Score Vandalism

[lovecraft68]

I thought sister stories were your thing now. You blew the roof off with the one a year ago.

"Another person's mom" is just a Mature story. What fun is that? Actually, I need to try one of those. Maybe a "Stacy's Mom" theme.

I'm getting back at EB by writing a spoof of his cafe stories. Revenge is a dessert best served weird.

My last four brother sister stories all placed in contests. There's a story behind the one from last year. A challenge from a friendly rival here.

So, I figure I'll go easy on everyone this time...

The "My friend's Hot Mom" stories do well. Milf but with a little taboo to the degree of its pretty sleazy to screw your friend's mother.

 

[RejectReality]

SoL grades on a curve. It's completely different math. If I'm not mistaken do they not also toss out the outliers? You can't compare it nearly so simply.

Toss the outliers, plus your score depends upon the scores that everyone else's stories have gotten within the same timeframe block. ( On a curve, as you said )

If you get a 10 and a 9, your displayed score is 8.14 or something like that. They used to have graphs of all votes and displayed your raw score, but people were utterly baffled by and constantly complaining about the disparity, so they removed all data you could use to determine what people were actually voting. All you get is the magic number they display.

Please note that I don't think there's anything nefarious going on. I believe the system treats everyone equally and fairly. It's just about as transparent as lead and as comprehensible as string theory to a pigeon.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I didn't even intend to compare it directly.

Oh, I think you did.

Funny how that turned out, eh?
Tell me though, if you are so sure that the same would happen with Lit, how is it that SOL doesn't allow anonymous voting, yet the stories there have consistently and noticeably lower scores than on Lit? The highest score there is 9.54/10 and it falls down very, very quickly going down the top list. I actually have a series there that is listed in the top 50 long stories with a mere 8.41/10 score. Funny stuff.

He was testifying that on Lush, scores maxed out when anon votes were nixed, and you argued with direct comparison that SoL (which does not allow anon voting) don't max out, so confident in your theory that you were even sarcastic about it.

 

[lovecraft68]

We need one of those stat hound types to let us know...

Which topic gets discussed to death, but every thread still gets a lot of responses.

1-Underage rule
2-scores/bombing
3-LW is a cesspool
4-Should I continue another person's story.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

We need one of those stat hound types to let us know...

Which topic gets discussed to death, but every thread still gets a lot of responses.

1-Underage rule
2-scores/bombing
3-LW is a cesspool
4-Should I continue another person's story.

5 - Publish chapters as I write, or finish the whole thing before posting anything?
6 - Anonymous commenters are cowards (unless they are positive).

 

[RejectReality]

We need one of those stat hound types to let us know...

Which topic gets discussed to death, but every thread still gets a lot of responses.

1-Underage rule
2-scores/bombing
3-LW is a cesspool
4-Should I continue another person's story.

Might actually be possible to come up with some reasonable numbers now that the forum's search isn't complete ass. LOL

 

[lovecraft68]

5 - Publish chapters as I write, or finish the whole thing before posting anything?
6 - Anonymous commenters are cowards (unless they are positive).

7-Which category?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

We need one of those stat hound types to let us know...

Which topic gets discussed to death, but every thread still gets a lot of responses.

1-Underage rule
2-scores/bombing
3-LW is a cesspool
4-Should I continue another person's story.

You missed a few:

• How long will my story be in Pending?
• What category should my story be in?
• What’s the best length for a story?
• Is it weird that I’m writing about _________?

Add to that is a 2,300 word story, asking for somebody to write it for them.

 

[KeithD]

12. What do readers want in X?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Oh, I think you did.



He was testifying that on Lush, scores maxed out when anon votes were nixed, and you argued with direct comparison that SoL (which does not allow anon voting) don't max out, so confident in your theory that you were even sarcastic about it.

This is all about math, in the end. I didn't want to compare it in the sense of scoring systems used, but I did want to compare it in the sense of the result he was implying. SOL uses a mathematical system that might seem hard to many, but it isn't rocket science really, assuming one is good at math. I didn't want to go into it, but it seems I will have to as you are calling me out on this.
By SOL's system, a story that scored all perfect 10* votes from readers would still retain that score, regardless of the weighting done. I believe this info is even there in their FAQs. What I basically pointed out is that there is no story on SOL that has anywhere near a perfect 10 score, even if there is no anon voting, otherwise there would have been a story there with a 10 score. But there isn't. The other significant difference is that they don't display scores for stories below 20 or 25 votes I think, which I applaud wholeheartedly. Here on Lit, we have stories topping the last month's Top Lists with 6 or 7 votes only, and last year's top lists with 11 or 12 votes. If they allowed scores for stories with few votes only, I suspect there would have been perfect 10-score stories. But they don't, which is another improvement.

 

[lovecraft68]

12. What do readers want in X?

13-My story was rejected for AI

 

[RejectReality]

This is all about math, in the end. I didn't want to compare it in the sense of scoring systems used, but I did want to compare it in the sense of the result he was implying. SOL uses a mathematical system that might seem hard to many, but it isn't rocket science really, assuming one is good at math. I didn't want to go into it, but it seems I will have to as you are calling me out on this.
By SOL's system, a story that scored all perfect 10* votes from readers would still retain that score, regardless of the weighting done. I believe this info is even there in their FAQs. What I basically pointed out is that there is no story on SOL that has anywhere near a perfect 10 score, even if there is no anon voting, otherwise there would have been a story there with a 10 score. But there isn't. The other significant difference is that they don't display scores for stories below 20 or 25 votes I think, which I applaud wholeheartedly. Here on Lit, we have stories topping the last month's Top Lists with 6 or 7 votes only, and last year's top lists with 11 or 12 votes. If they allowed scores for stories with few votes only, I suspect there would have been perfect 10-score stories. But they don't, which is another improvement.

And why was this weighted score on a curve implemented in the first place? You may not know because ( at least in this name ) you weren't there at the time. I've been there since '06.

Because all the scores were grouping together in a tight little knot at the top, and nothing stood out from anything else with the exception of a few outliers.

The reason the system exists, and the reason it lowers every raw score ( when you could actually see it ) is precisely because the scores were inflated and of little value for selecting stories. The scoring system purposely spreads the scores out to make what are small differences into larger ones. It's no more truly useful, it just puts everything under a microscope to give the appearance of it.

You also have a culture that's years in development of a significant core group of very active folks ( mostly paid members ) who vote critically, and always have. They also tend to offer truly constructive criticism — especially to new authors. Just enough of them to take some of the edge off of the inflation.

That is not present here. At least not in anything resembling the proportions it is on SOL. The closest example we have here is poetry, and that skews toward the form-nazi and snobbish end of the scale with a heavy dose of "that's scored higher than it deserves." :: Reduce score to better reflect "reality" :: Too many don't seem to realize they're on a porn site looking for enlightenment through verse.

It was anathema to the culture of Lush, and policed by a large staff who have next to no reservations about dropping the ban-hammer, which is why the inflation there was so instant and massive.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Sol's system is better, I agree, it's just that people are used to ridiculously high scores here and they complain about the lower scores they get there. For my own stories there, I think I received only about 10% fewer votes than on Lit, which is remarkable considering that only registered users are allowed to vote. SOL has potential in my opinion, but the interface design is atrocious

Yes the fuck it is.

 

[nice90sguy]

whelp, I logged into SOL based on its mention in this thread. Fuck me, it's awful.

On my favourite porn video site, I search using tags, then look at the ratings (and the banner image) to decide whether to click. Pretty much what I do here. It's not failsafe, but it saves time. High scores are a reasonable filter for me.

I posted on another thread that "popular" is not the same as "good" for me -- I agreee with pink_silk_glove on that point. But I DONT agree that that rule applies to everyone at all: I'm an eccentric, really. Everyone who knows me in real life, my family, partner, close friends, and casual aquaintances would agree with me. My taste in music, food, clothes, even my politics is pretty minority. And my taste in literature, and my sexual kinks are too. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that, but I know it for a fact.

The only "encouragement" I get from high scores for my stories is that some other eccentrics share some of my tastes in writinf style and content.

I write stories I want to read, and what I want to read is pretty niche.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

And why was this weighted score on a curve implemented in the first place? You may not know because ( at least in this name ) you weren't there at the time. I've been there since '06.

Because all the scores were grouping together in a tight little knot at the top, and nothing stood out from anything else with the exception of a few outliers.

The reason the system exists, and the reason it lowers every raw score ( when you could actually see it ) is precisely because the scores were inflated and of little value for selecting stories. The scoring system purposely spreads the scores out to make what are small differences into larger ones. It's no more truly useful, it just puts everything under a microscope to give the appearance of it.

You also have a culture that's years in development of a significant core group of very active folks ( mostly paid members ) who vote critically, and always have. They also tend to offer truly constructive criticism — especially to new authors. Just enough of them to take some of the edge off of the inflation.

That is not present here. At least not in anything resembling the proportions it is on SOL. The closest example we have here is poetry, and that skews toward the form-nazi and snobbish end of the scale with a heavy dose of "that's scored higher than it deserves." :: Reduce score to better reflect "reality" :: Too many don't seem to realize they're on a porn site looking for enlightenment through verse.

It was anathema to the culture of Lush, and policed by a large staff who have next to no reservations about dropping the ban-hammer, which is why the inflation there was so instant and massive.

We are getting somewhere now. So SOL admins noticed a problem and did something to make it better. Sure it's not ideal but it's better than what Lit has. Lit top-lists are garbage. You can actually find 20 chapters of the same story crowding the list. Try to search by tag for example and sort the results by rating. Depending on the tag, you will find like 50-100 stories with, say, 4.81 score, and again, you are likely to find many chapters of the same story in that list. These are all things that work much better on SOL. SOL doesn't see chapters as individual stories. Tefler's "Three Square Meals" would be just one story there. On Lit, that's 145 separate stories that show up individually in top lists, searches etc.

Of course, there are different types of problems that Lit doesn't have but SOL and AO3 have, problems that stem exactly from the fact that it's all just one story no matter how many chapters there are. For example, if only one out of fifty chapters, say chapter #37, has the tag "anal", the whole story will get the tag and someone who is searching for that specific tag will find themselves tricked as they will start reading from the first chapter and find zero anal for a long long time.
Every story site has its positive and negative sides. The scores on Lit are its negative side, no matter how you look at them. Almost nothing about scores works as intended on Lit, and unlike on SOL, admins clearly don't give a fuck.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

MrPixel opened this thread with the statement:
Point-blank: maliciously-damaged scores reduce readership.

I agree. Noting that I interpret his comment as relating to an individual story's readership, not LitE’s overall site traffic.

If a new story is one-bombed then it won’t rate highly on the “New Stories” listing, which is typically where stories get the most exposure. It’s also unlikely to make it onto the 30-day “Top” list, or the 12-month list. Unless a sweep happens in your favor or you have enough “followers” to counter-vote before the 30-day cutoff, your story will fizzle in obscurity with a low number of views.

One-bombing deprives a story of readers, especially for new stories and new authors.

Some suggest that this is just the system at work; i.e. your story sucks. Possibly, but malicious votes are an acknowledged problem – that’s why the site does sweeps.

I showed previously that the average score for the romance category is around 4.5 for all stories. The main problem I see is that with a 4.5 story average, one-bombs are too powerful. For polarizing subject matter (Fetish, LW, etc.) maybe the one-star voter legitimately hated your story, but in the bell-curve of statistics there’s probably someone who legitimately loved your story just as passionately. Unfortunately, the uber-lover can’t give you nine stars – this bell-curve of distribution is cropped at 5-stars max, so hate wins over love.

Even worse, malicious parties are exploiting the power of a one-bomb to kill the readership of many stories. With ease! Other authors (for example, here and here) report the ‘early one-bombs’ that come within the first hours of publication - I've seen them too. I can only presume this is intended to limit views on a story.

So I do like pink_silk_glove’s suggestion of cropping the top and bottom 10% of votes when calculating the story rating. It fits with my previous cavalier proclamation that the five star system is here to stay. This scoring modification could be retroactively applied to the whole back catalogue of stories (presuming every individual vote is being stored in LitE’s database) – so it wouldn’t necessitate throwing away 25 years of data. Trimming the top-and-tail votes would mostly balance out the excessive influence of a one-bomb.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

I’ll also repeat my own suggestions from a previous (similar) thread:

Only allow anonymous one or two-star votes if an accompanying comment is also made. Make anonymous bombers explain why they ‘hate’ a story. I’m happy to receive bad feedback… but tell me what I need to improve. Don’t one-bomb my “Hot” rating story and expect me to be enlightened.

Having additional comment information would also assist with the site sweeps. A comment that says “qwerty” might get swept as flippant. While constructive criticism may add legitimacy to the vote and also add value for the author.

This means that anonymous votes would still be accepted by the site (so its not a major change to the voting system) but to wield the power of a very low vote would need additional justification.

 

[dmallord]

I agree with you 100%. Anonymous voting should be curtailed. Perhaps voters whose names we know can also one-bomb your story, but at least you'd be able to identify them.

How would you know who voted a one or the five you covet even if you know their names? Would there be a list of the voters and their scores somewhere?

 

[dmallord]

... And it seems we have come full circle. Drum roll... and the solution is: Don't piss off others and stay in our own lanes.

If that's so, then I messed up over a year ago in the political thread.

Or is that not right?

 

[alohadave]

I’ll also repeat my own suggestions from a previous (similar) thread:

Only allow anonymous one or two-star votes if an accompanying comment is also made. Make anonymous bombers explain why they ‘hate’ a story. I’m happy to receive bad feedback… but tell me what I need to improve. Don’t one-bomb my “Hot” rating story and expect me to be enlightened.

Having additional comment information would also assist with the site sweeps. A comment that says “qwerty” might get swept as flippant. While constructive criticism may add legitimacy to the vote and also add value for the author.

This means that anonymous votes would still be accepted by the site (so it's not a major change to the voting system) but to wield the power of a very low vote would need additional justification.

This isn't a critique site though. It's a porn stories site. No voter should have to justify their vote (low or high).

Reddit has posted how they think that users should use voting, and not a single person actually follows them, unless they are trying to shame people who downvote. And people only ever complain about downvotes, never about upvotes.

Stop trying to fix the voting system, because readers are going to vote how they vote. It's much more sane to acknowledge how the readership votes and move on with your life. You cannot enforce how people vote unless you want to drive down engagement.

 

[Bramblethorn]

So I do like pink_silk_glove’s suggestion of cropping the top and bottom 10% of votes when calculating the story rating. It fits with my previous cavalier proclamation that the five star system is here to stay. This scoring modification could be retroactively applied to the whole back catalogue of stories (presuming every individual vote is being stored in LitE’s database) – so it wouldn’t necessitate throwing away 25 years of data. Trimming the top-and-tail votes would mostly balance out the excessive influence of a one-bomb.

This would effectively kill the category toplists.

For instance, in Romance there are currently something like 172 stories with scores of 4.9 or higher. All of those stories have at least 90% 5s, so trimming the bottom 10% would leave them all with perfect 5.0s. Now we have 172+ stories all tied for first place in the category rankings. I'd have to see the vote breakdown to be certain, but I suspect even in LW there'd be something like a ten-way tie for first.

Is that an acceptable trade-off? I don't have strong opinions about it, but I know some authors would be quite unhappy about this.

I’ll also repeat my own suggestions from a previous (similar) thread:

Only allow anonymous one or two-star votes if an accompanying comment is also made. Make anonymous bombers explain why they ‘hate’ a story. I’m happy to receive bad feedback… but tell me what I need to improve. Don’t one-bomb my “Hot” rating story and expect me to be enlightened.

If you require people to comment in order to vote on a story they hate, they're going to give the barest sullenest minimum:

"Boring."
"Too short."
"Too long."
"Ending sucked."
"Cuck shit."
"дерьмо."

Do we really want to encourage readers to leave more of those comments on stories?

Even if a 1* voter leaves an honest comment explaining exactly why they hated the story, it's unlikely to be useful feedback. If 90% of readers are giving 4s and 5s, but some dude leaves a 1* because he found it boring...probably he's just not your target audience. He's unlikely to enjoy your stories regardless of what you write, and you're not going to do yourself favours chasing the approval of that one guy.

Having additional comment information would also assist with the site sweeps. A comment that says “qwerty” might get swept as flippant. While constructive criticism may add legitimacy to the vote and also add value for the author.

This is only viable if some human moderator is going through assessing those comments individually, trying to gauge whether this "boring" is a heartfelt assessment of the work or somebody trying to tank the story for malicious readers. That seems like a lot of work.

And why should a one-star vote require more justification than a five-star?

 

[SimonDoom]

This would effectively kill the category toplists.

For instance, in Romance there are currently something like 172 stories with scores of 4.9 or higher. All of those stories have at least 90% 5s, so trimming the bottom 10% would leave them all with perfect 5.0s. Now we have 172+ stories all tied for first place in the category rankings. I'd have to see the vote breakdown to be certain, but I suspect even in LW there'd be something like a ten-way tie for first.

Is that an acceptable trade-off? I don't have strong opinions about it, but I know some authors would be quite unhappy about this.

You're better at the math than I am, but would this necessarily be true if you lopped an equal number of 5s? I don't know what the right percentage is, but if you lop off the highest votes and lowest votes in equal measure it would seem to me as a matter of common sense you'd get a score that would approximate what most people think minus the outliers.

This wouldn't be true for all categories, either, because many categories have top scores significantly below 5.

Plus there are changes one could make that would disincentivize people from either awarding 5 or nothing, like modifying the red H system.

 

[Bamagan]

I'll go ahead and repeat my lonely pan flute solo for 'voting with your feet' and just opting out of the scoring system. I find it to be like cutting the Gordian Knot with Occam's Razor, removing the one-bomb Sword of Damocles from hanging overhead. Mixed metaphors aside, its feedback value is murky and inconsistent at best. Especially when one is writing niche stuff that has a narrow target audience to begin with (which is the perspective from which I approach the issue, and thus the principal source of my bias). I understand and accept that my view is likely to be as widely popular as my fetishes, but maybe that means I get points for consistency?

 

[EmilysRopes]

I'm a reader almost entirely at the moment. I almost never cast a vote on the stories I read, mostly I don't get as far as the end where I could cast a vote. If I do, it is almost entirely 5s for those few stories which actually meet my fantasies enough to get me aroused. Very occasionally I will give a 1 if I find the content of the story obnoxious (the most recent example was severe bullying of a woman). The rest I'll let others judge.

 

[KeithD]

I'm a reader almost entirely at the moment. I almost never cast a vote on the stories I read, mostly I don't get as far as the end where I could cast a vote. If I do, it is almost entirely 5s for those few stories which actually meet my fantasies enough to get me aroused. Very occasionally I will give a 1 if I find the content of the story obnoxious (the most recent example was severe bullying of a woman). The rest I'll let others judge.

And that's all based on storytelling, not mechanics, isn't it? This isn't a judging question, just a check against a post on another board separating reader response between storytelling and mechanics. If you're saying what motivates you is the attractiveness of the storytelling, you are evidencing the other post's conclusion that the quality of storytelling is more important to the preponderance of readers here than that of mechanics.