6.3 KiB
A question about the relative popularity of rational fiction[Q][D]
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Author: u/avret SDHS rationalist*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3nx69n/a_question_about_the_relative_popularity_of/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2015-10-08T02:19:54
Post:
From what I've observed, rationalfic seems to be a somewhat popular genre relative to other genres of fiction based on the only metrics I have available to judge(namely, follower/favorite counts or similar). To what extent do your observations correlate with mine?
Comments:
u/Red_Navy [+7] (32 minutes later)
I think selection bias adequately explains it.
u/avret [+2] SDHS rationalist (40 minutes later)
Really? Even when using straight-up rankings by most followed from ffn?
u/Endovior [+4] (a day later)
Show us your metrics. Having actual numbers to reference helps; otherwise, you're basically just asserting "stuff my subculture likes seems popular".
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
For actual numbers for the stuff I've posted to ff.net:
There are 535 stories under "Terminator"; Branches on the Tree of Time is 6th in Reviews, 2nd in Favorites, and 2nd in Follows.
There are 545 stories under "Superman"; The Metropolitan Man is 2nd in Reviews, 1st in Favorites, and 1st in Follows.
There are 4.2K stories under "Mythology"; The Last Christmas is somewhere I couldn't find in Reviews, 8th in Favorites, and 18th in Follows.
There are 9.4K stories under "Frozen"; A Bluer Shade of White is 24th page for Reviews (~600), 8th page for Favorites (~200), and 26th page for Follows (~650).
(But those are just my numbers and it's probable that you can't extrapolate from those to rational fiction generally.)
Generally speaking, the biggest thing that determines how many reviews a fic gets seems to be how many chapters it has, mostly because you can leave a review for each chapter. Works get followed if they need following, so things which are complete don't tend to get followed. Other than that, I'm sure there's a marketing and/or word of mouth aspect to it that explains a lot of the numbers, popularity and quality aside.
u/avret [+1] SDHS rationalist (a day later)
Thank you for providing numbers. To add on, Light in Despair's Darkness(Out of 1800 stories about Danganronpa) is 4th in favorites, 5th in follows, and 8th in reviews.
EDIT: Missed the last paragraph. Is it reasonable to assume that this subreddit creates some to most of that word of mouth?
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
It's a combination of this subreddit and LessWrong, yes. Posting a story to this subreddit gives it much more of a boost than I would think you'd get from just posting it to the website. Though I'm not really sure how you'd go about quantifying that.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (a day later)
Depends on how many sites a given author struts their stuff on. If you're promoting in various places it becomes hard to tell what proportion of people come from where.
u/Endovior [+1] (a day later)
Given that the question here is selection bias, it seems like that particular filtering scheme is semi-problematic, since it returns the most popular stories in reference to specific pre-selected media (which contain popular rationalist stories), rather than the most popular stories, period (which may not).
u/Jiro_T [+1] (4 days later)
Most fanfic is written by people a lot younger than rational fanfic writers. Such people are much less likely to write good fic just because of their age, whether the fic is rational or not, so the confounding factor is really large.
u/avret [+2] SDHS rationalist (a day later)
HPMoR is 2nd or first most followed or most reviewed. 2YE, when it was up, was(I think), most followed or at least in the top 5. /u/alexanderwales's work is in the top 5 or ten in a few genres(For example, Branches on the tree of time is 2nd most favorited and followed). My own fanfic, Light in Despair's Darkness, is 5th most followed.
u/Endovior [+1] (a day later)
Where, exactly, are you finding those numbers? Can you link the list in question? I wasn't aware that FFN had a browse function that lets you sort by reviews, or by follows.
u/avret [+1] SDHS rationalist (a day later)
FFN on desktop version can filter by follows and favorites in the same place as it can by rating, idk if mobile can. I can't easily link the lists, sorry.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (a day later)
Could you take a screenshot and host it on Dropbox/Google drive/Imgur or similar and then share the link? Would literally take a minute if you have an account.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
You'd have to take a screenshot of each screen, so it would be three images (reviews/favorites/follows) for each story you wanted to get the metrics of. See this comment downthread where I link to the pages that you use the filters on.
u/gbear605 [+5] history’s greatest story (8 hours later)
One part of it on FFN is that most people who read rational fiction don't read the majority of the other types of stuff on FFN; there's a rational fiction enclave.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (an hour later)
How are you determining what is rational fiction on FFN?
u/avret [+1] SDHS rationalist (8 hours later)
Fiction from this subreddit(esp. from posts asking for good examples of rationalfic or similar)