I'm wondering if there are any active/former contributers to the kanji stories section. If I can come up with an original or improve an existing story, I do so and post it. It's sort of a built-in routine for me. If a similar story or better one is already posted, I just move on.

I have noticed that a lot of stories are dated and the number of 'stars' are much higher than the number of contributors. I suspect that the RTK section is predominately used by lurkers than contributors. I guess the same thing could be said with virtually anything.

Out of 2100 kanji, I've made and shared -checks- 62 stories. The rest I've just copied from former contributors and moved on. I'd guess most people would invent at least a single story that they like so much they'd decide to share, with so many kanji there's a pretty high chance of that happening.

I contributed some stories when I first started, then I realized that any story I contributed would be 'new' for a very little while and then be at the bottom of a long list of stories and never seen again, while the top few stories would be the top few stories forever. By virtue of being top stories in the first place, they'll keep gaining votes faster than bottom stories.

I stopped contributing stories when I had this realization. Also because I stopped looking at the story lists unless I was really badly stuck.

I like my stories to take care of placement of primitives and many top rated stories fail in that aspect. So far I've submitted 63 stories.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:I contributed some stories when I first started, then I realized that any story I contributed would be 'new' for a very little while and then be at the bottom of a long list of stories and never seen again, while the top few stories would be the top few stories forever. By virtue of being top stories in the first place, they'll keep gaining votes faster than bottom stories.

I stopped contributing stories when I had this realization. Also because I stopped looking at the story lists unless I was really badly stuck.

The majority of people may just get the file that's floating around with the top two starred stories, but they are missing out. I find that although sometimes the top story is the best, in more cases than not, you'll find better stories as you scroll down much further.

In studying with RTK, I have a handy printout of my favorite stories from this site. It's labor intensive in collecting the "best" stories and I often have to change them even more. I think if you have something decent, it will help someone, but they will have to dig for it. I'm one of those who actually goes through the list to find something decent.

I do find that a lot of the top starred stories were "starred" early on, I guess when the site was new. I think the stories with the "Data" references are evidence of its age.

I created and shared quite a few hundred stories, and the ones that have been used often make me feel good. Any story with over ten likes I consider a big success.

Tzadeck Wrote:I created and shared quite a few hundred stories, and the ones that have been used often make me feel good. Any story with over ten likes I consider a big success.

I remember getting my first star. It's a good feeling, and it's also interesting to know what others think about you stories. I am actually really suprised with my stories, the ones I think are so-so get stars and the ones that I think are the most original, excellent that would even get Heisig's own approval, go on unstarred.

I have to agree with Norman.

A LOT of the stories I copied from people were not popular and many didn't receive any stars at all. Try to read as many of the stories as you can before deciding on one.

And once you choose a story, give it a star!

chamcham Wrote:And once you choose a story, give it a star!

I usually scan many stories before I settle on a particular one or decide to think on my own. Going for the most popular ones is the most obvious thing to do. Another approach for selecting good stories that you might try is to find ones that have high gradient
For example, if the top story is from 2007 and, lets say, the third one is from from 2010 then the chances are that the later one is better.

Man, just looked at the stories I've contributed (2!). Both are 4-5 years old and have a combined 8 stars, lol.

I just finished a few months ago. Whenever I thought of an original story, or for whatever reason modified a story I found, I would post it. When I was stuck on a kanji I would scan through the stories posted (usually not just the top rated ones) and use whichever one seemed the most memorable to me. Everyone else's stories helped me a lot so I wanted to share mine too, in the hopes that some of them might help other people. Just looked back now and saw that I shared 617 stories.

I've got about 230 shared stories out there with about 20 of them having 100+ stars. Granted, since these are old stories, it's more likely most of those votes are just from the band wagon effect of upvoting a top story without looking at other likely better stories.

There's been requests in the past of letting users tailor how they view stories. Things like top posting a favorite author (or blocking an annoying one), bottom listing stories older than a certain time, or have a weighting algorythm where recent votes or maybe votes from people that finished the series have more say. Still, the system is better than nothing.

[Katsuo]

I think the system works well overall, but one drawback is that even if a new story is very good and gets a few votes it will still disappear into oblivion after one month. One way round this would be to make a new category which lists the top few stories over, say, the last three months.

In other words the present two categories expands to three:

1) What's new?
2) What's hot?
3) All time favourites

Category 2 above is the new one of course. It would be a drop-down list that includes, say, the top three or four vote-getting stories over the last three months or so. A really good new story would stay in that list and as a result would gradually work its way up the all-time list.

Disadvantages I can think of are a) It makes the system a bit more complicated and b) It would be extra work for the webmaster.

I have 826 shared stores, and only ten of them have more than 20 stars, haha.