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Dec. 23rd, 2008 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dbskylerSomebody recently came along and added two of my Teaspoon stories to their favorites list.
Which was very nice, and not entirely unexpected because I've noticed that while it's extremely rare to get a new review once a story has been posted for awhile, it's not as rare to have someone come across it a long time later and add it to their favorites.
Here's the interesting, thing, though -- one of the stories newly favorited has almost no reviews and quite a few favorites (and now one more favorite than it used to have). The other story has an average number of reviews and not many favorites at all.
Now I just can't help wondering what that means. Which is the more popular story? Which is better, a review or a favorite? (Assuming, of course, the review is positive, which it almost always is because people prefer to be nice and either say nice things or nothing at all.)
I know that personally, I favorite very rarely, and it's not related to how much I like a story. I mean, I obviously have to like it to favorite it, but in general I favorite when the story has struck me as being not only good but also unique in some way. There are lots and lots of stories that I go back and re-read on a regular basis that I didn't favorite. Not sure why, exactly, except that I don't like the idea of ending up with hundreds of stories on my favorites list.
But it also feels like a favorite is a more honest expression of someone truly liking a story than a review is. Which makes me feel like the favorite should get more weight.
And that would lead me to a nice, straightforward ranking system except for the fact that I like the higher-review / lower-favorite story a lot better than the other one. And I really do believe it is a much better piece of writing overall. Now I know that my own taste doesn't necessarily have any relation to which story other people like better, and furthermore neither is necessarily related to which story is actually the better piece of writing. But I can't help it.
I want to take some of the favorites from the one story and add them to the other. Yes, I am just that crazy.
On the other hand, if I add up the number of people who reviewed and favorited, then the two stories come out in a tie . . .
. . . which maybe is good enough. At least, for now.
Which was very nice, and not entirely unexpected because I've noticed that while it's extremely rare to get a new review once a story has been posted for awhile, it's not as rare to have someone come across it a long time later and add it to their favorites.
Here's the interesting, thing, though -- one of the stories newly favorited has almost no reviews and quite a few favorites (and now one more favorite than it used to have). The other story has an average number of reviews and not many favorites at all.
Now I just can't help wondering what that means. Which is the more popular story? Which is better, a review or a favorite? (Assuming, of course, the review is positive, which it almost always is because people prefer to be nice and either say nice things or nothing at all.)
I know that personally, I favorite very rarely, and it's not related to how much I like a story. I mean, I obviously have to like it to favorite it, but in general I favorite when the story has struck me as being not only good but also unique in some way. There are lots and lots of stories that I go back and re-read on a regular basis that I didn't favorite. Not sure why, exactly, except that I don't like the idea of ending up with hundreds of stories on my favorites list.
But it also feels like a favorite is a more honest expression of someone truly liking a story than a review is. Which makes me feel like the favorite should get more weight.
And that would lead me to a nice, straightforward ranking system except for the fact that I like the higher-review / lower-favorite story a lot better than the other one. And I really do believe it is a much better piece of writing overall. Now I know that my own taste doesn't necessarily have any relation to which story other people like better, and furthermore neither is necessarily related to which story is actually the better piece of writing. But I can't help it.
I want to take some of the favorites from the one story and add them to the other. Yes, I am just that crazy.
On the other hand, if I add up the number of people who reviewed and favorited, then the two stories come out in a tie . . .
. . . which maybe is good enough. At least, for now.
