The "Story-of-the-Week" is a great feature, and I'm very proud to have it on the site: but I keep noticing that the same seven or eight people, in fact, the same seven or eight stories: keep showing up again and again. Therefore I propose the following ideas for bringing more diversity to this content. 1: Each story can earn this award only once. 2: Each Author can only receive the honor once. 3: Weight the algorithm to favor newer stories over established ones. 4: Extend the period where a story cannot receive SotW again from six months to a year. 5: Add a cool down period for not just stories, but authors. Many of these ideas are mutually incompatible: so I encourage the other forum members to discuss the merits of each one. (In a calm and civil manner: PLEASE!)
I agree with 3 and 4. I don't think that a story should be only allowed to be SotW once ever. A year is plenty of time. On top of that, if someone adopted a story that has been story of the week in the past it's unfair to them. I don't think that an Author should be restricted to only being allowed to get SotW once ever. There's a couple of problems with this. If a writer consistently produces good content in multiple different stories in order to get Story of the Week more than once a year. Then why shouldn't they be allowed to get it more than once? Also how does one define when an Author receives the honor? Most of the stories that hit SotW have multiple writers and multiple contributors and it's not always the owner of the story that has put the most work into it. The fifth verse is the same as the second. I think the third and fourth proposals would do enough to increase the variety of stories that get featured in the SotW slot that 1,2, and 5 are irrelevant and frankly too restrictive and debatable.
I'd tweak three by posing the accent on stories already in the top ten. They already camp on the frontpage, do they really need a second slot? (i'm sorry if this is already not possible to happen) Also i feel five would be unfair. If an author is so good to bring several stories to the point of being SOTW, then praise to him/her. Let's just be happy with all the good content flooding the site.
I think 4 is a good idea. I'm not that keen on the rest. I definitely agree with the above quote, the top ten stories get year round real estate on the front page. Deservedly so! But they probably don't need another spot as well.
1 & 2. There are no repeated stories, that I saw, in 2017 though 8 authors did get more then one of theirs stories on the list for 19 out of the 52. Only 6 stories have been repeats though never in the same year. 3. Can be problematic since stories must have a chapter depth of 25 to make the list. 4. Sounds good. https://chyoa.com/chapter/Stories-Of-The-Week.338983
