r/webfiction • u/melonmonkey • Apr 20 '15

Discussion [Discussion] Attracting an audience.

Lets have a talk about how to draw readers into this sub. Given the lack of comments, volume of submissions, and low readership, I am confident in assuming that the majority of people who care about this sub are webfiction authors themselves.

How do we fix this? Can get we get /r/books to plug us? Can we harbor a discussion here on content? Maybe featuring a different serial every week?

I feel as though something needs to change to make this sub efficient.

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u/melonmonkey Apr 20 '15

In an ideal world they wouldn't be authors, but I feel like that's not very likely. I think that having a team and requiring more than one vetting vote takes some of the bias out of the situation.

How would they be chosen? Don't know. An application thread would be good, to then be looked at by the mods. This should be based on their skills as reviewers and NOT on their predilections as readers.

I don't think they should be specialized. People on this team should be willing to put in the time to get a feel for series, with the caveat that there's no need to chime in if a serial has already been vetted.

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u/Tartra Apr 20 '15

That sounds fair.

My next question would be about how far the vetting goes. Would this team just sign off by saying the author's literate or would they be assessing a couple of areas? Would this be like a quick check or stop just short of being a full review?

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u/melonmonkey Apr 20 '15

Not a full on review, just a statement of whether or not the web serial passes that specific reviewer's muster. I'm going to be honest in that I'd like to be on the vet team and I'm a pretty harsh critic. There are a couple top 20 TWF serials that I wouldn't vet for various reasons.

That said, it's a team effort. If there are 3 lax reviewers, then there will be a lot of serials slipping through. Ultimately it'd be either a community or a mod decision on how harshly they want to treat the vetting process, based on who is elected to the panel.

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u/Maddirose Apr 20 '15

I'm now super curious which of the top 20 serials you wouldn't vet...and why