At least five one-bombs in the last ten votes

[rescatooor]

Yes, please. Both of you.

I'm not the offended party here, but you are free to do as you like.

 

[Comshaw]

This message is hidden because KeithD is on your ignore list.

Comshaw

 

[Agiel]

If I say I have been one bombed, I don’t mean that someone gave me a one star rating.

I mean there is some reason to believe the vote is not a sincere judgment of the quality of the story, but rather, a deliberate attempt to lower the score for the sake of lowering the score.

How do you tell the difference? Usually you can’t.

Why do people (note I didn’t say readers because that’s not necessarily the case) bomb stories? Because they can and always anonymously.

1….FIRSTLY there are the ones who do it indiscriminately because they assume by awarding a 1 it will enrage the writer. They don’t care who this writer is but if the story is on the new list and has a H (or maybe not) that’s good enough for them. They don’t care if the 1 subsequently gets wiped out by a sweep. They’ve had their brief moment of pleasure.

2….The SECOND type is similar to the first but they don’t award 1’s. They are a little bit smarter than the 1-bombers. They use 2’s and 3’s. They also probably use more than one IP address so they can vote several times.

3….The THIRD type aim at a particular writer. For some reason, and there may be a myriad of them, they have taken a dislike to the writer. Maybe they made a critical comment on a story which the writer didn’t like and that writer sought them out for revenge.

4….The FOURTH, and possibly the worst, is there has been a clash of opinions in one of these forums and one of them feels they have come out the loser. The only way they can get revenge is by bombing the other’s stories. Anonymously naturally. I would ask how would they feel if someone did it to them but I think that would be irrelevant as far as they are concerned.

My comments probably don’t cover every type of bomber. The only type I can accept as being “acceptable” is the first one because that’s just they way they are both on here and in real life. It’s the way their mind works. They enjoy pulling the wings off flies. The difference is on here they always get away with it because they are anonymous whereas in real life they can’t always hide.

99% of the comments on here are sensible and interesting. There are a couple of protagonists who regularly have a go at each other but it doesn’t matter because others just let them get on with it.

Unfortunately there are others who delight in being annoying so much they wander so far away from the original thread and are so abusive they get the thread shut down.

 

[Earthlyone]

Yes, please. Both of you.

Just as popular on here as you are on the politics board I see

 

[Earthlyone]

Why do people (note I didn’t say readers because that’s not necessarily the case) bomb stories? Because they can and always anonymously.

1….FIRSTLY there are the ones who do it indiscriminately because they assume by awarding a 1 it will enrage the writer. They don’t care who this writer is but if the story is on the new list and has a H (or maybe not) that’s good enough for them. They don’t care if the 1 subsequently gets wiped out by a sweep. They’ve had their brief moment of pleasure.

2….The SECOND type is similar to the first but they don’t award 1’s. They are a little bit smarter than the 1-bombers. They use 2’s and 3’s. They also probably use more than one IP address so they can vote several times.

3….The THIRD type aim at a particular writer. For some reason, and there may be a myriad of them, they have taken a dislike to the writer. Maybe they made a critical comment on a story which the writer didn’t like and that writer sought them out for revenge.

4….The FOURTH, and possibly the worst, is there has been a clash of opinions in one of these forums and one of them feels they have come out the loser. The only way they can get revenge is by bombing the other’s stories. Anonymously naturally. I would ask how would they feel if someone did it to them but I think that would be irrelevant as far as they are concerned.

My comments probably don’t cover every type of bomber. The only type I can accept as being “acceptable” is the first one because that’s just they way they are both on here and in real life. It’s the way their mind works. They enjoy pulling the wings off flies. The difference is on here they always get away with it because they are anonymous whereas in real life they can’t always hide.

99% of the comments on here are sensible and interesting. There are a couple of protagonists who regularly have a go at each other but it doesn’t matter because others just let them get on with it.

Unfortunately there are others who delight in being annoying so much they wander so far away from the original thread and are so abusive they get the thread shut down.

.......................................

 

[HBuff]

Wow! 1-bombing... I am flabbergasted to learn the degree of pettiness some people will debase themselves to so they can feel important by offsetting the votes of many other users. Some people are obviously quite frustrated with their life.

 

[KeithD]

Yes, Literotica is a fairly easy site for no more than one downvoter to be able to destroy the scoring of an author's story list and misrepresent the quality of the stories. I post to multiple Web sites and I've turned off scoring here at Literotica as being pretty worthless.

There most certainly are trollish users here, not the least some regularly posting on this discussion board. King of the mountain/mine's bigger than yours games and all that. If you mainly wish to have a broad reader base (none better than here for erotica) and you are self-confident about your work, you can flip your middle finger at the mental gerbils and turn voting off. You have control here over comments you receive on stories, which most Web sites don't give you.

 

[SimonDoom]

Sometimes downvoting is legit. I had somebody recently send me a message that they read my story and disliked it so much that they gave it a 2. I don't agree with their opinion, but I have no basis to tell them that they are wrong. It's what you get when you publish stories. You just need to get a thick skin and deal with it. I have plenty of readers tell me they enjoy my stories. I also have some who tell me they hate my stories. So? It's part of being an author.

 

[KeithD]

The print book publishing world doesn't have the high level of juvenile "I've got the power/I slept in a Holiday Inn last night" stinkers that the Internet does.

But, yes, you have to take whatever strangers on the Internet say about your stories with a ton of salt. Most often you'll be able to recognize that they have a good point, if they do. This doesn't have much to do with their anonymous scoring power here though.

 

[DHerbert]

Thanks for the comments on this thread. I put up the latest part of my series the other day and pretty it much immediately got a 1 (along with three 4's by the time I'd looked). It's not like I thought it was the best thing on here or anything, but I sat there for a while thinking I'd done something screwy and was a bit upset for a moment. Given that it was part 6, I'd assumed that most of the remaining readers would be on board with the story, so a 1 hurt.

Obviously someone might just have not liked it, but I think that I'll also need to grow a thicker skin!

 

[lovecraft68]

Sometimes downvoting is legit. I had somebody recently send me a message that they read my story and disliked it so much that they gave it a 2. I don't agree with their opinion, but I have no basis to tell them that they are wrong. It's what you get when you publish stories. You just need to get a thick skin and deal with it. I have plenty of readers tell me they enjoy my stories. I also have some who tell me they hate my stories. So? It's part of being an author.

I received a comment, then the same comment in a feedback e-mail that they gave me a one on my story "Oh My God, Bro" because I used the word Bro, and what am I, a teenager?

I'm not, but considering the characters were 18 and 19 I thought it was fitting, and I do know a lot of people who will say bro from time to time.

But that's the readership in a nutshell, any little thing can set some of them off.

 

[DHerbert]

I suspected it was something like that, but was reaching out to see if there was a hidden function in the author control panel to display vote history, something like a graph of vote counts versus date.

Ooh, I like the sound of that! I'm a bit of a stats nerd and I could spend ages going over something along those lines - which is why it had better not come to pass. I've enough distractions in life already!

 

[DHerbert]

Thanks for the comments on this thread. I put up the latest part of my series the other day and pretty it much immediately got a 1 (along with three 4's by the time I'd looked). It's not like I thought it was the best thing on here or anything, but I sat there for a while thinking I'd done something screwy and was a bit upset for a moment. Given that it was part 6, I'd assumed that most of the remaining readers would be on board with the story, so a 1 hurt.

Obviously someone might just have not liked it, but I think that I'll also need to grow a thicker skin!

They were back again today. The latest part goes up and gets a 1 straight away - almost as if they were waiting for it. Why bother reading any more of the series if they've 1 starred the previous 6 parts! Some people are just plain weird!

 

[Winter_Fare]

They were back again today. The latest part goes up and gets a 1 straight away - almost as if they were waiting for it. Why bother reading any more of the series if they've 1 stared the previous 6 parts! Some people are just plain weird!

Some people follow series to vote down every episode. Some vote stories down to make themselves look better. In my experience, the very second a story tops it's category it gets hammered, and if you haven't already got a couple of thousand views, a couple of dozen votes... Meh. Some people suck.

 

[MsNatalie99]

Hey I'm sorry if this is unrelated. But I got an anonymous comment. I usually would either ignore it or delete it. However, reading it struck a chord, so if anyone was willing to look at it and tell me if there's any truth to the comment. It's a poem only like two paragraphs. Cause now I'm debating on deleting the submission.
I'm not asking for ratings or comments, just if the guy is right.

Poem

 

[DeeceeBee]

I once posted about being pleasantly surprised to find one of my stories was rated at 4.97 and in the top ten for the past thirty days and the top 100 for the year. It had over 40 votes and around 9k views and had been around long enough for the LW basement dwellers to spew their 'cuck shit' vitriol.
Within a day it had been bombed down to below 4.5 and out of the top lists so I no longer post about my stories under that user name.
My suspicion is that there are a small number of forum users with a large number of socks that will 'punish' anyone they disagree with or who has the audacity to challenge their misogyny.

 

[neuroparenthetical]

I'm not asking for ratings or comments, just if the guy is right.

"Make light of" doesn't seem like the kind of criticism that anybody should be leveling at that particular poem. There's absolutely nothing in its text to suggest it's "making light of" anything. Its tone is serious, somber, fatalistic and/or hopeless.

The most obvious way to get from Point A to Point B is to decide that the author isn't intentionally making light of mental health, but, by mere virtue of the fact that they decided to write a poem contemplating futility and hopelessness, they've committed a taboo act. They've put something out into the world that might trigger somebody, and their lack of regard for that potential consequence means that they're making light of the subject matter.

That's uncharitable towards the author, and is a pretty toxic censorious impulse. I'd suggest that this is the kind of comment that might have been made in good faith, but still needs to be immediately dismissed. It's far too close to simply saying "how dare you make art?"

 

[MsNatalie99]

That's uncharitable towards the author, and is a pretty toxic censorious impulse. I'd suggest that this is the kind of comment that might have been made in good faith, but still needs to be immediately dismissed. It's far too close to simply saying "how dare you make art?"

Thank you. It certainly wasn't my intention to show any kind of disregard. I'll delete the comment.

 

[DeeceeBee]

Hey I'm sorry if this is unrelated. But I got an anonymous comment. I usually would either ignore it or delete it. However, reading it struck a chord, so if anyone was willing to look at it and tell me if there's any truth to the comment. It's a poem only like two paragraphs. Cause now I'm debating on deleting the submission.
I'm not asking for ratings or comments, just if the guy is right.

Poem
View attachment 2147710

I don't consider the piece to be 'making light' of mental health problems, particularly in the context of some of your other works.
Your poetry is thoughtful and emotive. I'd delete the comment, not the submission.

 

[Winter_Fare]

Hey I'm sorry if this is unrelated. But I got an anonymous comment. I usually would either ignore it or delete it. However, reading it struck a chord, so if anyone was willing to look at it and tell me if there's any truth to the comment. It's a poem only like two paragraphs. Cause now I'm debating on deleting the submission.
I'm not asking for ratings or comments, just if the guy is right.

Poem
View attachment 2147710

Looks like they're wrong. You're not making light of mental health, are you? It's a thought proving poem.

 

[MsNatalie99]

Looks like they're wrong. You're not making light of mental health, are you? It's a thought proving poem.

Thank you. I'm working on my bachalors in Psychology, so it definitely made me feel concerned.

 

[RetroFan]

One thing that I noticed recently was that my score for my story 'The Lost Hours With Annabelle' which won the April Fool's contest this year has steadily declined since then. At the time it won in late March it had an impressive 4.86 score, and while the current 4.65 score is still very good, six weeks later it would be nowhere enough to win a story contest.

 

[JGittes]

One thing that I noticed recently was that my score for my story 'The Lost Hours With Annabelle' which won the April Fool's contest this year has steadily declined since then. At the time it won in late March it had an impressive 4.86 score, and while the current 4.65 score is still very good, six weeks later it would be nowhere enough to win a story contest.

Keep in mind that most of the scoring during the April Fool's contest is from readers who like the story's category. By that, I mean the overwhelming majority of voters during the contest know the category of the story before they first click on the story. My impression is that most readers will not voluntarily read outside of the categories that spark their kinks. Once the winners are posted, it's open season. The general readership takes an active interest and the story is subject to all the squick reactions with an unappreciated category and all the trolling activity discussed above.

I've followed four contests in detail and in every case, within a week of the posting of winners, they are all voted lower than their highest pre-posting score. And usually, all three would be lower scoring than the fourth, fifth, and lower stories at the end of the contest.