BronxWench

Think I spent way too much time playing that game.  Preferred the stealth/sniper build myself, and got annoyed at mandatory companions who’d ring every doorbell, set off every trap, and push me over cliffs.

They’d treat him worse than the Argonians up in Windhelm!

Jar Jar Binks meets Dragon Priest?

I’ve commented a few times that multi chapter stories seem to get more hits overall because they get a boost from being pushed back to the front page each time the oneshots don’t get. If you guys mean Skyrim: Plaything as the Skyrim story – that’s had 36 chapters for 12k hits which works out (average only!) 333 hits a chapter from folks clicking on the front page which is still impressive and more than most of mine ever did but possibly not as intimidating a comparison as it looks.
...I gotta do a Skyrim story sometime. I got Morrowind, I got Oblivion… including Jar Jar Binks crossover request bah.
 

Skyrim’s super mainstream, so that would make sense. It could also be the story is just that good. Once I finish my own, I plan to read a lot of the stories here. Especially that one.

I’ve got stories posted to three archives, AFF, AO3, & FFN.  Only FFN with my main potter fanfic seems to be getting hit by bots.  AO3 & AFF both seem to be bot-free.  11k in 100 days might be bot driven, however, some fandoms are more active than others.
 

Wouldn’t bots be scrubbing the site systematically though, so that every story sees a certain number of dragon prints? I’ve kinda been hoping my story is doing moderately well because it’s gets more daily dragon prints than most other stories that are regularly updated.
For example, I’ve got 1288 in 25 days, whereas another story in the games archive has only 650 in 29 days. Of course, there’s a Skyrim story with 11k in 100 days, which is doing better than both of us.

It is easy to find stories that have got between 100 and 200 totally after being online for a year so bots in general is not a significant problem for dragon hits. Possibly there could be some tailor-made bot that is specially looking for the word Skyrim or something similar, but that is life.
As a funny notice I used to frequent a now gone story site where the email was visible with the story but you could not see the equivalent of dragon prints. This meant that I received spam proportional to the number of hits from readers with malware on their computers. Good chapters got lots of more spam than the bad ones…. a very different time.

I liberally lather up the minor1 tags, so it’s more likely my smut that does it.  You’re welcome! 

I wish to apologise to everybody if reading my porn is what causes SkyNet to try to exterminate us all.

Flicking through Unleash the Beast comparing the above has had me thinking a second part would be cool, Hermione back to Hogwarts not long before her 17th Birthday, ends up spending the night in Hagrid’s hut and seducing the cowardly Fang, who for the purposes of the pwp would have some magic in his bloodline is still frisky at senior dog stage… eh.
Got this idea of some dogs of magic infused that breed litters of puppies with witches, a secret group called the Union of the Knot, with only one or rarely two puppies out of each little also able to carry on a magical rather than non magical bloodline. There should have been a witch with Fang back in ‘89 or so, but the candidate turned out not to be able to get through his basica cowardice, perhaps scaring him due to personality conflict. Hermione’s the second effort, having been unknowingly observed with Saxon in part 1, they arrange for her to find herself alone with Fang for the night, and then the next morning one of them is making breakfast when she wakes up caked in dried sperm and strongly smelling of dog sex, and explains she’s now likely pregnant, that the pregnancy enhances her own fertility – maybe a suggestion that Fang’s grandmother was Molly, another member of the Union...
Yes, this is some fucked up shit, but the first story was popular and turning it around a bit so Hermione is the seducer rather than the other way round, and adding in the pregnancy angle (some kinda magic to hide it while she’s carrying I guess) would be something new. I dunno, I feel like I probably won’t get it written but it’s nice to plan stuff and feel ideas form…

Not saying it’s the greatest idea ever, simply what I do because there’s no other metric here, aside from reviews.  (And don’t think asking the reader a comprehension worksheet would work either.)
Now, FF.net has good enough statistics for me to ascertain that bots are coming through.  I mean, I doubt humans are reading my 700k potter fanfic in a day.  It was meaningful the couple of times I watched a slow progression through the chapters, that did let me know that somebody was willing to hit “next chapter”.  On FF.net, though, they have other metrics, like alerts & favorite counts, to help know that readers are liking it.

I don’t know how useful keeping track of dragon prints are- I used to get loads of hits on pastebins I hardly showed anyone, and I realised the numbers were just getting inflated by bots combing the site.

Oh, yeah, those rating bombs were not great. Only happened to one of my stories – went from like 4 stars/30 votes where it had been for months to over 100 votes overnight and 1 star. I tended not to pay a lot of attention to ratings, but it still kinda sucked.
A like button would be pretty good -might need to be tied to accounts tho’ like on Twitter, to reduce fake boosting (probably not all the way but some of the way!) I feel like it’s unlikely

Honestly, if we could implement it, a “like” button would be great. Granted, the lack of likes might be just as discouraging as the lack of dragon prints, but it would have far less potential for abuse than our old ratings system. I can’t tell you how many members had stories rated down for what I consider the stupidest of reasons: a disliked pairing, a character being too out of character, and on one memorable occasion, for writing too many stories. Yes, really, and the saddest part is that the author was an excellent writer who truly didn’t deserve to be ratings-bombed.

I’m one who was attacked by a rating bomb, the downvote would come in immediately after a chapter post, too short to actually read it.  Lemme tell you, it was very discouraging to keep posting.  (And this was in ORIGINAL fiction, where there wasn’t any “one-true-pairing” shipping nonsense – could’ve been a story-tag thing, but never really know why they attacked.)  Sure, a like button is open to some abuse, but any author who bots it will lose the reason it’d exist, to know how many people truly like their story – less of a downside than a dislike button.  Now back to this Hermione incest scene….

I think a downvote button just opens for abuse. At the end of the day you can’t use the downvote metric for anythings useful since you don’t know why somebody downvoted the story/chapter.  The upvote/like is more useful for the author...but it can be abused by authors/readers who want to promote a story.

How about having a “like” button for the chapters where the result is only visible for the author? If you remove publicly visible aspect of the like/upvote you remove a lot of reasons for people arranging a bot that clicks on the like button.

Honestly, if we could implement it, a “like” button would be great. Granted, the lack of likes might be just as discouraging as the lack of dragon prints, but it would have far less potential for abuse than our old ratings system. I can’t tell you how many members had stories rated down for what I consider the stupidest of reasons: a disliked pairing, a character being too out of character, and on one memorable occasion, for writing too many stories. Yes, really, and the saddest part is that the author was an excellent writer who truly didn’t deserve to be ratings-bombed.

One thing that make dragon prints a measure a bit tricky is that a large number of chapters in the story raises the effort to read it all. This mean that each time you post a new chapter you can expect a number of people checking the beginning out but not becoming fans so they drop out. The increased perceived effort to read the chapters will mean these random visitors lessens over time. In essence you can a growing number of regulars that read everything, but having a dragon print that is falling as fewer random visitors visit the story. If you keep a steady beat of dragon hints as chapters grow in number I would say it signals you are doing great.

From another perspective, exchanging reviews with other authors is a great way to making it more likely new people will check you story. If I have to choose between reading two stories and one of them has a review I will most only choosing the 0 review one when doing community-service-style-reading. Stories with reviews are generally a better read.

The thing lacking at AFF today is we don’t get dragon prints for the individual chapters. If we had those we could tell how many that read to the end. The tricky thing is that adding such feature afterward would imply that later chapters of all existing chapters has no dragon prints even while they could have been visited by loads of people.

I just assume they don’t like my stories! But, seriously, dragon prints can be a reasonable guide, especially if they keep going up loads on new parts.

That’s the million dollar question, as your only metrics you have are dragon prints & reviews.  (There used to be “ratings” but that got abused by trolls.)
What I do is I record my dragon prints, daily, and plot them in a spreadsheet; I do this with all my AFF & AO3 stories, and it lets me know which stories gain X number of hits after a chapter post, that’s about the only way to measure interest.
Now, the other thing you can do is to read stories, drop reviews, and hope the karma comes back to you.  After all, a review is golden.

I’m new here and have only one story up that’s a work in progress. I notice that unlike many other sites, there’s no like or dislike buttons, no subscribing to an author, just reviews. And those reviews are pretty rare. The only thing we really have to go on is dragon prints. In that respect, my story seems to be doing moderately well, gaining about 40 dragon prints per day, which seems to be a higher rate than other stories in the “games” category where the story resides. But all dragon prints tell you is who has clicked on the story, not if they actually read it and enjoyed it.
So I guess my question is, if I’m maintaining a somewhat higher level of daily dragon prints than other newly updated stories in my category, does that mean I’m doing well? Or is that a completely meaningless measure?

There’s no pending registration for you for the forum, so I’m assuming it’s the archive.

Dang. this thread has more spam than a Hawaiian 7-Eleven.

Compare and contrast!Ddescriptions of effects of various severities and treatments:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/burns-and-scalds/ (one small picture)
vs
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/acid-and-chemical-burns/