StoryMash Creative Storytelling Forum

I posted two stories and for a little while one was at a 2.9 rating, but now they both show 0 votes and 0.5 ratings. Does anyone know what this means???

Ok, I just realized that 'my' review of 5.0 could have given it a 2.9, but does that mean all stories start out at .5 with no votes?

Yes, your 5.0 rating made it a 2.9. Here's more info about the situation from the "Help" page:

"Every story I have posted... immediately after posting it, my rank is always around 2.9. Can you tell me why this is?

"The default ranking for a brand new chapter, which usually starts with an automatic 5-star vote from the author, ends up being around 2.5-3.5. The fluctuation depends mostly on the rankings of the very best chapter on the site and affects all StoryMash chapters equally. As the number of votes increases for your chapter, the final ranking becomes closer to the average of all the votes. The reason it works this way is not a bug, but to give more credit to chapters with more than a tiny number of votes. Without this, all new chapters would immediately rank at the very top, even before anyone has a chance to read it. In the future, this initial rating will fluctuate more depending on the history of previous chapters published by the same author."

I hope this helps!