Stats ...

I find the Stats area interesting. OK, OK ... most of you just rolled your eyes.

Seeing the distribution of topics authored, what stories are favorites, etc. is all interesting detail, but what I'd be more interested to know is what story characteristics are read the most. We clearly see that most written stories are M/F (or anyone/F !!) but are the stories read proportionally to the volume written? I do realize it would be difficult to make this meaningful. A simple count of what was opened would include the stories that were opened and quickly closed because the reader may not have liked it. Similarly, it probably shouldn't be counted as a selection if it was read BEFORE the story was validated.

Perhaps a statistical breakdown by favorites?

Any thoughts about including more underlying detail about reader's choices when reading? If this appears to simply be a nuisance, just schedule my appointment to visit Miss Thrashbottom.

Thank you,

Dan

It would be interesting to have stats as you say but if it stops the stories from appearing for days because of stat collecting I am against it. I would rather readers show their favourites by "commenting" or "writing", either one is good enough for me. I find numbers and stats appeal to me so I may be writing against my own interest here but I like the stories better...LOL

Certain statistics can be readily generated whereas others are problematic and it's primarily down to the database design. For example, it's not possible to derive statistics relating to stories only from the point they were validated, at least not in terms of favourites.

The favourites by spanking orientation,however, are as follows (first number represents number of stories featuring that orientation, the second is the number of favourites assigned for that category):

M/F - 5312 - 7022
F/F - 1806 - 2646
F/M - 1383 - 2188
B/F- 514 - 796
B/B - 339 - 391
M/M - 305 - 135
F/B - 231 - 331
M/B - 88 - 82
U/F- 70 - 111
B/M - 40 - 41
U/M - 13 - 10
U/B - 9 - 9
U/U - 7 - 1
M/U - 4 - 1
F/U - 3 - 0
B/U - 1 - 0

Key: M: make, F: female, B: both, U: unknown

The number of actual reads is exactly the information that many of would want to see, but I can't think of any reliable way to detect when a story has actually been read vs those that have simply been skimmed. I collect statistics on my personal story site, and have that exact same issue.

Guy

I think number of reads doesn't tell you much, because a) the reader read a few sentences and decided, no it's not what I'm looking for, b) the reader downloaded for reading later, or c) the reader actually read it online. You can actually see when b) is happening. Look in "latest"--"read" and look at minutes elapsed between reads, especially when it is a serial. "Reads" less than a minute apart of parts of a serial means that it is being downloaded.

If you want a meaningful metric, try this. For any given author add the number of favorites and the number of comments then divide by the number of integral works. This gives you sort of an average number of positive hits per work. The larger the number, the better. You have to collapse the serials and multipart works to singles so that you treat each as a single work or it penalizes the author who likes to break up his/her story into multiple small pieces.

Except that there are readers who will comment on, if not every part of a serial, on more than one. So those authors 'score' higher. Also, some stories may be favorably received, but since they are read by fewer readers (due to a poor title, or whatever), a high percentage of favorable responses may not translate into as high a number of total reads and comments; an author with a higher percentage of such stories, may appear to have a lower number. Bottom line, there is a problem with whatever metric you might try to devise.

Also, this doesn't really answer the question by dan2bend, which was about CHARACTERISTICS of stories, not AUTHORSHIP of stories. I'm a big stats person myself (my eyes didn't roll at all at dan2bend' mention of statistics), but I wonder what the point is when we have a great bunch of stories here. How about we just read them?

Sorry to sound like a killjoy, but I'd like to remind people that we do what we can to discourage users from copying/downloading the stories in the library. Not all authors want their work disseminated this way. If individuals want a personal copy of any of the stories archived here, they should contact the author independently and ask their permission.

This topic cropped up earlier and a little more info can be found here
http://www.spankinglibrary.co.cc/forum/index.php?iframe=1&action=vthread&forum=5&topic=215]

Don't be sorry... be proud! You're good at it! Celebrate your talent!

Report to Miss Thrashbottom's office at once for 'celebrations'