Medium: Are Rules of Engagement Broke?
BUG:1: Most fiction tags have top story lists filled with stories published more than six months ago. Why?
Note: What follows is speculation based on observation.
There seems to be a problem with Top Story Lists. There seems to be loads of stories permanently pinned to Top Story Lists. All these stories seem to be published before the introduction of claps. I hope to show that Rules of Engagement seem Broke, and have probably been this way since August 2017 when Hearts were converted to Claps.
What is Engagement?
Engagement is the value placed on stories to be able to rank one story against another. In simple terms, if story A has 2 fans today and story B has 1 fan, story A will have a higher Engagement value. [note: A fan is someone who claps for a story]
The real Engagement calculation is unknown and complex, but, a couple of things can be surmised:
- Trending: Today’s fans and claps have higher value than last weeks fans and claps. Similarly with other criteria.
- All interactions are stored: These can include Claps, Fans, View, Read, Read Time and many other criteria. Obviously, more fans equals more Engagement. Also a longer story, if read, has more Engagement.
The Initial Observation
In November 2017 I published three stories, all using the Microfiction tag, which, back then, was little used. Each story charted high in the Microfiction Top stories List, stayed there for a while, then didn’t get any more claps and dropped out of the list. At the time I did notice other stories with only a couple of claps in the list stay put after mine had dropped out, but didn’t pay too much attention to them.
More recently, I had a feeling that three or four stories at the bottom of the Microfiction Top stories List are still there from last November without any more fans. So I started observing more closely.
New Story Observations
I became an editor, which made me privy to stats of all stories I publish. I found, that if a new story got into a Top story List and did not get a new fan for two days running, it dropped out of the list like a ton of bricks. I observed this time and again on all new stories, I will call this the 2-day rule.
The 2-day rule :
If a new story does not get a new fan for 2-days it will drop out of every top story list.
Old Story Observation
There seems to be old stories permanently pinned to every (fiction) Top stories List I looked at, except the very well used Fiction and Short Story lists. See Tags for the Fiction Writer in Medium for a list of lessor used tags [example tags: Drabble, Horror, Fairy Tale, Very Short Story, Very Short Fiction]
What are the Old Stories with this Problem
Tags: Fairy Tale, Very Short Story, Drabble are chock-a-block full of old stories. ALL lessor used tags that I reviewed have this problem. Most Fiction Top story Lists are chock-a-block full of old stories.
Looking at the published dates of all stories in the various lists it can be seen that incumbent stories originate from before the switch from Heart to Claps, in August 2017.
Why is this a problem to you?
Your story is well received and goes to the top of your chosen list. After a week or so, it gets no new claps for 2 days running and the 2-day rule kicks-in and drops out of the list. But wait, there looks like there are stories in this list that have had no new claps for over 6 months — your story got claps 3 days ago.
How come old stories are still in the Top story list?
Are Rules of Engagement Broke?
Some Lists from a few days ago
Looking at the tag Very Short Story:
There is a story “Rosmery and Dirt” published on Apr 5, 2016 and it has 1 clap given by 1 fan. Note claps and fans are the same for both 15th and 19th March — There has been no new engagement — and if you look at today's list it’s likely to still have no new engagement AND be in the Top stories list!
On March 21 2018 this story was placed 8th (in Very Short Story list):
Why is this story even placed in the list? I document above that it has no new fans between 15th and 19th March AND 21st March. Is Engagement Broke?
What happens if you clap for one of these old stories?
Clap for one of these old stories and after 2 days of no more new fans, the 2-day rule kicks-in! The story drops out of the list!!
This implies these stories ARE STUCK which reinforces querying: Are Rules of Engagement Broke?
The title of this story is
Medium: Are Rules of Engagement Broke?
I used Broke rather than Broken with purpose. For all responses and follow up stories can you tag with Broke? Then we can follow more easily.
The Top stories List Broke is also full of old stories. Compare current list with some stories from a few days ago: Top Stories List — Broke-1.
Solution
The simple solution could be to finish the migration of Heart stories to Clap stories by releasing their pinned status BUT the result may just replace one set of pinned stories with another. So a bit of testing might be in order, to find out if there are any side-effects.
The 2-day rule can’t be the only rule applied to top lists, the model would be too simple. Once pinned stories are unpinned some of the other rules will kick in to fill the lower places. So, in future when the 2-day rule kicks-in the story will not drop out entirely, but to the next level of rules.
Just thought, I have only looked at tags associated with fiction, what about other tags?
- Tag Vietnam 25 out of 32 are older than 6 months.
- Tag Politics all are recent.
- Tag Government 6 out of 30 are old.
- Tag Hilary Clinton, less clear cut, but there are some old stories that could be permanently pinned.
- Tag Wales, 65 out of 67 are old. Whats more I’ve clapped for 2 Wales stories: One got into the Wales Top story list close to the bottom. The other one hasn’t got in (yet)! How come most of the stories in the list are ahead of both the stories I clapped for? There are even a couple of stories with NO FANS. The other story got into the tag Welsh Top story list.
For tags not related to fiction it seems less of a problem. Over to you readers: note a couple of old stories in your favourite tags. If they seem to stick around in the list with no more new fans while your story drops out the list -time to ask questions…
The names below are mostly fiction editors, with a few other interested parties. I’m guessing you all want to know that old stories seem to be permanently pinned to most top stories lists, keeping out your recently engaged stories.
There will be a follow up story, but all names will be removed, unless you request to opt in by adding your name to comments (use tag Broke).
Emma Zhou, D.S. Ritter, edh lamport, Julia Kantic, megpokrass, Lisa Wilton, Lily A King, Christine Costa, Meg Stewart, Effy J. Roan, Donna Pailor, Louise Foerster, Michelle Richmond, Jewel Eliese, Autumn Lindsey, Badri Sunderarajan, Manasa Kashi, Terijo, Emmanuel Nataf, Ricardo Fayet, Martin Cavannagh, Matt Cobb, Arielle Contreras, Yvonne Shiau, Luther Savage, Jess Knueppel, Cait Marie, Lisa Mildon, Alexandria Pallat, Trease Shine Hinton, Melanie Blackman, T.L. Hicks, Gabby Davis, Lisa Post, Emily Garber, Nicole Akers, Clay Akers, Frank McKinley, renee tarantowski
DiAmaya Dawn, A Maguire, Pat Link, David Smooke, Dan Moore, Linh Dao, Gueldner, Luke Esterkyn, Hassan S. Ali, Morgan Rock Loehr, Tom Mitchell, Gutbloom, Lauren Modery, Amanda Rosenberg, Irving Ruan, Matthew McConaughey, Stephanie Georgopulos, Harris Sockel, Vyoma Nupur, Bonni Rambatan, Carina Sitkus, Daryl Koopersmith, Anna Breslin, Vivian Winslow, Emma P
Thank you for reading.
