Count me out on voting

[NCmVoyeur]

They'd love 'em here

Would Joyce get great scores on Literotica? How about Faulkner, or Virginia Wolf?

They'd get ones. Zeroes, if it were possible

Having submitted a story that uses a stream of consciousness narrative, I can perhaps do a little better than pure speculation. My story adopts a style similar to what Joyce did in the earlier parts of Ulysses, in particular Part 4 ('Calypso').

For the curious: http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=9237

The result? 31 votes at average of a whopping 2.61!!!

Now with the obscurities that he throws in, Joyce might have sunk even lower. Who knows?

There's such a low vote-to-read ratio in any case, that the voting is a poor guide at best. Unfortunately, it's sometimes the only guide.

Without knowing who's voting, it's hard to draw conclusions: e.g., a '5' from someone who's read Joyce, Woolfe or Faulkner or who otherwise has an appreciation for the style, would mean far more to me than a bunch of 1's from those who think it's just too hard to read.

 

[wildsweetone]

okay now i'm hacked off, so i dragged this thread back up from the bowels of the earth to comment.

how the heck can i rely on my voting statistics when the darn things are going BACKWARDS?????

well to be specific, one story in particular under Erotic Couplings was on:

14 June at 4.07 with 28 votes and 6206 views.

4 July at 4.10 with 29 votes and 6298 views.

now it's at

4.07 with 28 votes and 6311 views.


go figure. *sigh*

 

[DVS]

14 June at 4.07 with 28 votes and 6206 views.

4 July at 4.10 with 29 votes and 6298 views.

now it's at

4.07 with 28 votes and 6311 views.

Not possible for this to happen. You must have REALLY pissed the system off.
You gotta deal with that temper! or let someone deal with it for ya

 

[KillerMuffin]

Laurel goes through the system regularly. When your total number of votes go backward it means that she caught an IP series and removed the extra vote(s).

Believe it or not, people will serial vote things other than a 1. The most common serial vote is a 5.

Five of my stories hadn't been touched in a year and suddenly their scores change drastically. It turns out that she caught up to some hanky panky that happened back in May of 2001.

That's all there is to it.

 

[DVS]

Laurel goes through the system regularly. When your total number of votes go backward it means that she caught an IP series and removed the extra vote(s).

Believe it or not, people will serial vote things other than a 1. The most common serial vote is a 5.

Five of my stories hadn't been touched in a year and suddenly their scores change drastically. It turns out that she caught up to some hanky panky that happened back in May of 2001.

That's all there is to it.

If I might ask, what do you mean when you say IP series? And, what is considered a 'serial vote'?

 

[Sandia]

I don't know, DVS - hopefully KM will come back and say for sure - but I'm guessing the IP address means the votes were coming from the same place - either the same computer or more likely the same internet address - and serial votes means it was one after another, like 5 5 5 or 1 1 1. Somebody trying to pull a score up or down by voting more than once.

Sandia.

 

[wildsweetone]

somebody deal with my temper? ohmygolly that bears thinking about.

so it sounds as if somebody liked my story enough to go back and read it a second time and then voted again...

omg i have a serial reader! rofl
that's just too funny, i love it!!!!!

 

[KillerMuffin]

If you've voted or not is tracked through your IP, your computer's "internet address" if you aren't sure what that means. Some people have figured out how to foil the system by using {censored}* or {censored)* with dynamic IPs. That means they change with each log-in.

However, while these IPs will fool the database into thinking that you've never voted before, these IPs are a series, or serial, in nature. Any review of the voting records will show "voting hanky panky."

Recently, the scriptwriter added an automatic "serial IP sniffer" so that all votes are automatically checked for "hanky panky." Laurel or one of her elves goes through and cleans up the votes.

A "serial vote" would be the same person cheating the system to vote on the same story for whatever reason over and over again.

If I know this stuff, then I've been here just way too long...




* While some can figure this out easily enough, there's no sense in just giving the information away.

 

[wildsweetone]

here's a thought

i have a few couples who enjoy reading my stories. what if they decided to place a vote each using the same computer on the same story?

from what you've just said KM one of their votes would be deleted, right?

hmmm

 

[KillerMuffin]

Yep. This being the Internet and an anonymous end-user site, there's really no way to verify that the couple is actually a couple for voting purposes. People lie. Of course they tell the truth, too. So it's essentially one computer/'Net connection-one vote.

They had a registered voter only thing, where you had to be registered to vote, in the works at one time. I have no idea what happened with that, though. WH might.

 

[Street0]

See Dick fuck. See Dick fuck Jane. See Dick fuck Jane, hard. See Jane cum. Fuck Dick, fuck.

I'd give this story a five and that's saying a lot because normally I don't bother with voting. Why don't you submit it?

 

[Sandia]

Street, I like your sense of humor.

 

[Street0]

Street, I like your sense of humor

Thanks, I like it as well.

 

[the_bragis]

Don't count me out of voting!

Don't you think perhaps the more people vote, the more accurate the gauge becomes? Obviously if one of my stories is so bad no-one wants to touch it and then I get 10 of my friends and long lost relatives to vote for it and it gains a 'H', the rating is not going to be as truly accurate as someone whose story has many more votes, by a wider range of readers. I think of it this way: votes times rating, plus viewings, equals a reasonably fair assessment.

You know it makes sense.

I'm Alex.

 

[Laurel]

A fraud vote happens when a person or persons attempt to make multiple votes on a story, which is against our rules. We have a complex system to detect these. How does it detect them? Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be as effective, would it? I'll just say it's a system developed by several programmer types who know their stuff.

If I give your story a single 1-vote because you have blonde hair, that is not fraud. It may not be smart voting, but I have the right to vote once on your story. Similarly, if I give your story a 5-vote because you're my best pal, that is not fraud either.

How much should you weight the voting? If it's keeping you up nights and giving you fits, you're putting too much weight on it. We added voting at the request of writers. I personally believe that literature is too subjective to be rated on a 1-5 scale, but I also understand that writers like to get as much feedback as possible on their stories. Voting is yet another tool - though a clumsy one - for gauging reader reaction to a story.

 

[Sandia]

A fraud vote happens when a person or persons attempt to make multiple votes on a story, which is against our rules. We have a complex system to detect these. How does it detect them? Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be as effective, would it? I'll just say it's a system developed by several programmer types who know their stuff.

If I give your story a single 1-vote because you have blonde hair, that is not fraud. It may not be smart voting, but I have the right to vote once on your story. Similarly, if I give your story a 5-vote because you're my best pal, that is not fraud either.

How much should you weight the voting? If it's keeping you up nights and giving you fits, you're putting too much weight on it. We added voting at the request of writers. I personally believe that literature is too subjective to be rated on a 1-5 scale, but I also understand that writers like to get as much feedback as possible on their stories. Voting is yet another tool - though a clumsy one - for gauging reader reaction to a story.

Laurel, I love your cats.

 

[Devyne]

I like 'constructive' criticism that makes me feel all warm inside, but I'll take an anonymous hate letter any day. It's better than being a ghost...

i agree with that entirely. though im new to literotica (just joined today YAY!) i think voting is subjective what i liek in a story may not be what someone else likes so whats it matter? it doesnt! feedback is feedback

 

[its Leslie]

Hmmm just got an anonymous feedback to one of my stories.

And you know something, I know it was specifically due the existence of this thread.

I know this as the person (who remained anonymous because even they don't think their opinion is worth an once of nutsack sweat) specifically commented that in their opinion my material is not worth the vote from it being amatuerish crap. They acknowledged my decision to turn off voting.

Hey anonymous doofus...I KNOW I am an amatuer duhhhh, I don't need an anonymous jerk telling me the obvious. Crap of course its crap. Most of the stuff on Lit is unprofessional garbage, but we all like it just fine.

I write for laughs, I don't NEED to write erotica. But I get such a satisfying boner after writing an erotic piece.
If I wanted to write something that was worth getting seriously published, it would likely be centered on ecology or astro physics.
But last time I checked, physics didn't make me all that horny.

Geeese. Can't picture what goes through the minds of the people that only want to slag our efforts eh, but it's reasonable to presume that not much goes through their heads.
Critiques on style or technique might just actually net the visitor an improved story next time.

But demonstrating that Lit actually attracts readers with delusions of authouratative opinion such that they expect us to care when we get feedback no better than "your story sucks", is just, well, comical.

But at any rate "mr anonymous" thanks for the laugh, your silly feedback only makes you look dumb and me smarter than you.

 

[wildsweetone]

A fraud vote happens when a person or persons attempt to make multiple votes on a story, which is against our rules. We have a complex system to detect these. How does it detect them? Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be as effective, would it? I'll just say it's a system developed by several programmer types who know their stuff.

If I give your story a single 1-vote because you have blonde hair, that is not fraud. It may not be smart voting, but I have the right to vote once on your story. Similarly, if I give your story a 5-vote because you're my best pal, that is not fraud either.

How much should you weight the voting? If it's keeping you up nights and giving you fits, you're putting too much weight on it. We added voting at the request of writers. I personally believe that literature is too subjective to be rated on a 1-5 scale, but I also understand that writers like to get as much feedback as possible on their stories. Voting is yet another tool - though a clumsy one - for gauging reader reaction to a story.

Laurel,
would a 1,2,3 point voting system be worth considering?

 

[its Leslie]

The only way voting will ever matter is if the only people doing the voting are people that we writers put in place to do the voting.

I believe they are called judges.
Of course the olympics proves that even judges can't always be trusted.

But I will pick a finite sum of judges over unseen unknown readers with motives hardly worth considering.

As it goes, I write mostly for me, and partly for my already known friends. Truth be known I could care less if unknown people are enjoying my stories. So logically their opinions (which are commonly meaningless) don't figure in my desire to write.

I miiiiiiight like to profit from writing erotica, but if I ever do start writing commercially, I won't base my decisions on the Lit audience voting.

My two all time best examples of literary excellence are the Lord of the Rings, written just to wrap a world around an imaginary elven language, and Dune, which was refused 9 times by people that clearly had lousy judgment (after the fact).

Great fiction is rarely well received initially, or even written to be a great work in the first place.

 

[Octavian]

There is a parallel discussion in 'story feedback' under the thread 'Tactical Voting' .
I made the mistake of initiating it there--sorry.
Basically I believe most '1' votes are given by other authors with vested interests.
I wonder if it would be fairer to do away with graduated voting altogether, and substitute it with one button. The reader could then click on it if he/she thought the story merited it.
The number of votes would then reflect the number of readers who considered the story to be outstanding. It is harder to manipulate the voting if you have to serial vote for your own story. And it would not be possible to sabotage any one else’s either!

 

[Coolville]

emoticon free zone

Don't like voting? Turn it off.

I get a kick out of seeing the numbers. Maybe it's a guy thing, statistics and all that. I like watching to see if that 4.5 will nudge up to 4.7.

Don't lose sleep over it. It's all just personal preferences. If a story turns me on and is well-written - I might give it a 4 or a 5.

On Lit. there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Most stories are crap and finding the good ones makes my day. So I'm all for the 1-2-3 system.

Not that there's any reason for the Lit. people to waste time on changing the voting system. It's better than the American voting system, in any case.

Feedback is great. Women telling you how much your words turned them on and men complimenting you on the writing. A nice little bonus.

But publishing stories should be more important to the writer than anything else.

Fretting about votes sounds like a time-consuming displacement activity.

 

[MidnightShadow]

i agree with coolville

i don't see why it matters one way or the other...all i care about is the views......just feedback would be fine with me............but then again...i'm an author so i have an ego......which ALL authors do to some extent.....

i like knowing that people enjoyed my story....and to some extent the voting works for that....i'm not looking to write a classic anyway

this one is to the other authors....do you always give feedback to a story? If not, why? even bad technical feedback can help to tell you what people think and what they want to read. I don't write for me..........i write for an audience.....think about it.........audience makes a writer..