Cheese with my whine
A little earlier, Bridgewalker posted a much more legitimate whine then the one I'm about to launch into.
It's always easy fodder to point at piles of dog 💩 lying on the ground and invoke outrage without offering solutions. I'm the type of person I'd rather get a poop bag and try to clean things up rather than complain about them. Right now there appears to be an abundance of 💩 piles surrounding us. So perhaps this is less about me whining and more about lessons I've learned in the last month or more.
I imagine drei2763878 might be able to back me up on this.
Mini Break
I took a two-day writing break after slipping from #14 on the Writers Leader Board to #17. I had been trying to keep fighting and climbing up the ladder and if I kept pushing I was gaining 80-120 points a day. Two days ago I took a sudden drop of >800 points, >400 point drop the day after that and tonight it was another 150 points. I've lost about two 'weeks' of work. Coupled with the performance issues with the site and needless to say I haven't been feeling overly creative.
Scoring Mechanism
The way writers are ranked has to do with the total number of views, reactions and bookmarks a creator gets in a 30 day period. So for me to keep climbing, while having a smaller follower base means I have to constantly produce content if I want to climb higher. That means aiming to post twice a day while trying to keep posts interesting, engaging and view/reaction/bookmark worthy. It's becomes a part time job, not that I'm complaining. I enjoy flexing my creative muscles and the feeling of community it seems to cultivate. The issue however, if I stop writing I will most likely slide off the board completely.
My big whine
The top 15 writers on Civitai are entrenched and the thing I find humorous is that almost half of them have fewer than 15 total articles. It just so happens that those articles have tens of thousands of views and that seems to keep these individuals at a near constant level on the board moving perhaps +/-20 points a day. To me, the entire point of a board is to give all creators an opportunity to claw their way to the top. Much like Bridgewalker pointed out, it seems things are stacked in the favor of those that were lucky or fortunate.
A suggestion
As I mentioned earlier I hate complaining (pointing out the piles of 💩) without at least proposing a solution. I have zero power or ability to make it happen, but who knows. Maybe once Civitai returns to a more stable platform an admin will run across this post. The Writes Leader Board should be divided into categories. There is simply no way stories will ever beat out training guides. So why do we lump all articles into the same basket. They already do this with other categories and that's how nemo474 rose to such a high position on the Vehicle Creators board. I think by diversifying the types of articles you can have technical writers go head to head with other technical writers and storytellers go head to head with other storytellers.
In the end
I've licked my wounds over the huge drop I took in the last couple days. I'm just a few articles away from hitting my 100th. What I would ask from you dear reader for creators like myself, drei2763878 and all the other talented folks looking to try for the top. Your views mean a lot, taking the time to add a reaction does wonders, if you like the post enough to revisit and reread sometime please bookmark it. it's these small acts that help keep us motivated and producing content for all of you.
Now please be sure to take some cheese with you when you go.