The Academy will as it grows go through five major milestones, two of which we have already left behind us:
The launch: On April 4 2025 did the forum start with 15 stories, now we have 189.
The Popular Stories board: On June 26 2025 did the Popular Stories receive its first story and we start to build a strong incentive for lurkers to register.
The Community Favorites board: Once the first story reaches a rating of 60, the Community Favorites board will be moved to the index page as well. It will provide an incentive for people to participate in the community. When the Community Favorites board becomes active, we will have implemened the intended structure for the forum fully. This will be the real launch of the forum.
A full page of Popular Stories: Once the Popular Stories board has a full page stories, the incentive to register for people will likely be as big as it ever will be. Yes, more stories will technically give even more reason to register, but at some point your brain will only perceive the number of stories as "a lot" and one full page of stories will likely be close to that.
A full page of Community Favorites: Similar to the Popular Stories board, the incentive to participate will likely be as strong as it gets with a full page of Community Favorites.
I would like to encourage everybody who reads this here to actually like the stories they read and enjoyed. Despite Shocker's story being the first that reached Popular status, it has received only 14 ratings - although 16 people voted for it in Gang Rape Galore. And that does not even include the people who thought it was their 4th or 5th favorite story of the contest and could have given it at least 1 rating point.
I know from my own experience that there are people here who wrote glowing reviews for my stories when I published them on RavishU but who did neither rate nor comment on them here, probably because they already read them. Or I know examples of people highly rating a particular chapter of a story, but not rating the story as a whole. And this will be the case for other authors' stories too, not just mine.
Of course, if you don't want to rate a story, then don't. Nobody wants you to lie about liking something you didn't. But if you just forgot when you finished reading or gave a great story only a 1-point rating because you didn't know yet that you can rate a story with up to 3 points, maybe take the time to revisit one of those stories you liked and rate it positively or upgrade your rating. Not only will you make the author of the story smile and encourage them to write more, you will also help us build up our library of Popular Stories that will encourage more people to register and ultimately also more authors to write the stories you would like to read. You are helping the individual author AND the forum as a whole with the simple click of a like button.
Here is a very simple thing you can do: The next time you visit the Public Stories board, don't just look at the most recent stories. Click on the downward facing arrow left of "Rating" and look at the stories sorted by rating. You will then see the highest rated stories at the top of the board, some of which are no longer on the first page using the normal sorting. Give those high rated gems you missed a chance, and who knows, maybe Fugitives won't be the only Popular Story for long!
