A Critique Of Vocal's Stats

Introduction

Three years ago, I wrote this piece that highlighted the vocal Stats were not working as they should. Vocal said it was going on the Roadmap to be fixed, but never has been.

So Why Am I Still Complaining?

I like to know how my latest stories are performing. Hearts and comments do not equate with reads, especially with me, because Vocal Creators seldom see my work or think it is not worth a heart or comment. I do have a number of Vocal friends who regularly comment and are very supportive, but I can count them on my fingers and toes, though I have over a thousand subscribers.

As I say in the linked articles, unless the story has very few or very many (for me, more than a hundred reads), I cannot see how I can find out how many reads the story has, and therefore how effective my sharing has been.

I suggested a read count just for the author on the story, but Vocal said they would not do that.

Other possibilities are a date or text filter, or a search facility just on your stats. I can only hope that they fix the stats one day, but I have two stories at the moment that have been getting a lot of Facebook, Blue Sky, and Threads likes, but I have no idea whether they are being translated into paid reads.

Once you have published a few hundred Vocal stories, you will get a few pages of stories with the same number of reads and because the query that brings them back seems to work based on the page, stories get repeated in the stats.

Conclusion

I know it is very unlikely that Vocal will see this, but it would be very helpful if they fixed their stats report.

Thank you so much for reading.