Weird rating goings-on

[feel_the_beast]

That said, I get really annoyed at bad ratings when they drop a story below a threshold. 4.8 -> 4.79 feels really bad.

And that is what happened to my story today, and why I'm really upset about it. Even though I know from experience that this shit is just another Tuesday on this site.

 

[Bazzle]

They must have listened to you, because they just put up this snazzy new feature called "Comments"

I think it'll revolutionize everything.

No need to be sarcastic, but a prompt... Between the scores and the comment box

 

[feel_the_beast]

Only in general terms, not based on specific stories or authors:
Perhaps the author forgot to label the trigger tags, and the reader met with an unpleasant/upsetting surprise in the middle or at the end of the story. Or there may have been a characterization error that made the reader feel that the story's development was not credible: for example, a shy, sensitive character suddenly starts acting like a slut without any warning. Or a loving relationship turns into humiliating smut. Or the ending feels rushed or doesn't feel believable.

True enough, of course, but I would never offer any vote on a story I hadn't read every word of.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Your example requires 20 people to avoid detection.

No. It requires twenty apparently unique logins, which is absolutely not the same thing. I have a phone and a laptop, and could presumably vote twice as long as one of those was anonymous. There are ways to make your votes go even farther, and if a troll were to know what the exact criteria were to power sweeps, they could probably vote a lot more than twice. Changing computers? VPNs? Purging your browser history? I don't know. And it's better that people don't know. Because troll hammers already hit works that get into their sights, and if the trolls knew what digital tools to use to hit even harder, they would.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If I hate the first page of a 6 page story, and I know I hate it, what's to stop me from pressing the "I hate this thing" button? The 1* literally says "hated it" above it. I think that's totally valid.

You want to drop a 1 for a story that you "hate"...

That said, I get really annoyed at bad ratings when they drop a story below a threshold. 4.8 -> 4.79 feels really bad.

... yet you moan about a 0.01 drop from 4.80 to 4.79. Really?

That's what I call a Marie Antoinette comment : you want your cake, and you want to eat it, too.

Seriously though, you think a rating below 4.79 is "really bad", enough to get "really annoyed"? I'm not sure the score is your biggest issue, to be honest. A sense of proportion, maybe.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's not like you have to read every single page. Skipping to the end is not hard.

It's a dick move, though.

What's wrong with being an adult and saying, "Okay, I didn't like that one, I'll reverse click and try something else"?

 

[anthrodisiac]

No need to be sarcastic, but a prompt... Between the scores and the comment box

It wasn't intended to be mean-spirited—glib, but not cruel or dismissive (my humor doesn't translate well, hence the emoji). Apologies if it came across that way.

So basically it would an optional input field along the lines of "provide author feedback" explaining high/low ratings? From a pure UX perspective, I could see that potentially dropping engagment. If I'm prompted for additional information after putting a rating, and all I want to put in is a rating, it might discourage me from putting a 1/5 because I know this comment-esque feedback option is going to pop up. Even if it's optional, this sort of feature for someone who wants to leave a casual rating because they specifically don't have much feedback could get people to go 2/4 instead so they don't have this thing prompting them for additional specifics.

The user has an option to provide feedback with the current Comments section, so having an additional prompt besides that could also be confusing, and could lead to a drop in comments if the feedback is private (there is also a private feedback option on stories as well). Having 4 different ways to provide feedback can feel overwhelming, and how do you know when you want to provide a comment vs. a prompt without having the feature explained fully?

That's from the user side. From the author side, I would love something that increased data on what people liked/didn't like. I love feedback, and would greatly appreciate insight into why someone voted some way. I'm a data person (clearly), so I'm a big fan of critiques. I'd love to know why a certain story blows up and another doesn't. Why, for example, does my humor/horror/light bondage piece about a Icelandic demon cat that eats people who don't get clothes for Christmas do get so many more views and ratings than a neurospicy FPOV tamandua rom-com? I suspect it's multi-fold: this is my first story to feature an anthro as the POV MC, it's been submitted to the Valentine's Day contest, so people don't get to see the category when they click the link in the contest and then they see it features anthros and bounce, it's 23k words, and like most of my work, it's fairly cerebral. Whereas the Yule Cat was under 10k, male MC, some bondage elements, and the anthro didn't get introduced until fairly late in the story, when the reader has already invested a chunk of time.

Now, if any of those people would provide feedback validating my analysis, I'd be ecstastic. The other, more unsettling thought, is that it's not interesting, and the few people who rated it are into anthros and tend to rate these types of stories higher regardless of quality as long as it isn't attrocious.

Welcome to neuroses.

 

[alohadave]

It's a dick move, though.

What's wrong with being an adult and saying, "Okay, I didn't like that one, I'll reverse click and try something else"?

Depends on why you are voting. I don't try to guess at why people vote how they do. Readers have the right to vote however they like, no matter how we feel about it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Depends on why you are voting. I don't try to guess at why people vote how they do. Readers have the right to vote however they like, no matter how we feel about it.

True, but to penalise someone because you didn't like their story - to deliberately go to the last page to drop their one - that's far more about the reader than it is about the story. I want to know how the story went down, not about some dick-wad who wanted a completely different story altogether - which is usually what one-bombs are all about.

As I say, adults being adults on an adult website, it's not an unreasonable expectation.

 

[Writer61]

No. It requires twenty apparently unique logins, which is absolutely not the same thing. I have a phone and a laptop, and could presumably vote twice as long as one of those was anonymous.

A different device and clearing your cache probably make no difference.

Twenty different logins, all using a VPN, is quite an effort even before you avoid suspicious behaviour like only voting 1*. All for a 0.0.1 drop? Somebody would have to really dislike you, or your work, to do that. It is not impossible, but it is unlikely.

 

[Writer61]

True enough, of course, but I would never offer any vote on a story I had read every word of.

Imagine a story with appalling spelling and grammar on the first page. Is that likely to improve? No.

I would go straight to the end and give it 1* (and leave a comment explaining why).

 

[anthrodisiac]

I very, very rarely give anything less than a 3. As a writer, I understand the work and effort that goes into writing, and putting yourself out there is admirable, even if the writing isn't very good, the story is uninspired, or the characters are bland.

I judge on 3 criteria: story, characters, spelling/grammar. Spelling/grammar is the one I'm most forgiving of, given I'm not going in with the expectation that everything ought to be MfA-level writing from self-published work here.

5: Story, Characters are at least a B+, spelling/grammar is at least a B-.
4: Story, Characters are at least a C+, spelling/grammar C.
3: Not a very good work in more or less all contexts. I can forgive bad spelling/grammar, but boring, uninspired stories with unrealistic or bland characters is not as excusable.

If they put in effort, but didn't meet those criteria, I usually won't vote (or, frankly, finish, and I don't like voting on works I don't finish).

A 1 for me is basically you didn't put any thought or effort into the work and effectively vomited something on a page.

I don't get people who rate something low simply because the work doesn't contain the things they're into (for example, a story doesn't contain the fetishes they like, so they give it a 1 purely based on that and they never read the story) or they have some issue beyond the actual work (personal issues with the writer, rants against the platform hosting the content, etc.); as if the world ought to cater to their specific needs. Yet, you see it all the time in reviews for books, movies, stories, video games. Call me old school, but I think someone should vote on the merits of the work. Hell, I've read things that are definitely not my cup of tea, but if it's well done, the creator should get recognition for that.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't get people who rate something low because it's not something they like; as if the world ought to cater to their needs. Yet, you see it all the time in reviews for books, movies, stories, video games. Call me old school, but I think someone should vote on the merits of the work. Hell, I've read things that are definitely not my cup of tea, but if it's well done, the creator should get recognition for that.

It's readers' privileged self-entitlement, which is fine, but you're right - their opinion is all about them, and has nothing to do with the story.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

You want to drop a 1 for a story that you "hate"...

... yet you moan about a 0.01 drop from 4.80 to 4.79. Really?

That's what I call a Marie Antoinette comment : you want your cake, and you want to eat it, too.

Seriously though, you think a rating below 4.79 is "really bad", enough to get "really annoyed"? I'm not sure the score is your biggest issue, to be honest. A sense of proportion, maybe.

I didn't say I vote that way, I said it's valid, because the site labels that rating "I hated it". Taking it at face value, if you hate a story, rate it as such. It's the way the site is designed, and it's how at least some readers must vote. I personally give out a lot of 4s and comments about what I liked.

And from a writer's perspective, yeah. I dislike it when stuff goes under a threshold. It feels bad. I have a ton of stories with a ton of scores, I just picked my favorite threshold. I get excited when a story hits that mark, and I don't like it when one drops below it after it's been there a while. That's my perspective. My opinion. Please, continue to speak from on high about how my opinion is the wrong one to have.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I didn't say I vote that way, I said it's valid, because the site labels that rating "I hated it". Taking it at face value, if you hate a story, rate it as such. It's the way the site is designed, and it's how at least some readers must vote. I personally give out a lot of 4s and comments about what I liked.

And from a writer's perspective, yeah. I dislike it when stuff goes under a threshold. It feels bad. I have a ton of stories with a ton of scores, I just picked my favorite threshold. I get excited when a story hits that mark, and I don't like it when one drops below it after it's been there a while. That's my perspective. My opinion. Please, continue to speak from on high about how my opinion is the wrong one to have.

So you're not talking about you're own responses, and you don't do those things, so you are acting like an adult. That's good to know.

I guess I don't get people who use the term "hate" so loosely, it seems over the top to me. You might not "like" something, but do you really "hate" it? I doubt it.

I think we've been talking at cross-purposes.

 

[IWroteThis]

True enough, of course, but I would never offer any vote on a story I hadn't read every word of.

And that is why the rating don't mean what you think they do.

 

[IWroteThis]

It's a dick move, though.

What's wrong with being an adult and saying, "Okay, I didn't like that one, I'll reverse click and try something else"?

No, it's not. A dick move is fraudulently implying you didn't hate a story your hated, causing others to expect it to be a better story than it actually is.

The rating system is pointless if it only reflects the ratings of people who liked the story. It ceases to be anything but a masturbatory fantasy for the author's ego.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

And that is why the rating don't mean what you think they do.

This. We each bring our own opinions into the rating system. If you take it at face value and vote based off "I loved it" or "I hated it" as the ratings are labeled, then that's valid. But if you come in with an Amazon listing mindset or a yelp review mindset, ignoring the labels... Well, most people vote either a 1 or a 5 on Amazon. Tempering those extremes to "I disliked it, 2*", when the reflex is "REEE 1*", is hard. You'd have to be a thoughtful person, and many aren't. So each rating is an opinion expressed not just of the story, but it carries with it a nebulous interpretation of how to use the rating system itself. So you're not necessarily capturing anything real, but an analogue approximating their actual opinion.

And yet the thresholds matter to me. The ratings matter to me.

 

[IWroteThis]

True, but to penalise someone because you didn't like their story - to deliberately go to the last page to drop their one - that's far more about the reader than it is about the story. I want to know how the story went down, not about some dick-wad who wanted a completely different story altogether - which is usually what one-bombs are all about.

As I say, adults being adults on an adult website, it's not an unreasonable expectation.

I hate to break it to you kid, but you're the one not acting like an adult. You're acting like a grade school student who's used to getting participation trophies rather than being recognized for achievements.

 

[IWroteThis]

I very, very rarely give anything less than a 3. As a writer, I understand the work and effort that goes into writing, and putting yourself out there is admirable, even if the writing isn't very good, the story is uninspired, or the characters are bland.

I judge on 3 criteria: story, characters, spelling/grammar. Spelling/grammar is the one I'm most forgiving of, given I'm not going in with the expectation that everything ought to be MfA-level writing from self-published work here.

5: Story, Characters are at least a B+, spelling/grammar is at least a B-.
4: Story, Characters are at least a C+, spelling/grammar C.
3: Not a very good work in more or less all contexts. I can forgive bad spelling/grammar, but boring, uninspired stories with unrealistic or bland characters is not as excusable.

If they put in effort, but didn't meet those criteria, I usually won't vote (or, frankly, finish, and I don't like voting on works I don't finish).

A 1 for me is basically you didn't put any thought or effort into the work and effectively vomited something on a page.

I don't get people who rate something low because it's not something they like; as if the world ought to cater to their needs. Yet, you see it all the time in reviews for books, movies, stories, video games. Call me old school, but I think someone should vote on the merits of the work. Hell, I've read things that are definitely not my cup of tea, but if it's well done, the creator should get recognition for that.

Ah, another one that can't tell the difference between an adult entertainment web site and an online English Lit class…

Of course people should rate stories based on how much they like them, just like the words under the stars clearly indicate!

 

[ElectricBlue]

No, it's not. A dick move is fraudulently implying you didn't hate a story your hated, causing others to expect it to be a better story than it actually is.

That's convoluted. I don't think anyone who drops one-bombs for no good reason is ever thinking about anyone else.

I don't have an issue with people using the score spectrum as a measure of worth, it's the deliberate trolling without reading the story that's the issue. I don't call it a problem, though, because it isn't one, it's part of the furniture. And in any event, I know that "jump to the end scores" don't stick, they nearly all disappear.

The rating system is pointless if it only reflects the ratings of people who liked the story. It ceases to be anything but a masturbatory fantasy for the author's ego.

Obviously we've got egos, that's why we're here.

For my part, I don't actually have a problem with the scoring system, because it is, as you say, the collective results of hundreds or thousands of readers - those that can be bothered to vote at all. In a feedback lite zone, which Literotica is, every little flicker of a response is useful.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Ah, another one that can't tell the difference between an adult entertainment web site and an online English Lit class…

Wait, this isn't an online English Lit class...? So where have I been posting my smut?!

 

[anthrodisiac]

Ah, another one that can't tell the difference between an adult entertainment web site and an online English Lit class…

Of course people should rate stories based on how much they like them, just like the words under the stars clearly indicate!

I don't get people who rate something low because it's not something they like; as if the world ought to cater to their needs

I can see it seems like I'm saying they should only judge the story on the basis of a pure rubric; from a craft perspective, not an enjoyment perspective. Definitely not what I intended, I should've been clearer.

What I am saying is that someone shouldn't 1-star a story because it's not part of their specific fetish/interests, they have some issue with the author, or a problem with the platform the content is hosted on. People have different likes, dislikes, turn ons, turn offs, and going, "I'm only into MILFs. No MILFs? 1 star!" has no bearing on the quality of the story or how much someone else might enjoy it.

Maybe the story is genuinely awful and if the reader had read it they still would've given it 1 star. Or maybe it was actually an amazing story and if they had given it a chance or if their interests were different they would have loved it. Most likely, it's somewhere between those two.

 

[IWroteThis]

That's convoluted. I don't think anyone who drops one-bombs for no good reason is ever thinking about anyone else.

I agree with the "no good reason" caveat that you added, but hating a story is actually a very good reason to give it a 1* rating.

Also, moving the goal posts is a dick move.

I don't have an issue with people using the score spectrum as a measure of worth, it's the deliberate trolling without reading the story that's the issue.

Once again, you're moving the goal posts.

Still, I'm not sure that it should considered trolling if you read none of the story, as long as you clicked on the story in good faith. The reader is not to blame for the failure of the writer to give it a good title, write a good description, and put it in the right category. I know for certain it's not trolling if you read enough of the story to legitimately hate it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it should be rare for a person to give a story a 1* rating after reading the whole thing, as they clearly didn't hate it that much. A 2* rating would probably be more appropriate.

I don't call it a problem, though, because it isn't one, it's part of the furniture. And in any event, I know that "jump to the end scores" don't stick, they nearly all disappear.

That's because the sweeps are just as fraudulent as some of the votes they remove.

Imagine Amazon getting caught deleting ratings so their products had better numbers… Sure, you can point out that both positive and negative ratings get removed, but when's the last time you saw a thread where somebody was talking about their story's rating and vote count both going down after a sweep? There's a very clear bias towards lower votes in these sweeps.

Obviously we've got egos, that's why we're here.

Yes and maybe, in that order. I started posting here because I wanted to improve my writing, and I needed feedback in order to do that. I'm now sure how that translates to ego, as it would seem to be the opposite.

For my part, I don't actually have a problem with the scoring system, because it is, as you say, the collective results of hundreds or thousands of readers - those that can be bothered to vote at all. In a feedback lite zone, which Literotica is, every little flicker of a response is useful.

I agree, although I feel that honest feedback is more useful than bloated ratings.

 

[IWroteThis]

I can see it seems like I'm saying they should only judge the story on the basis of a pure rubric; from a craft perspective, not an enjoyment perspective. Definitely not what I intended, I should've been clearer.

What I am saying is that someone shouldn't 1-star a story because it's not part of their specific fetish/interests, they have some issue with the author, or a problem with the platform the content is hosted on. People have different likes, dislikes, turn ons, turn offs, and going, "I'm only into MILFs. No MILFs? 1 star!" has no bearing on the quality of the story or how much someone else might enjoy it.

Maybe the story is genuinely awful and if the reader had read it they still would've given it 1 star. Or maybe it was actually an amazing story and if they had given it a chance or if their interests were different they would have loved it. Most likely, it's somewhere between those two.

I agree with that stance more than how your original post came across, but I still have to at least partially disagree with you.

I'll admit I'm old. Old enough that when I first got the writing bug in grade school, there was no Internet. In fact, I'm older than Usenet as well, although it was waiting for me when I got to college. Anyway, back in the day when getting published required a lot more than pushing a button on a web site, wanna-be writers had one thing hammered into them: Know your audience. If you sent your story to the wrong magazine or publisher, it just got trashed.

So, yes, if I jump into the Fetish category, for example, and start 1* bombing every story that isn't one of my own fetishes, that's inappropriate. However, if I'm looking through the New Story list and I see a combination of title, description, and category that prompts me to click on the story, only to find that they were misleading and I hated what it turned out to be, it's certainly appropriate to rate it as such. Of course, even if they weren't misleading, it's still appropriate to give the story an honest but low rating if it sucked.

In other words, if your reason for clicking on the story was legitimate, giving it an honest rating is legitimate, no matter the actual rating.

Sadly, too many writers pick the category by the vocality of the audience rather than the interests of audience. They want feedback, but then complain when it's not the feedback they wanted, because it wasn't the story the audience wanted.