Academy Updates - April 2026

[RapeU]

April Monthly Update

First off, apologies for the delay in the monthly update of the forum. A couple of weeks ago we moved to a new house. Then on Wednesday I hit a deer on the way to work that caused the engine light to come on. Thankfully I was almost at work and was able to limp home without issue. But the very next day I hit yet another deer on the way to work and it caused the airbags to go off. So it's been a crazy few weeks.

Project Relaunch

As mentioned in the prior month Project Relaunch had some success but ultimately didn't succeed in the way we wanted it to. However, we're still feeling the positive effects of Project Relaunch with @LaLia's story The forester's cabin reaching the threshold for popular stories in less than a week.

One of my personal aims was to try and get a popular story from a contest while the contest was still running. Now that it's happened I have the hope that a contest will generate a community favorite. But that leads us to a problem within the community.

The Fundamental Issue: Story Ratings and Friend Groups

The community we are in, whether we like it or not, is a lot like a school cafeteria. People hang out in different groups, a few people don't hang out with anyone, and new people look around at the chaos and wonder where they fit in. There are people who don't like each other. Others post stories then move on to whatever else they do.

It is the behavior of these groups that make the forum difficult to succeed in the way we want it to. People participate in polls yet can't be bothered to rate the story. Rating the story is far more important than selecting a poll because ratings are how the board runs and functions. I could understand withholding rating during tournaments or when there's a competition where the winner is decided by ratings, but to see 10 people vote for a story in a poll to win a contest yet have that story not even be rated close to 20 shows the deep disconnect between people's understanding of how the forum is supposed to run.

Additionally there are groups of people who refuse to rate stories because of who the author is. Now I'm not saying anyone should lie and rate a story a 3 when they didn't like it. If you don't like a story, that's perfectly fair and not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about someone who writes a good, solid story yet people make the conscious choice to not rate it after reading it because they don't like who the author is. The behavior is part of the fundamental problem. This is the kind of thinking that keeps our community in a negative feedback loop of being ok with being part of a story graveyard.

About a month ago I replied to a near 30 rated story to jump it back up to the top because it's a solidly written and would make a great popular story. The community at large ignored it and it sunk back to the multi page graveyard. When I tried to give it a little more help, someone said "oh the author doesn't comment on any other stories. Why should it be popular?" This logic is part of the fundamental problem and is part of the negative feedback loop that plagues our community. Wouldn't it be great if an author were to log in or get a notification that a story of theirs became popular? Perhaps that author would now be motivated to write and contribute more. Even if they don't, even if the author is inactive, so what? A good story is a good story regardless of who writes it.

What I Need From The Community

I'm not asking anyone to do more than what they have time for. I'm not asking for anyone to give a story a 3 rating when they hated the story they read. I'm just asking for the community to take the few seconds it takes to click on a few buttons and give a story you read a rating based on how well you liked it.

I also want to encourage members to rate stories based on the story itself, not based on who wrote it, how active the author is, or whether they comment on other stories. A good story deserves recognition regardless of who wrote it. Supporting good content helps the entire forum grow stronger. And at the end of the day we all want this forum to succeed otherwise you wouldn't be here in the first place.

[MillieDynamite]

I was hoping to be more involved here, but between my ghostwriting and writing stories for publication (Amazon and ZBookStore, not for free), I just haven't been able to get here to read stories like I want to. This problem won't be changed anytime soon. Being a mother, a wife, and an adopted daughter to parents over the age of 65, I'm way busy on the personal front as well.

Despite that, I want to publish and read stories here as well. I haven't looked at the contest rules. If I can find stuff I published before that fits the rules and that I've run out of steam on sales sites, I'd love to enter them in a contest. However, I suspect that's a no-no-Nanette thing.

Anyway, I really hope to get time to read and vote. I did manage to read and vote for the April Fools contest. Not my best effort, though. I should do better.

[Vela Nanashi]

Actually from how I understand our contest rules, as long as the story has not yet been in a contest on RA it can be in one if it fits site and contest requirements

[LtBroccoli]

I was hoping to be more involved here, but between my ghostwriting and writing stories for publication (Amazon and ZBookStore, not for free), I just haven't been able to get here to read stories like I want to. This problem won't be changed anytime soon. Being a mother, a wife, and an adopted daughter to parents over the age of 65, I'm way busy on the personal front as well.

Despite that, I want to publish and read stories here as well. I haven't looked at the contest rules. If I can find stuff I published before that fits the rules and that I've run out of steam on sales sites, I'd love to enter them in a contest. However, I suspect that's a no-no-Nanette thing.

Anyway, I really hope to get time to read and vote. I did manage to read and vote for the April Fools contest. Not my best effort, though. I should do better.

Reposts from other sites is okay for contests, as long as it fits the contest. I've done it a few times with stories from TBV and RavU.

[RapeU]

You can also use a story you've previously posted on the forum for a contest (only exception is when the winner is decided on story rating. It wouldn't be fair to enter a story that's already rated 28 for that kind of contest.) Even if you need to edit a story to fit requirements you can do that until the time left to write runs out.