To Vote or Not To Vote, That is the Question

[Whispersecret]

Mickie, your push to get us all out to vote responsibly is a valiant and admirable one, but unrealistic if you think it could make a difference. See, we honorable people would have to actually take the time to READ the story. The dishonorable people can take the same amount of time and VOTE VOTE VOTE to their heart's content.

Again, why can't we make it like this...in order to vote, you have to be logged on to that particular story for at least ten (or whatever) minutes, otherwise your vote doesn't count. Then we put the burden of time on the dishonest person.

I highly disagree with the idea that we have to live with the flawed voting system. Whom does voting benefit? The writers? If the voting is tampered with, it's invalid. Why even put stock into something that is inaccurate? The readers? Nah. If they want to express their feelings about a story they could always send feedback.

What if we abolished the voting system and the Top Lists. What happens? Readers would be left with New Stories, the Story Index, and E's to help them find something to entertain them. Sounds okay to me.

What if that's too much trouble for readers? They want a quick, easy way to find story they'll like. Go with Alex's idea. (His re-explanation of his idea makes it sound more feasible. (Alex, did you say anything about allowing posts that trash stories? I think someone would have to monitor that forum to make sure that didn't happen.)

Or perhaps implement a system by which members could keep track of the stories they've read, so they don't have to keep finding the same ones. Isn't there some way to highlight them in a different color if you've already clicked on them?

But how will writers get an idea of how their stories are doing? Feedback. The best and most specific way to know. The malicious people will have to actually spend time writing to the people they target, and the authors will be better able to judge from the words and tone whether it's a nut or someone sincere, something you can't do with votes.

My understanding is that voting exists for the readers and the authors, both. If we analyze what needs are being filled with the voting and fill the needs with some other alternative, the problem could be solved.

Laurel, your post about the movie site sorta didn't do anything except illustrate the an accurate voting system does not exist. We all know that already.

A lot of ideas have been put forth. Are you going to address any of our points? Because when you assure us, "We're listening to everything and working on it and won't quit," I sort of feel like you're just dancing around.

 

[cymbidia]

...in like vein...

I'm never going to win any Lit awards, either. Why? Because my stuff is way too graphically BDSM oriented and most people don't want that kinda kinky shit with their morning dose of written orgasms.

However, i don't write for profit but to release a snapshot about a segment of sexuality that i know well, and most people don't. I write to put into words what only a few of us get to do. I write because i *can* write about that kinky shit with authentic passion and eye for detail.

Unlike KM, i *don't* get much email, maybe because my "stories" aren't read much. Therefore, i don't get much validation as a writer from my email. I've stopped watching my scores bounce around because it was making me crazy and, while it's fun to go crazy on occasion, as an everyday diet, it lacks any semblance of a good time. Since i'm not watching my scores, i don't get validation (or depressed!) from those, either. There's enough email that trickles in to keep me from complete despondency, though, so i'm okay there.

Guess what i'm saying is that i'm going to write no matter the voting system here, as are the vast majority of us who churn out the stories that comprise the backbone of Lit's reason for existence. If i don't like that voting system for any reason, i'll (continue to) ignore it.

 

[Laurel]

Whispa -

Thanks for the continued feedback. I don't want you to ever think I'm dodging your questions. I do like to dance, but what I do in the privacy of my own home, while the curtains are drawn, has nothing to do with Literotica voting - I hope!

My comments about the movie site were actually intended as the opposite of what you got out of them. That is probably my fault for not being clear - perhaps I could use some work on my writing skills.

I was trying to illustrate the fact that a system does not have to be perfect to work. The Internet Movie Database is a site that I have used on a regular basis for years. I certainly don't rely on their scores as the word of god, but I do find them to be helpful in their context. The context is that of the Internet and specifically that of opinion - the opinion of human beings, all of whom are filled with emotion, all of whom are prone to mood swings, and all of whom have lived different lives and experienced different things. People are going to vote different ways for different reasons, I think we agree on that. Then, the big question becomes "What is a VALID vote and what is not?"

If I vote down a movie, or a story, after seeing only the very beginning of it, is that any more or less valid than someone who views the whole thing and then up votes it because they happen to like Julia Roberts, or Anal Sex? What about the person who down votes it because they had a bad day or because there were spelling errors? Some people may be voting on grammar, others on content, others just to be nice or mean. This simply means that the system is based on human beings, not robots. I believe, though, that given enough votes over enough time, you are going to get a fairly accurate, but certainly not perfect, idea of what a large group of people think of the piece of work they are voting on, whether that be a movie, a story, or a scientist working on a cure of AIDS (Nobel prize reference!)

If our litmus test is whether something has to be perfect to be useful, then I certainly wouldn't be very useful to anyone. Luckily for me, that's not the test. I don't believe that we need to prove that the system is 100% perfect for it to be useful to both authors and readers - frustration and all. Perfect, is itself a term so subjective that we would could probably never achieve it for more than one person at any time.

As far as the idea of making a time limit to vote, I talked to Manu and it is certainly possible. To do that, apparently, you would need to use some sort of a ********** timer, and anyone with javacript turned off would simply be able to go around it. Another option would be to use cookies, but again, it could easily be foiled. Even if you were to try it, you would get into the issues of how fast each person reads. I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't see how another abusable system on top of this one would make anyone happier. If there is even a .01% chance of abuse, then there will be some people who are unhappy and we are back at square one.

I am not against adding a toplist for all of the "editor's picks" if enough people think that is a good idea, but then you are taking the imperfect voting of 200,000 people and relying on the imperfect voting of one person. I'm not convinced that my opinion on any given story should be given that kind of importance. The icons are a small thing, a new toplist would take it to the next level.

As far as readers being able to keep track of the stories they've read - that could possibly be done on a per-visit basis, but not in the long term unless, again, readers want to register, which most do not. I'm not clear on how this would help the voting system.

The idea of adding the ability for readers to post feedback on each story has been discussed and we have never been sure what authors think of the idea. This opens up the possibility of some public negative feedback which some authors would probably find upsetting and which could again be left by readers who are simply being assholes or who have a beef with the writer. If someone is willing to vote a one on a story, they may very well be willing to do worse if given an easy way to publicly attack the story. We are currently working on a system for the eBooks site that will allow users to leave reviews of each book, and this system could most likely be ported over to Literotica if there was enough interest from authors in something like this. It should be noted, though, that this is not a replacement for the voting, but an additional feature on top of the voting.

I hope that I covered most of your points with some sort of cohesion. Please keep the comments coming. You may not always think so, but we really are trying to find a solution that makes everyone happy all of the time forever. I thought we found it once, but apparently xtacy is now illegal in most countries - back to the drawing board!

 

[skywriterxxx]

I agree with Whispersecret's ideas about voting.

Feedback is probably the one best indicator of how well you're doing, especially 'signed' feedback.

If someone wants to 'one' me, let them send me feedback and sign it!

 

[CookieMonster]

Cutting down on voting fraud

Whispersecret wrote:
The problem is that voting is being manipulated unfairly. ...

Let's hear from the people who have the expertise to come up with viable solutions.

I know a little bit about computers, not much at all about managing web sites. If I remember right, when a person accesses a web page, the IP address of that person's (or ISP's) computer is available at the receiving end. Assuming that this is right, one possibility would be to disallow multiple votes on the same story from the same IP address. (I think it would sometimes be possible to get around this, but assuming it can be implemented it would cut down on the amount of multi-voting.)

A technically simpler scheme would be to require that only registered members be allowed to vote: when a person logs in to vote, check that this person has not voted on that story already. (This can be foiled by a person with multiple IDs, but the hassle factor of having to remember all of the IDs, and login to each one separately for each vote, should be high enough to reduce fraud.)

One potential problem of such schemes might be that they'd require significant amounts of extra storage to keep track of who has voted for which stories, but this can be addressed by periodically "purging" the database. If the database is purged weekly, that means that a person wouldn't be able to vote on a particular story more than once a week, which I think would still cut down significantly on the amount of fraud.

CookieMonster

 

[chatbug]

Linking the discussion profile and the author profile

I wish I could click on a profile in a discussion thread and jump to their stories. Author profiles and discussion profiles seem somehow different.

I'm going a little off-topic, but I wanted to respond to this. The author profiles and discussion profiles are different. I've linked them together by specifying my Literotica author profile page as my home page in the discussion profile. Click on the profile icon on this message, and you'll see what I mean.

It's two clicks, rather than one, but it's still better than none. If more authors did this, it'd be accepted as another way for bulletin board readers to get to our stories.

 

[SpectreT]

Question:

How many people get feedback? I've posted three parts of my story thus far, with 39, 14, and 15 votes. The scores are: 3.97, 3.79, and 4.27, respectively. Which, to my keen analytical mind and firm grasp of the realm of statistics, means precisely jack. Obviously, the third part, the only part so far with any overt sex, is getting a higher overall rating, but what do those numbers mean, in terms of how many people liked or disliked my story? I've gotten exactly five pieces of feedback, two from the same person on different parts of my story, and all were enthusiastic "Keep going!" types, as I suspect anyone who would take the time to feedback would be doing so to compliment the author, so feedback isn't helping me figure out how I'm doing as a writer either.

Just my two bits' worth.....

 

[wild_jay]

Don't suppose there is any way of the system refusing to take more than one vote per IP address?...might do away with some of the abuse.
I think the voting option is a good idea, gives the author the choice.

 

[KillerMuffin]

The system will not permit more than one voter per IP address. Voter fraud is committed by persons with access to more than one IP address.

 

[CookieMonster]

The system will not permit more than one voter per IP address. Voter fraud is committed by persons with access to more than one IP address.

Ha! I hadn't realized this, but I just tried to vote multiple times for one of KM's poems, and wasn't allowed to. Which is at it should be, but shoots down my bright idea. Oh well!

 

[JUDO]

OTHER RATING OPTIONS

Wow! Well, here and on other threads throughout the Bulletin Boards I run into this issue of scoring (yeah and not that kind of 'scoring' either...unfortunately).

Our current scoring system is open to abuse as are all scoring systems that try to make sense of the maddening elements of art and literature such as 'quality' (just ask the author of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance').

We have a completely open system. Our work is 'hangin' in the wind' and anyone...anyone can praise it or spit.

This is difficult to take, but currently, it is all we have and all many other systems have as well. Take the Oscars, for example, many of the voters have no idea what is difficult to do in the various categories, but they know what they like; and they get to vote. Unfair to the creators of the art at times, but it's the system they have.

I guess the purpose of the scoring is to give the casual observer of the thousands of stories here some stick in the sand to try and find things they may like. Usually for me, it's the topic and short little log lines next to the titles on the 'New' listings.

If scoring offends the author, I'm all for a 'non-rated' area being created where everyone can read the titles and log lines.

I also like Alex Tzar's idea of more lengthy summarys being present for such non-rated materials. The 'TV Guide' or 'Reader's Digest' versions of the stories.

But, I think the current method of scoring could be improved in possibly several ways with minimum work needed by the site team, and other ways to convey reviews of work would simply take more involvement by the people this system most effects...the authors. Read on...



A FEW MORE IDEAS...

Most of the individuals who vote for our stories have access to one computer, so their vote will also simply be one person's low, medium or high opinion. The current math for finding this out is to add all the scores and average them.

DIFFERENT MATH FOR SCORING:
How about this? During any 24-hour period, always throw out the low and the high score, then average. Depending on the length of time used, this will help 'average out' the extreme reactions a story may recieve. If someone is bombing a story with a five or one, then at least one of these per day per IP address will be dropped. In a day, where one recieves only 2 votes or less, other logic can come into play: a) if the votes are all the same, keep them b) drop them c) average on these days only.

I haven't thought through the ins-and-outs of all the issues involved, so if it seems worthy, I'd be glad to try and spend more time on this.

The idea is to eliminate the extreme or manipulative voting.

REGISTER ALL VOTERS:
Require that all the possible people who vote be registered on the site. This would accomplish two things, one hopefully positive and one possibly negative: 1) Less 'impluse scoring' would take place because the voters would have to register to vote; a deterant to impulsive actions 2) Less readers would vote because they wouldn't take the time to register (just like Presidential elections).

TIME ON THE STORY:
Reading takes time even for the fastest of readers. Is it possible that time could be on our side for questioning the validity of a score? Someone, I forget who, mentioned that it takes time to read something and give it a '1'. They mentioned that normally, if the material were deserving of such a score they would simply stop and not finish it.

I would say that two conditions could be tracked for attempting to decide is a rating was worthy. a) Did the scorer access all the pages of a story? b) Was sufficient time spent on each page to actually read the material?

If not on either one of these, the score is dropped. Certainly, both of these conditions could be 'side-stepped' easily and un-worthy scores still posted, but it would possibly eliminate many of the 'impluse scoring.'


EDITORS CHOICE AND RATING:
One suggestion that I agree with is to have other reviewers. Certainly books, movies do this with people who make their living as full-time reviewers (eg. Roger Ebert, etc.). The biggest problem I have for this is simply, the time to do it. The Editors already have their "E" preferences which appear every day. Perhaps they don't have time to rate each reading that receives an "E", but that's a possibility; an Editor's list. (This has been mentioned before).

AUTHORS CHOICE AND RATING:
How about a volunteer Author's Rating? There would be lots of ways to assemble a cast for such a host of characters. Perhaps similar rules would apply to the volunteer Authors as appear for the volunteer Editors. Something like this maybe:

1) Authors have to be qualified to join - some arbitrary time of membership and/or arbitrary number of stories submitted.

2) The 'Author's Choice' would be reflected in a (my fantasy here) "Scarlet Letter 'A'" posted next to the listing, along with a Author Choice Rating (four stars, five stars).

3) The 'Author's Choice' listing would be selective and not necessarily contain all the published listings.

4) The 'Author's Choice' group of reviewers would meet together over the Net to make their decisions known at either the beginning or end of each month (eg. the following 15th of each month along with the top lists Awards maybe??).


Well, my thoughts on it. I hope this helps. I've already in my short time here had it all happen to me (Naturally, being an obsessive 'newbie' author, I watch the ratings like a hawk). I feel the pain of KillerMuffin, Cymb, Whisp, Weird Harold, p_p_man and all the others who have discussed this topic ad infinitum.

I've read something by all of you and you're all doing a tremendous job; so try and take heart in that.

- Judo

 

[JUDO]

The voting buttons

Another possible idea...

I also remember someone saying that the current graphic used for voting encourages a '3' since it is preselected and all one has to do to register it is click once on the 'Submit Vote' button.

How about having nothing selected as the default, then when the 'Submit Vote' is clicked, the voter will be prompted with 'You have chosen # as your vote. Is this correct?' Then the voter would be prompted to answer 'Yes' or 'No', a 'No' would take them back to the bar and they would start again. This would eliminate a lot of the 'voted for 3 by accident.'

- Judo