Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-10950063-20140404145452/@comment-24077689-20140404182515

Xelrog T. Apocalypse wrote: GraydonL wrote:

Princess Callie wrote:

GraydonL wrote:

Xelrog T. Apocalypse wrote:

GraydonL wrote:

MidnightEarth101 wrote: Have something where people can link to their pasta and then have people read through and vote, and at the end of the week, make a blog post with links to the most voted on pastas This. I really like this idea, although we should make it a forum post instead of a blog so that way it can be highlighted. The problem with this is that people don't know how to review creepypastas. The 1% of people with valid, thought-out opinions will just get drowned out by the 99% who vote based on whether they like the author or some other irrelevant garbage. I think the reel or PotM Nominated categories were good ideas, but whatever is decided, the method of selection should absolutely not be a user vote. >not be a user vote.

The point of this is to find a way to collect generally higher quality stories. If the general people can not vote on what they like, then what is the point. Also, I think it is more in the middle ground, sure they wont give well thought opinions, but they will vote on the fact that they like it, whatever the reason my be, which is the entire point. People like Jeff the Killer. People like Sonic.exe. People like Ticci Toby. These were terrible. No quality at all whatsoever.

Popularity and what the majority likes is not what equals quality. You are right. Popularity and what people like is not quality. But what people like is generally quality. You guys keep bringing up those stories, but how many more popular stories are actually really good? Psychosis, Russian Sleep Experiment, Smile.dog etc. While some people might vote on crappy stories, I guarantee that at least the majority will actually be good stories.

Maybe an admin gets a final vote? This is supposed to make it so we can get a large amount of good stories in one place. If you involve an admin, how is it any different than PoTM? The process goes like this: People submit their stories, other users can decide whether or not they are good, and the bad ones are tossed. Then any of the good ones remaining go on the forum post. Quick, efficient, and generally have decent quality. Bad ones don't slip through, because people usually like quality, and if one is crap, then someone will say it.

If you notice, most of the shitty popular stories are some of the first stories, because early on there wasn't any good stories. JtK was one of THE very first creepypastas as we know them today. Before that, a creepypasta was a thing you copy/pasted in emails and sent to five people so scary sue didn't rape your family, the very word creepypasta comes from copypasta. Now days, creepypastas are short horror fiction, and is treated as such, so people look for quality and a good story instead of going "lol tht wus a scery pic."

Annnd holy shit massive rant.

There's more than one per month. That's the only difference that's required here. Who said it needed to be more different than that?

I'm still in favor of just leaving "PotM Nominations" or "Honorable Mentions" tags on stories that meet said criteria. They're read through anyway while looking for the winning PotM, so it's no extra work for anyone. And it ensures that ALL of the stories in said category are of decent quality and not just MOST of them, as you're arguing. I see what you're getting at, and it could honestly be a good idea to have an honorable mentions section. But one of the big problems still is that PotM is still largely a popularity contest. For example, when my story was nominated it got like 2 reads, Skelly considered taking down that month because a super duper low quality story nearly won. Like it was nearly trollpasta quality. Basically, it was only that story and one other that anybody really read. My story didn't get any increase in attention because of the nomination. It wasn't until Cym's blog that I actually saw an increase in traffic. Which due to the huge amount of positive feedback I've gotten, had anybody even read my story I probably could have stood a chance.

But it wasn't just mine, there were at least 6 stories that I was genuinely nervous about that I was sure would beat mine. They didn't even get votes. It was this low quality ritual pasta and then The Devil Game that not only got all the votes but got all the attention. Nobody really bothered to read any of the rest. None of those other stories got extra comments or anything. And I feel like it's a popularity game and once those two stories got a massive amount of votes, nobody really bothered to read the others because those two already had so much support.

So, I get what you're saying, but it might even be better not even as like a feature or prize that we just have a system where we can bring increased attention to more obscure works. There are some genuinely amazing stories on this site that have maybe 2 comments, that don't even get nominated.