YEYHEYHEY!!

Wish I could blow my own trumpet!

I don't have a trumpet. All I have is this here kazoo. I wanted to be number 8000! It's not fair! I wonder if there's going to be a competition to get number 10000 now? Back off, bubs, it's mine!! No, actually, this scenario is bad isn't it? Nobody will submit their work after 9998! Unless somebody has two and can submit both of them really fast! Well, it's still mine anyway!! Hah hah hahhh!! And I'll get double cherried, it'll be so good! And then it'll win the Pulitzer!! Hah hah hah hah!!! Or, then again, I could be happy simply with number 9743 and then go to bed.

Just out of curiosity, perhaps the editors would tell me what was actually the FIRST item posted on the site!

Well done, Jen. It's nice to see someone so happy...

Just curious but how many of the stories, poems and others have been cherry picked? Wonder what percent the cherry picked make up because people are likely to remove them if the are bad or if they are fantastic aren't they? are they? who are they?

I don't know what it is now meremortal but the very same thought occured to me some months ago and I calculated that about 23% of the work had been cherry picked. I've no idea though on how that percentage is spread amongst the authors. Also, each piece submitted is given a reference no. The latest stuff entered is all around the 9780 mark. with only 8009 pieces on the database this means that 1780 pieces have been deleted or amended. I think that's how it works anyway.

It's about 22% overall, slightly higher for stories and slightly lower for poems. But poems are almost two thirds of the total. I don't like to think too much about the ratio when I'm doing it. I can easily cherry three on the bounce, or go ten, twelve pieces without finding a good one. On my reckoning, we might just make the ten thousand by Christmas. I cherried Jennifer's piece and I think she earned it.

Thankyou very much andrew - and yes, it was one of those pieces that I re-read and just thought - yes, I think that one is GOOD!! So cheers!! J xxx

Thanks for the information it's quite strange to think of all those stories and poems and how many of them are that good and still there to be read!

To answer Mississippi's question - the oldest story I can find on the site is "Plonker Goes" by S Gardiner . If you hit any story and then change the bit in the address at the end that goes s= XXXX to S=27 the story will come up. I did a quick sample and that was the lowest number I found. (The others might have been deleted or edited) And the date was 24 October 2000, so it sounds about right.

Thanks Andrew.