It is not just to complain but I'm curious about how the most relevant story is working in the search section. I will take my own story as an exemple but there are a lot of others with even higher stats. https://chyoa.com/story/"How-Gods-Come-To-Be".5034 It is a one chapter, one like story with under 5k views, it is on the first page of the sci-fi /fantasy section. And it was posted 4 years ago and left untouched since. https://chyoa.com/story/Stranded-on-Verdana-4.10202 83k views, with 10k on the first of the 123 chapters and 178 likes after 15 days. So as I can't find my story in the 30 first pages (all stories started with A or a number or symbol).... Maybe Alphabetical order would be a more honest title than relevance. Because even appart from mine I fail to see how dozens of multu hundred chapter stories with millions of views are less relevant that a one chapter story that happen to start with an A. If that's it anyone just has to post an empty story named "AAAAAAAAAH I'M FIRST !" to be on top of this section. So unless I'm missing something I find this rating very misleading.
What you're missing is that there are no "sections" to speak of. Everything goes through the search function, even category selection. By selecting a category, the site selects only stories filed under that category, and then runs out of information. Therefore, the site defaults to an alphabetical arrangement (mostly, a few stories still take precedence due to some anomaly from the days of CHYOO). All stories listed under other categories are omitted to provide you only the selected category, thus it is sorted by relevance based upon the information you've entered for a search. There are several ways to adjust the arrangement in the drop bar that reads "relevance" when you first begin, and can be further trimmed by entering additional information either through the search bar or the refining options listed to the right of the search results page. Mind you, I've never searched the site through a mobile, so I have no idea how it looks on a phone. If there is a difference, someone please follow up.
When someone clicks the sci-fi fantasy link under a story he gets to the search section with sci-fi as a filter ok this I get. But the 'sort story by' thinguie is set on relevance by default. Sure you can change it type words etc. But this setting has nothing to do with relevance. I have no problem with alphabetical order being the default setting when searching. My problem is in saying to people, look these stories are more relevant they are on the top of the list, when all they have that others haven't is an A at the start of their titles. So ironically I find that the relevance setting isn't relevant at all.
It's called "relevance" because it's searching based upon information, and the only information you supplied was the category. Once the site runs out of information to omit certain stories or prioritize one over the other, it defaults to alphabetical to resolve the equality. Think of it like this: You go to the library and tell the librarian you want to borrow a book, but don't supply any other information even upon probing, instead only saying yes or no to specific books (and for the sake of argument, we'll say the librarian can't discern anything about you such as age or gender). What does the librarian do since it can't narrow the scope with a genre, author, or anything else that demonstrates not all books are equal? In all probability, either it goes down the nearest row of books, or starts reading off books from the top of the inventory, only stopping when you say you'd like to borrow the current book it's suggesting. They're both terrible ways to get what you want, but they're the only options the librarian has since it doesn't have any information besides "book" and won't receive new information until you judge a book. This is how you're using the relevance search function by only selecting a category. The category is the only information the site has, so the site only knows to present the stories listed under that category. At that point, it doesn't have any new information until you either open a story or go to the next page.
Maybe make it where it takes into account tags? Example would be Story A is a non consent story. It has 20 chapters of which five are tagged non consent. It would have a score of twenty five percent for the purposes of relevance. The tie breaker could be length of story. I.e. if two stories both score twenty five percent the one with the most chapter would be listed first.
I get it that it is a good setting when using the search bar. It also makes it the worse to set as the default one when people click on links of categories under a story. I sometimes like to look for stories at random without search criterias and maybe highest rating or chapter depht would be better default setting. Love the website , I'm just trying to see if it can be improved upon.
Maybe the random story function may be useful for you. Just click on that symbol on the right side of the search bar (on small devices you will find the symbol in the dropdown menu) direct link: https://chyoa.com/goto/random
All of these are already options. All you have to do is select how to refine or sort your results and input search information. These two options are identical. Selecting a category initiates a search, so it's going to initiate default search settings. If Friedman can program category or tag selection to operate under different defaults, I'll support the update. Otherwise, it's better to set the site to prioritize information and then adjust it personally.
I know and sometimes use this function but it isn't very handy for me. I read, browse and write on my phone. I only log this site on a computer to send the first message to someone. (for some reason it bugs on my phone as I can't get the thing that let you clic on the names to work on it.) The mobile version of the website is very good and the interface is very nice to use but as the connection isn't always the best individual loadings can take a while so the random story is too slow for me. On a plus side that I will maybe post on the suggestion thread , it would be nice to be able to set the numbers of stories per page in the search section to more than 10.
