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Only 16 site members have read and rated Will's latest story. This is both sad - because it is one of his best stories to date - and disgraceful - because most of you are lazy clods.

With that said, I highly endorse and encourage you all to read Will's latest story.

Mutiny on the Bounty

Everyone has been really fucking lazy about reviews these last few months. (I mean, me too, but that's neither here nor there....)

Whatever you guys are doing, your behavior here really has been *checks thesaurus because Bucky already stole disgraceful* shameful, low, blameworthy, contemptible, degrading, detestable, discreditable, dishonorable, disreputable, ignoble, ignominious, infamous, inglorious, mean, offensive, opprobrious, scandalous, shabby, shady, shocking, shoddy, unrespectable, unworthy...pick one!

Mutiny is a good and cool story and I mean, even if words in large numbers scare you, there's other examples like Fluxion's sad little tale of the submissive office slut still only having a single review. And that's like a ten minute read.

I suspect that is an accurate count of current active members.

Where's the Reddit surge when you need it

This is not a graveyard Ogre!

End
Killa
BZ
Bucky
Mizal

Ebon
Thara
Steve
Wibns
Mayana

Digit
Fluxion
Azbaz
Ogre
Will

Chris
Tim
IAP
Ikiriakos (too many bloody k's in his name)
Romulus

Leora
Mr.Ace
Eric
Orange
Coins

We have a healthy stable!

Please go outside and seek sex. 

u lok 4 sum fuc??

I've hosted, what, 7 or 8 contests over the past year and a half? Hard not to remember the names when you keep seeing them.

If there's anything I hate even more than reading, it's being told encouraged to read! 

On a serious note: Will actually personally messaged me to read his storygame and I told him that I'd get on that this week. I've read a bit of it and it seems good, so I'll be looking forward to reading the entirety of his writing. 

@Will11 has a very bad habit of posting his stories in the middle of, or right before, a contest. And then they get buried.

Plus I see so many people logged on here every day who do fuck and all by looking at their points, yet something keeps them coming back.

Lots of randomly returning members too. We have more of those than any other site I've seen. I see Stryker right now.

I did say "active," right?

I'm pretty sure everyone on that list has been here in the past week.

Lol my algebra classroom had more people than this list. 

Not counting the dropouts 

How dare you forget @Killerainbow

Hey boss, what can I do ya for?

You've been here over a year, Killer, and you've rated three stories. One of them was mine, granted, so assuming you gave it a GOOD rating I'm inclined to feel more pleasant towards you, but you clearly can do better.

So go here and get to it. We'll wait.

e: Aren't you one of Seto's friends? You're making Seto very sad right now. You monster.

I feel bad now, I can't believe you're just gonna guilt trip me like that. Fine.

Wait wait, I'm making a story game for my class right now but I promise to read a bunch of new games and rate rather than just guest everything.

Class stories always suck, I wouldn't worry about that one.

Fair enough, and you're for sure right I honestly hate everything I've written so far because I literally suck at writing, but it's worth 180 points and I have a D right now. On the flip side, I'll be introducing my English class to this site which will automatically give them +100 cool. I feel like it's a good trade. Anyway, I got 4 days to do this I can read one story right quick but it's gotta get done.

An English class. Oh...good.

What grade are you in btw?

10, sophomore year.

Also, why am I slightly intimidated by you when I don't even know what you look like?

*EZunmaker

@Drakoblare

I would say that most, or even the vast majority of people who have accounts here do not rate stories. If we want to talk about why, that's another conversation.

Checking out the current list of newer storygames, stories on that list have an average of 22 ratings. They average 0.62 ratings per day. Will's story has 23 ratings in 28 days -- right at average for total ratings, but at a rate of 0.82 ratings per day. So his story is actually getting substantially more ratings than just about every other new story on the site this year.

That said, yes, if you are reading this and haven't read his story, you should.

@Zake will save the site

[Redacted]

In retrospect, I am no where near ready for such an undertaking. Sorry to disappoint, xd.

However, I will mention that this thread seems to have done quite a lot, so I hope people keep the importance of readers in everyone's minds. Some of the reviews I managed to look at are also surprisingly good, so keep it up y'all.

I've been meaning to start writing some "real" reviews (i.e. bust out at least a two paragrapher). Is the "Top 5 Storygames in need" section of the homepage accurate?

Feel free to also post a short list here and I'll get crackin' 

All semi recent contest stories. I’ll preemptively add the June batch now.

The Lost Realm by me.

Shameless advertising time.

OK, I have officially started edutaining myself (compliments of Will11). Lost Realm is next in line!

Any other shout-outs?

I don't need reviews on my latest story at all.

Toooooootally not.

...

Dark Nights (Be sure to write a lengthy comment so I can knock Mistery's gibberish off the featured comments list)

Are you very sure? :3

Read my pretty pretty unicorn story. It's commended and the highest rated thing I've done, and I need incentive to tack two small alternate paths I've been planning onto the beginning. Also there are no featured reviews yet so this is easy commendations people.

Wait! hold up!! Did you just say Unicorn? I like Unicorns!!! :D

But... I was working on my very own story...  ):

I've already started it, and I plan on reviewing it once I read the mutineer path.

I can say in advance that unless I come across pages of random numbers, the rating will be high.  :)

Okay,  I read it and then practically verbally fellated Will in the comments. 

Now I must go and save a kitty out of a tree. If you are feeling generous, wish me luck and well wishes in advance, thank you. 

Kitty in a tree? God save the queen! 

Thanks Bucky, it is very kind of you to bring this up! I've had three new reviews today which has almost doubled the reviews posted on that story by anyone who isn't me. People are lazy about reviewing (actually including me lately) and I think it is to do with the Commendations.

I haven't had any Commendations in over a year now despite publishing a few stories and having one (maybe two, I forget these things) featured, either it is crazy difficult to get Commendations or people have stopped giving them. Mizal is one of the few writers capable of consistently writing commendable reviews, I guess others either don't have the time (like me) or the ability/determination etc to read a story through completely and write a thorough review. The competitions do now seem the foremost feature of the site, though they have been responsible for over fifty great stories which otherwise probably wouldn't exist so that is good.

I wouldn't mind if we dropped the commendations thing now (like Sages are ever going to be displaced) and returned to the daily point.

I wonder if 3J can be retrieved from wherever he has gone and continue his updates? Apart from the aforementioned competitions I don't think we've had any updates for over a year either. A massive thank you to Bucky, Ikiaros and Thara for your reviews (and KleGrand, Mizal, Ebonvasilis and Mistery, I guess, for your older reviews). I plan to publish another story this summer but I'll try to pick a good time and also try to have more site involvement too.

Thanks again all of you, you are very kind and I hope good things happen to you this week :)

For reference, Commendations are supposed to be something really hard to get, hence why not many tend to be given out.

Admittedly JJJ isn't really around anymore, so we can probably ease up a bit on the requirements.

They were primarily meant to be given for stories from what JJJ said but that's not been happening at all because of the fairly dumb way the system is set up, which is the main reason there's such an imbalance. Posters and reviewers are reaping a ton and all the bonus points on top of it (right now two commendations would get me about 20 points a day easily with a couple hour's effort at most.) since that's the quick and easy method, and authors are winding up with nothing.

But the automatic-by-length system and admins not having any way to remove them is kind of awful and I'm pretty sure that would have been changed by now if JJJ was still active. The system we were left with was semi-experimental I think and it's kind of a joke that the amount you get for a story that took months to write and polish would be equal to that of cranking out a handful of reviews or responding to a few Workshop threads.

The system was meant to encourage good writing in general. Comments and Stories were treated equally when we discussed it in the admin section.

As you've said though, implementation of it was off. I don't think it would be scrapped if he returned, but balance changes would definitely be made.

If nothing else, newly featured stories should be commended. The bar for featuring is a lot higher than for commendations.

Personally, I would already have read and rated (but not necessarily fully reviewed) a lot more stories if the points were more substantial. As it is (i.e. 1 point for what might take me one to four hours of reading), it actually discourages rating stories. It's as if you are saying, "what you are doing is insignificant to us" rather than "This is what we want you to do the most." Probably 10 points per rating/review would be a lot more motivating (and appropriate). 

The problem is that there's a bunch of crappy storygames that are up for a few hours that I and a few others enjoy to read the easy points from. Thus, on a day where a class posts a whole bunch of bad storygames (which has happened before), I could reap 200 points effortlessly.

Reviewing storygames and being featured is actually really overpowered in the points it gives you. 2 points for being featured, 3 points as a once-a-day daily bonus for the commendations, and 10 points for being the most commended in a day (which would be most days by having just two commendation points). That's 15 points for just 300 words worth of a review.

The way to judge whether or not a reward is "overpowered" is based on its influence on behavior.

Right now, the reward for rating/reviewing a story is not overpowered.

No, actually I'd judge it in comparison to the amount of time spent vs points gained, and in comparison to the other ways to gain similar points. Reviews right now are unbalanced in the sense that if you want a lot of points and commendations, the very last thing you would do is write a story.

Ten points for a review would be incredibly silly considering the amount of effort in writing a couple of paragraphs with the bog standard 'learn grammar' advice, compared to writing an publishing an actual story; another thing you get ten points for.

Writing three reviews right now on most days would net you 20 points a day. There's nothing else comparable to that in anything else you can do on the site, writing reviews (or even just rating without bothering to comment at all) is far and away the fastest and most reliable way to rake in that meaningless e-cred.

Even the one point per story in some cases is technically more than the time put in ought to deserve considering how many can be clicked through in about ten seconds, no reading required.

The issue isn't the amount of points so much that most users don't care about them at all and so they don't bother to rate stories in the first place, or half the time don't even bother to log in while reading. Reading a CYOA for the purpose of gaining points rather than because you like CYOAs is an entirely different mindset and one that requires you to be dug in pretty deep as an active community member already, because it honestly makes no sense at all outside of that.

That's also the reason tiny games get read/rated far more often than longer ones, which is not too healthy for the community imo but, I do it too because it's a far more efficient use of time.

I mean if anything I'd say some kind of system could be put in place to give an extra point or two for rating 6/8 games and up to try and address the imbalance there, so I do agree to that degree even if games that take hours to read are few and far between. 90 seconds is probably closer to the average.

Or hell, let's get really fancy a moment and imagine something like clicking a review and automatically have a point go from me to the reviewer; never gonna happen, but I'd be all over that.

"The issue isn't the amount of points so much that most users don't care about them at all" 

Agreed. For the majority of readers, the points are not overpowered (i.e. they are worthless). Also agreed, awarding more points wouldn't fix the issue as it relates to them (so there goes my "10 point" quick fix)

You should assume that I (and all of us who care about this site) are actually reading the books when you decide how many points to award for rating them. Saying that it amounts to "just writing a few words" is not an accurate reflection of the actual time involved in reading the work (and "just a few words" would not get me a feature or a commendation anyway).

Publishing a book should definitely get more points than it does currently. It would be great if that, as well as the points earned for a rating a game, were somehow tied to the length of the work itself.  

As a related aside, I don't think points would be enough to motivate me to write a "real" review (which would take me hours).  For that, I would want some assurance of receiving equivalently detailed notes for my work-in-progress. I have made that offer publicly; but, so far, only Wibbons has taken me up on it (and I think we both found the exchange to be very useful).

Personally, I prefer a private exchange of "full notes" as I feel freer when outside the public eye (and I suspect many others feel the same), especially when giving or receiving criticism, which is often the most useful).

Posting this to signify that I finally stopped editing my prior post (so it is "ready to read").

As you can see, my "best" work really does take some time; and, even then, might contain the occasional orphaned bracket. :")

Some people do just read stories and then say how they felt about them because they like to do that. Clearly not enough doing the latter but the 'read for fun' people have always been the silent majority here.

Isn't your story like 150k and counting? And it's not really a reviewer you're looking for so much as a full proofreader, which represents quite a bit more effort and hours and hours of time done purely as a volunteer with no promise of a return anywhere near the same level. I don't think it's surprising there haven't been a lot of people clamoring for that position on a project of that size.

Mine is 100K according to the site, and 75K in real life (i.e. as a word document). The deal would be that I read and send you notes first, then I get notes back of similar effort/time (so, less detailed for sure).

I'm not sure what the correct terminology would be for what I am looking for. In real life, two of my friend are writers (one professional and one of them of the "writes great feature-length screenplays but none of them have sold yet" variety) and we have been exchanging "notes" (we read each other's work... usually just a "once-through "... and then share what we like, what we don't like, and ideas on how to make it better). For my book, it would take a long time just to do that (probably 3 hours to read it straight through, and an additional 2 hours to read the two main alternate branches), but I wouldn't mind someone reading it, quitting 2 hours in, and then telling me where and why they quit (I think that would be really really useful actually). Wibbons just read the branch that appealed the most (which was totally fine with me, and useful info to boot).

I don't need punctuation/spelling stuff (i.e. "copyediting/proofreading"?). I agree that would be way too onerous, and I'll probably pay someone to copyedit it for real once it's done.

I've been asking for "beta-reading", but I embarrassed to say I still don't know exactly what that term means. Just to clarify, I will read your work (including all the branches) and tell you what I like, what I don't like, and give a few very detailed suggestions (with some rough-drafted examples) of how I think it could be better. Then, you would do the same for me (with the understanding that you are allowed to quit reading mine early if and when you decide it sucks, and/or you feel like you have paid me back already in kind). At this point, with my friends, I often just ask for specific sections to be read (i.e. the parts I revamped the most since their last read).

Yeah I was thinking there might be a semantics thing at work here. I consider a critique, a review, and proofreading all as very different things, even if they can get blended together pretty frequently on the site.

A review is the simplest and least time intensive and it's also what most authors who have posted a story would be happy to get more of, plus the most efficient way to rake in points, if we're sticking to the original topic.

The hardest part of what you're wanting would be finding people here with that kind of time who aren't spending it on their own projects, and aren't dumbass kids who don't know much about writing to begin with.

If he returned. Low expectations.

Seriously though, this is exactly what he said he wanted to avoid when he came back after the last time he disappeared. I don’t get what’s so hard about logging in once a month and making sure the place didn’t burn down, even if just to show you’re not locked in somebody’s basement.

The Banisher is a mythical figure who only returns in times of direst need to save the site before riding off into the sunset again.

Some scholars believe there was a transcription error from the earliest illuminated scrolls that tell of him, and that a B was mistakenly printed in place of the original V.

Well, Will, I tried, but some fiend moved it to the Parlor Room to wither and die.

Who Is Online
71 guests and Fluxion, @Deceptionize, @Multiverse, @MrInspectorMan, @Shayn03, @crystalkitty, @Dragonveld, Orange, @lillymaria, @EpicRome23, LoreOfHistory, @TinFoilTopHat, Digit, lkiriakos, mizal, Leora, ISentinelPenguinI, FeanorOnForge.

ngl I could probably get behind a thread devoted to random pings of forum-avoiding nobodies.

So why don't all of you tell us something about yourselves and also pick a newish story and write a review.

@Axxius - cheerfully ignoring your profile

Mizal, please stop referring to our visitors as "dumb-ass kids" and "forum-avoiding nobodies". We are trying to court them for god's sake!

Aww! So that's means I, not a dumb ass kid? Because in truth I'm really 18 years old so dumb ass grows up well be more suited to call me as.

The bar for not being either one of those things is so incredibly low, I think anyone who isn't some kind of unfortunate evolutionary failure can probably pull it off.

Damn. If I knew the same author of the Jesse James story, made another story, I would've been on that shit so hard I would've died from dysentery by now! Thanks for getting the word out!

Good news my friend: I've published 18 :)

Ok, so I finally just wrote my first-ever "legit" public review (for The Lost Realm). Fingers crossed that the gods reward me? Next up is Dark Knights, then Unicorns, then whoever else specifically requests my services (non-requesters will just get my normal short reviews, according to the rules I am clearly just inventing as I go along). Will11, in retrospect, I probably owe you a "legit" review given the quality of your work, so I'm gonna loop back to it after I play with the unicorns.

Dark Nights "legit" reviewed, time for Unicorns. 

There really is some performance anxiety in the writing of public reviews.  For example, I can't help but cringe when I give criticism/advice (especially publicly). I hope it's not coming off too harsh/like "I'm an expert" (which I am not). Feel free to reprimand me if that's the case (but, please be nice about it). It is so much easier to gauge these things when I speak with a friend (or patient, for that matter) in person.

Personally, I'd rather that even the slightest forms of criticism be sent to me in private (so I can cry in a corner and then delete /repress the memory of it altogether a few days later). 

You are overthinking this. No one objects to criticism or strongly worded opinions and if they throw a fit about it we lynch them. This is a writing site where honest feedback is expected and encouraged, not a safe space for fragile babies.

If it helps, try starting every review with 'this is one of the worst stories I've ever been subjected to and I think the author must be some kind of faggot' just to break the ice and get the words flowing.

Way to steal my thunder. :-( That preemptively encapsulates my feeling about this unicorn story I'm about to start reading. 

As a fragile baby, I now need to fear lynching.

Referring more to the sort of authors who blow up over PMs or make whiny threads if someone types unflattering words about their work. You're doing them a favor by taking the time to write a review, particularly if it's a detailed one, and don't need to feel bad or apologetic in the slightest if what you're saying is critical.

Everyone posting anything here knows they're asking for public feedback by doing so and throwing the doors wide open for whatever they get. The ability to sort good advice from fluffy praise from trolling from confused people driven by some bizarre alien thought process and to take what's useful regardless of how it's phrased and not be bothered by the rest is an important skill to develop.

And I see lkiriakos has net himself 19 points, 6 commendations, and the bolded red name for the day, by writing two reviews.

I think this really helps to illustrate what I was saying before.

One of us was clearly wrong. :-p

What happens if you have suddenly decided that a story is so bad that you can’t make it past the first page?  

For some strange reason I get this sense you're talking about a particular, specific story, but the time honored method is 1.) Read the first page 2.) Avert your eyes and click wildly until you find an ending 3.) Read the ending page and fudge a review.

Oh and of course 4.) Somehow get the comment featured anyway

Ok, just reviewed your story (and wrote way too much, but because I was too lazy to stop/make it tighter LOL)

I'll be recommending 'test' for the featured comment slot but the other one looks like it will be a great read, thanks! I'll take a better look as soon as I have a normal sized screen for grown ups.

"Test" was my experiment to see if I could obsessively re-write my comment (as per usual), but alas... 

I will have to forever live with the typos and poor imitation of your "bitchy" voice. :'(

OK. I'm all out of requests for "legit" reviews.

If you want one, please let me know here (or PM me and I'll send it to you privately).

This has been very fun (and I am learning a lot by writing these), so thanks Bucky for the kick in the butt.

@Killerainbow just put up their first story. On my phone so I can't read the entire thing just yet but the first few pages are interesting, I think we can declare them one of the good newbies.

(KR can we get a pronoun please?)

She has potential. Raw clay at the moment. But definitely seems like the kind of competent person that would be willing to learn and strive to improve. Kind of like my impression of wibbins after his first story.

Female... Also I appreciate the comment, but if you're only saying that to me cuz Seto is my friend, minus cool!

Z for Zombies is a lot of fun and surprisingly well done. Not counting Mutiny, it's easily the best non-competition story we've had all year, and I don't even like zombie stories.

Good call. :-)

Okay, I just read the Mutiny on the Bounty game. It was a fun. I just think the author should get a St. Martin's Handbook because I kept running into a lot of mechanics problems. I also thought there needed to be more detailed descriptions. Still, it was a fun romp.

You Are A Disc In My Dad's Spinal Cord. Can You Make His Back Stop Hurting In Time For Christmas? is magical and should be experienced by all. Nice job @tylerrusso

That was one of the best lolrandom games I think I've read.

I'm a boat!

It'd be appreciated if you guys could give The Oil Pits of Lazarus a look and offer some constructive advice to the author. It's short so a pretty quick read, please do not be alarmed by it having more than 300 words on the first page, although I understand that must be frightening.

This is Jaimie of Ramona Wilde infamy, come back to us now after having traveled to far lands on a quest to learn English, and she could use some feedback and encouragement probably.

Fun story. Just realized (after writing my review) that her style is very Hemingway. Crisp and to the point (in a really good way) - especially the action sequences. Your advice to her was on point. Basically, it should be longer/more full and also more well-thought-out in certain places (but not wordier... the amount of wordiness is perfect).

No idea where you were getting Hemingway vibes from but then I went and looked and realized you saw it referenced in henshaw's review.

So just left with no idea where he's getting Hemingway vibes from, let alone finding comparisons to the Old Man and the Sea, but I suppose he might have read it for class recently or something and it seemed like a good title to work into conversations, who knows.

Huh? Henshaw's review was written after mine... But, for me,  I mean the spareness of the descriptions. You see the bad guy... next sentence he is cut in half. Boom. Not too many sentences and yet a lot is going on. That's where I got the feel from...

Oh.. I see... you think I copied the idea/saw his review... No. My post (also) was before Henshaw's review. But, I think it's cool that we saw the same thing. Wish I could describe it better. Something along the lines of "very few words/sentences between the actions" maybe?