful for! But since the shelf has released, my reads have increased by about 15k (
), but my ranking has dropped from the #1500s (#300s Drama) to #3000s (#800s Drama). Now I feel either it’s glitching for me (plus others) or people are reading my first chapter and stopping (if reader retention is calculated). I personally hope it’s the 1st one. 
I have the privilege of being on the shelf, so I’m already very happy about that! But I just wanted to mention my own experience with it. 
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