• Star Tags Complete!

    Holy crap that took like 3 more hours extra than I expected. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, check THIS POST!

    Anyway It's all done.  I'm sure there are plenty of mislabels/ect, but It's for the most part done.

    THIS WILL BE ROCKY at first, since so many old stories didn't even have star ratings.  If it outright fails then..lesson learned right?  I'll think of something else, not like I haven't had plenty of failed ideas on here so far anyway :3

    There were 0 1 star/2star stories, so those labels haven't been created yet.  Here are the others though for easy access, as always you can find these in the CATEGORIES drop down menu on the left side in the S's (all start with STAR to keep them together instead of numbers) 


    Star 3 (3 count)
    Star 4 (13 count)
    Star 5 (49 count)

    There are a TON of stories that need some votes, so your duty as readers is to vote on stories you liked in the past!

    Star Needed (149 count)

    Yes, that's right, 149!

    When something hits 10 votes let me know! We need to get rid of this Need Star sections! All of this is done manually by me, so I won't know if something hits 10 votes until someone tells me it did!

    I also added [Grimdark][Normal][Crossover] ect to things that needed it in the descriptions (so most of it lol) and added "normal" labels to all the stories that didn't have one in that category (I always left them unlabeled before).

    And a few stories in the archive have been shuffled around as needed.

    Anyway I'm off to bed.  There were a ton of updates as well tonight, so I'm going to let them get some attention before I upload everything else I got in my email.

    I also only dug 2 archived threads tonight, so I probably missed a bunch of stuff.

    15 comments:

    1. Amazing job, Sethisto! I'll be sure to be "one of those /co/lts" that will pester you when something hits 10 votes.

      Thanks so much, man!!

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    2. The number of stories in each star category seems ass-backward. I'm not sure what the point of arranging by star rating is when it looks like 75% of the fics will be in the top category.

      It seems like a lot of people just put 4 or 5 stars when they like something, and most of the people who come here are going to like most of what they read on here. I mean, it's great that the fandom is so positive about fan works, but it seems like it means that stories that are readable with relatively few errors and involve a popular ship end up at 4.6 stars while truly epic fanfiction ends up at 4.8 stars.

      So now if a new person comes to this site and wants to read the absolute best fanfiction we can come up with, they can click on the 5-star tag and have their search cut down to 75% of the content.

      And this certainly isn't your fault Sethisto. It's due to the generosity of the raters. Is it bad to be generous with 4 and 5 star ratings? Not inherently; I'm as guilty as any of us. If I thought something deserved a 3 star rating, I just wouldn't vote, because I didn't want to bring the average down. But now that we have this system in place, I'm regretting not being brutal about my ratings, because some of the fics in the 5 star section are absolute masterpeices, and some of them are the definition of mediocrity.

      This isn't to belittle your work Sethisto. I can imagine that this must have taken you forever, and we're all grateful for the work you put into this site.

      But I don't think that this was one of your better ideas.

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    3. Thanks for all the hard work, Sethisto! We really appreciate it!

      And @Anonymous -

      Perhaps it's time to go back to those lower-quality fics and put those lower ratings on them? It's not the idea that's bad, it's just that folks haven't fully sounded off yet.

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    4. It's really less that people are overly generous with high ratings so much as it is that people who didn't love them tend not to vote at all. A story that manages 10 5-star votes when the vast majority on-site have managed 10 votes period deserves some sort of recognition for being more well liked than the rest. Currently, 5-star stories account for 22.8% of the content on EqD. This percentage might increase, or it might decrease. It's going to take some time for the system to work itself out to its natural conclusion.

      I think it's certainly far too early to be condemning the concept. The best way to help make it work out is for everypony to do their part to honestly evaluate what we read and give each story the rating we feel it deserves. If we're really all so nice that we can't bring ourselves to rate anything lower than 4-stars after every "needs rating" story is cleared, we can come back and address the issue again.

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    5. That's alot of 5 stars; the idea about rating with stars and organizing them this way seems questionable

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    6. I feel that theres a lot of 5 star stories that might have been generously given. I could understand an epic story like "Out in The Cold" being in the 5 star list, but a few might be a little skeptical.

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    7. Well would stars maybe discourage people from writing if they're going to be judges on it?

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    8. @ Anon: If anything, the rating system should be a motivator to work harder to become better in writing! That's my opinion, anyway.

      Also, I'm going through the "Stars Needed" category, looking for those particular fan-fictions that made the ten-star checkpoint. Hopefully they'll be sorted accordingly~ :D

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    9. Since everypony is being a bunch of Complainy Mc Complainersons, you know what I did? I went and looked through the entire Star-5 catalog. And I voted on every story that I've read and hadn't yet rated.

      You know what else I found? Because it's something that should be expected when somepony does something this big by hoof: errors! There are, count them, 10 different stories mislabeled as Star-5. The actual tally to this moment is 3 Star-3, 21 Star-4, and 39 Star-5. This is becoming a much more even distribution, and there are a number of Star-5 stories right on the cusp of becoming Star-4s.

      Think the system's broked? Vote! Fix it! Don't be mean, just be honest. Leave the author a comment on how they could have done better, if you're so inclined. Ideally the average quality of content will continue to rise to the point where there's no need to sift through things to find the good stuff, because there'll be awesome stuff just lying about everywhere. And there's already a bunch of it, some I'm hopeful that we're closer than you might think.

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    10. @Phoe

      I'm really hoping thats because people went and revoted. 10 errors is a lot more than I expected just on 5 stars lol.

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    11. @Sethisto

      There are some really surprising ones in there. Would it be helpful if I sent you the list, or do you think you've got it well in hand on your own?

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    12. @Phoe

      List would be great, toss away thanks!

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    13. To echo what most people said:

      I do admit to being afraid to vote on a few stories. There were some I felt were 4 star quality that had ratings closer to 5, but I knew with such few votes (like 5 votes total) that I could serious drop their rating in one fell swoop.

      But now that the star ratings are a sorting practice, I'm going to be much more honest in my ratings and much more apt to rate! I'll distinguish between stories that are have something great in them, but maybe a few errors (4 stars), and stories that are expertly constructed and entertaining (5 stars).

      I think this start rating system adds a real value to ratings, and will check me to be most honest and more likely to rate. I hope other people are with me.

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    14. *makes a pot of coffee and straightens his glasses* REVIEW FANFICTION I WILL, PONY"S YES

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