1-Bombing on Loving Wives

[SmilingLez]

Normally, I'd agree with you.

I rarely vote and even more rarely comment.

Many times I'll read a story and while I know it fills someone else's sails, it does nothing for me.

To those, I'd say 'Meh, move on' and ignore it.

One of the few times I ever rated/commented a story was one that, for some stupid reason, I couldn't let it go.

I read it, said 'Nah...' and moved on.

I somehow ran across it in the lists a couple of days later and thought, 'That's the story I hated. I'm gonna vote and comment on it.'

So I did.

In the days after reading it, I came to loathe everything about the story and its - to me - totally unlikeable characters.

If it hadn't seen it again, I would never have said anything else about it.

I left a low vote and a comment. Not a short 'These people all suck!' but a 300+ word semi-rant on what I hated and why I low-voted it.

I, of course, was the outlier. Everyone else who commented on it loved it.

I am 100% sure you did not comment anonymously.

That's my point -anonymous comments and anonymous ratings are the problems and unfortunately, there's no way around it

 

[IWroteThis]

I was referring to troll bombers - they give a one-star rating without even reading the story. There's no way to distinguish who gave a honest rating and who did not. That is the problem with the rating system. If I can't give a five-star rating to a story/poem/audio, I do not rate it. Same with comments and I've never left an anonymous comment. That is so fucking cowardly. YMMV

No, the problem with the rating system is people like you who deliberately misuse it. If you don't want to use a five-star rating system, then don't. Simply don't rate the story and leave a comment instead.

Oh, you should also learn the different between anonymous and Anonymous, because every comment you make here is anonymous.

 

[designatedvictim]

I am 100% sure you did not comment anonymously.

I don't want to disappoint you, but I did.

Comment anonymously, I mean.

IIRC, it was the very first comment I ever left (I hated the characters that much) and I didn't have the balls to go so against the prevailing opinion on the piece.

 

[SmilingLez]

No, the problem with the rating system is people like you who deliberately misuse it. If you don't want to use a five-star rating system, then don't. Simply don't rate the story and leave a comment instead.

Oh, you should also learn the different between anonymous and Anonymous, because every comment you make here is anonymous.

I'm sorry you took my comment so personally. I was pointing out flaws in the rating system, if it offended you again my apologies.

Perhaps you should learn the distinction about being an anonymous coward versus being anonymous but showing your Literotica username. YMMV

 

[SmilingLez]

I don't want to disappoint you, but I did.

Comment anonymously, I mean.

IIRC, it was the very first comment I ever left (I hated the characters that much) and I didn't have the balls to go so against the prevailing opinion on the piece.

Thank you for having the guts to admit that. I can honestly say that I've never hated a story / poetry / audio so much that I had to give it a one-star rating, just to prove my point

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm sorry you took my comment so personally. I was pointing out flaws in the rating system, if it offended you again my apologies.

Perhaps you should learn the distinction about being an anonymous coward versus being anonymous but showing your Literotica username. YMMV

This is what gets me, no one is using their real name, but a lot of people-and most of the nasty trolls-still need that extra layer to hide behind, says a lot.

 

[IWroteThis]

This is what gets me, no one is using their real name, but a lot of people-and most of the nasty trolls-still need that extra layer to hide behind, says a lot.

Perhaps, but not what you seem to think it says.

You complain about 1* bombing trolls, then claim to not understand why writers don't want to provide a direct link to their own stories for retaliation?

 

[SmilingLez]

Perhaps, but not what you seem to think it says.

You complain about 1* bombing trolls, then claim to not understand why writers don't want to provide a direct link to their own stories for retaliation?

You are assuming that the troll bombers have written anything. You are also assuming that the troll bombers have a Literotica account. Lots of assumptions but no facts to back it up

EDIT

This is a comment I received on my vignette about 5 months ago. To me this is the cowardly way out. I would have loved to read this commenter's work, but he / she / they denied me that

Anonymous 5 months ago
I gave you five stars, fully deserved; however, you cannot go on writing stories with minimal sentences of a couple of words. In the end, it’s a too easy intimist effusion.

 

[lovecraft68]

Perhaps, but not what you seem to think it says.

You complain about 1* bombing trolls, then claim to not understand why writers don't want to provide a direct link to their own stories for retaliation?

I'm not talking about writers; I'm talking about bombers and unhinged commenters in general

Want to see LW cleaned up, ditch anon. Incel nation doesn't have the spine to even post under a fake handle.

As for me, I don't leave many comments, when I do I use my name.

 

[IWroteThis]

You are assuming that the troll bombers have written anything. You are also assuming that the troll bombers have a Literotica account. Lots of assumptions but no facts to back it up

I'm not assuming any more than you are. Quite a bit less, in fact.

I'm sorry you took my comment so personally. I was pointing out flaws in the rating system, if it offended you again my apologies.

Perhaps you should learn the distinction about being an anonymous coward versus being anonymous but showing your Literotica username. YMMV

Oh, I didn't take it personally. I just tend to call out bullshit when I see it.

 

[designatedvictim]

Thank you for having the guts to admit that. I can honestly say that I've never hated a story / poetry / audio so much that I had to give it a one-star rating, just to prove my point

I gave it a 2*. Recall that the flawed voting scale is for liking. And I did not like it.

To me, poor writing impacts my liking, but, surprisingly, this wasn't the case here.

At least the author had the guts to not simply delete it, so she gets credit there. (Unlike my second comment on another story which was not anonymous. Which was on a mediocre story that was just horribly written. I couldn't get past all the typoes. Everyone has typoes, but how many times can you ignore repeated typoes and homonym mistakes?)

It was well-enough-written, but about an overall shitty group of characters doing shitty things.

To make matters worse, it was non-con in T/I, because the half-sibling thing trumped all other categorizations.

The author, at that point, had - so far as I could tell - everything else in Reluctance/NonConsent.

The comment I left wasn't so much to prove a point, but to 'exorcise my demons' so to speak.

If I hadn't seen it pop up again, I'd never have bothered. I wasn't obsessing over it.

My most recent story (this week) had five 1* in the first 100 votes.

Were they all trolls? No idea, but the first vote, in under two hours - on a 49K-word story - was a 1*.

Did they read it all? See answer above.

Were they disgusted that a story in T/I had siblings that didn't have sex? This would actually be a semi-valid reason, but so far none of the (only four) comments have been negative.

 

[SmilingLez]

Oh, I didn't take it personally. I just tend to call out bullshit when I see it.

Like you I call out bullshit when I see it too; especially when the poster believes they are Gawd almighty

 

[IWroteThis]

I'm not talking about writers; I'm talking about bombers and unhinged commenters in general

Want to see LW cleaned up, ditch anon. Incel nation doesn't have the spine to even post under a fake handle.

As for me, I don't leave many comments, when I do I use my name.

The key to "cleaning up" LW is to stop trying to force the audience to accept stories they don't want. The real trolls in Loving Wives tend to post bad fetish stories…

There is a fair amount of truth in "the customer is always right." The site had an idea for a category, did a piss-poor job of naming and describing it, and now the audience has clarified what they want it to be. Accept it and move on like an adult.

 

[SmilingLez]

The real trolls in Loving Wives tend to post bad fetish stories…

Judge, jury, and executioner?

 

[Lifestyle66]

The key to "cleaning up" LW is to stop trying to force the audience to accept stories they don't want. The real trolls in Loving Wives tend to post bad fetish stories…

There is a fair amount of truth in "the customer is always right." The site had an idea for a category, did a piss-poor job of naming and describing it, and now the audience has clarified what they want it to be. Accept it and move on like an adult.

Those who shout loudest are not necessarily correct.

Only about 40% of that LW audience are the intolerant shitheads who 1-bomb and leave shitty comments on anything which is NOT a BTB story. The other 60% of the audience reads the stories and just move along without leaving comments and rating with 4s.

On my latest story, for example, there are ONLY 134 votes! So, even if half of those are 1s (67 votes), there are 13,900 other LW readers who viewed the story! Those 67 shitheads don't define the category. They are merely turds in the swimming pool.

 

[lovecraft68]

The key to "cleaning up" LW is to stop trying to force the audience to accept stories they don't want. The real trolls in Loving Wives tend to post bad fetish stories…

There is a fair amount of truth in "the customer is always right." The site had an idea for a category, did a piss-poor job of naming and describing it, and now the audience has clarified what they want it to be. Accept it and move on like an adult.

The problem is you have it backwards. The stories in LW have the right to be there, look at the category description and many LW readers don't mind them

But because a whiny faction of woman hating insecure cretins who can't handle fictional cheating which is a fetish to a lot of people, or even handle couples who enjoy swapping, authors are the ones that are the problem?

I don't like NC stories, know what I don't read? NC stories. What the people you defend do is click on stories they don't like then start screaming, like a five-year-old taking a tantrum. They read what they hate then blame the site and authors for them being there. Yeah, makes sense.

They don't control the category; the site does and the authors do.

Customer is always right? Without authors there are no customers. Not to mention you think any of those dregs are going to click on a link and buy anything? You need a job for that.

Business is supply and demand. Who's the supplier? Hint, not the reader.

Going by what they want, they should be reading in vanilla romance, EC or just get a copy of the 1950's housewives handbook.

 

[IWroteThis]

Judge, jury, and executioner?

No more than you.

 

[IWroteThis]

Those who shout loudest are not necessarily correct.

Only about 40% of that LW audience are the intolerant shitheads who 1-bomb and leave shitty comments on anything which is NOT a BTB story. The other 60% of the audience reads the stories and just move along without leaving comments and rating with 4s.

On my latest story, for example, there are ONLY 134 votes! So, even if half of those are 1s (67 votes), there are 13,900 other LW readers who viewed the story! Those 67 shitheads don't define the category. They are merely turds in the swimming pool.

Views are an irrelevant number. Despite your apparent interpretation, a better argument could be made that those who didn't vote bailed out before the last page because they didn't like it. I mean, if they read to the end and liked it, why not click on a star? There is a lot of discussion in AH about how the ratings need to be changed because of the correlation between liking a story and rating it.

 

[SmilingLez]

No more than you.

The real trolls in Loving Wives tend to post bad fetish stories…

I don't suggest censoring of any kind, nor call someone else's stories "bad fetish stories"

 

[IWroteThis]

I don't suggest censoring of any kind, nor call someone else's stories "bad fetish stories"

Once again, you seem to have a shockingly bad grasp of the English language for somebody who calls themselves a writer. Also, considering this is a discussion about stories posted to the Loving Wives category, pointing out that it's not the Fetish category seems to be relevant and on topic.

As for the second part, yeah, you've already explained how you can't figure out how to use a five star rating system properly.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Over all I think the current system works in the sites favor. Changing it would definitely discourage new, and often timid, writers from trying a second or third time. New writers are the life blood of Lit. To discourage new writers with the inevitable low scores (lack of red H) would prevent new ideas, new stories, and experimentation.

I don't believe that for a second. The life blood of the site is the readership, the high traffic. Your stance is all about the writer. You;re saying that we need to encourage the writers by keeping the scores up (translation: not hurt their feelings). If someone's going to quit writing over a 4.4, that;s the writer's problem, not the site's, not the other writers; and definitely not the readership's.

New ideas don't get eyeballs on a porn site. You want a score, you want a following, stick to the template of the category. If you have a new idea, just tell it and let the reactions fall where they may. No scoring system is going to change that or encourage new ideas.

Is the red H overly prevalent? Maybe, but it encourages new AMATEUR writers to keep writing and to keep posting

This is baloney. Okay sure, there are a handful of people who give up if they don't score well, but if we extend your argument then why isn't the site giving all stories a Red H? This isn't kindergarten where everyone gets a ribbon for participating.

You're looking at this from the point of view of the writer's ego. "If I don't score well, Imma cry and quit." The site is not centered on the writer's feelings. It's centered on the high traffic readership. The Red H is supposed to tell the readership what is popular. Popular inherently means attracting more eyes than the rest. You can't just give out Red Hs to people to make them feel good if the story isn't significantly popular. It misleads the readership. If we change the site to cater to the butthurt writers, it will become a snobby place that turns off the readership. It's a completely free site. Why are we here if we're not getting paid? For the insane amounts of free traffic. This is a gift. Don't fuck it up.

Some writers have great characters but poor plot; some just don't have the vocabulary to express in definitive terms what they want to say but the idea is there; others may have weak characters, weak story but the sex is hot! Why discourage them with bad ratings?

Again, you are looking at this as a writer and ignoring the readership. Your entire stance is built on the premise that the purpose of the scores is to fluff the writer's ego, to tell the writer how good he is. As if the site is centered around the writer's experience. It's not. The site is centered around reading as it should be. Because that's how we get all this traffic that we love (or at least should love if we know what's good for us). the scores aren't for that. The scores are to tell the readership which stories are popular - not good, popular. You feel that the scores are there to tell the writers how good they are. That's just not true. You've got it backwards.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I don't suggest censoring of any kind, nor call someone else's stories "bad fetish stories"

I mean... some of them are. A LOT of them are.

I don't read everything in the category, because most of it isn’t to my taste; I like the marital drama stuff, whether that's reconciliation, BTB, moving on, etc. Neither the fetish-y cuckold stuff nor the swinging/sharing stuff do it for me, but I do still peruse some of the stories because there are a few really great writers in there: HannahBaird, DonSilver, etc. And, every once in a while, I'll click on ones that are horribly low-rated for the same reason I used to watch Ed Wood-level schlock in college: it's amusing in small doses.

Very small doses.

The ratios of good writing to mid-tier to just terrible in LW feel REALLY off compared to other sections of the site, and that's doubly true in the cuckold stuff. For whatever reason, the hotwife/sharing stuff is generally at least competently written/plotted, but the cuck stuff is more often than not just... like, it's terrible. This isn't "not my kink," because while it's not my kink, I'm also not a prude; the content is whatever, but everything that's supposed to deliver that content--pacing, dialogue, plotting, all of it--is just... honestly, it's fucking awful more often than not in the cuckold stuff, and I have no idea why. I'm talking sub-Penthouse Forum levels of writing here.

So, yeah, some of them really ARE "bad fetish stories," which means they're hit with a double whammy: technically bad and full of divisive content. That doesn't mean the writers should be getting the kind of absolutely hateful comments they sometimes do, but I'm not also going to pretend that some of it is about their ability, too.

And before someone asks, yes, this goes for BTB-type stories, too. There's a newcomer in there in the last year that tells some fo the worst BTB stories I've ever read (both in content and storytelling), and he's getting his with ratings that are usually reserved for the bad cuckolding stories, for good reason.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I spent time in the LW category, and frankly, I got to the point where I didn't like the abuse I was getting from the commenters. My latest story that just published at midnight my time on Saturday morning is about two people in a sexless marriage who are placed randomly with each other at a crowded restaurant dinner table, and their interaction with each other for the rest of the conference they are attending leads them to enjoy sex with each other, the first time either of them had cheated on a spouse

I placed it in the "First Time" category because I think it fits there well. It certainly could have gone into LW because it's about cheaters. But I've read the comment "cuck fag shit" enough to know that I don't want to read it again. So if there's any other place where I could post a story that might otherwise go into LW, I'm choosing the other place.

So ... you write to be told that you're good.

Whenever this notion comes up, everyone denies that they do. Yet I see comments like this all the time, slam dunk evidence that many of us in fact do. A writer who will gladly choose significantly less eyeballs in exchange for higher score and more positive feedback. This writer is obviously writing more to be told that he's good than he is to actually share his story.

 

[IWroteThis]

The problem is you have it backwards. The stories in LW have the right to be there, look at the category description and many LW readers don't mind them

But because a whiny faction of woman hating insecure cretins who can't handle fictional cheating which is a fetish to a lot of people, or even handle couples who enjoy swapping, authors are the ones that are the problem?

I don't like NC stories, know what I don't read? NC stories. What the people you defend do is click on stories they don't like then start screaming, like a five-year-old taking a tantrum. They read what they hate then blame the site and authors for them being there. Yeah, makes sense.

They don't control the category; the site does and the authors do.

Customer is always right? Without authors there are no customers. Not to mention you think any of those dregs are going to click on a link and buy anything? You need a job for that.

Business is supply and demand. Who's the supplier? Hint, not the reader.

Going by what they want, they should be reading in vanilla romance, EC or just get a copy of the 1950's housewives handbook.

Well, you got one thing right. Writers are the suppliers. However, what seems to trip you up is that there isn't a supply shortage. No, the struggle is on the demand side. So, naturally, Literotica is not going to risk losing readers just to keep a few whiny writers happy.

So, going back to Loving Wives specifically, the site is not going to kick the marital drama crowd out and risk losing those readers. So, as I've said before, you have two choices. You can take your stories to the other categories that match the themes and not deal with the LW audience you hate. Or, you can post your stories in LW and deal with the response you claim to hate while voluntarily drawing it.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Once again, you seem to have a shockingly bad grasp of the English language for somebody who calls themselves a writer.

And once again, you are being excessively arrogant and rude.

The writers aren't writing the right stories. The readers aren't using the voting system properly. The AHers are too dumb to read my posts correctly. Dammit if only everyone on the planet acted the way that I say is proper, I might actually be happy. Dude, lighten up.