I'm new to this site and I was looking at the Top Ten list and wondering how it worked. Does anyone know how the Bloodshedverse decides those things? Like, is the number of readers on the Top Ten list the amount of total times each chapter has been read, the common amount to all chapters to show everyone reading every chapter(the entire story)? Or do they have some way to tell exactly which members look at a story and so only put down One Reader even if they go back again and again?

Haven't a clue. I didn't even know we had a top ten list.  That'll be a question for Dia to answer.  She's the script expert/writer/fixer. :)

I think it is based on number of readers and reviews -

The Top Ten is a really easy way to see the most successful stories as per readers and reviews - several categories and all helpful for making quick selections and finds -

I meant the section of the Top Ten for the Most Readers. I have a friend on this site with more than 3000 readers, which is above at least numbers ten and nine for Most Readers if it's being done by all times every chapter has been read added together.

Absolutely no idea! lol  That is definitely a question for Dia.

Hey there, sorry, I was sick.

Each hit on a fic/chapter is counted, even if the same person has already read it before. Counting how many different readers a fic has would be cool, but impossible. I can't just count the logged in readers because quite a lot of prople don't have accounts or read on computers where they can't log in for one reason or another. Neither can I seperate the hits via IP address, because for most people that changes at least once a day - not to mention those who access the site from different computers depending on where they are at the time. So Most Readers is just the sum of hits on each chapter (the ratio ones are the same only divided by the number of chapters/stories an author has written).

Hope this answers your question.

I never even thought about this until the question was raised, but I noticed something odd about "most read story" vs. "most read author." Are they tabulated differently? The #1 most read story has over 4,000 readers, yet the #1 most read author only has a little over 2,000 readers. How is that possible? Shouldn't the author of that story have 4,000 readers, plus however many readers have read their other stories? Or is "most read author" the author with the most readers on a single chapter or something?

Yeah, I saw that too and wrinkled my brow.  The whole thing is a mystery to me.  There may be a system in place to make the statistics fair for everyone.  I guess, since I'm one of the authors in question,  it's ok for me to suggest that there needs to be a way to figure  the reads per author vs the reads per story. Otherwise, the person who has written the most would have the most readers. Does that make sense? I'm guessing that's what's going on there. But, again, have no clue. Dia?

Huh, that's odd. It's been a while since I looked at the code for the TopTen lists, I'll have to check how I calculated the most read ones. It's possible that they are averages and I forgot to mention it, that would explain how a story can have more readers than an author. I'll check it out tomorrow (it's 3:30am, don't think I can figure it out tonight) and let you know what's going on there.

one potential explanation on the Most Readers and Most Read Authors is that when a reader goes through the entire story at one sitting that is counted on One Hit - when readers have several sessions with the same story, that would add several hits.  Unless there is an automatic 1 to 1 hit attributed to the author with every hit for reader at the story, this might be part of the difference.

Good guess, nmcll.  Statistics are weird things, and they are affected by all kinds of stuff like that.  For instance, a very, very long story that is posted one chapter at a time, is going to have many times the hits and the reviews as does a shorter story, or a one-shot. Even though the shorter story may have had more happy readers.  Hence, the "reviews per chapter" category, I guess.  And your idea that any story that is read at one sitting would be counted as one hit explains one of the things that puzzles me when I bother to check my statistics. Which would be the way a story can have such a large number of readers in the beginning and then half as many by the end.  But, if those who read it all at one time are only counted once, that would explain it. :)  Ditto for reviews - if readers go all the way through at one sitting and leave a review at the conclusion, then that particular story would have fewer reviews than one that was posted and reviewed one chapter at a time.

Another point - many of the older fics on this archive were brought over from the old Bloodshedverse and the reviews may or may not have come with them.  I don't know about the reader counts, but I do know that if the reviews were brought over in one lump, they only show up on here as one very long review (even if there was a huge number of them).  The same may have happened for the reader counts - or they may not have transferred over at all. I'm not as sure about them.   Also, so many writers now have LJs where they also post their chapters, that overall review counts may have fallen through the years as more and more reviews are left on the LJ, rather than on an archive.  I'm just guessing, there; but I know that I do a lot of my commenting on LJ rather than on here or one of the other archives. 

Anyway, there are so many factors involved; that's why I don't may much attention to things like "Top Tens".  It's probably a decent guide for new readers to get some idea of which stories have been most popular, but hardly infallible.  And, I think anyone who tried to make all the different categories come out the same would quickly go insane.  And we don't want to do that to Dia, do we?  :)

Which would be the way a story can have such a large number of readers in the beginning and then half as many by the end.
I always assumed that's because people start reading and then for whatever reason don't finish. If it's posted over a long period of time, a reader might forget they were reading it or miss an update - or, of course, they may just stop reading because they don't like it. Also, if there's a long break between updates, people may reread the earlier chapters in order to remember what was going on before they read the new update, which would give the earlier chapters a higher read count.

But, if those who read it all at one time are only counted once, that would explain it.
It doesn't. I just experimented. The hit counter counts every time you click on a chapter, whether you read them all in one sitting or over a period of time. Even if it's a completed story, and you click on "entire story" rather than reading each chapter individually, it still adds one hit to each chapter.

For reviews, on the other hand, it would make a difference, since as you mentioned, some people read a story straight through and then leave one review at the end, whereas people are more likely to review each chapter if they read the story as it's updated over a period of time.

OK, I checked and the most read lists are averages. The sum of all hits on a story divided by the number of chapters for "Most read story" and the sum of all hits on an author's stories divided by the number of chapters for all those stories combined for "Most read author". I now remember that I decided to use averages to give shorter stories and one-shots a chance to be part of those lists; without dividing the hits by the number of chapters a longer story would always beat a shorter one. Same goes for the authors, an author with only one story would never show up in the TopTen if it was just about the total number of hits. Maybe I should add something to each of the TopTen lists to explain how they are calculated. To tell the truth, the TopTen exists because people requested them, can't see what good they do myself, so I just put together the ones suggested to me and never thought about them again.

Also, if someone reads a story via the "Entire Story" option, a hit is counted for each chapter.

As for why later chapters tend to have less hits than earlier ones, I think Eowyn got it right, some people may stop reading, some re-read earlier chapters due to longer breaks between updates, personally I sometimes start re-reading a story just to have something to read even if it isn't finished yet (I must have read TalesofSpike's "Will be done" series at least ten times before it was finished), some continue to read but at a different place (lots of people update on lj first, so once a reader figures that out they may catch their updates there), ...

Same for reviews, I only ever review once I'm done reading everything that's up, so if five chapters have gone up since the last time I checked, I'll only review the last of those. It's possible more people handle it that way. Plus, if they don't have anything specific to say about each chapter, they may get tired of leaving a generic "Nice chapter, update soon" review after each one; they already told the author they like the story, and maybe they'll say so again once the story is finished, but not necessarily repeat it after each update.