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Include a section on storygames for newly updated storygames. Priority (of being displayed) could be given based on time since update, and increase in length since update, or alternatively on storygame rating..

Goal: Encourage authors to revise their existing work (so new players can enjoy a better experience) 

Reference: This is already a feature on Steam where games which have undergone notable changes (self-declared) are highlighted to the player

Newly updated sounds great but in practice we already have the parlor room for announcing those things and technically you'd have to unpublish/republish anyways, therefore making the game a newly-published game and belonging in the new storygames section.

Parlor room is useful for people with registered accounts. Seeing how many people are online at any given time, it's often between 6:1 to 3:1 ratio of unregistered:registered. I've been playing games on the site for atleast six months now, only got involved in tracking the threads after I registered in mid-Jan, till which point I was entirely oblivious of everything in the forums

...?

what does that have to do with having a newly-updated section? You have to make an account to publish a game at all.

The forums are public. One does not need to register to look at the parlor room. Even supposing that there exists a 1% of guests who never make an account and always lurk (most of them wander through, read 1 game and leave. I doubt it's the same 10 - 100 people coming everyday and not making an account) they would be able to lurk the forums all the same and see what games are being updated/talked about.

I think the difference in our thoughts is in our points of view. I'm requesting this feature to increase discoverability of improved games for the masses. We have >1k games now, if a dev wants to improve an existing game, they have no way of gaining visibility for their efforts in the current framework.

Again, if someone doesn't have a registered account, they have no interest in the forums imo. 

I know for a fact that more guests lurk the forums than they do storygames xD

People talking about how they started out on CYS and they're like "I had no account so I just lurked the forums and played a game every now and then" followed up usually by "which is what I do now but I get points for it."

I can also pretty much guarantee that most games are not updated ever. Not any worth noting anyways.

Devs do have the ability to gain visibility - the new game section automatically shows the most recently published. They'll be on that list for at least three days and can even put in the description of their games "Updated mm/yyyy" :D which is exactly what people who have updated their games do.

Esentially this idea would work if people could update their games without unpublishing/republishing. If there was no unpublish-republish process, then the need for a newly updated catagory would be necessary.

I'm not sure I understand "section on storygames for newly updated storygames."

Do you mean a new block on the main Storygames page, just like all the other blocks, but with a new header something like, "Recently Updated?"

Yep

So I could totally spam it by republishing my story twice a day and get top billing?

How about a cooldown? Can only be considered updated once per month? Encourages updates to be significant, otherwise you'll be crying wolf and be chastised for it (and we do have fairly brutal chastisements here)

I actually agree with the idea, but we'd have to do something to ensure the change was actually large enough to justify bringing attention back to it, and not just some bug fixes.

With that said I do think it's a shame that when people make a big update on an existing storygame the site just kind of ignores it.

How about adding a toggle when a game is republished - "Is this a significant update (Y/N)?" - with the disclaimer significant updates will have priority on being higher up on the list of recently updated games. This adds a bit of an honor system wherein if the person knows the update isn't too big they still have a chance to be noticed, but once again are incentivized to spend more effort. At the same time, a person bluffing about the size of their update will be putting themselves in jeopardy by claiming to be what they are not - an action mods can easily notice and handle.

What if we just put it at the top of New Storygames?

I like that idea -- and I wonder if a way to reduce spamming might be to actually remove all old comments and ratings?

Not the same, a new and an updated are different beasts.

For me updating my game is a lot about proofreading and logical corrections. Launching a new game requires building an entirely different world and a different level of work. It'd not be fair to either to put them in the same basket

Also give authors the ability to edit descriptions of games before they publish so they can tell players that they've updated the game recently.

Yep, that too

Where should this section go if not new storygames?

New distinct section. Games are not eligible to be 'updated' more than once a month (so you can't change a letter every day and stay up). To start, we can see how response is, and add in controls (e.g. must add atleast 1000 words to qualify) as and when they're required, and we gain a better feel of the system ourselves

The abuse proofing is rather pointless given mods can just punish someone abusing the system.

That's true, but it's structurally nicer to reduce mod workload by designing the system in a sensible manner as well. Also, by keeping a monthly 'ticket' a person can update the game once a month, let ideas stew in their mind, and then have a reason to come back after a month/s. Also, if this is implemented I'm calling it out in advance this time: add a timer for the author to see when can they next get on the recently updated board.

Keep in mind sometimes people will want to pull their game down a second time right after an update, if they introduced a new rare bug that only a reader caught. If there was going to be a "ticket" system like that, people should still be able to update their game as many times as they want, but their position on this list wouldn't be updated until their next ticket was available.

Regardless of how it's implemented, with or without an anti-abuse system, I'm in support of it. There's a number of games that have gotten updates that I didn't realize until I went back and played through them again much later. Was pleasantly surprised, but was also disappointed that all their effort didn't draw any extra attention. 

I've just suggested a different method (the Is this change significant?) on a diff comment on this thread. Merging that with a once a month ticket (again, discretionarily spendable?) would keep authors

1) interested in updating (as new visibility)

2) encouraged to work on larger updates (priority to be ranked higher on the list)

3) encouraged to try improving more even later down the line (one month cooldown)

Yeah just saw the comment. I'm not sure how difficult that system would be to implement or even fairly judge, since what's considered "big" or not might be subjective. Some people can crank out a lot of content in little time, while other people might spend weeks accomplishing the same thing. I'm sure most people would handle it fairly though and there's be a good middleground for it.

All that said, I'm in favor of encouraging people to make bigger updates and improvements. The point of comments and criticism is to offer advice so a person can improve their storygame, so taking it down and greatly improving it is definitely in the spirit of the site. Furthermore this system would let people feel more inspired to go back and improve older projects, that they might have otherwise called "good enough" and left as-is. And for readers, it may even get people to replay a storygame they already tried and rated, to see if it's better, and bump up their original rating if they improved on the areas suggested.

Should be "you're not supposed to publish unfinished products" obviously. Sorry.