Everything Katrina said is correct.

I just wanted to reiterate:

You don't have to understand how it works, just look for the clock and pencil icon.

The contest isn't limited to continuing just those 85 initial start chapters. It includes the entire story trees starting with those 85 initial start chapters.

As chapters are written and entered into the contest they will get a clock and pencil icon thus expanding the "base" of chapters you might wish to continue.

Just because a few days after the contest started you didn't find a chapter you want to continue doesn't mean you won't find one tomorrow or next week.

Sorry about not being able to search for contest chapters. That was a feature that didn't make the deadline. Future contests like this should have search feature.

btw, reasons we choose these contest rules were based on community feedback and include:
- Several of you have mentioned chapters getting "lost". This was small way to bring attention to good (rank 4+), less known(no subchapters added) writings of our community.
- Providing an interim solution for those who want to opt-out of contests. Just don't continue any of the contest chapters. [note: opt-out feature is still planned, probably for next release, no promises though, there never are]

"Favourite paths could be shared with others through the user profile and may help to produce completed books or series breakpoints."

Have you been reading our development notes? ;)

[In reply to several comments at once]

Thanks for all your great feedback! It's encouraging and exciting to hear from the reading and writing community, even the criticisms.

I wanted to address chapters not being findable.

- From our front page there is link to Search and link to Stories. From either of those there is a link to Chapters(all published).

- Most chapter lists (Search results, Chapters, Stories) are sortable by many criteria a reader may use to find chapters. During the fix mentioned in this blog the *default* order for chapters and stories became "most recently published", search results *default* is "highest ranked".

- The new chapter tree will help readers to be exposed to a greater breadth of chapters.

- We want readers to find your chapters and do what we can but some of the best methods are under your control. Writing a compelling preview, using appropriate tags, attracting new readers to your chapter by linking to it on other sites.

Just to be clear this isn't our "final answer". We are still listening to your ideas, mulling over features that may improve findability. We believe this is an area StoryMash can and will improve with future releases.

OriginalSim, "I never get a clear sense of "audience"."

We don't really believe in a reader/writer divide. I hope the collaborative environment encourages readers to become writers and certainly don't want to put any barriers in the way of that.

We're considering more details on votes such as breaking out home many 5 star, 4 star, etc. There's a times viewed in the chapter statistics. An anonymous number but it does capture people who just read and don't vote or comment. Can you think of other information we could provide that would help you fell your audience?

I also want alerts, to know when people comment on my blogs :) They're coming, along with some sort of favs...

This is a feature we have thought about and think would help our writing community. In fact I recently purchased (sorry for long url) http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence-Building-Applications/dp/0596529325/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208504178&sr=1-1 which is a book about that very subject!

Something like your suggestion will hopefully be arriving soonish, 1-2mo.

Search page (found on right nav), the Stories page (found on right nav) and the Chapters page (found on either Search or Stories page) should help you find any chapter.

Search can search title and/or body of chapters and also searches chapter tags.

Stories provides a list of start chapters.

Chapters is a list of every chapter. Note this is named Top Ranked Chapters since from before we added sorting. Hmmm, I should change that :). We poop, I just noticed the sorting doesn't work on that page. I'm definitely fixing that!

All the lists are sortable by several factors including date (that is how you could find latest chapters). The lists only show 20 or so chapters at a time but their are "pagination" controls at the top and bottom of the lists that let you get to the rest of the list.

Most of our "listings" default to newest first so it may seem that old chapters fade away. And it's true they don't get as much exposure as brand new one might. But consider the following.

The featured chapter (on the front page) although only one chapter per day can hi-light older chapters.

When people continue your chapter or any chapter after it in a story tree many readers will want to start "reading from the beginning" and thus read your chapter.

If you've used accurate tags people searching on those tags both on StoryMash and with a search engine such as Google will have easier time finding and reading your chapter.

Readers who like a new chapter you write are likely to visit your profile page and find your other chapters no matter how long ago they were read. Write more chapters :)

A feature we're often considering is other types of chapter rankings / statistics. Such as most read, longest, most comments, most voted, highest ranked "rookie" chapter, best chapters for each month. A page or something would highlight those listings and provide continuing exposure for older chapters.

Another feature we could do is "recommended" chapters. That is after a reader votes 4 or 5 on a chapter display a list of other "similar" chapters.

Those features are still under consideration. What we eventually do (if anything) is still being planned. Your ideas and opinions would be welcomed and influence what we build.