Story rankings are abusable?

feedback_discovery

#1

Maybe I’m just salty, but it really bothers me now if I discover by “random” half the hot list I get is pretty much the same kind of romance story that I have seen the last five years of Wattpad. I don’t want to argue about the stories itself but doesn’t isn’t this ranking system easy to misuse by literally slapping any tags you want onto a story and then dominating the rankings when those tags have no relationship with it?

It’s the same situation for short stories, and while I didn’t actually look at the chapters I can’t imagine any of then being actually short stories… or that people search up short stories for something that literally has porn in it’s description. Those stories has a audience but honestly I don’t want to see them. I feel like I’m forced to see “those” stories if I want to discover new books when those tag rankings should had alleviated this.


#2

I do personally understand you. I have the same problem with Fanfiction. When I want to read a Romance, Historical Fiction, or something else, I get loads of fanfictions in the results/rankings and I waste always a good hour sorting what’s fanfic and what isn’t first, and then the completed books and the ongoing ones and lately the ones I have already read and the ones that I haven’t yet. I read following my mood, and when nothing fits in my reading lists, I like to look for something new but it’s never easy with the current system because the ranking seems frozen in time as you say.
Needless to say that it discourages me most of the time :tired_face:


#3

I have pretty much stopped using discovery or suggestions for books but I just feel like this is something that nobody talks about even tho it seems so absurd to me — like again if people want to read those stories then alright, but if I have to see those stories shoved down my throat it just feels like nobody cares because some of those stories are featured too.

Edit: as a fantasy guy I get bombarded with fanfic or werewolf/vampire stories and it’s hard not to dislike them even tho the hots list is technically listing the most popular stories…


#4

Personally, I complain and rant whenever I have the occasion like now lol :woozy_face:

I like to read on Wattpad and I am sometimes surprised to discover talented writers, but not as often as I’d wish to because, justly, looking for books is sometimes a chore. We need a more convenient system and a new categorisation. If books are sorted by genres and recency, along with popularity, progress and length, if we were given more choices, it would be simpler for both readers and writers. As things stand, with all the uncompleted books and loads of fanfictions, looking for a book seems like looking for a needle in a haystack :pleading_face:


#5

Even as an fanfiction writer I have to agree it doesn’t seem fair there isn’t really a way to exclude FFs when searching for other stories.


#6

It isn’t fair for fanfiction writers either, not all the books get the visibility they need and, even in fanfics, the ranking is quite always the same. If a new system is set up, I think everyone will get some benefit out of it :blush:


#7

TBH I feel like this would be okay if there was some kind of moderation system to remove tags as needed, I’m not sure how effective this would be or how many things one would have to sort through, but those things will naturally happen bc of Wattpad’s large userbase and it’s better to do something then not, but there’s not a lot to do on my part and reporting the stories doesn’t really fix the issues


#8

Maybe if the readers are given the possibility to choose or vote for the tags it would be better. Another solution would be to remove the tags and set a limited, generalizing list of tags and adding the sub-genre in which the book is written, I think it can suffice. After that, it would be up to the writer to write a catchy plot that would help the book to appear in the results of research more often … like it’s done on other platforms :thinking:


#9

Imo I feel like being able to vote on tags could technically lead to abuse though I think it’ll cut down on the inappropriate tags

I’m not sure if I’m understanding right but do you mean tags under a genre? Because having predefined tags could still lead to writers tagging their stories whatever there is to boost their visibility.


#10

I get how you feel. In the Poetry Hot section, there are short stories and fanfics.


#11

I dislike tags being ranked at all. I think only genres that you pick for your book should be ranked, like before.

This system is just messy.


#12

Agreed!


#13

Nope, I meant the author chooses the tags and the readers would have a certain amount of time to tell if they are pertinent or not, the tags that get the most of favorable ratings would be kept, the others discarded once the deadline (or number or reads and votes) reached.
For the genre, I am not too sure but I am convinced that adding the sub-genres would help somewhat for the visibility. For example, if you’re looking for New Adult Romance you’d get different results than with Romance, and MXM Romance would give different results than LGBT+ Romance. If a studied and enriched list of sub-genres is available, I think it could replace the tags and everyone would be able to encode a precise research key. Well, this is just my opinion as a desperate reader lol :flushed::thinking:


#14

It could work but the pessimism within me says people would just vote whatever tags they see, but honestly you could really come up with anything at this point. I just wished they would change it to anything but how it is but they don’t really have a incentive to considering all the monetizing going on.


#15

I’ve said this before in another thread, but what Wattpad really needs is something similar to its current system where you can search for stories only containing [tag] PLUS [tag], but in addition, you should be able to search for [tag] MINUS [tag].

For instance, try searching for a standard werewolf story. You won’t find one even after tons of scrolling. The hot list, the rising list and the new list are all romance werewolf stories, but see, if you could search for [werewolf] and then subtract [romance], [alpha] and [mate], you’d actually get what you wanted.

Just a suggestion.


#16

I think they may be working on this issue. Recently, they had a survey that used examples from the hotlist and asked, Is this what you expect to find when you search [insert tag/genre]? I gathered from the questions that they’re looking to improve the ranking system.

I do agree, the current system is rather frustrating.


#17

pssst yes there’s a way to exclude things from a search. Type a minus sign for all your queries on the tags you don’t want. Idk maybe it helps. It doesn’t help if the book isn’t properly tagged, though


#18

That is funny because the first thing I was told when I started posting fanfic on wattpad was that I should best put ‘xy fandom fanfiction’ in the title to make it clear. Is that not a common practice?


#19

Awesome. How new is this feature? Because I could swear I’ve tried it as late as some time this year and it didn’t work before.


#20

I’m not sure! I rarely use the search bar. I found out purely by accident a while ago.
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