Polling Feature

[kailhofer]

Since we have this nifty way to poll readership, can it be put to use by just anyone, or just editors?

Also, is this something we could use to make a "Reader's Choice" pick by having readers vote on their favorite stories each month, & then vote between the monthly favorites for a Best of the Year? Links could be put right on the story page to the lettercol poll, or even on the main index page, so a lot of people would see it.

The votes appear to be IP logged, and you can't vote more than once, so it's not like people can jam the ballot box (at least, not easily).


I'm at a point in my writing career where just being published on a free webzine doesn't carry any helpful weight on my resume. An editor's choice for year's best has at least a little bitty notice when you want someone to pay for a story, but 2 years in a row now I heard I was on's Dan's list... only to be left standing at the altar, so to speak.

Twice bitten, twice shy. Especially if "Playoffs ain't meaningful if only the two worst teams in the league are excluded" and "Kailhofer da Bum" "should be happy to be mentioned with the two Gareths". >:(
(Nothing against the Gareths. They're good writers.)

I'm not saying I deserve an automatic shoo in or anything like that, but unless I have a chance at something that is going to help me in a more tangible way, I have no good reason to submit another story here. I'm sorry if that seems egotistical, but there comes a point where you realize your experience level matches the level of the critiques you get, and then you don't learn anything that helps you improve to the next level.


Well, think about it.

At least we might get an idea which stories are being read, and that would be helpful to know. There's a lot of time no one can tell if more than 6 people read your story or not.

Nate

[doc]

I just had a thought. I know the lettercol has had that name forever, but I have to admit, it's the only place I've ever seen the word used. Everywhere else on the net, the same feature is referred to as a forum. I wonder if changing the name to the more well-known term would bring more people in here?

Lettercol comes from the print world, and is a contraction of "Letters column". The original lettercol much more closely resembled a Letters column than a modern forum. (You can see what it looked like here: http://www2.aphelion-webzine.com/oldlet ... ercol.html.)

I don't know that the name really has that much bearing, but it would be easy to add a link called Forum that would bring you here. There's a link to this page at the bottom of every single story Aphelion publishes, though, so I can't believe the reason people aren't commenting is because they don't know its here.

[Robert_Moriyama]

...There's a link to this page at the bottom of every single story Aphelion publishes, though, so I can't believe the reason people aren't commenting is because they don't know its here.

Heh. For a while there, this month's short stories had a link to the HACKED lettercol address (thanks to my simple-minded method for copying the boilerplate parts of the HTML from old stories). I have NOT been advising authors to check the lettercol for comments -- gotta start doing that for those who aren't familiar with our love of vivisection / drawing and quartering (or, when Wishbone is involved, sixteenthing) stories.

Robert M.