User blog:Freefalling Lilacs/An Idea to Support the Underrated Stories

Now that I'm more active on the site, I've been trying to think of some way to be able to help out my fellow writers. After seeing such a positive reaction to my group picture for my story, I've been having some ideas floating around in my head that I'm going to throw onto the table.

For a story writing community, it seems like there's a lot more publishing of random stories than there are people that are actually reading. There might be plenty of readers, though without hearing their comments there is no way to know who exactly is browsing our stories (and I definitely support the blog:Fyrexx/Comment Club Comment Club idea if anybody wants to improve this specific issue.) I try to read stories if I'm not in the mood to write or when I'm on my lunch break at my volunteering opportunity. I'm currently finishing up what has been posted of The Legend of Total Drama Island and will be writing a few long comments on its talk page, but I've recently come to the realization that I have no idea where to go from there.

Now, when you ask the question of "Hey, does anybody know of a good story to read next?" most people are (obviously) going to rec their own work. We're writers whose only profit is comments, so of course that's expected, but it doesn't really make it any easier to find a great story that isn't one of the classics.

Is there a story on the wiki that you would consider a hidden gem? I'm sure that there are plenty of works out there that are well written but just don't get enough attention because 1) They're a one-shot and don't pop up in the activity feed often, 2) The author is a newer member who doesn't tend to interact with everyone, or a variety of other reasons.

Pretty much I want to find a way to give these stories the attention they deserve. My idea is to have users suggest their favorite stories that they would consider to be "Underrated." I put that in quotes because I'm not necessarily saying that the story has to be amazing but have zero comments on the talk page, I just don't want somebody to rec a story that everybody is talking about. Every month or so (I haven't decided on a time limit), I would read through the story that was suggested the most and do something to help give it a little more attention. Depending on what the author would like the most, I would be willing to do some fanart, create a rankings blog (if it's a competition story), write a lengthy review on the talk page, or something else that you can come up with.

Here's how it'd work: I'll make a blog entry every month and have people put their suggestions there. You cannot suggest your own story, and you must be logged in when posting a comment to prove that you aren't just the story's author logged out (not that I don't trust you guys, but who knows what schemers are out there.) For the story that's suggested the most, I'll draw some fanart for it or one of the other things I listed in the last paragraph. Then, it starts all over again the next month.

I'd really like to know if anybody's interested in this, as I'm not going to bother with it if nobody wants to suggest stories! I know there're probably a few kinks in the idea, so if anybody has suggestions to improve it just tell me.

Tl;dr: Can you think of a story on the wiki (that's not yours) that you think deserves some more readers? Well, here's an idea to get some!