Top Ten Most Read

It's a totally meaningless list. Top Ten this week, or today, or this month... that may have more value. It might be nice to have a rolling 'most read in last seven days' or similar.

woolly citations and weird arguments - the sort of stuff some bearded mariner regales you with on the way to Tescos ah... hahahahahahahahahaha that's so damn funny

Self-fulfilling hit counter stories (or elf-fulfilling if you must). Somehow, back in the genesis of ABC (circa 2004), they ratcheted up the reads and now no one can catch up. Not even if you rig up a mechanical device to flick open your own stories every minute of the day and night. And then our own curiosity gets the better of us and we look too. Yes, Angela Bromley has had 13259 hits on a story about her …. That's computers for you, binary not literary.

I appreciate this grouse - and it would be nice to have 'most read in the past 30 days' or whatever - but it takes money to pay techies to do this stuff - and we don't have a lot of that!

Fair comment I think. Maybe we should flag up Poem and Story of the Week more prominently.

First impressions count. I shopped around for online writing sites before I chose this one. In the end I picked it because its design was cleaner than the competitors (which isn't saying much: http://www.writing.com/ http://www.ukauthors.com/). But I had serious reservations about the quality of the writing. I never would have guessed there was so much good stuff on here... it doesn't look that way from the ten latest or ten most read lists. Making the story/poem of the week more prominent would be a good start. Maybe also the cherry picks, though in my opinion the net is cast a bit wide there.

There are many, many online writing sites, apart from ABC, UKA and Writing.com. Not hugely keen on Writing.com, it's too BIG and complicated, but Writers Dock is nice (http://www.writersdock.org), as is Bibliophilia (http://www.bibliophilia.org) who are just starting out and could do with some support. There are loads more, but those spring immediately to mind. There' nothing in the rule book, as far as I know, that says you have to belong exclusively to one site. ABC, UKA, Bib and WD have many members in common, and that's the way it should be. More the merrier. Sure Tony will agree. We don't see each other as 'competition' at all - just a bunch of guys who started up writing sites and help each other out when and where we can. We had the same probs with the 'most read' over at UKA, and in the end I deactivated them. As stated, they tend to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. That said, whatever we do to try and improve things (Tony, me, Sonny et al) will upset someone. Case of can't please all of the people, alas. Hey, Tony, a spell check here would be good :-) http://www.ukauthors.com http://www.ukapress.com

In terms of functionality, I think Editred is really good: http://www.editred.com/

OK, you're not competitors, forgive my crude and Thatcherite take on online writing sites. But I still think clean design, good functionality and prominently displayed quality work is the way to become first among equals. I tried out Editred... lots of nice features, but it feels a bit cluttered compared to here.

Yeah, I agree Editred has too many features but if they could identify which ones were and weren't most useful and knock out the rest, it would be pretty good.

I can't even find the ten most read, but then, I'm a clutz.

Two of my stories are in the top ten most read. With one 'Rocco Sifredi...who?,' i couldn't figure out why it was getting so many hits on UKA and here without comments on the former, it was getting 50-60 hits a week long after it was submitted , which is high for uka. Rocco Sifredi is a well know porn celeb , so i thought maybe google was directing people to the site mistakenly ... on checking on google , i found i'd spelt his name incorrectly with 2 f's , but with this spelling mistake it still created a link about him to uka as first on the google list. I adjusted the spelling of his name and the hits dried up on UKA and have slowed considerably here. As for Angela Bromley the other of mine in the top ten, i assume the last word in the title is doing something similar , in attracting hits rather than genuine readers.

Ah, so that's how it's done! Thanks Flash. Now please go and read my latest masterpiece, "Teen celebs get naked girl on girl, and other stories".

Giz a link then :-o)