Update to Story Ranking and Trending Section Calculations

Announcements! Writer's Portal Updates
550

They are complaining about income yet from the strike, they are gonna lose it.

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551

Exactly.

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552

The bottom line is that this is, more than anything, a way for Episode to cut costs. Their server can’t take the software, but instead of improving the server to match, Episode is downgrading their own software. It’s cheap as hell.

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553

:skull:

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554

I mean we can’t help what happens with any algorithms, and the top authors have definitely worked hard to get there- but you are spot on in mentioning how quickly and abruptly alot of the authors have reacted; as a reader, that’s my main problem here.

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555

Conspircy, episode may have done this to make it harder for people to unlock the payment system.

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556

Oh!! I’d also like to address the situation with new stories and new authors. With their story not being placed in the ranks until 48 hours, mobility is very difficult for newer authors, which was easier with the old system. With stories moving up every hour, it was much simpler for readers to be exposed to newer stories. However, that’s not the case anymore. I personally believe it’ll be difficult for newer authors to move up and get recognition because the only people who will read their freshly published story in that 48-hour interval is the people they shared it with! Thus, their story is completely screwed when it’s moved to the trending section. Authors with more followers will have an extra help because they can simply share it with their followers. I don’t know, it makes me sad. How do you guys feel about this issue? Please feel free to share your opinions!

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557

Let’s hope that’s not true, lol.

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558

You should go read my original post
it might help you with your insight
:confused:

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559

YES. YES. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING! You have a good point.

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560

I want to put it out there:

Every single person who has written a story on Episode works hard, and every single one of us deserves the same opportunities to be trending. This new update is robbing many people of their opportunity to trend and Episode doesn’t care because they care more about their featured stories than anything else, anyway.

I mean, if they really cared about the non-featured stories, why is the homepage pretty much dedicated to featured stories, as well as their own sections in each genre shelf?

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561

The more writers they have to pay the more they will struggle to pay them.

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562

Sorry, can’t really speak on the author aspect on things (haven’t published anything.) all I can do is share what me as a reader feel. :woman_shrugging:

563

I don’t like the attitude that people have, thinking that the biggest authors have worked the hardest. There are many reasons why one great story trends whilst another doesn’t, and this new update will just add to the disparity. It’s pretty much an artificial class divide. Sigh.

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564

But then you think they could increase the criteria to enter Writers Payments, or even reduce the amount paid per read? I feel there are better cost-saving approaches that don’t wipe everyone out.

565

But than people will be complaining even more :slight_smile:

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567

Then wouldn’t the writers who are already getting payed complain? They wouldn’t be happy to find out they are being payed less. Who would be?

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568

After this glitch is over and done with, big authors will be stuck at the top. It’s not good for small authors and it’s not good for readers, either. Now readers are gonna get the same stories presented to them constantly – to a greater degree than before

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569

Well said, that’s what I’m trying to say.

570

That’s my personal theory. That as per Liz’s post, the only change to the system is the frequency of refreshes. It worked fine on Thursday. Then on Friday, everything glitched (it happened roughly around 7pm PST if I’m correct, so I’d assume by then the majority of the Episode team had gone home). Usually when I see “glitches” they really just affect the writer’s portal ranks (and at first, that’s what happened with this “glitch”- my rankings were messed up but I could still see my stories where they should be (I’m not a big author, but I write in less-popular genres so it’s usually easy to find my story)). Since the refreshing now only happens once a day, the glitch hasn’t been able to be fixed as sometimes it takes a couple refreshes. There has only been one refresh since Friday (last night) and that that didn’t really seem to change much. I also have to wonder if refreshing the ranks just once a day is causing issues to the server (as now, there’s more data to compute?).

I have to agree that some posts are making me cringe. I understand why everyone’s upset, but it would probably be best to at least wait until the team is back at work tomorrow and then hopefully we’ll get an explanation and/or fix.

I have two stories where I’ve been told by Episode which one has the higher retention of the two. Granted that was a long time ago, but I doubt it’s changed that much. The one with better retention is trending much worse than the other one.

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