Young Writers Society

By now you may have noticed that when viewing a literary work, there is a blank star right above the name of the author. Clicking the blank star turns it into a gold star.

This is the culmination of a lot of ideas submitted by users and is merely the first phase of what I will be doing with the gold stars. For now, giving a gold star shows whether or not you liked the piece. All works start off with a minimum of one gold star, and authors are allowed to give a gold star to their own piece. If you change your mind about whether or not a work deserves a gold star, you can remove it later. To giveth, click the star. To taketh away, click the star again.

The top 5 Featured Works are displayed on the front page as images in a slideshow. Just click on the image to see the work.

If you want to see the top 25 featured works, just click on "View More..." below the slideshow on the front page. From that page, you can also select to see the top 5 featured works from any specific date.

That does sound really, really cool!

Wow, Nate! That does sound pretty cool. It might be even more awesome when I actually see it, since I can only imagine how amazing it can be. I'm excited, though.

Our fantastical admin, once again, impresses us with his marvelous skills. ^_^

Awesome, Nate. Although, I do have one question. How will we be able to see how many gold stars we have gotten, or given? Is it possible?

Awesome!

BBB

That's an awesome idea. I love it!

BigBadBear wrote:Awesome, Nate. Although, I do have one question. How will we be able to see how many gold stars we have gotten, or given? Is it possible?

Awesome!

BBB

[s]
For now I'm holding off on displaying how many gold stars a topic has. This is because only 19 stars have been given out at this point. However, as that number rises, I will make it such that when you open a literary work, you can see how many gold stars it has.[/s]

Went ahead and made it such that you can see how many stars a topic has when you open it.

However, you will not be able to see the number of gold stars from the recent topics list or when browsing a forum. What I want to avoid is the tendency of users on sites with ratings to gravitate toward those topics with a good score. Of course, it's going to happen anyways, but I want to minimize it.

And there will eventually be a page where you can see what topics you have starred.

One question: will there be a minumum of posts that you must have before giving out stars? I can easily see some people creating accounts just to rate their own work higher.

Trident wrote:One question: will there be a minumum of posts that you must have before giving out stars? I can easily see some people creating accounts just to rate their own work higher.

Nope, and I really don't think that's going to happen, or at least it's not going to happen on a large enough scale to have any overall effect. There's always this concern out there about these types of things, but there's never been widespread abuse and I think it's because it takes too much time. To create another account, you need a different e-mail address. You then need to activate it. After all is said and done, you get one more gold star. Just one. That's it.

If you see it happen, of course let others know such as a mod or admin or a JM with authority over that section. But I honestly don't see it happening.

On another forum I attend, it has an advanced rating system. Or, at least it used to. There was a tendency of people to rate a thread a particular way if they saw that everyone else was rating it that way too.

When you can see how many gold stars a thread has, it might lead to a higher chance of a "lemming effect."

Dr. Kitty ->> I don't see the problem with that. It can only have a 'lemming' effect if it has a lot of stars. It can only have a lot of stars if it's good. If it's good, then it should be promoted. If it's promoted, it's going to get more stars.

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Anyhow, start giving stars out to those literary works you think deserve a 'gold star'! So far, 75 stars have been given out, which is good. But, I can't go further with this until there's a lot more than that! At the moment, the most any literary work has is three stars.

I am having way too much fun with these already. XD

Thanks for adding them, Nate!

This is really neat. I will have to go give stars to all those great pieces that I haven't gotten around to yet. ^_^

Thank you so much...
~Azila~

*sighs*

I guess I have to dig out the masterpieces of writing marvels again.

They're so much fun! Almost like a mini power-rush... 'I think I'll give it a gold star... Or maybe not!'

Very good idea.

That is really awesome, Nate.

Go you!