Successful Story Hours - a simple analysis (raised from the thread)

[jollyninja]

as far as motivation for writing goes, one of my players moved and has no game to go to each week. he requested a story hour. i am a slave to the reasonable and interesting requests of my former gaming companions. as i had not really been keeping a campaign log as it were, i have been forced to write it in the character of someone who may or may not know what really happened and is drunk. and i swear, there will be lesbian pirate ninja robots at some point. it's not false advertising.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I don't know how popular or good my Traveller T20 story hour is compared to other story hours. All I know is that I post updates every Sun. evening-Mon. morning. And by the time I post the next update the next week, there have been 200-250 views.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

if you havent read this thead, it attemps to place story hours in a ranking based on page views, responses, duration, etc. they use two methods of different criteria.

have any newcomers busted into the Top 10? Perhaps even the Top 5?

Wulf's Story Hour

Views: 100,533
Replies: 871
Lifetime: 989 days

Views/Replies Ratio: 115.4
Views/Lifetime Ratio: 101.65

But like Piratecat's SH, this is a terribly inaccurate measurement. I have deleted a lot of posts from my SH-- which both increases the view count and decreases the number of replies.

Wulf

 

[Droid101]

One day... you all wait. One day!

Heck, I'll just make a HÔL campaign and it should be popular to read right off.

 

[Desdichado]

Huh. Hadn't seen this thread in a while. And since I have a Story Hour that's more recent than the thread, heck, let's do the metrics! I've got 58 posts in the thread, 10 of which are story entries, 1244 views, and it's been around exactly three months in two days, so we'll call it 88 days. That's give or take a day, but close enough.

Views/Posts Ratio: 21.448
Views/Lifetime Ratio: 14.136
Views/Story Posts Ratio: 124.4
Lifetime/Story Posts Ratio: 8.8
Posts/Story Posts Ratio: 5.8

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter too much. As long as I get the occasional bright comment from a reader, as long as the views seems to be steadily climbing, and as long as my players keep popping in to banter with each other about in game events, it's a lot of fun to write.

 

[WizarDru]

What Wulf said. Some of the larger or older story hours prune comments regularly, so that's not a very good measurement. Some don't get as many comments, but get a higher view count. Some of the older story hours predate this version of the boards, such as PC's, Wulf's, (contact)'s, Sagiro's and mine, making a measurement of popularity over time innaccurate. Especially if it's combined with posts over time...a measurement which penalizes a story-hour for longevity, if I understand the methodology being used.

As it stands now, there are more story hours than I have time to read.

Let's see, if we use the current date for the new thread (which prolly shaves off about 400 days, like Wulf, PC and the others)....

Views: 46,070
Replies: 422
Lifetime: 989 days

Views/Replies Ratio: 109.1
Views/Lifetime Ratio: 46.5

 

[Rackhir]

What Wulf said. Some of the larger or older story hours prune comments regularly, so that's not a very good measurement. Some don't get as many comments, but get a higher view count. Some of the older story hours predate this version of the boards, such as PC's, Wulf's, (contact)'s, Sagiro's and mine, making a measurement of popularity over time innaccurate. Especially if it's combined with posts over time...a measurement which penalizes a story-hour for longevity, if I understand the methodology being used.

Granted it's not an exact measure, but the most popular story hours do pop up at the top as one would expect them to do. Though I think more recent data pops up your story hour.

I do find the existance of this thread interesting, because I came up with exactly the same idea at one point and posted the results to PC's story hour. Well I guess grate mimes fink a lice.

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

Resurrected

I stumbled across this old thread while I was searching for something else, and I thought it would be cool to see how things have changed since the initial post. For those of you new to the thread, the OP formulates the "success" of a story hour based on the number of views devided by the number of posts. It's certainly not an exact sceince, but it does present some interesting results. I took the story hours from the first page and a half, and excluded my own story hours, since they are no longer updated in the traditional sense.

Here's how the story hours rank today:

talien		140.11
Shemeska		100.74
jonrog1			92.26
Sepulchrave		87.52
Sagiro			82.78
spyscribe			64.51
Jeremy			62.00
Rolzup			60.94
Cerebral Paladin		60.37
Eccles			59.03
Aholibamah		58.90
sniffles			58.15
the Jester		57.94
Lazybones		57.65
sniffles			57.49
the Jester		55.74
JollyDoc			54.28
the Jester		53.89
megamania		53.82
Altalazar			53.18
the Jester		52.14
megamania		51.26
Son of Thunder		50.00
Whisbang Dustyboots	47.02
tariff			45.55
megamania		45.18
diaglo			45.05
EternalNewbie		44.98
Menexenus		44.73
Ankh-Morpork Guard	43.63
megamania		43.56
sniffles			43.50
Teneb			40.74
Cerebral Paladin		40.36
el-remmen		40.32
Ankh-Morpork Guard	39.90
Jon Potter		38.08
Hairy Minotaur		37.74
Silver Moon		36.27
Silver Moon		35.50
megamania		34.55
detomo			33.00
Rackhir			32.88
Enk&D'Shai		30.14
Goonalan			29.87
barsoomcore		29.43
Devo			29.30
Yesminde			28.33
Funeris			27.98
megamania		27.72
Yesminde			27.17
amethal			26.02
Loup Du Noir		22.81
Goonalan			21.49
megamania		21.01
Olgar Shiverstone               20.93
Funeris			18.80
Dantardis			18.46

I think the coolest thing is that the top 10 has changed almost completely, which I must say, surprised me some. But I love the fact that new authors have taken the place of the old guard and are putting out some really fine material. I would encourage people to go through this list and take a look at some story hours they might not have read (not just the top 10). There are some real gems in here.

BD

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Wow that HAS changed a great deal.

And hey, I like it. Good thread bump here.

 

[Mallus]

IIt's certainly not an exact science, but it does present some interesting results.

I approve of your methodology %100.

And not just because I DM the campaign in Rolzup's Story Hour that you just ranked him 8th behind such ENWorld superstars like Sepulchrave, jonrog, Smemeska and Sagiro...