Maybe just a “recommend” or “subscribe” button? The assumption being if someone reads and clicks the recommend button then the story is “liked” and would generate traffic and encourages the writer that people are at least enjoying the work. Prevents disliking maliciously. A subscribe would create an alert on the archive profile to say “hey a story you are reading has updated!” and would again also let the author know they are being enjoyed. I know we have, in the archive, a list of recommended reading but if we could link it somehow because it doesn’t make the author’s heartstrings flutter because there’s no link to them that lets them know they’ve been recommended and afaik there’s no alert to let the reader know there’s been an update. They have to check manually. I may be wrong, I cleared out my profile years ago, and apparently, a lot of my favorite authors removed their stories which is sad.
My thoughts were more archive-oriented. Forums and the archive are, in my mind, not really “together”. I know this is a forum about the archive but I always feel like I’m joining a separate space with the forums. (I take additional issue with the amount of separation that exists in the forum for topics – you can promote your story here but to talk about it you have to go over here and if you want a beta go here whereas I would think an author would just make a single thread where they can simultaneously say “go read my story” and talk about it and thank people for reviewing and get feedback from the audience. Just the “Nomadic String about This Story I wrote about Delicious Cake” and not worry if it zigzags into chaos. Potentially a me problem but I am mentioning it. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.)
But I am not a coder and I do not know the amount of mess coding all that would be. If I was a coder I’d volunteer my time to make gold stars for reviewing stories in the archive. I started and stopped at HTML. I wish I could code but I fear I’m too tired to pick up a new hobby.
I can see if I can design something that happens monthly for reviewing here in the forum, but my request, if I were to design something, would be chaos. I’ve never been one for controlled conversation. I know you guys got titles here that goes in the signature so that can always be utilized, I suppose. A ranking system I dunno... I’m chewing on it...