Finding Old Gold

On the "How to judge a story" thread, PinkAngel observed that most of the people reading here make their selections from the "Latest" list. After that I (and many others?) look at the "Last Read" list or the "Commented" list. Those two lists create some occasional opportunities to see older stories popping up to the present view. The "Activity" listing also shows us if someone is reading older stories and can lead us there. The "Lucky Dip" list gives an excellent chance of randomly finding a gold nugget, but you might have click on many to find one.

I wish there were a better way to find the most popular older writing. I wish there were a way to see older stories ranked for number of views, number of comments, and number of favorites. There has been a well-described increase in the rate of comments in the recent past, so 10 comments on a 2009 story would mean a lot more than 10 today.

Who are the super writers who haven't posted anything since January, 2011? Which are the super stories? What is your "oldest" favorite story here? Toss out some gold nuggets.

I'll start.

One of my favorite super writers is ruegirl. Almost all of her hundreds of stories were posted before 2010. I particularly like the serial "Akira", a space-opera yarn about the crew aboard a interplanetary ship, and the story "Late Visit".

There are lists of most-commented and most favorites in the 'Statistics' section of the library, but it only lists the top 30 or so stories. Other than observing that the single most-commented story is likely to be the best, I would hesitate to recommend using only that criterion (appearing on such a list) to find the best stories. There are LOTS of really good stories here that have not received such attention, generally because they have been here for so long, buried, but also because a newer story managed to slip by the adoring readers.

I tend to look for stories at random that pique my attention. I then go to the authors' pages for those that I enjoyed the most.

Just a FEW of my favorite authors include flowergirl, flopsybunny, Rollin, ruegirl (agreeing here with jefesse), Janine, John Benson and jools. Of course, it all depends on personal taste.

Why does it have to be popular? I am genuinely confused. So if ten people have commented you are more likely to like a story than if two have commented?

If a lot of the commenting is done by friends etc of authors then this doesn't really reflect on the actual story at all, it just reflects that person's regard for their friend. I think this is often proven by the comments on contest stories, when people (in theory) don't know who wrote what.

I don't think comments, reads or favourites are a good way to judge or choose a story... but that's just my opinion anyway and I shall now go and carry on breaking into flops' desk, while she is out, looking for crisps or vimto

I rarely look at "Latest" because I know I've only read a small fraction of the material here. and I see no reason why the newest stuff should be better than the old. When you could view all authors in one list, I started by checking out authors whose pen-names interested me. Now I try a letter and choose an author more or less by random (which has meant y and z got good coverage), checking the story synopses for something that sounds as if it might interest me. However, I've learnt that some authors often write stuff I like, so I also check their list out - and finally, if an exchange with someone commenting on my writing suggests we have some common likes and they're an author, of course I investigate further.

As for favourite writers, my list of favourite stories suggests flopsybunny is well ahead (I knew that), followed by angelmischief and Gabrielle Pearson. However, some people have only written two or three stories.

It's not a 100% correlation - there will be scatter - but I expect that word-of-mouth and the Activity screen will have driven the type of story I'm looking for to have found greater "popularity," not less. If I could search the older stories for number of views, I would probably start with posts with a thousand views and let my eyes scan the list. I would skip right over some because I don't favor the writer, but I would sample many of the others. Then I would lower the bar to 900 views and start all over again.

I can expect ahead of time that I won't like many of the heavily viewed stories by writers I have no knowledge of. I'll sample them and if they don't catch my interest, I will probably skip them over in the future. Might I be missing out? Certainly. Might I have sampled the only thing that writer ever wrote that would turn me off? Occasionally.

I posted this thread mainly to (1) stimulate any interest I can in older stories, and (2) to greedily lap up any recommendations I can get for off-the-scale terrific old stories hidden away in the archives. I'll be reading "Late Visit." I revere Ruegirl's stories and I'm largely familiar with her body of work from previous websites. I am not acquainted with Late Visit, but soon will be, thanks to je fesse. I will also sample angelmischief and Gabrielle Pearson. I've mentioned in a previous thread that I really like the stories of Teddybear, Bendover, and Saradora. Those are the kinds of recommendations I'm looking for. Who else has old stories we're likely to love? Tell us about them...

Wow! There aren't going to be many of them. And I sincerely doubt that there is enough "word of mouth" to push any story to that many views. There just aren't THAT many people here who are active and communicating. A story with that many views is going to have a lot of "favorites" or comments, an 'attractive' title (likely something about 'school'), or validation info with wide appeal - or all three! It's probably easier to work off the comments list, the favorites list, or searches.

I find that my stories that have the most views tend NOT necessarily to be the ones that are 'favorited' the most, or that have received many comments, or ones that I like the most personally, but rather the ones with "school" in the title, however good or bad they might be.

I thank Je Fesse for the lead to Ruegirl's "Late Visit." It was an excellent read. I'll throw one back.

There's a story called "A Birching for Miss Armstrong," by James Fox. It seems to be his one and only story posted, but I found it to be very much aligned with my tastes. It was posted in September, 2009 and has 460 views, but not many comments or favourite designations.

"I find that my stories that have the most views tend NOT necessarily to be the ones that are 'favorited' the most, or that have received many comments, or ones that I like the most personally, but rather the ones with "school" in the title, however good or bad they might be."

The words "nurse" and "nursing" help too! Overtly spanking titles tend to get more views than subtler ones - a bit depressing, really, especially as the synopses are so easy to view.

A suggestion about finding Old Gold. Use the Search function. By checking the appropriate boxes you can search using any parameters you want.

For example if you are interested primarily in adult only, M/F, no sexual content, etc. you can search for those only and the search engine will show you all the stories meeting your criteria. You will probably get back hundreds or even thousands of stories. You can then sort them in any order that you would like using Februs's handy controls.

As far as this topic is concerned, if you click on Added it will sort the stories that you have selected starting with the latest to the oldest. If you click Added a second time it will sort them in reverse order starting with the oldest. Presto! Old Gold!