Voting and Comments

[pink_silk_glove]

WELCOME to the club!

(It's happened many times to me, thus "F the Red-H", the middle-thingy is my goal.)

Oh, I need no welcome. Like I said on page 1:

Have you ever woken up to find that every story in your catalog has exactly one more vote and they've all gone down? (That has happened to me a few times)

So, I'm a charter member.

 

[RejectReality]

Fuck the red H is what I've been advocating for since forever. That ridiculous bauble is the primary source of author anxiety, an easy target for trolls, and causes readers to ignore anything that doesn't have it, thus causing them to miss out on oodles of stories they'd probably love if they weren't dazzled by the Ooooo! Shiny!

It's obvious Laurel doesn't agree, but I see absolutely no benefit to the damn thing ( especially for newer authors without established followings ) and massive problems from every possible angle.

 

[SimonDoom]

Fuck the red H is what I've been advocating for since forever. That ridiculous bauble is the primary source of author anxiety, an easy target for trolls, and causes readers to ignore anything that doesn't have it, thus causing them to miss out on oodles of stories they'd probably love if they weren't dazzled by the Ooooo! Shiny!

It's obvious Laurel doesn't agree, but I see absolutely no benefit to the damn thing ( especially for newer authors without established followings ) and massive problems from every possible angle.

It's idiotic. I agree.

I could see keeping a red H that represents a percentile--maybe 75 percent--within a particular category. But as it exists now it's totally meaningless, and it's clear from comments in this forum that most people have no idea what it represents. They just like the bauble and the veneer of "hotness."

 

[Zach_lost_in_Aus]

Fuck the red H is what I've been advocating for since forever. That ridiculous bauble is the primary source of author anxiety, an easy target for trolls, and causes readers to ignore anything that doesn't have it, thus causing them to miss out on oodles of stories they'd probably love if they weren't dazzled by the Ooooo! Shiny!

It's obvious Laurel doesn't agree, but I see absolutely no benefit to the damn thing ( especially for newer authors without established followings ) and massive problems from every possible angle.

You have a point. Though it’s a bit of fun.
I find that there is a rich vein of good stories in the 4.30 to 4.49 bracket!

 

[Bramblethorn]

True, to find an actual mean would require some serious number crunching. The mean would also vary considerably from category to category. I would guess that in most categories the mean would be somewhere between 4.2 and 4.4 but I could be off. In LW perhaps it's 4 or less (I don't hang out there enough to know).

Those numbers look plausible to me.

Getting an exact average would require scraping scores for all stories, which seems too much like hard work; I know 8Letters has posted some averages by category but I think those are based on e.g. "stories posted in last 30 days" or similar rather than for the category as the whole.

But it's easier to find medians and other quantiles. I posted about that a while back (methods here) and for LW the median score was 4.08, vs. 4.39 for all non-LW stories combined.

Given that the low tail stretches out a lot further than the right tail, I would expect the averages to be a bit lower than the medians. Somewhere slightly under 4.0 for LW and around 4.2 for combined non-LW is probably reasonable.

If anybody wanted to get a more accurate estimate of means, without scraping all ~550k story scores, the method I used for medians could be adapted. If the top 10% of stories in a given category are between X and Y, next 10% are between Y and Z, and so on, you can use that to get an upper and lower bound on the average.

I agree with that. There are a lot of little rules in Romance that will kill any positive reactions the more that you ignore them. There are many boxes to tick and leave them unticked at your own peril.

Your characters must be fully deserving of love and happiness. Usually in every way possible. Characters who make choices that lead to their own unhappiness run a risk of not being respected and therefore not deserving of the happiness.

All strife and conflict endured by the characters must come from external sources and from no fault of their own because these characters are perfect and do not in any way deserve such strife or unhappiness....

Any bumps in the relationship must be from external sources. The characters do not ever fuck up unless they are tricked by some spiteful cardboard villain that creates a 'misunderstanding'.

This is probably the easiest path to success in Romance but these things are not quite mandatory.

For the story I mentioned, one of the things I wanted to explore was the idea of loving somebody who isn't fairytale-perfect and never will be. The love interest in that story is insecure and sometimes bullies others, including the first time she meets the narrator. Afterwards, she might feel ashamed of her behaviour, but she hates apologising. Over the course of the story she improves and even learns to say sorry very occasionally, but that journey's incomplete when her illness and death interrupt it. (Simplifying a bit; there's some room for debate there, depending on some philosophical questions.)

Nadja's not perfect, but she's trying to be a better person, and that seems to have been acceptable for most readers. I think readers who are aware of their own imperfections are open to the idea that somebody could have flaws and still be deserving of love.

(Obviously, the bigger the flaws the harder it is to make that work. Nadja's a bully but she's not a serial killer.)

And the big ones, a positive ending confirming the commitment and absolutely no infidelity by our main characters.

Would mostly agree here. Mine did have some adultery in it, but that was a show marriage between a lesbian woman and her gay friend to give them cover in a homophobic country, so it adhered to the spirit if not the letter.

 

[THBGato]

@Bramblethorn you forgot to mention it is absolutely awesome! It's a total heartbreaker.

I also think the way it begins will warn off anyone who is just interested in a bland hetero by the numbers romance. Thus, you avoid disappointing readers.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

And as we speak someone has just downvoted six of my stories. My stories often go weeks between votes, so for six of them to all go down within an hour means that someone reading this thread is a petty coward. Nice work!

I know the feeling so well. Whether you care about scores or not, it's the inability to answer or retaliate to such things that gets to you.
Anyway, don't worry, I am sure EB will soon claim that Laurel's sweeps take care of all such things

 

[SpecterNecter]

I've been a reader on literotica for many years, but have only recently posted a story - My Stepdaughter's Yoga Class - now up to Chapter 8.

It includes many a favourite fantasy and all the first 7 have been voted HOT (above 4.5). I have a couple of readers who vet before I post, and they felt Chapter 8 was the hottest of all, and I was aiming for that with 8 votes with a 4.8 average. But then next morning checked, while I had the magic 11 votes (above 10 for a HOT rating), my score had dropped to only 4.09. I spoke to my two readers and they reckon that someone had dropped a vindictive 1 star bomb vote to tank the ratings. They said it had happened to a few other writers they knew of and agreed with me, they didn't see the point of it. If you don't like a story, you generally don't read beyond the first half page - so what's the point in rating it, since you haven't obviously read it. I personally would only rate a story I had finished, so they would generally get a 4 or 5 star rating (usually 5).

So I wondered if other literotica writers had found the same? Also, while I had two good comments on the first two stories in the series, there's been nothing since. So if you read them and enjoyed them, I'd love to hear from you. Also, if you felt the 1 star tanking rating was unfair, 5 star reviews to lift it would be welcome. I'm up at 4.33 on 18 votes, so some higher voting has come in, but that 1 star rating damage can hold things up for a while.

I say all of this because some hot stories where I was looking for continuation suddenly trail off with no follow on. And it makes me wonder that with a continuation of lack of comments and ratings trailing off, some writers simply get discouraged. After all, they are providing a free service, no payment, so comments and ratings are the only scant reward.

I'm relatively new to the message area so this has probably been suggested a thousand times but wouldn't it just be easy for the site to write an algorithm to eliminate troll votes. If 95% of the votes are between 3 and 5 then automatically eliminate the anomaly votes that are 1 and 2. It really wouldn't be that complicated.

 

[SpecterNecter]

Fuck the red H is what I've been advocating for since forever. That ridiculous bauble is the primary source of author anxiety, an easy target for trolls, and causes readers to ignore anything that doesn't have it, thus causing them to miss out on oodles of stories they'd probably love if they weren't dazzled by the Ooooo! Shiny!

It's obvious Laurel doesn't agree, but I see absolutely no benefit to the damn thing ( especially for newer authors without established followings ) and massive problems from every possible angle.

I like the H on new stories that show a story that comes out well received, but when the N goes then so should the H.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm relatively new to the message area so this has probably been suggested a thousand times but wouldn't it just be easy for the site to write an algorithm to eliminate troll votes. If 95% of the votes are between 3 and 5 then automatically eliminate the anomaly votes that are 1 and 2. It really wouldn't be that complicated.

Why would you give people the ability to cast 1 and 2 votes, and then not count them? Why assume they are invalid "troll" votes? If a 1-5 ranking system means anything, then some significant portion of the stories deserve 1 and 2 votes.

I've said this numerous times: the scoring system does not exist as a reward to us, the authors. It exists as an information system for readers, to assist them in choosing stories. Readers don't care about our sensitivities. They want scores to assist them in choosing stories to read. Presumably, some of them have the same sensibilities that lead some readers to cast 1 and 2 votes. Get rid of all 1 and 2 votes, and you deprive them of information that want.

 

[SpecterNecter]

I don't consider anomaly votes valid. If the overwhelming majority lean a certain way then your contrary opinion is worthless. It wouldn't just apply to 1 or 2 star votes. It could be 5 star votes that are eliminated. It would be a better representation of the public's opinion.

 

[dadadadiox]

If you have a cheating woman as a MC you will trigger the insecure, judgy, misogynist men and they will one-bomb you. Some will stalk you with one ratings on all chapters.

I was butt hurt when I was a new contributor and shut off voting a week after an each chapter dropped. Now IDGAF. Once you have enough of a following, not to be confused with followers, and your number of ratings go up, the one-bombers will be less damaging as their rating has less impact.

That said, any rating over 4.0 is a good score. The red HOT tag is nice but it’s not important. I look at a 4.3 as a B grade from my cranky English teacher on my creative writing assignment. I’m okay with that.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Why would you give people the ability to cast 1 and 2 votes, and then not count them? Why assume they are invalid "troll" votes? If a 1-5 ranking system means anything, then some significant portion of the stories deserve 1 and 2 votes.

I've said this numerous times: the scoring system does not exist as a reward to us, the authors. It exists as an information system for readers, to assist them in choosing stories. Readers don't care about our sensitivities. They want scores to assist them in choosing stories to read. Presumably, some of them have the same sensibilities that lead some readers to cast 1 and 2 votes. Get rid of all 1 and 2 votes, and you deprive them of information that want.

You see, somehow I still find it surprising just how many people think that anything less than a 3 or a 4 is automatically a troll vote. I guess it's just the optimist in me with such hope for humanity. No one ever questions a 5 as a legit vote but most writers here always dismiss a 1 as a troll, as if they could never score a legit 1. They want feedback but only positive feedback, despite insisting otherwise. It's the same reason that they cry when someone leaves an anonymous critique because they can't hunt them down and smack them back. Every day I could give hundreds of stories 1s and explain exactly why in the comments but there are not 34 hours in a day nor 10 days in a week and I'm not about to single anyone out. It's probably the same reason why most readers only vote 5s or not at all. They realize early on in the story that it sucks and they just back out. They don't have time to read crap and like their mothers told them, if they don't have anything nice to vote, they don't vote at all.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm relatively new to the message area so this has probably been suggested a thousand times but wouldn't it just be easy for the site to write an algorithm to eliminate troll votes.

No, because computers can't read minds.

If 95% of the votes are between 3 and 5 then automatically eliminate the anomaly votes that are 1 and 2. It really wouldn't be that complicated.

This would probably be the case for almost all stories, in which case they might as well just remove 1 and 2 from the voting options altogether and make 3 the new 1.

I don't consider anomaly votes valid. If the overwhelming majority lean a certain way then your contrary opinion is worthless.

Which is it that you want to eliminate, "troll votes" or "anomaly opinions"? They're not the same thing. Different people like different things, and just because somebody hates a story that other people loved doesn't mean they're trolling.

I have a story here that begins a lot like a romance, but then ends with a breakup and the two main characters going their separate ways. I wrote it partly to express the idea that a relationship doesn't have to last forever to be important, because that's not something I see much in fiction. A lot of readers appreciated that, but some disliked it and downvoted because they really wanted a happy ever after, and that's a valid opinion.

Have you really never had the experience of listening to/reading/watching something that's immensely popular, and thinking "this isn't for me"? Is that opinion invalid?

(Besides, if the people who liked a story really were an "overwhelming majority", there'd be no need to worry about the dissenters, because sheer weight of numbers would make their impact on the score pretty small.)

It wouldn't just apply to 1 or 2 star votes. It could be 5 star votes that are eliminated. It would be a better representation of the public's opinion.

And what happens if the trolls switch to giving stories 3-star votes instead? A couple of 3-stars are about as effective at dragging scores down as a single 1-star.

On the other side of things, just about any story that's halfway legible is getting a good percentage of 5* votes - there would be very few stories that aren't getting at least 5% 5-star votes. So trying to detect anomalously high votes is a non-starter; there's no such thing. The problem there is more about distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate 5* votes in a story that has a mix of both, and that's not an easy thing to do.

 

[SimonDoom]

You see, somehow I still find it surprising just how many people think that anything less than a 3 or a 4 is automatically a troll vote. I guess it's just the optimist in me with such hope for humanity. No one ever questions a 5 as a legit vote but most writers here always dismiss a 1 as a troll, as if they could never score a legit 1. They want feedback but only positive feedback, despite insisting otherwise. It's the same reason that they cry when someone leaves an anonymous critique because they can't hunt them down and smack them back. Every day I could give hundreds of stories 1s and explain exactly why in the comments but there are not 34 hours in a day nor 10 days in a week and I'm not about to single anyone out. It's probably the same reason why most readers only vote 5s or not at all. They realize early on in the story that it sucks and they just back out. They don't have time to read crap and like their mothers told them, if they don't have anything nice to vote, they don't vote at all.

It makes no sense to me at all. If you have a 5 point scale, then all 5 points should be used. Give me one thousand stories, and some of them are going to be very bad. They deserve to be a 1. There's nothing harsh or anomalous about it; it's just reality. In practice, I rarely give very low scores, because I don't finish stories I hate, and I won't vote for stories I don't finish. But in theory I see nothing wrong with giving a 1 to stories that are very bad. I've started reading a number of stories that I think deserve a 1 because of the atrocious writing.

Again: the whole point is providing useful information to readers. It's not to stroke our author egos. More useful information is conveyed if all votes are counted, unless the votes are illegitimate, such as by bots, or automatically entered without reading the story, or whatever.

 

[baffling8929]

I agree with that. There are a lot of little rules in Romance that will kill any positive reactions the more that you ignore them. There are many boxes to tick and leave them unticked at your own peril.

Are these rules codified anywhere? Asking for a friend ...

May also explain the 1-vote on my most recent installment where my female lead got hurt doing something courageous but reckless.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

This would probably be the case for almost all stories, in which case they might as well just remove 1 and 2 from the voting options altogether and make 3 the new 1.

better yet, why don;t we only allow votes of 9 or 10. That way, everyone gets a minimum 90% approval rating. : P It's kindergarten and everyone wins! Yay!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

A lot of authors here are criticizing the rating system. The only thing I am unsure of is who exactly are we criticizing?

1. Us authors for fretting about ratings?

2. Readers for the way they are voting?

3. Lit admins for setting up an easily abusable system and creating an artificial and BS threshold of 4.5?

To me, the answer is obvious, but I am not sure if everyone here agrees about that. All I see from authors and readers is a reactionary response to the profound fallacies of the voting and rating system, but maybe some people here have a different opinion?
I think that question is probably worth discussing much more than pointing out some specific fallacies over and over again.

 

[SimonDoom]

The fascinating thing to me about the endless ongoing scoring voting debate is how many people cannot see things from a different point of view, and, namely, the point of view of the Site. The Site has a 1-5 voting system. Obviously, it wants readers to be able to take advantage of the full range of scores. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. The Site has no interest in your feelings as an author, and it shouldn't. Your feelings don't matter. Your sense of worth doesn't matter. The scoring system exists, as all scoring systems do (like scores at Amazon or Rotten Tomatoes, for example) to provide information to potential customers. That's all. That's what matters. So much digital ink is spilled by people who ignore this and worry about so-called "fairness" issues that are completely unimportant to Literotica, and SHOULD be completely unimportant to Literotica.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

A lot of authors here are criticizing the rating system. The only thing I am unsure of is who exactly are we criticizing?

1. Us authors for fretting about ratings?

2. Readers for the way they are voting?

3. Lit admins for setting up an easily abusable system and creating an artificial and BS threshold of 4.5?

To me, the answer is obvious, but I am not sure if everyone here agrees about that. All I see from authors and readers is a reactionary response to the profound fallacies of the voting and rating system, but maybe some people here have a different opinion?
I think that question is probably worth discussing much more than pointing out some specific fallacies over and over again.

Of course there are people with different reasons for critiquing. The sane ones know that it's just bad math hacked together years ago with little thought and never updated/tweaked/fixed. The vain folks hate the idiot voters who don't see their brilliance. The only people who like the voting system are the ones love to write formulaic pandering tripe for easy Red Hs.

And just to be clear and keep the trolls and haters off my back, no not all Red Hs are achieved through pandering. Hardly. There are many that are earned the hard way, but we do know that those pandering template fapsheets are out there and that they score well (and once in a while you might even find one that's good).

 

[Otto26]

Anonymity is the issue and it's probably unsolvable. It's pretty much impossible (or undesirable) to ensure that each human being who reads the stories has one, and only one, account. Without this ability the voting system is fundamentally corrupted and relies entirely on the goodwill of the participants. Many of whom have shown that they don't have any goodwill while they can hide behind anonymity.

If you want the H then get a VPN and 5-bomb your story with anonymous votes. Feel better? Probably not. So don't get upset when the opposite happens.

 

[MillieDynamite]

But those VPN 5-bombs might also get swept away with the same broom that sweeps the 1-bombs. Best to let voting just be what voting is. I'm sure I've been 1-bombed, but I can't see even my wife 5-bombing me. I'm just not that likable LOL.

Anonymity is the issue and it's probably unsolvable. It's pretty much impossible (or undesirable) to ensure that each human being who reads the stories has one, and only one, account. Without this ability the voting system is fundamentally corrupted and relies entirely on the goodwill of the participants. Many of whom have shown that they don't have any goodwill while they can hide behind anonymity.

If you want the H then get a VPN and 5-bomb your story with anonymous votes. Feel better? Probably not. So don't get upset when the opposite happens.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

But those VPN 5-bombs might also get swept away with the same broom that sweeps the 1-bombs.

There is no broom. Unless someone reports something or unless there is a contest going on, the sweeps don't happen.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Well, I've been 1-bombed in the contest, so I was only thinking of a contest.

There is no broom. Unless someone reports something or unless there is a contest going on, the sweeps don't happen.

 

[SimonDoom]

There is no broom. Unless someone reports something or unless there is a contest going on, the sweeps don't happen.

This isn't entirely true. Two or three years ago (I forget which) the Site undertook a broad-based sweep of votes that lasted a few weeks and resulted in the elimination of many votes across the spectrum, unrelated to any contest. But lately, I think you may be right. I haven't noticed as much sweep activity, outside contests, as I did a few years ago.