Voting - A Devils advocate perspective.

[lovecraft68]

This. Agree 100%.

I logged in to post a promo for a story HeyAll and I collaborated on that just went live. It’s not Salman Rushdie and it’s not pretending to be; it’s a three-minute or less stroke fantasy.

When I looked, the story was struggling to hold 3.85. That’s bullshit.

When I post new stories, a few piss & vinegar haters stop by and two-bomb my handful of votes, most likely attempting to make my otherwise straight fives look more “fair”. My assumption is that a lot of other low-readership/high quality authors deal with this too. Otoh, HeyAll, geronimo, Jasmine etc that are the site’s most popular authors get straight bomb-attacks for no other reason than their numbers make them targets—I think it’s very clear that those bombs make their scores unfair, and imho fairly useless as data.

I agree with Payne that the voter feedback is an imperfect system. I personally don’t think there’s much to learn from it or, beyond the site’s contests, value to votes or Hs. In this instance, I learned a lot more working with HeyAll than from the story’s (so far) 26k views or its score.

Its one page, a lot of readers like longer stories

Heyall is awesome, he's like lits best kept secret.

 

[SimonDoom]

Its one page, a lot of readers like longer stories

Heyall is awesome, he's like lits best kept secret.

Dude, he's got more followers than you do. I think the secret is out.

 

[HeyAll]

(Thanks for the very kind words above, I am a fan of you alls as well)


A couple of thoughts:

1. For the aforementioned story, it's incredibly unusual by all standards of Incest (and Lit stories in general). The score is currently at 3.85, but it has 1,700 votes and 41,000 views. The 24 hour total should have it at well over 50,000 views with maybe 2,100 votes, but the score will be below a 4. Even with sweeps, it'll still be below a 4.

Granted it's a 1 page story, which get mixed votes. I have a few 1 page stories that have a red-H, but others that are much lower. I was surpised by the score, but the overall numbers make up for the dissapointment. I think it's a good story but there were negative comments about the realism, which is fine.

But the fact that it has such a low score but people are still clicking on it means that they're ignoring the score.

The views right now are higher than a lot of my recent mom/son contest stories which had red-H's.

2. As mentioned, Incest, for whatever reason, is seeing the scores dip across the board. I think that's true of Lesbian too. My personal opinion is that there are so many chapter stories that people reserve their 5 star votes for something that feels lengthy.

My favorite story length is around 6,000 words, and even that gets mixed results in terms of having a red-H or not.

3. As for the red-H itself, I honestly think it matters less.

The reason is simple. With the new layout of the hubs, a red-H is less visible than it used to. With the old Hubs, a red H was pretty big. With the new Hubs, it's small and it stands out less.

Do people refuse to read a low rated story? Sure, that's possible. But I think having a large number of favorites/comments can negate a low score. Big numbers are big numbers.

As mentioned above, having big numbers will get you more big numbers. I know for me, when I scroll down a Hub, number catch my eye. A story with a lot of favorites means something.

4. A red-H looks great on the Hub and profile, but to me, the amount of votes/favorites is the true metric of success. It means people are reading and enjoying it.

People downvote stories for all sorts of reason. I always keep that in mind when looking at the Hubs. If I see a story with a lot of favorites but a low score, I either think a) the story is short or b) it has controversial aspects to it (ie noncon, incest themes that people weren't expected, fetishes, cheating, etc...)

 

[HeyAll]

I noticed that the other day when I looked around the new story list and 30 day list for the first time in months.

Not sure if there's more trolls, or the sweeps seem to think there's a lot of suspicious fives or maybe....

This may rattle a few cages, but I was speaking to a friend I made here several years ago, we usually e-mail back and forth a few times a month talking about writing and stories both on lit and for sale as he publishes as well.

He mentioned that he felt a lot of the newer taboo writers don't seem to be able to rival some of the older authors who for one reason or another aren't around anymore.

he may have a point, but then that made me take another spin in that maybe because so many of the same themes have been done time and again long time readers aren't as receptive, or possibly newer readers have higher expectations?

All I know is the numbers there used to be massive and the scores somewhat higher than I see now.

Is what it is.

There's a fine line with incest writing and scoring high.

People want the basics with incest (ie a forbidden love, accidentally walking in on someone naked, etc...)

Those stories tend to get rewarded even though they're the same thing. It's just like the movie industry.

But if you deviate from the central themes, it gets dicey.

If you hit the right notes, people will say that it's unique and pushing incest in new directions.

If it's too wierd (ie the mother is a mafia boss and completely unlikable) then people can be turned off by it because it's not what they want.

But that line between hitting the right notes and hitting the wrong notes is razor thin. And it also requires a lot of experience, which is why younger writers tend to stick with the central themes. But they aren't bored of the main themes yet, writing the same thing over and over again.

For me, the romance aspects are boring now. That's why a lot of my recent (10 or 20) stories have mixed results. I don't like writing the same things so I always try to find something new that will get me excited. The result is that there have been complants and low scores along the way, which is fine.


It reminds me of a quote from a law professor. I've always remembered it because it's a good one:

"If you know what Promissory Estoppel is, you can be a lawyer. If you don't know what it is, get the hell out. But the difference between being a lawyer and 'get the hell out' is this big"

Makes a small hand gesture.

 

[8letters]

Here is a statistical analysis of stand-alone I/T stories 2 1/2 years ago. It was almost two months worth of stories. 31.4% of stories got a Red H. Scanning down the current list, none of the first 25 stand-alone stories on the I/T hub have a Red H. In my analysis, 10.3% of stories had a score of 3.79 or less. Now, 14 of the first 25 stand-alone stories have a rating of 3.79 or less.

Massive shift downward.

On the other hand, I compared the ratings of my stories on 3/22 to 2/1. 15 of 24 stories had no change. No stories had a positive change, eight went down 0.01 and one went down 0.02.

 

[lovecraft68]

Dude, he's got more followers than you do. I think the secret is out.

I meant more as a person and a writer than stats.

I'm well aware the little shit passed me last year because he's so damn prolific, and I'm not any more.

I'm excited to see him closing in on the #2 spot for personal reasons. But #2 is the max out no one is catching Jasmine, ever.

 

[SimonDoom]

He mentioned that he felt a lot of the newer taboo writers don't seem to be able to rival some of the older authors who for one reason or another aren't around anymore.

he may have a point, but then that made me take another spin in that maybe because so many of the same themes have been done time and again long time readers aren't as receptive, or possibly newer readers have higher expectations?

.

I'm not a sufficiently techy person to be able to explain why anything's happening, but I can offer some observations:

1. View totals are not what they were four years ago when I started tracking them. Four years ago, the 250th most viewed story on the 12-month toplist had about 115,000 views. Today, it has about 85,000 views. That's a huge drop of 30,000. I suspect -- but don't know -- that Literotica is doing something different in the way it calculates views, and perhaps it is putting a wall of some kind against bots or whatever that might otherwise drive up view totals that the Site regards as illegitimate. Whatever the cause, this is a really big difference.

2. I've been reading stories here for 20 years and I don't believe story quality has declined. There was a rather pompous post to that effect some time back, and I think it's dead wrong. I think that perception is the result of a normal psychological "rose-colored glasses" way of looking at the past, something most of us do.

3. If you ignore the trolls and the impact they have on scores, it's pretty clear that there still is a massive and enthusiastic readership for the same old incest stories that have always been popular. You have to focus on views and favorites, however, to see that, and look past scores. HeyAll/Vix's new story seems to be a stark example of this.

4. Scores do seem to be a bit lower. My completely unscientific guess about that is that reader behavior has changed. I think there are more aggressive and negative participants in social media than in the past. I think it's a phenomenon you see everywhere, not just at Literotica. Not everyone is this way, but there are more of them, and they drive down scores. The most obvious microcosm for this is Loving Wives. The toxicity there is much, much worse than it used to be, and it's much harder to write a Hot Wife story and get a respectable score than it used to be. It has nothing to do with originality. We may be seeing something like this creep into incest, too. Incest readers can be picky and punish the exploration of kinks that don't give them what they want. This pickiness may be increasing. But I admit this is conjecture on my part.

5. There is, as far as I can tell, a huge random factor in what stories do well and what don't. I deduce that first and foremost from my own stories. I think most of my incest stories are roughly on a par with one another, quality-wise. But they differ greatly in terms of performance, including views and scores. Publishing a story here is like dropping a bottle in the ocean, and you don't know where the current will take it. People need to take this random factor into account before reading too much into the numbers they are seeing.

 

[NotWise]

Here is a statistical analysis of stand-alone I/T stories 2 1/2 years ago. It was almost two months worth of stories. 31.4% of stories got a Red H. Scanning down the current list, none of the first 25 stand-alone stories on the I/T hub have a Red H. In my analysis, 10.3% of stories had a score of 3.79 or less. Now, 14 of the first 25 stand-alone stories have a rating of 3.79 or less.

Massive shift downward.

On the other hand, I compared the ratings of my stories on 3/22 to 2/1. 15 of 24 stories had no change. No stories had a positive change, eight went down 0.01 and one went down 0.02.

I wonder if the pandemic brought in a lot of new readers who had different views on how to rate stories.

 

[8letters]

I wonder if the pandemic brought in a lot of new readers who had different views on how to rate stories.

I'd think it'd be more likely that the new mobile-friendly front end makes it clearer what each star level means. I can't remember if there were words underneath the stars in the old system. So a lot of voters are now rating stories as "Average" or "Like It", instead of 4* or 5*.

 

[Payne_Hall]

5. There is, as far as I can tell, a huge random factor in what stories do well and what don't. I deduce that first and foremost from my own stories. I think most of my incest stories are roughly on a par with one another, quality-wise. But they differ greatly in terms of performance, including views and scores. Publishing a story here is like dropping a bottle in the ocean, and you don't know where the current will take it. People need to take this random factor into account before reading too much into the numbers they are seeing.

This might be silly or otherwise useless, but from an outsider perspective of someone who hasn’t really looked at or written I/T, yours makes for an interesting metric, if you separate them based on what kind of incest it is (the relationship of the characters and all) and what perspective it’s written from. Like you said, the writing is all on a quality level, but that’s a differing factor.

 

[lovecraft68]

I wonder if the pandemic brought in a lot of new readers who had different views on how to rate stories.

Possibly, one of the first things to happen during lockdown was Pornhub memberships going through the roof.

Very telling about society when they think no one is watching.

 

[RejectReality]

Possibly, one of the first things to happen during lockdown was Pornhub memberships going through the roof.

Very telling about society when they think no one is watching.

To be fair, they were offering it for free for a couple of months there.

 

[gordo12]

However, this did get me thinking and while admittedly I can't speak for all I can only suggest with an analysis of read rates and total votes I have received in my short time here then said votes are from 0.4% of my readers. [/I]

less than 1% though folks?

I'm just speaking my mind on matters and applying a little bit of perspective

Your mathematical model is incomplete. I average around 1/15 to 1/30 votes to views. That translates between 3% to 7%, not .04. I've had stories as low as 1/10 (10%)

That's during the time spent on the hub. Once it falls off, voters tend to disappear while reader views gradually increase. Still, the percentages are far above what you're stating. A two-year-old story I just looked at (and it's difficult because of the current vote disappearing issue) still shows around 4% on 50,000+ views.

So yeah, I think votes are important and tell you something.

 

[HeyAll]

Thank you all kindly for the notes above. It's greatly appreciated.

And yes, I've noticed that in the past year, views/favorites seem to have gone down a lot. When the lockdown happened I expected views to go up. It used to be normal to have incest stories get over 100,000 views within a month. Sometimes upward of 120,000 to 170,000 if you're really lucky. Now, getting 100,000 views in a month is a rarity.

Having said that, Literotica numbers remain strong. 44 million unique worldwide viewers in a month.

https://www.similarweb.com/website/literotica.com/#overview

What does it mean? I don't know.

It could be like how ratings have plunged for award shows. But people watch the clips on youtube or twitter in the millions.

It could be that with the impovement of the Hubs, readers are spreading out.

Another thing that should be considered is that more readers are on mobile devices.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

 

[SimonDoom]

Here's another hypothesis: There are more authors and stories than before. If that's so, then it means stories will drop off new story hubs faster, and get less exposure. More of us are fighting for the attention of a limited (very large, but still limited) number of eyeballs. It would stand to reason, if that's so, that it would be harder for individual stories to get the same total views that stories got in the past. Total Lit story views could be up, and yet views for the top stories could be down.

 

[NotWise]

Here's another hypothesis: There are more authors and stories than before. If that's so, then it means stories will drop off new story hubs faster, and get less exposure. More of us are fighting for the attention of a limited (very large, but still limited) number of eyeballs. It would stand to reason, if that's so, that it would be harder for individual stories to get the same total views that stories got in the past. Total Lit story views could be up, and yet views for the top stories could be down.

We might be able to hypothesize for ever.

I have a story poised to go into Group, where I've never posted before. I've been watching the hub which, like other hubs, is producing pretty low scores. I didn't actually read many stories until last week, and then I found good reasons for a lot of the stories to be poorly rated.

In the most common case the stories were short and the authors seemed inexperienced. A lot of the "stories" might have been women expressing their multiple-lover fantasy without adding much story to support it.

So maybe sometimes it's the authors.

 

[SimonDoom]

We might be able to hypothesize for ever.

I have a story poised to go into Group, where I've never posted before. I've been watching the hub which, like other hubs, is producing pretty low scores. I didn't actually read many stories until last week, and then I found good reasons for a lot of the stories to be poorly rated.

In the most common case the stories were short and the authors seemed inexperienced. A lot of the "stories" might have been women expressing their multiple-lover fantasy without adding much story to support it.

So maybe sometimes it's the authors.

I posted my first story in Group Sex a bit over a month ago, and I'm surprised how poor the score is. It hasn't received bad comments, so I don't know what went wrong. After a bit over a month it has over 20,000 views and 48 favorites, so I can't complain too much, but the score is significantly below my average, and that took me by surprise.

This is a good example of not taking scores too seriously. My story has a score of 4.35. It was published 31 days ago. It comes nowhere close to touching the 12-month top 250 story list. But I've got over 20,000 views, 241 votes, and 48 favorites.

The number 1 top-rated story on that list has a score of 4.9. It was published 11 months ago, and it has 6,800 views, 12 votes, and 3 favorites. Which would I rather be? I'd rather be me.

 

[HeyAll]

Here's another hypothesis: There are more authors and stories than before. If that's so, then it means stories will drop off new story hubs faster, and get less exposure. More of us are fighting for the attention of a limited (very large, but still limited) number of eyeballs. It would stand to reason, if that's so, that it would be harder for individual stories to get the same total views that stories got in the past. Total Lit story views could be up, and yet views for the top stories could be down.

This makes perfect sense, and yes, there are a lot more stories now, even in catagories where there weren't that many stories before (ie Lesbian, sort of Group Sex).


Also, I looked through the catagories based on this thread, and as noted, scores look really low now. Seeing scores in the 3 range seem way too common.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Its one page, a lot of readers like longer stories

Heyall is awesome, he's like lits best kept secret.

He's got over 15,000 followers.I've got 338. I don't think he's a secret.

 

[Rustyoznail]

He's got over 15,000 followers.I've got 338. I don't think he's a secret.

And he’s a damn good editor for a noob.

(Note to self - go back and reread his PM’s...)

 

[ElectricBlue]

I posted my first story in Group Sex a bit over a month ago, and I'm surprised how poor the score is. It hasn't received bad comments, so I don't know what went wrong. After a bit over a month it has over 20,000 views and 48 favorites, so I can't complain too much, but the score is significantly below my average, and that took me by surprise.

Group are "feedback low" readers in my experience. I put a few stories there, never again. The lowest vote/view ratio of any story of mine, no comments, nada. It's a tumbleweeds category for me. The author might as well not exist, so far as reader feedback went.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Nope, not 0.4%... you might have forgotten to multiply the answer of the division by 100.


I have done a spot check of mine and it's between 1% to 8% of the clickers that vote. And those are probably mostly trolls down voting my stuff.

Although, I did have one of 0.6% turn up. I figured that was an outlier.

 

[SimonDoom]

Group are "feedback low" readers aka in my experience. I put a few stories there, never again. The lowest vote/view ratio of any story of mine, no comments, nada. It's a tumbleweeds category for me. The author might as well not exist, so far as reader feedback went.

I'm working on a story that's part Exhibitionist/Voyeur and part Group Sex, and after my recent experience with GS I'll probably publish it in E/V, because I've had a lot of success there. It's a fairly easy-going readership that accepts other kinks with the E/V, and it's middle of the pack in terms of number of readers.

 

[lovecraft68]

I posted my first story in Group Sex a bit over a month ago, and I'm surprised how poor the score is. It hasn't received bad comments, so I don't know what went wrong. After a bit over a month it has over 20,000 views and 48 favorites, so I can't complain too much, but the score is significantly below my average, and that took me by surprise.

This is a good example of not taking scores too seriously. My story has a score of 4.35. It was published 31 days ago. It comes nowhere close to touching the 12-month top 250 story list. But I've got over 20,000 views, 241 votes, and 48 favorites.

The number 1 top-rated story on that list has a score of 4.9. It was published 11 months ago, and it has 6,800 views, 12 votes, and 3 favorites. Which would I rather be? I'd rather be me.

Odd how things evolve/devolve. I wrote a few group stories in my first years here and all were well received and the readership seemed fairly 'easy' doesn't sound like that's the case now.

If I had anything lying around that would fit I'd post it just to see what would happen