1-Bombing on Loving Wives

[SmilingLez]

That would not be a good story.

Him accepting and joining in would be better. Even if 'joining in' didn't mean actual participation, but agreeing to the sharing.

Thank you for explaining the category to me. I did enjoy the story. Wimpy people who stay and become doormats for their partners is definitely a turn off for me

 

[Agamemnon18]

The LW category has HUGE viewership and a very active commenting and rating fanbase. Putting stories there is a cheat code for higher viewership. While there is a strong effect for randomly being one of the ten first stories published on the day (because you have to click "more new stories" to even SEE the others), viewership is very high. Very High.

Yesterday, there were 18 stories published on Loving Wives. The 10 that were published above the fold enjoy an average viewership that is 4.25 thousand higher than the 8 that were published below the fold. But both that difference and the lower average viewership of the stories that lost the coin flip are still higher than the Highest viewership of any story that came out on the Sci-Fi/Fantasy board yesterday. The average viewership of the ten lucky above-the-fold stories is higher than the highest viewership of anything that came out yesterday on Mind Control, BDSM, Lesbian Sex, or even Erotic Couplings. Only the Taboo/Incest page has higher viewership numbers. The highest viewership story on Reluctance/Noncon from yesterday is a huge outlier and would still only come in FOURTH on the Loving Wives board.

Now, what you pay for that level of engagement is a reader base that hates your story, hates each other, and hates your characters and their life choices. Basically, you have two main cheating fetishes and they are incompatible and also overtly hostile to each other. Essentially there are people who like to watch their partners have sex with other people, and there are people who have revenge fantasies about punishing cheaters for their betrayal. These groups mix like water and acid. There's also a group of people who want emotional stories about reconciling after a cheating event, and those people are themselves divided into people whose fantasies can be described as "getting forgiven for my indiscretions" and "my cheating ex realizes their fuckup and comes crawling back."

So on many days, fans from one camp or another will rampage through the Loving Wives category and 1 bomb everything that they think is the wrong kind of story. Also a certain number of comments will appear from whatever camp your story isn't catering to in order to angrily tell you that it should have catered to their fetishes instead.

So, Loving Wives is just modern politics?

In all seriousness, though, the rage-filled comments about BTB or RAAC are kinda wild

 

[Ianus4]

Here are some real stories that came out today:

* Foreign Exchange
Unexpected meeting with Chinese man.

* Prague
How a birthday trip changed my life.

* Tuesday Will Be Much Better
When insomnia sows a seed of doubt.

* Leopard Spots
A betrayed husband reconciles with his cheating wife.

---

So what do we notice here? From the standpoint of the LW community, only the fourth one tells you what kind of story it is.

The fourth one? Well, not really...

 

[Ianus4]

So, Loving Wives is just modern politics?

In all seriousness, though, the rage-filled comments about BTB or RAAC are kinda wild

Because these stories stir up strong emotions.
I remember an old friend of mine who, after seeing the movie Seven, expressed a very strong opinion about the screenwriter and the director.

 

[IWroteThis]

Returning to the problem of 1-bombing, another terrilbe aspect of LW stories are the low star ratings. Your story can be very well written and actually be great story, but the 1 bombers reduce it to a 3.xx or 2.xx rating. What reader is going to want to read low rated stories? I've temporarily tried turning star voting off. It seems to help, but it further upsets the 1 bombers.

The "problem" is that the Loving Wives audience is more open and honest. In other categories, people will still hate your stories. They just won't bother to tell you.

 

[Dudeqwe]

F-them. I 5*’d it.

 

[Actingup]

Returning to the problem of 1-bombing, another terrilbe aspect of LW stories are the low star ratings. Your story can be very well written and actually be great story, but the 1 bombers reduce it to a 3.xx or 2.xx rating. What reader is going to want to read low rated stories? I've temporarily tried turning star voting off. It seems to help, but it further upsets the 1 bombers.

1-bombing is an issue. However, I think that you could also argue that the other categories are scored too high to give meaningful results. If half of the stories are ‘hot’, then the red H means nothing. If you score it in LW, you can pop the champagne.

See also the threads on score comparison and the percentile distributions that I did.

 

[OddLove]

1-bombing is an issue. However, I think that you could also argue that the other categories are scored too high to give meaningful results. If half of the stories are ‘hot’, then the red H means nothing. If you score it in LW, you can pop the champagne.

See also the threads on score comparison and the percentile distributions that I did.

View attachment 2593669

I've always treated the 5th star as a 'like' button. If I liked the story I 'click the like button'. If I don't like the story than I 'don't click the like button'.

So I suspect lots of other people ignore the 5 star system as well and just use the 5th start as a 'like button'

And because of that, I don't take the scores very serious.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Laurel defends trolls. This thread is proof.

 

[lovecraft68]

I've always treated the 5th star as a 'like' button. If I liked the story I 'click the like button'. If I don't like the story than I 'don't click the like button'.

So I suspect lots of other people ignore the 5 star system as well and just use the 5th start as a 'like button'

And because of that, I don't take the scores very serious.

Same here, this is not a literary critique site. Did I like it? Yes, here's a five.

As for the other end, I usually can tell I won't like a story early on so just click off. I think I may have given 3 or 4 ones in my time here and all for the same reason, but for the most part I won't trash people's work because I'm careful not to read material I know I don't like which brings us back to this thread and the masochistic behavior of these people who come here every day to do the "ow, quit it" with what they read.

That would simply be their problem, but then they lash out and make a problem other people.

Their view isn't "Maybe I should stop reading this stuff" it's "Those assholes need to stop making me read it so I'm going to drive them away."

But nothing will change. This site has been asked for the same changes for years, make promises, and never keep them, and these wouldn't be complicated changes. They're certainly not going to address how to clean up a category that some people have done their best to make uninhabitable for the good crowd there, so it will continue to just keep spiraling and we will continue to get these threads.

And the same couple of people here will continue to act like everyone else is wrong and get angry in their defense of indefensible behavior.

 

[lovecraft68]

1-bombing is an issue. However, I think that you could also argue that the other categories are scored too high to give meaningful results. If half of the stories are ‘hot’, then the red H means nothing. If you score it in LW, you can pop the champagne.

See also the threads on score comparison and the percentile distributions that I did.

View attachment 2593669

This is where the scores and obsession over them frustrate me. "If there's that many H's then they don't deserve it."

All I keep coming up with on that is its the view of people who think they're superior and should of course have H's and top list spots etc, but all those other H's are posers and don't deserve it and why do I keep getting lumped in with these hacks? The complaints about soft scoring are from the self important egomaniacs here.

Not happy when they're bombed, not happy to see other people do well, not happy with a mostly easy going readership that rewards them. What it comes down to is we have a lot of 'not happy unless they're not happy' people.

 

[ICantLeafYou]

I've always treated the 5th star as a 'like' button. If I liked the story I 'click the like button'. If I don't like the story than I 'don't click the like button'.

So I suspect lots of other people ignore the 5 star system as well and just use the 5th start as a 'like button'

And because of that, I don't take the scores very serious.

I'm guilty of that.

If I end up disliking a story, I just stop reading it, close the tab, and don't rate it at all.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

All I keep coming up with on that is its the view of people who think they're superior and should of course have H's and top list spots etc, but all those other H's are posers and don't deserve it and why do I keep getting lumped in with these hacks? The complaints about soft scoring are from the self important egomaniacs here.

I see what you mean (or your logic behind it) but I see it rather the opposite.

First, the scores are soft. Incredibly soft. There is no denying it. On a scale of 1-5 the average - AVERAGE score is 4.4. But the complaints about trolling and bombs are whining because these writers think that their score should actually be higher! Okay, so you wrote two cookie cutter characters, had no significant plot, wrote generic tab A into slot B sex for a total of 7k words banged off over a weekend and scored a 4.72 ... and you're bitching about a troll or two knocking .07 off of your score??

Second, the Red H is FAR too low. The Red H is intended to show the cream of the crop. 45% of all stories get a Red H. That is not cream. A 4.51 gets three or four times or more traffic than a 4.49. I know this because I took 3 1s in a day or two a couple of weeks ago, lost my only Red H and the traffic completely dried up. I was getting a dozen or more hits a day and now I'm getting 2 or 3 just because the Red H is gone. I'm not complaining, but this shows what the Red H does for your traffic. This is the reality of it.

There are some things that can be done to improve the scoring system for it's accuracy but no one is (or maybe two or three of us in the AH do) wants those ideas. All the complaints about scores are from people just trying to get a higher score. "If only the system was better, I'd score better." As if it's the system's fault that your score isn't as high as you want it. Whaa, cry cry cry.

First, you can't make the voters score more accurately, you just can't, so all of these ideas for forcing voters to have an account and all that jive is just an attempt to force voters to vote differently (read: higher). It's all bullshit. What the site could do, with simple math, is make the interpretation of scores more accurate. Here are some things that have been proposed in this forum many times, and they never get traction because the writers by and large are not the least bit interested in an accurate score, only a higher score.

1) A little bit of anti-troll. Once a story gets 10 votes, omit the bottom 10% and the top 10% of votes from the score count. So a story with 10 votes (5,5,5,5,5,4,4,4,2,1) would total 40, less 6 (the top 5 and the bottom 1) for 34 div 8 (not 10) for 4.25. A story with 35 votes would not count its best 3 votes (probably all 5s) and its worst 3 votes (probably all 1s). A story with 314 votes would not count its best 31 votes nor its worst 31 votes. This way, if someone wanted to troll this story, they would have to bomb it 40 or 50 times or more. Yes, some will still do that, but most of the trolls are lazy fuckers and just run down the entire catalog once. Likewise, if someone wanted to upvote for a contest, they would need to vote it up 30 or 40 or 50 times to make a difference. It won't eliminate trolling, but it would be a significant improvement.

2) Calculate percentiles and award hot ratings based on the percentile. Obviously each category has to have its own percentile scale. Any story rated in the 90th percentile or higher gets a Red H. This would indicate a cream story. Then any story rated between the 75th and 89th percentile gets a pink H. This indicates that the story may not be cream, but it is still worth clicking. Then any story rated between the 60th and 74th percentile, gets a yellow H. This would indicate a decent read that you still might want to click on. This graduated award system would eliminate the dark cliff abyss that happens at 4.49.

These elements would help the scores and the awards to be more accurate. The Red H would be true cream, and the yellow and pink would indicate still decent, so it would help the readers find stories that are more popular because the award ratings actually have accuracy, instead of this 45% of all stories are hot bullshit. It would also help the writers get accurate traffic for their appropriately ranked stories. Their yellows would get more clicks than their unranked, their pinks would get more clicks than their yellows and their reds would get the most clicks.

Of course all of this only tells readers of the popularity of a story, nothing of the quality of a story, but then nothing can rate the quality of a story. Not on a site like this where the scores are decided by a porn crowd that largely knows nothing about literature and prose. And that's okay, it's to be expected. It's a porn site more than anything after all. All that we can do is measure the popularity of a story, but at least we could have a system that displays that popularity accurately.

But the vast majority of writers don't want accurate scores. They only want higher scores. "Laurel, do something about the trolls or I'm leaving, whaaa!" Pfft. No one will go for this because it means that their 4.52 will lose it's Red H, even if it still gets a yellow. They want their Red H so that they can think it's as popular as a 4.9.

 

[lovecraft68]

I see what you mean (or your logic behind it) but I see it rather the opposite.

First, the scores are soft. Incredibly soft. There is no denying it. On a scale of 1-5 the average - AVERAGE score is 4.4. But the complaints about trolling and bombs are whining because these writers think that their score should actually be higher! Okay, so you wrote two cookie cutter characters, had no significant plot, wrote generic tab A into slot B sex for a total of 7k words banged off over a weekend and scored a 4.72 ... and you're bitching about a troll or two knocking .07 off of your score??

Second, the Red H is FAR too low. The Red H is intended to show the cream of the crop. 45% of all stories get a Red H. That is not cream. A 4.51 gets three or four times or more traffic than a 4.49. I know this because I took 3 1s in a day or two a couple of weeks ago, lost my only Red H and the traffic completely dried up. I was getting a dozen or more hits a day and now I'm getting 2 or 3 just because the Red H is gone. I'm not complaining, but this shows what the Red H does for your traffic. This is the reality of it.

There are some things that can be done to improve the scoring system for it's accuracy but no one is (or maybe two or three of us in the AH do) wants those ideas. All the complaints about scores are from people just trying to get a higher score. "If only the system was better, I'd score better." As if it's the system's fault that your score isn't as high as you want it. Whaa, cry cry cry.

First, you can't make the voters score more accurately, you just can't, so all of these ideas for forcing voters to have an account and all that jive is just an attempt to force voters to vote differently (read: higher). It's all bullshit. What the site could do, with simple math, is make the interpretation of scores more accurate. Here are some things that have been proposed in this forum many times, and they never get traction because the writers by and large are not the least bit interested in an accurate score, only a higher score.

1) A little bit of anti-troll. Once a story gets 10 votes, omit the bottom 10% and the top 10% of votes from the score count. So a story with 10 votes (5,5,5,5,5,4,4,4,2,1) would total 40, less 6 (the top 5 and the bottom 1) for 34 div 8 (not 10) for 4.25. A story with 35 votes would not count its best 3 votes (probably all 5s) and its worst 3 votes (probably all 1s). A story with 314 votes would not count its best 31 votes nor its worst 31 votes. This way, if someone wanted to troll this story, they would have to bomb it 40 or 50 times or more. Yes, some will still do that, but most of the trolls are lazy fuckers and just run down the entire catalog once. Likewise, if someone wanted to upvote for a contest, they would need to vote it up 30 or 40 or 50 times to make a difference. It won't eliminate trolling, but it would be a significant improvement.

2) Calculate percentiles and award hot ratings based on the percentile. Obviously each category has to have its own percentile scale. Any story rated in the 90th percentile or higher gets a Red H. This would indicate a cream story. Then any story rated between the 75th and 89th percentile gets a pink H. This indicates that the story may not be cream, but it is still worth clicking. Then any story rated between the 60th and 74th percentile, gets a yellow H. This would indicate a decent read that you still might want to click on. This graduated award system would eliminate the dark cliff abyss that happens at 4.49.

These elements would help the scores and the awards to be more accurate. The Red H would be true cream, and the yellow and pink would indicate still decent, so it would help the readers find stories that are more popular because the award ratings actually have accuracy, instead of this 45% of all stories are hot bullshit. It would also help the writers get accurate traffic for their appropriately ranked stories.

Of course all of this only tells readers of the popularity of a story, nothing of the quality of a story, but then nothing can rate the quality of a story. Not on a site like this where the scores are decided by a porn crowd that largely knows nothing about literature and prose. And that's okay, it's to be expected. It's a porn site more than anything after all. All that we can do is measure the popularity of a story, but at least we could have a system that displays that popularity accurately.

But the vast majority of writers don't want accurate scores. They only want higher scores. "Laurel, do something about the trolls or I'm leaving, whaaa!" Pfft.

Imagine what the aggregate score would be if you removed LW? Might be over 4.5

The issue is people need to accept things here for what they are.

The scoring system is as simple as it gets and is along the lines of liked it or didn't. There is no "Well, the use of unreliable narrator was a bit flawed, and then..." liked it or did not.

This is enough for the readers here, at least those that vote, but some authors cannot get this through their heads.

We all think differently but for me I can't get over the fact that the readers here show they are appreciative of our efforts and that's all that should matter, instead it's constant whining about the trolls-who are obviously a minority other than the outlier of LW-and then the 'quality"

What quality means to the people who tout it here is translated as thus "I know my story deserves that 4.85 but oh, did you see that one on the top list? Its awful." Says who your story is quality and says who the other is not? Oh, right 'you' and your opinion matters...why?

Want more detailed feedback, want a system that rewards your perceived quality writing? Find another platform, send your stories to non lit related editors. Here's one for you, test out the market see how you stack up there.

Or stay here and whine that....people are too nice.

I've said this before and always will. Be careful what you wish for because I have a feeling that if these people who think so highly of their work did get rated by quality they might be in for a rude awakening.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I've said this before and always will. Be careful what you wish for because I have a feeling that if these people who think so highly of their work did get rated by quality they might be in for a rude awakening.

Agree. Writer posts a story. It scores a 4.9 because it is popular. Writer immediately thinks that he wrote something quality. No, he wrote something popular. He may have written quality or he may have written complete crap. The score tells us nothing of the quality. But it is 100% accurate (trolling aside) to its popularity. But the ego doesn't want to hear that. "I just scored a 4.9! I'm the second coming of Terry-fucking-Pratchett!" (or insert your fave author). Then, "Oh, I just got bombed down to 4.78. I'm not Terry-fucking-Pratchett anymore! Boo hoo! Laurel, fix this!! Put a band-aid (or a plaster for you Brits) on my knee!"

And the age old argument always rears its head, "Well it's that popular it must be pretty good." Bullshit. 50 Shades was super popular. Was it good? I haven't read it but I see it critically panned all the time. It's the butt of jokes. Twilight and sparkly vampires were crazy stoopit popular. They sold ga-jillions and had movies made, but those books get terrible reviews.

This album sold 20 million copies. It must be good. Saturday Night Fever soundtrack actually is a pretty good record. The Spice Girls record is not quality at all. So that age old argument of popular must mean some degree of quality is smashed to bits. Popularity and quality are entirely different things.

Writers here don't want to hear that.

 

[lovecraft68]

Agree. Writer posts a story. It scores a 4.9 because it is popular. Writer immediately thinks that he wrote something quality. No, he wrote something popular. He may have written quality or he may have written complete crap. The score tells us nothing of the quality. But it is 100% accurate (trolling aside) to its popularity. But the ego doesn't want to hear that. "I just scored a 4.9! I'm the second coming of Terry-fucking-Pratchett!" (or insert your fave author). Then, "Oh, I just got bombed down to 4.78. I'm not Terry-fucking-Pratchett anymore! Boo hoo! Laurel, fix this!! Put a band-aid (or a plaster for you Brits) on my knee!"

And the age old argument always rears its head, "Well it's that popular it must be pretty good." Bullshit. 50 Shades was super popular. Was it good? I haven't read it but I see it critically panned all the time. It's the butt of jokes. Twilight and sparkly vampires were crazy stoopit popular. They sold ga-jillions and had movies made, but those books get terrible reviews.

This album sold 20 million copies. It must be good. Saturday Night Fever soundtrack actually is a pretty good record. The Spice Girls record is not quality at all. So that age old argument of popular must mean some degree of quality is smashed to bits. Popularity and quality are entirely different things.

Writers here don't want to hear that.

50 Shades is a disgrace and not for the poor writing but the horrible message that abuse is romance.

The series and its sequel were tanked by the first movie.

That director-and to his credit-shows Gray as the creepy stalking abuser he was instead of romanticizing him. The movie bombed and the reviews called out what a POS he was. They fired the director, hired a new one and the next two movies-direct to streaming I believe-were so ridiculous in how they reformed him into some great guy was pathetic, and too late.

BTW, the second trilogy is literally the same story but from his POV. Seriously, that was handed a book deal.

Hopefully there were no pets involved or we could get another trilogy from a goldfish.

 

[SimonDoom]

Here are some things that have been proposed in this forum many times, and they never get traction because the writers by and large are not the least bit interested in an accurate score, only a higher score.

This is the nub of it, and I suspect this is one reason why the site doesn't take all the author kvetching over this issue too seriously. Their response: "It's not about you, folks, it's about the readers." And they're right about that.

2) Calculate percentiles and award hot ratings based on the percentile. Obviously each category has to have its own percentile scale. Any story rated in the 90th percentile or higher gets a Red H. This would indicate a cream story. Then any story rated between the 75th and 89th percentile gets a pink H. This indicates that the story may not be cream, but it is still worth clicking. Then any story rated between the 60th and 74th percentile, gets a yellow H. This would indicate a decent read that you still might want to click on. This graduated award system would eliminate the dark cliff abyss that happens at 4.49.

This is what I've been advocating for years, but authors don't want this because they know they'd lose some of their red Hs. I would, and I don't care. A percentile system, while not perfect, would be better than what we have. I might put the cutoff at 75 % rather than 90%, but that's a quibble. I suspect the site will never do this, because it's not important enough to them and readers have grown accustomed to the system we have. And they might cause a riot among some authors if they took away their red Hs.

 

[lovecraft68]

This is the nub of it, and I suspect this is one reason why the site doesn't take all the author kvetching over this issue too seriously. Their response: "It's not about you, folks, it's about the readers." And they're right about that.




This is what I've been advocating for years, but authors don't want this because they know they'd lose some of their red Hs. I would, and I don't care. A percentile system, while not perfect, would be better than what we have. I might put the cutoff at 75 % rather than 90%, but that's a quibble. I suspect the site will never do this, because it's not important enough to them and readers have grown accustomed to the system we have. And they might cause a riot among some authors if they took away their red Hs.

The problem with percentiles is your basing them on the same votes people complain are meaningless already.

So a story has a 90% instead of a 4.88...what's the difference? People will seek out the high percent scores the same way they do the Red H.

The H is meant as a simple reward in a simple system.

I feel the site never anticipated a group of authors who want something far more complex to satisfy their egos.

We're a tiny percentage here compared to the number of active authors on the site which is too bad because I wonder how the majority feels about many issues we discuss here. Is this group a good representation of authors in general or an outlier skewed by being here and listening to the endless malcontent and bitching?

Over the years I have thought of starting a discussion of whether or not being in this forum is a good or bad thing for authors, but I don't see it going over well because there's a lot of defensive people here who take everything personally.

 

[Cultivateddesires]

Having been on the wrong end of those stars myself I have a theory that there is a strong, vocal cohort who want LW to remain faithful. (And I think there is some merit in that.)

I don’t read enough stories to be statistically accurate but I suspect this place has an excess of cheats and misbehaving and insufficient genuine married loving.

(I am as much the problem as anybody else.)

Thick skin definitely a solution. General acceptance of the interweb nastiness.

 

[SimonDoom]

So a story has a 90% instead of a 4.88...what's the difference? People will seek out the high percent scores the same way they do the Red H.

The difference is that 90% tells you that the story ranks higher than 90% of other stories. 4.88 tells you nothing. Numbers without context mean nothing at all. The percentile might not be enough context to give you confidence it's a good story, but I can say that in my case, as a reader, if I knew that a story was in the top 10% it would give me at least some extra confidence that it was worth checking out.

We're a tiny percentage here compared to the number of active authors on the site which is too bad because I wonder how the majority feels about many issues we discuss here. Is this group a good representation of authors in general or an outlier skewed by being here and listening to the endless malcontent and bitching?

I suspect most don't care at all, and that the AH represents a very tiny sliver of the overall authorship that gets much more worked up about this stuff than most do.

Over the years I have thought of starting a discussion of whether or not being in this forum is a good or bad thing for authors, but I don't see it going over well because there's a lot of defensive people here who take everything personally.

This is a personal thing you can't advise others about. Speaking for myself, I have greatly enjoyed participating in this forum. I get a lot out of it. We have our share of cranks and blowhards, but on the whole this is a very interesting, well-informed, and mostly well-behaved group. I have received a lot of useful information, support, and feedback for my writing.

I DO agree with you -- I think this might be what you are getting at -- that this forum encourages a certain level of unhealthy navel gazing, and obsession about aspects of the writing experience (like scores) that don't really matter. It's easy to get caught up in that. Me all have to manage that in our own way.

 

[lovecraft68]

The difference is that 90% tells you that the story ranks higher than 90% of other stories. 4.88 tells you nothing. Numbers without context mean nothing at all. The percentile might not be enough context to give you confidence it's a good story, but I can say that in my case, as a reader, if I knew that a story was in the top 10% it would give me at least some extra confidence that it was worth checking out.




I suspect most don't care at all, and that the AH represents a very tiny sliver of the overall authorship that gets much more worked up about this stuff than most do.




This is a personal thing you can't advise others about. Speaking for myself, I have greatly enjoyed participating in this forum. I get a lot out of it. We have our share of cranks and blowhards, but on the whole this is a very interesting, well-informed, and mostly well-behaved group. I have received a lot of useful information, support, and feedback for my writing.

I DO agree with you -- I think this might be what you are getting at -- that this forum encourages a certain level of unhealthy navel gazing, and obsession about aspects of the writing experience (like scores) that don't really matter. It's easy to get caught up in that. Me all have to manage that in our own way.

On the first point, this may just be another case of how people view things. I see 4.88 out of 5.0 I say that story had a great score. 90 out of 100 I'd say the same.

But again, a common complaint here always defaults back to "But is it popular or actual quality" and that's where everything devolves. Lit is just not the kind of site to care about having that type of critique.

On your last part, I think you summed it up well, 'unhealthy' fixation with certain things that have nothing to do with becoming a better writer and can be off putting to someone who is newish.

I've said before that I posted my first story here in May 2010 but did not come here until the end of 2011 when I already had 40+ stories and kind of found my own way to an extent I didn't feel I had to listen to the "Oh, no, you have to do this" crowd. On a whole, I think the forum isn't a good thing for people with no established footing here. Too much noise is how I'd word the point you made.

 

[lovecraft68]

Having been on the wrong end of those stars myself I have a theory that there is a strong, vocal cohort who want LW to remain faithful. (And I think there is some merit in that.)

I don’t read enough stories to be statistically accurate but I suspect this place has an excess of cheats and misbehaving and insufficient genuine married loving.

(I am as much the problem as anybody else.)

Thick skin definitely a solution. General acceptance of the interweb nastiness.

I see your point.

But where things get dicey is there are couples who enjoy swapping or just wife sharing and how is that not loyal if both husband and wife are enjoying it? That to me would be 'monogamy' is what they're looking for.

And if that's what they want then why is this a category? Those stories can be in EC or romance.

Years ago, Lit's slug for the category was "Tales of adventurous wives" and you'd still see the "But...that's not her husband she's with"

Porn has phases, things get hot, they tail off and it seems the last few years both in the erotic e-book market and video porn, cheating wives and cuck have blown up and are immensely popular. Its one of the (mostly) yeah this would suck for real, but as a fantasy, hell yeah.

The problem children of the LW category cannot accept that infidelity is a valid kink, and again if what's wanted is 'loyal' couples, then what is the point of the category?

 

[Actingup]

The difference is that 90% tells you that the story ranks higher than 90% of other stories. 4.88 tells you nothing. Numbers without context mean nothing at all. The percentile might not be enough context to give you confidence it's a good story, but I can say that in my case, as a reader, if I knew that a story was in the top 10% it would give me at least some extra confidence that it was worth checking out.

90% of stories in that category is way more meaningful than an arbitary threshold. It's not an absolute measure of quality for the reasons already discussed, but it's something. Here's the table that I posted in that other thread:



A 4.5 in LW is something like the 97% percentile, and in Romance it's less than 50th percentile. Or, down further into reality, my 3.92 rated story in LW is just less than 70th percentile (so I shouldn't feel too bad?) but my 4.28 in Romance for my St Valentine's entry is less than 30th percentile (I don't know why we single out LW to complain about bombers - they're just as bad in other categories.)

(for discussion on the Sci Fi scores and the effect of story series, please see the other thread)

How important is all this in the scheme of things? Not very, and particularly not outside Author's Hangout. Still, if Literotica started to award Editor's choice awards or Monthly prizes again, I'd hope that they look at something like a percentile measure as a way of shortlisting.

 

[Cultivateddesires]

Totally get it. Loving has many guises and interpretations, this is the essential foundation of this entire community! I have found myself straying into the Hot Wife text gifs more than I ever imagined.

The only certainty is that the internet will be upset no matter what you do.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

So a story has a 90% instead of a 4.88...what's the difference? People will seek out the high percent scores the same way they do the Red H.

It's actually a big difference.

As it is, the Red H is a hard coded line at 4.5. This means that the site cannot control how many stories are deemed cream because the site cannot control the voting even if it wanted to. So site wide, 45% of stories are deemed cream. This is misleading to readers looking for a cream story. Also, it means that in a category like LW 10-20% of stories get a Red H but in a category like Romance, 60% or more get a Red H. This is fucking dumb. So the Red H is meaningless.

Now, if we implement percentiles within category as a means to determine Red H, the site can now determine how many stories are cream. It's easy. Whatever bar that we want to set that at, 90th percentile, 80th, 67th, whatever. But If it takes 80th percentile to get a Red H, when you see one the Red H means something. It means that the story is in the top 20% of popularity for it's category. Furthermore, every category will have 20% cream. This is infinitely more useful for readers than this arbitrary line in the sand at 4.5.

Remember, the score itself will still say 4.72 or whatever. That will not change. But it will also have a percentile and the percentile will simply determine the hot rating, nothing more.

And it's very simple math. It would not require some grand overhaul of the site, It would require absolutely no changes to the actual voting interface whatsoever.