A Vocal Raise Your Voice Conundrum

Introduction

This is very short, about a slight issue I have noticed with Vocal's excellent "Raise Your Voice" fortnightly gatherings which you can see here:

The Problem

Not everyone reads the "Raise Your Voice" but unlike the stuff in Discord it is available to all Vocal Creators and everyone is made aware of it when it lands, either because of its Top Story placement or email notifications.

I choose five worthy stories each week and very often two or three become Top Stories, so Vocal does take notice of my suggestions.

This week these were my five suggestions (though you can actually visit the "Raise Your Voice" piece on the link in my introduction):

If these Creators do not read the "Raise Your Voice" post or if they do, and do not see the nominating post then they will not know that they have been nominated, but will be happy when they appear in the Top Stories and get their five dollar bonus, and I am really happy when my nominations get Top Stories.

These two did:

So your nominations do get noticed and will make the nominated creators feel better about their work and give them more confidence in their writing.

The Workaround

I always say that if you need a workaround then there is something wrong with the system, and an ideal one would be a notification to the creator, either by an @name option or the fact that the story has been shared in another Vocal piece.

The workaround is simple.

When you nominate a story, go back and leave a comment that you have nominated the story, then the creator will be informed.

I won't be doing this retrospectively but will do going forward.

They may not get a Top Story, but they will know that you rate their story highly enough to nominate them.

Conclusion

I hope you have found this useful, and it could bring us Vocal Creators even closer together.