The Effect Of The New Vocal Leader Board

Introduction

I have written about this in the last six months, here is one of the stories, but something happened today that I didn't expect. It was trivial, but unexpected.

The New Leaderboard

I think the new Leaderboard is excellent, featuring the most popular stories on Vocal which I assume means a combination of reads and comments and you can see the last one here:

The awards for commenting and subscriptions have gone, mainly due to the comment-swampers with their two-word or repeated AI commenting. Those awards were significant, but were often won by alleged scammers.

So the leaderboard has become a lot more trustworthy.

We were getting comments and subscriptions from lots of accounts that have no content, but they seem to have dropped off significantly. I got a comment from this one today, which I have a feeling is AI-generated. All these accounts seem to be online game developers. This was the trivial incident that I mentioned at the start:

Unfortunately, my comments and hearts on my stories have halved (I didn't get many anyway), although my reads seem to be still consistent, and that is what brings in the dollars.

I still comment as much as I did, but feel that many don't comment now because there is no chance of getting on the leaderboard for commenting and getting that bonus.

One of my favourite things about Vocal is the interaction, and comments can enhance articles, help build and maintain friendships, and commenting is generally a selfless act, because, in itself, it does not bring YOU a reward.

I hope that comments pick up because that is part of what makes Vocal and brilliant publishing platform.

Thank you so much for reading, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

The music is "One Together" by Fleetwood Mac from their album Kiln House. We on Vocal should be "One Together" don't you think?