Introducing the Vocal Weekly Bonus Leaderboard

Oh I just read it today, thank you so much vocal team, as you sent this link via email response to me. It is well discussed story about rewarding the bonuses. And I also endorse that only publishing the article is not worth of bonus. But a healthy competition is good for weekly bonus. I am excited to see more on this platform. Thanks for the email and updates.

Justin I was wondering about a readers community from another creator who suggested maybe letting readers earn say anything for one cent to maybe a nickel a read. I am a very happy writer/artist here, but I would not mind earning a little bit more just for reading. If this is possible I would read more on other communities.

While I love the motivation behind this change, it's pretty disappointing to have the other bonuses removed. I have spent over two years creating content on this platform and the 50 stories bonus was something I was really looking forward to receiving in celebration of an important personal milestone as a growing creator. I'm not a fantastic writer, but I only publish work I'm satisfied with sharing, so the 50 published stories was a big goal to finally reach. Unfortunately I found out way too late about the change and was led to believe otherwise by out of date content explaining the bonuses. I think the new system is lovely for fostering a supportive community, it's just a bit heart breaking to have the goal be so anticlimactic.

This was indeed a helpful information. I love it

I just want to put in my two cents. My intention here is not to down talk anybody or to degrade anybody's ideas or thoughts. I just want to make some clarity here. I see several people talking about quality not being rewarded with these new bonuses. Unlike statistics such as most reads or most hearts, most engagement and so forth quality is subjective. I might think that my story is of the utmost quality but maybe the people reviewing our stories may not think so. It's hard to judge exactly which story was the best written story of the week. I think that would lend itself to playing favorites. I feel Vocal is on the right track by using the statistics that are available which are verifiable and conclusive. Judging quality is neither verifiable nor conclusive it is an abstract notion based on human emotion rather than verifiable data.

I like that you are trying to encourage more beneficial commenting. It is encouraging me to set a goal of leaving a comment, first of all. Second, making sure it is meaningful. And third, making sure I really read the story (not that I don't anyways). It's more of taking my time and 'highlighting' the parts I really like or could use approvement. Which leads to this. Do you think they'll be a highlighting option someday? Just wondering.

Is there a start date for this? I am sad that it's all about quantity and not about quality. Awards for MOST read / likes/subscriptions, not best stories/ideas/work in promoting Vocal. This will encourage scammers to find ways to scam the system while the real talents will have to take the reads they can get. I have a high reads and subscriber base but I doubt I will qualify for any of these bonuses and some real talent will be left in the wilderness. I hope this can be properly evolved to include all the best talent on Vocal

Considering the fact that this discontinuation of milestone bonuses seems to have coincided with my battle with support over mine for 50 stories, which happened to have been met during the creation of my microfiction series, I can't help but think that the "discourage bad actors from trying to game the system with subpar content" is a slight that I and many of my fellow creators don't deserve. Speaking only for myself, I can definitely say that the quality of the stories was exactly what started the series in the first place and the reason it continued. You opted to keep my bonus. So be it. Don't insult my creativity and my application of the challenge that Vocal issued.

Vocal has grown quite a bit in the last few years, and of course I understand that with growth comes more stories, and the need for more moderators keeps increasing, which makes automation a more cost effective option. But when I first joined vocal I really did like that my work was being reviewed by someone before approval (it helped me improve the quality of my work), so hopefully some version of that can come back because I'm mainly here to express thoughts and improve my writing (I've learned a lot of things from other creators on vocal and it's been fun writing). I'm sure many people on here would prefer having human moderators instead of more bonuses, if there was a choice between the two I mean.

Quick question, what are You going to do about people that copy other people's comments, and those that will even use AI to generate comments based upon comments that they've copied and pasted into AI text generators? I know for certain that one of my comments was copied and pasted into somebody else's comment section. Before I had my comments deleted due to somebody clicking the "Report" button 18 times saying that I "Violated Community Guidelines" You can clearly see one of my comments that was copied and pasted in the comments' section of this article. https://vocal.media/filthy/creating-spicy-content If it's happened before, it's more than likely to happen again. I use myself as an example since I can provide the example that's occurred.

Very interesting concept(s).

Unfortunately this is not going to be any different to the Vocal ‘favourites’ list for Top Story. It’ll just means those ‘favourites’ will win all these bonuses and the rest of us don’t stand a chance. When every story, article, poem was reviewed by a human, I used to get regular Top Stories. I know my writing has improved and not gone backwards but since no one reviews each story now, I’ve struggled to get any recognition. Not being a Vocal ‘favourite’ anymore has hurt my reads and engagement and sadly I think this platform has gone severely backwards. It’s all about bias now and not quality writing, hence why I cancelled my V+ membership after two years. Good luck to those that aren’t a ‘favourite’ as I don’t see this changing for you at all. I’m not even interested in trying for these bonuses as I know I don’t stand a chance.

This is a simply a subset of the problems that writers and creatives face in the real world. The more traction and reaction your work gets, the higher you rise and the more you get paid. This doesn't really speak to quality or dedication to the craft of writing—it speaks more to having a lot of time or enough financial support that you can put in the time without needing money for it. I've read some amazing writers here who have totally gone unrecognized. Vocal has some amazing quality writing right here on the site which it is missing - frequently. I don't know what the answer is - more variety in the moderators and judges, as at the end of the day, what people like is highly highly subjective. Not going for trendy pop cultural topics but looking at evergreen themes. Recognizing a broader range of writing not just stories that fit a narrow style spectrum.

Is there a link to the discord server somewhere?

I am here to write and share my work. I didn't even know about bonuses being a thing on vocal because I only joined so I could share my work. I like the incentives for feedback. I am here to become a better writer. My stuff is all really raw right now but I know I can watch my page grow as my writing improves. Hopefully, I can find a community of people here for that because that is my goal. To find my people.

Honestly I'm feeling rather discouraged with this. It doesn't back track and reward any of us who paved the way by starting the building of these communities that the smaller ones have now branched off of. I mean will Judey Kalchik be recognized? Hers is massive. Any of the founding VSS admins? Some of us don't do much as much now because of our jobs but it would have meant a lot to have been noticed and rewarded this way previously. It seems to only reward those who can pound the pavement endlessly rather than holistically look at our number of reads and subscribers in total. Those that have the time to do this already collect the rewards. Also no one has responded to my comment asking to have input in the community Tom and I came up with. Between this and the plagiarism I'm not as in love with this platform much as I used to be and that breaks my heart because my profile is filled with Vocal positive PR articles. Vocal has a history of overlooking those who write well but quietly. It's why we did the Fab 5 years ago. The leader board for a lot of folks is going to feel like yet another place to be overlooked. What meant something to us was handpicked top stories from a moderator who cared about quality. More moderators would solve the plagiarism problem and make top stories feel like more genuine achievements again.

Ooouu, thoughtful comments are my jam. Let the games begin.

Amazing. Can´t wait to start posting on these new communities. Lovely. Keep up the good work Vocal. A big shout out from Angola, Africa. One Love.

I’m trying my best to write the best stories but I’m not receiving any rewards but I’m patient with my work. Will get to iy

Adding a humor category was my idea, maybe a few others too. How come I did not receive any kudos or even a mention or an 'atta girl', while others got honorary mentions for their ideas. I once got over 2500 reads for a story. How come I didn't get a mention. "The facial recognition dilemma", was the story. There were other ideas which Vocal just took for granted that they could use. Is it fair to ask for retroactive benefits as someone else mentioned. All my hard work just went up in smoke without an 'atta girl'. Very disheartening. I have mixed feelings about the new plans. Only time will tell if it actually changes anything. Let us hope for fairness and not the same old, same old, wrapped up in pretty words.

Very Happy to hear this! Thank you so much

What about people whose stories get a lot of reads, but from people who aren’t Vocal members, and this can’t like or comment? I write a lot in the Geek community, but a large bulk of the people who read those aren’t members.

from these 1st,2nd, and 3rd place bonuses, my conclusion is it will only benefit those writers who have the most subscribers here and whose stories often rank as top stories, sorry to say but these bonuses won't benefit much to new writers with few subscriptions and no top story at all.

“With the new Vocal Weekly Bonus Leaderboard, we are placing a renewed emphasis on community engagement, quality storytelling, and genuine interactions.” 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Thank you! This made my entire day. As a writer, nothing is more disheartening than the low effort comments. I also really appreciate that quality over quantity is being recognized. Being rewarded for generating traffic to the site sounds fun, and like a win/win for everyone. I had a lot of success getting views for my personal blog via Reddit, but never tried it with Vocal. We could all use a wider audience.

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed by this. I understand what Vocal is trying to achieve. However, I feel like this is going to let many Creators, like myself, fall through the cracks. I have a day job that I work more than 80hrs a fortnight and I'm a sole parent. I engage and create as often as I can, but I am SEVERLY limited in time. For the time I have available, I spend a massive percentage of it trying to build networks and readership. I dedicate as much of my as I can. Which still comes up short compared to others. I really feel like my contributions very likely will never be recognised. I feel like this also has the potential to be misused, with some people choosing to only read many shorter word count peices. This feels very discouraging to me and I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way.