Score Vandalism

[KeithD]

My compromise solution is to award red Hs based upon a percentile within a category--say, only the top 25% get a red H within that category. This would improve the meaning of the red H, and it would lessen the incentive for gamesmanship, but some authors would lose their red Hs so they'd put up a fuss about that. I might lose some of my red Hs. I wouldn't care.

Simpler and more effective than that would be to delete the red H system and let the ratings speak for themselves to however individual readers want to understand them to mean in attracting a read. At one time the ratings didn't show to the readers. Now they do. Let them stand on their own. Far less bother for the website admin as well.

 

[alohadave]

Registered-only serves two purposes.

One, it's like putting a deadbolt on your front door in addition to the normal knob latch. It's not going to keep the evil-doers completely out, but it is going to slow them down. Making registration a requirement might have the "too much trouble" effect for somebody just wanting to spray a little paint.

Sure, registered users - even other authors - bomb stories. But that they are doing so is recorded, especially the "bomb-only" accounts. These can be outed with simple database queries by site admins. As to what to do about it? That's their call.

Simon, we shall agree to disagree.

I want people to vote and comment on my stories. We get precious little feedback as it is. Restricting it to a tiny subset of users is counterproductive.

I have stories on SOL, and the default there is comments are turned off. That makes it even harder for authors to get any kind feedback from readers.

 

[NotWise]

Why do you think that your proposal solves the problem? We know whether comments are anonymous or not, but how can you tell whether a vote comes from an anonymous user?

If you think your stories are under systematic attack, you can present your evidence to Laurel via DM. If she agrees, she may launch a sweep. But, low votes aren't necessarily invalid votes any more than high votes are always valid. If you ask for a sweep you need to brace yourself for the possibility that your score will go down rather than up.

It seems like voters are commonly out to reward an author or a story, and that creates a strong bias toward 4* and 5* votes. I think the median score should be near 3, but according to 8letters work it's more like 4.5. Not all voters are out to pat you on the back -- witness Loving Wives, where the median score probably is about 3. When you get a string of low votes it's easy to attribute it to malicious voting, when it may really be unbiased voting.

Most of the votes I've seen lately have been below the story's score. Maybe it's the season. I remind myself that opinions vary, and everyone has a right to their opinion.

 

[lilshymynx]

3 ~ Put guide words on the numbers: 1~poor, 2~adequate, 3~good, 4~excellent, 5~amazing. This will entice voters to use the whole scale and give all of the stars relevance. Voters will now be more inclined to give a good but not perfect story a 4 or a decent story a 3. Scores will come down but will be more accurate, and writers can be pleased with a well-earned 4.2 that means something.

Already exists

 

[SimonDoom]

I thought about that, and it's certainly far better than the 4.5 bar, but it still doesn't remove the jealousy target.

No, but I think most authors like their red Hs enough that they would live with that. It doesn't eliminate the problems, but it reduces them. And in my system a red H, by conveying a percentile rank (say, 75 percentile) would convey information that a raw score would not. We had a thread a little while ago where someone presented actual data on what a red H means, percentile-wise, and I think some people were shocked that it means so little. In some categories a story with a red H is no more than a median story, or a little above that, while in Loving Wives it's probably around 90 percentile. It's ridiculous, in its current form.

 

[SimonDoom]

Simpler and more effective than that would be to delete the red H system and let the ratings speak for themselves to however individual readers want to understand them to mean in attracting a read. At one time the ratings didn't show to the readers. Now they do. Let them stand on their own. Far less bother for the website admin as well.

This would get no complaint from me. I suspect that Laurel and Manu believe that the red H system is so embedded in the status quo and the expectations of both authors and readers that eliminating it would be eliminating "value" that site members think they are getting, and they are loath to do that. My proposal would preserve the institution but give it more meaning, so it might be more acceptable to the site owners than getting rid of it.

 

[Agent0069]

5-point rating system is funny, because authors want to see that red “H” next to their story, while readers might not realise that any score besides a 5 will damage story’s chances at retaining a “H”.

But I don’t think there’s a solution. Ratings, trends, troll attacks is something even large service struggle with, I doubt there’s something a site with one developer will be able to fix.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

This would get no complaint from me. I suspect that Laurel and Manu believe that the red H system is so embedded in the status quo and the expectations of both authors and readers that eliminating it would be eliminating "value" that site members think they are getting, and they are loath to do that. My proposal would preserve the institution but give it more meaning, so it might be more acceptable to the site owners than getting rid of it.

That's a good point.

But I don’t think there’s a solution. Ratings, trends, troll attacks is something even large service struggle with, I doubt there’s something a site with one developer will be able to fix.

It'll never be perfect. The lit-verse is a swamp of wild creatures that can't really be herded, but the system that we have is horrible (basically useless) and has heaps of room for improvement.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Already exists

View attachment 2355278

Ah, never noticed that.

 

[KeithD]

Tso it might be more acceptable to the site owners than getting rid of it.

Unless they took a look at the comparative work for them to do one or the other.

 

[Agent0069]

Has rating breakdown ever been proposed? Like, not change anything, just let authors see how many 5s and how many 1s they have, instead of an average?

 

[alohadave]

No, but I think most authors like their red Hs enough that they would live with that. It doesn't eliminate the problems, but it reduces them. And in my system a red H, by conveying a percentile rank (say, 75 percentile) would convey information that a raw score would not. We had a thread a little while ago where someone presented actual data on what a red H means, percentile-wise, and I think some people were shocked that it means so little. In some categories a story with a red H is no more than a median story, or a little above that, while in Loving Wives it's probably around 90 percentile. It's ridiculous, in its current form.

Simply changing it to something like 50 or 100 votes would make it more meaningful. 10 votes is a pretty low bar.

 

[alohadave]

Has rating breakdown ever been proposed? Like, not change anything, just let authors see how many 5s and how many 1s they have, instead of an average?

It probably has, this is a recurring topic here. You can guesstimate the breakdowns, but there's always some fudge factor.

IMO, that would help readers too.

 

[KeithD]

Simply changing it to something like 50 or 100 votes would make it more meaningful. 10 votes is a pretty low bar.

This is where we get into the relative responses to the different categories. Some categories just don't attract a high number of readers/voters. If the site doesn't want to be reduced to only Incest and Loving wives stories being bothered to submit, it has to give some relief to other categories.

This is the same issue as the Electoral College composition in the United States. To get the smaller states to join the union at all, they had to be given some relief on being included in the total or Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts would have been the only segments of the country being able to play.

Just strip out the red H system and let the listed ratings of the stories speak for themselves after 10 votes register (to neutralize the power of the early votes).

 

[AwkwardlySet]

These are all valid questions being raised here. But the answer is quite simple.
Laurel and Manu don't care about any of this. I'll actually go beyond what Simon said. They do not care what you want or need one bit, regardless of whether that would take away from readers or not. They simply don't care as was clearly demonstrated in the most recent topic about Author's pages. The needs of authors are not something that influences the website policies in the least.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Simply changing it to something like 50 or 100 votes would make it more meaningful. 10 votes is a pretty low bar.

In incest or LW, sure, but in EC most stories will never see 50 votes. In L&T almost none of them would.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Oo. I actually agree with Simon on this point. It's a good idea. If it worked to defuse the Russian and Romanian judges from bombing Olympic diving scores, it should certainly work for us.

This is not a good idea. Stories Online does something similar to this, and it's basically a scoring shitshow. It also doesn't actually fix the problem, i.e., if someone wants to tank a story's rating, they can shift to making it a 2 or 3 star rating instead.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'll just point out something no one has mentioned in this thread, as far as I have seen.

Literotica's voting and rating system in itself isn't bad at all. It's the fact that admins do nothing to counter those who are trying to game the system. Anonymous or registered, you were meant to vote only once on each story. You hated a story or you hate an author? Great, give them 1* and that's all fine and perfectly within your rights. But giving them ten or twenty 1* on a single story isn't. The same goes for giving ten or twenty 5* of course, even though haters are usually more persistent than fans.
This is where the system falls apart completely. Sweeps barely scrape the surface of "fraudulent voting" as Laurel herself calls the whole thing. The sad effect of such a system is that many authors take care not to piss off anyone on the forum or in comments for fear of getting targeted themselves. They know scores matter in the eyes of readers and that getting a lower score will affect the number of people who read the story and who comment on it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'll just point out something no one has mentioned in this thread, as far as I have seen.

Literotica's voting and rating system in itself isn't bad at all. It's the fact that admins do nothing to counter those who are trying to game the system. Anonymous or registered, you were meant to vote only once on each story. You hated a story or you hate an author? Great, give them 1* and that's all fine and perfectly within your rights. But giving them ten or twenty 1* on a single story isn't. The same goes for giving ten or twenty 5* of course, even though haters are usually more persistent than fans.
This is where the system falls apart completely. Sweeps barely scrape the surface of "fraudulent voting" as Laurel herself calls the whole thing. The sad effect of such a system is that many authors take care not to piss off anyone on the forum or in comments for fear of getting targeted themselves. They know scores matter in the eyes of readers and that getting a lower score will affect the number of people who read the story and who comment on it.

How do you know this is happening? That people are giving stories ten or 20 1 stars? How could you possibly know that?

I've been publishing stories here for over 7 years, and I've received many 1s and negative comments, but I see no clear evidence of this behavior.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Literotica's voting and rating system in itself isn't bad at all.

No, the scoring system is inherently bad, designed quickly with little thought 25 years ago and never updated to meet the needs of the community. We all know that it is bad for writers to gauge their work, but then as mentioned, it's geared more for readers, but then it's not good for readers neither, because the scores are so inaccurate. Even Simon who believes that the scores do indicate some level of quality admits that it doesn't tell him much, only in a general sense over a very large sample, so a reader spending ten minutes on a work break browsing scores is still essentially looking for needles in haystacks.

It's the fact that admins do nothing to counter those who are trying to game the system.

Wrong again. The admin has gone to great lengths to sweep the scores, something that shouldn't need to be done (at least to the extent that they do) if the system was designed better in the first place. A good scoring system would have a reasonable amount of accuracy, would be helpful to the community, and would be simple to admin. As it is they have not created a helpful accurate rating system, they have created a popularity pissing contest that they have to run around and clean up after on a regular basis. Fails on all three counts.

 

[KeithD]

How do you know this is happening? That people are giving stories ten or 20 1 stars? How could you possibly know that?

I've been publishing stories here for over 7 years, and I've received many 1s and negative comments, but I see no clear evidence of this behavior.

I've seen it. When I was being actively attacked on the boards and was able to catch when my stories were posting, I'd see multiple 1s posted before the story could have been read. I have no doubt it's part of what happens here. It helps me not pay much attention at all to story rankings here. I like it when I get the red H simply because it attracts views. I don't credit it or much more than that because this site is a voting sieve. Lots more views posting than any other site I post stories to, though (whatever that means, because I can easily be manipulated too and doesn't ipso facto register actual readers).

I'll add that this hasn't stopped me from continuously posting stories here for nearly two decades. I appreciate the platform it gives me and just don't fool myself on what that means as far as actual favorable readership. In my case, this is a last/archival placement for most of my stories, so "developmental feedback" on the stories means diggly-squat to me.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I have to say, my favorite system is Lush's, even though it loses a lot of the nuance you see here. They have comments, likes, favorites, and views. They also have a "heat" rating ; I have no idea if that's what it's called, but there's a fire symbol next to it, so that's what I'll call it. If you get a comment? +1 heat. Same thing with a favorite or a like, but only +1 heat for each user, regardless of how many ways they interact with it. They do require logging in to like/favorite/comment, so it probably wouldn't work here, though.

They also have some things somewhat similar to the green E here (Recommended Reads, they call them there), but more frequently given than they are here on Lit; they come at a pace there that's more like the E was at the beginning of Literotica rather than now, i.e., somewhat common but not super common, and generally given for good reason.

Frankly, I'd be happy if they just went with the Reddit up/down vote system, though. It's simple, and any finer detail can be put in a comment.

 

[Lifestyle66]

How do you know this is happening? That people are giving stories ten or 20 1 stars? How could you possibly know that?

I've been publishing stories here for over 7 years, and I've received many 1s and negative comments, but I see no clear evidence of this behavior.

The evidence comes from watching the 1-bombing patterns.

When I had a contentious debate with two authors here in the AH a few years ago, each of my Red-H stories soon (within an hour) received 1s until several dropped below 4.5. Then when another 5 was added to raise one of them to 4.5 Red-H again, within 30 minutes another 1 would push it back down.

My story list was being watched for positive changes, and attacked to bring some of those down, over, and over, for about two days.

I can't believe that was random chance. And it happens, even now, with every new story I post. Watching the ratings progress over the first hours shows patterns of 5s, followed by 1s, back & forth until the attacker grows staisfied and moves on to their next target.

 

[TheLobster]

(Even when your story has a thousand or more votes, it hurts to see it drop .01 or .02. It's happened to me. And you know that it has to be some kind of concerted effort then, because a few random 1s aren't going to have such a huge effect.)

It will. Any H story with 1000 votes needs only two 1s to drop by .01 in score. This is just the math arithmetic mean, and is one of the reasons practically no one uses such a flawed scoring metric anymore.

This is really the source of all the complaints. The scoring algorithm is way too simplistic, offering no transparency yet producing artifacts that are easy to exploit.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

No, the scoring system is inherently bad, designed quickly with little thought 25 years ago and never updated to meet the needs of the community. We all know that it is bad for writers to gauge their work, but then as mentioned, it's geared more for readers, but then it's not good for readers neither, because the scores are so inaccurate. Even Simon who believes that the scores do indicate some level of quality admits that it doesn't tell him much, only in a general sense over a very large sample, so a reader spending ten minutes on a work break browsing scores is still essentially looking for needles in haystacks.

The scoring system, which I'll readily admit has some fallacies, is inaccurate only because you perceive the scores as something they were never meant to be. They were always meant to be a tool that shows how much readers liked or disliked a story, they were never meant to be a gauge of story quality. I completely understand your beef with this and long ago I voiced the same objections you are voicing because they are generally true. But since then I managed to accept that scoring isn't what we want it to be. It's what it is, as accurate or inaccurate as that makes it.

Wrong again. The admin has gone to great lengths to sweep the scores, something that shouldn't need to be done (at least to the extent that they do) if the system was designed better in the first place. A good scoring system would have a reasonable amount of accuracy, would be helpful to the community, and would be simple to admin. As it is they have not created a helpful accurate rating system, they have created a popularity pissing contest that they have to run around and clean up after on a regular basis. Fails on all three counts.

After all the experience I had with being bombed for close to a year now, I'll just disagree with you. Sweeps barely scrape the problem and what's more important, sweeps take Laurel's time, which is why she doesn't employ them often enough, not to mention the fact that sweeps use a pretty crude algorithm, one that many persistent trolls find a way around.