Voters ambush!!!!!!

[Laurel]

Re: Pendantic Interruption.

It amazes me how much freight one can load into the connotation of one word, to differentiate it from another word of a nearly similar denotation.

What exactly is the difference between the two words?

Both words are derived from Greek roots.

Erotica : (plural) erotic literature or art.
In the original - ‘sexual love.'

Pornography : (plural) printed or visual material intended to stimulate sexual excitement.
In the original - (pornographos) ‘writing about prostitutes.'

From the original definitions, erotica appears to be more concerned with a particular abstract concept, pornography more to do with a graphic depiction.

Neither term seems inherently judgmental, yet the term ‘pornography' is invariably the derogative word, and erotica the flattering term employed, when differing judgements are discussed. And, it appears that this argument has been going on, since the days when English first swiped the two contrasting viewpoints from the Greek.

Thus ends the colour commentary, I return you, now, to ringside . . .

Exactly. I don't think an erotic story having "pornographic" elements is a bad thing. In fact, an erotic story without "pornographic" elements can be a snooze. On the other hand, a pornographic story that's not erotic is boring and flat.

 

[XicotencatlSmith]

Votes R Us

I have to admit that I prize the little H next to my popular stories, and get depressed when they go away. Kind of like a favorite grandparent, they don't seem to last forever, lol. I'd like to say that it doesn't matter to me, but that would be lying.

I cope. My popular stories aren't the ones I think are my best anyway. And as the H's go away, on all of them, and the E's never come(cue violin music, <sniffle>), I simply reflect on the fact that everyone but me is stupid, and I shake my head sadly because I know that those persons giving my stories a 1 or 2 are in some way compensating for their personally low self esteem and gut gnawing jealousy over my enormous . . . talent. It's sad, really.

This thread has inspired me. I think I'll go write the Worst Story Ever, something that merits a 1 on every level.

 

[Guest]

"X"

If you don't mind me calling you that for short. lol.....

Maybe Laurel will create a prize for the "lowest" scored story...might be interesting.

I think I have a few that would qualify for that contest myself....

I remain,

 

[XicotencatlSmith]

X is fine

X is fine. Xico. Or Chico Ten Cow, as my buddies would say. Whatever floats your boat.

I wrote "The Worst Story Ever" and submitted it. (Didn't take long, lol, I might have a talent for bad fiction.) I'll be sure to put in the story feedback section when it gets approved.

 

[Quasimodem]

"X"

Originally posted by Thesandman
...Maybe Laurel will create a prize for the "lowest" scored story...might be interesting...

I foresee a scurvy reader sneaking about to award strategic '5' votes.

 

[Guest]

Leave it to Quasi....

To come up with a solution for fixing a perfectly stupid idea.........


I remain.....

 

[Un-registered]

Re: Votes R Us

I think I'll go write the Worst Story Ever, something that merits a 1 on every level.

I'm prepared to take side bets that it gets higher marks than at least one other of your stories.

 

[Guest]

LOL

As soon as one of my submissions gets 10 votes and hits the top list page, the scores start to come down (my latest poem should be knocked down soon - lol)

What can you do? Authors want many reads and many votes - yes. And most readers give an honest opinion, an honest score, even though it can be difficult to rate a subjective thing such as a story or poem.

There are some people who arrogantly read and dismiss good material, usually voting EVERYTHING down. If that allows them to puff up their chest and think they did well for the literary world, so what??

It does bother me when other writers vote stories down to increase their own ranking - I know that does happen, and I think it diminishes us all just a bit.

Feedback is wonderful - and is probably a better measure of how your work is received than the votes.

There's no real answer - votes can give you a bit of a kick or annoy the hell out of you when your favorite story doesn't score well. I think we should keep the voting system, however. In the long run, eventually, the best submissions will come out on top.

 

[XicotencatlSmith]

Re: Re: Votes R Us

I'm prepared to take side bets that it gets higher marks than at least one other of your stories.

That is a beautifully left handed remark, unregistered, lol. I'd take exception to it and rise up, with full frontal moral outrage, in defense of my exceptional prose if only you weren't so very likely to be correct.

The Worst Story Ever has been submitted, and tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . is pending.

 

[Master_Vassago]

OK, this is really out of hand. Just to prove a point tonight once and for all. I just had 31 votes on my newest submission. One for the Holiday contest. As soon as it posted high enough on the lists it got a one vote knocking it down to a 4.69. One malicious vote.

This set of stories has had a high ranking from the beginning and then sure enough one person comes along and bombs it. There has to be something to do. The story is below my name under new post. I would be interested in why someone would vote it down. I don't want to point fingers because that is just ridiculous to do. Besides I wouldn't know where to start. I can only assume it is some lesser than respectable person.

Should I email Laurel? I don't want to whine but, Yes, I had hoped to at least place in the Holiday contest and now that seems highly unlikely. (OK, so a little whining) Of course had there been feedback I would have not said a thing but as always this person didn't have the nerve to send a feedback. It just irks me to no end. Thanks for reading my rant I am off to go fume about it elsewhere.

 

[deliciously_naughty]

you need over 50 votes to be in the running to place for the holiday contest. you're much closer to being in the running than most of us.


Keep in mind, a 4.69 is very respectable, and once you have over 30 votes it would take more than a single 1 vote to knock it down.


it's a double edged sword...if you want to be eligible for winning the contests you have to allow voting. If you allow voting you have to accept that some people are going to hate your story no matter how well written it is. Maybe they hate the content or find it objectionable, maybe they think your style sucks, whatever. You can disallow voting but then you have to accept that you are no longer eligible for the contests.

This all leads back to my thread about how sometimes I really hate the whole voting thing and other times I don't care.

 

[Octavian]

Originally quoted by deliciously_naughty


Keep in mind, a 4.69 is very respectable, and once you have over 30 votes it would take more than a single 1 vote to knock it down.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wrong, I'm afraid.

30 votes with an average of 4.69 plus an additional 1 vote reduces the average to 4.57!

I know from personal experience it was very disheartening to get votes of '1'. Funnily enough I only ever got them when my story was highly listed.
But it is also true that feedback is more meaningful measure of the quality of your story. And when such feedback is highly complimentary, it more than compensates for the votes of the cretins.

________________________________________________
I'm terrifically popular. If I had any friends you could ask them.

 

[Un-registered]

OK, this is really out of hand. Just to prove a point tonight once and for all. I just had 31 votes on my newest submission. One for the Holiday contest. As soon as it posted high enough on the lists it got a one vote knocking it down to a 4.69. One malicious vote.

This set of stories has had a high ranking from the beginning and then sure enough one person comes along and bombs it. There has to be something to do. The story is below my name under new post. I would be interested in why someone would vote it down. I don't want to point fingers because that is just ridiculous to do. Besides I wouldn't know where to start. I can only assume it is some lesser than respectable person.

Should I email Laurel? I don't want to whine but, Yes, I had hoped to at least place in the Holiday contest and now that seems highly unlikely. (OK, so a little whining) Of course had there been feedback I would have not said a thing but as always this person didn't have the nerve to send a feedback. It just irks me to no end. Thanks for reading my rant I am off to go fume about it elsewhere.

The wholly logical thing to do, if you are convinced that it is a purely malicious vote is to go through and vote a 1 on every other story, just to level the playing field.

Of course every other author, also being wholly logical, would then react to your vote in the same way and every story's average would come down to under 2!

I don't vote any more because of the high averages stories get. When I first came here a couple of years ago (without my hyphen) I thought voting was a good idea. I thought all stories should start with a 3 level before I read them and then go up or down according to their "quality". Let's ignore defining "quality" for the moment. Only really, really brilliant stories would get a 5, perhaps the top 5%; similarly 1 votes would be the bottom 5%. Then I realised that a story on here which doesn't average more than 4.5 is often considered a failure by its author. So all stories are to be considered to be in the top 5% by more than half the readers who vote?

That was when I gave up voting.

As for the definition of "quality" to get a high vote - don't start me off on that

 

[Master_Vassago]

OK just a brief response. Yes, I am still mad as hell and I doubt that it was just a reader that thought oh bad story. It happens all to often with top stories as we all know. I haven't even dared to venture in and look at the scores as of yet this morning.

I do agree that it's a double edged sword and one that I am sure I will continue to play with. But as I stated before, if feedback was given and someone truly thought the story was just horrid, I could accept that. In the same respect I won't go through and one vote all the top ten stories or even all of the holiday stories just because that's retaliation and ridiculous. I will just eventually write a story that no matter how many one votes it will be loved by the masses and a one wouldn't matter. Ok well I can hope can't I? Enjoy your day and if I should ever find the One Bomber well I can think of plenty of things to do.

Now just a thought. Have any of you other author's thought of this point? I just sat here typing and realized this person could be one of us, or someone who visits these boards. Now here's the interesting part. Perhaps this person is really getting off on knowing how pissed, and bad and destroyed his/her one vote effects us. Maybe for a limited time we should find a way to communicate via other transmissions or emails and not post on the board and eventually the one voting will cease to be fun.
LOL> OK I realize that will never happen.

One last thing on avg. out of thirty stories submitted and posted here I come out with a 4.53 it used to be a bit higher but I think I pissed a few people off lol. Imagine that. But I suppose I should look at the scores overall if I care about them and just figure I am making the majority of people happy that read and vote. I do put much more stock in voter feedback though, than the scoring system.

Maybe if a person votes a one, then said person should be zapped by his or her keyboard if they fail to send feedback. Just a thought.
Good day to A/all

 

[Un-registered]

OK just a brief response.

L&M save us all from your long replies

Maybe if a person votes a one, then said person should be zapped by his or her keyboard if they fail to send feedback. Just a thought.

This is just the latest of a whole series of 1 vote complaint threads. I did mention on an earlier one that some boards force feedback on a vote less than a certain number, and was told very forcibly that all you would get is feedback that said "sdfdsdfdfddssdf" and that it wouldn't help.

 

[XicotencatlSmith]

Feedback for the WORST STORY EVER

The Worst Story Ever made it through the pending process.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=73267

It's currently running with a 3.31 rating after 25 votes, so apparently it's not the worst story ever, as had been my intention.


Here's some of the feedback I've received . . .

--Almost perfect! There are two things you missed: (1) You didn't write in first or second person singular and (2) You didn't have the babysitter's panties and bra off before the end of the first paragraph. Thanks for the laugh.

--I'm sorry X-Smith! I tried to be bias as you requested when voting but your story "The Worst Story Ever" was just way to funny!!! So really, it's not my fault you see, if your story wasn't so entertaining you would have recieved a one as you wanted but since your story was infact very fun to read you'll just have to live with a five instead!! I know your probable upset with me but I couldn't, in good conscience, let my vote be swayed by anothers wishes so I hope you learn your lesson for next time and write something that isn't so entertaining and that much fun to read!!!
Other than that I thought you really did a fantastic job on the story and enjoyed reading it immensly!!! (Okay, so my mom wrote this one)

--Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Just got thru with "The Worst Story Ever."
Considering how many stories I've run into (and backed out of) that were written in all seriousness, I didn't expect to laugh, but I did. I 5'd it for being funny. All Things Considered...bwhahahahah!


Oh well. I guess I'm not going to get the 1 average I hoped for, <sigh>. Neither 5.0 nor 1.0 is attainable it seems, so I'm a man-child doomed to wander the twilight 4 point something something rating forever.

 

[Un-registered]

Re: Feedback for the WORST STORY EVER

The Worst Story Ever made it through the pending process.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=73267

It's currently running with a 3.31 rating after 25 votes, so apparently it's not the worst story ever, as had been my intention.

You've been ambushed. I normally never vote but I hgave it a 5 just to be awkward. I may even read it later tonight if I have time!

 

[XicotencatlSmith]

AMBUSHED!!

"Damn you, Un-registered!" yelled Xico, shaking his fist.

Yeah, "The Worst Story Ever" has gotten more feedback than any story I've written, be they the run of the mill "naughty" stories or my serious attempts at fiction, and most people refuse to give it the "1" I asked for. You were right, it will end up being rated higher than some of my stories.

It gets worse. Harvey Weinstein called my agent, and Miramax is looking to option the movie rights. Seems Ben Affleck flipped for the role of Thrash Maxim, J-Lo has been tentatively cast as Tina, his sister. I've got fly out for a pitch meeting, because they want me to do the screenplay with Quentin Tarantino. They think with him getting co-writer credit we can interest Angelina Jolie to be cast as the babysitter.

Look for it next fall; The Worst Story Ever: The Movie

 

[XicotencatlSmith]

More feedback

Of course, Un-registered can have his fun, but my legions of loyal readers are pouring in the one votes quicker than you can count a hanging chad. Some helpful souls are even visiting my other stories to make sure I get all the "1" votes I need.

It makes me happy, I must say. No longer must I be known as Xico "Can't Crack the Top Ten" Smith. I can assume the moniker Xico "At least Now I have An Excuse, Because I Asked People to Give Me A "1" vote on a certain story, and they misundersood and gave it to all my stories" Smith

 

[Un-registered]

Re: More feedback

Of course, Un-registered can have his fun,

Thank you.

Right wing pornography is the wave of the future.

I'm left handed. Does that mean that for me "Left wing pornography is the wave of the future"?

 

[Quasimodem]

More feedback

... I'm left handed... for me "Left wing pornography is the wave of the future"?

You have to use BOTH wings!
Otherwise, like the rest of society, you merely travel in your own tiny circles.

 

[XicotencatlSmith]

Re: More feedback

You have to use BOTH wings!
Otherwise, like the rest of society, you merely travel in your own tiny circles.

"You walk left side of road. Okay. You walk right side of road. Okay. Walk in the middle of road. Get squished!" -Mr. Miyagi

Besides, ask the ladies, they know tiny circles can be the key.