Are the stories on Literotica getting worse? The truth may shock you.

[NotWise]

lit should another category: Math.
so many math fetishists.
they should have a category of their own.
you know, you wake up in the morning, feel horny.
you open a story, look at a graph, read a table, and rub one off.

I started a story in which the MMC learns to transforms himself using fourier transforms, which gave him the ability to disappear into the fourier domain and reappear in a different location. It came off like a really bad superhero origin story, so I trashed it.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Perhaps one of the experienced story-side authors could correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the invitation to rate found on the final page of multi-page stories. Anyone disliking a story probably won't finish it and, therefore, not rate. That skews the sample set.

For those of us who write in SRP & ORP there are no ratings, just views.

Exactly the point I just made.

 

[NotWise]

Thanks for the analysis. The doomsayers might find it hard to swallow.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

fourier transforms

is this like Fast & Fourier meets Transformers?

 

[SimonDoom]

There is no way to know how many people read the first page of a story, or maybe even just a few paragraphs, decide it sucks and just nope out and move on to a different story. I suspect that it's a much larger segment of the readership that we might think.

Speaking for myself, this is my pattern. I vote on less than ten percent of stories I initially click on.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Speaking for myself, this is my pattern. I vote on less than ten percent of stories I initially click on.

I'd go so far as to speculate that the majority of views do not result in a complete read. People like to give their opinions, even when not wanted. Most readers not finishing, could in part, explain the low percentage who vote and/or comment.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

13:42 GMT

Perhaps one of the experienced story-side authors could correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the invitation to rate found on the final page of multi-page stories. Anyone disliking a story probably won't finish it and, therefore, not rate. That skews the sample set.

For those of us who write in SRP & ORP there are no ratings, just views.

13:51 GMT

There is no way to know how many people read the first page of a story, or maybe even just a few paragraphs, decide it sucks and just nope out and move on to a different story. I suspect that it's a much larger segment of the readership that we might think.

13:53 GMT

Exactly the point I just made.

Well if both of us have made the same point within ten minutes of each other, there's obviously some merit in it.

 

[iwatchus]

It's hard to know without more data, but I doubt this. The "guide" to scoring at the bottom of each story indicates that five stars means "love it" and four stars means "like it," but the median score for all stories is near 4.5. I think the best explanation for this is that people who like a story are much more likely to vote on it, so the scoring system doesn't capture as many negative votes as it would if everyone voted on every story. The score therefore represents a significant inflation over what people really think of the story.

Certainly, you can not say that a 4.7 means almost everyone loves your story. But that's not the way ratings work anywhere. Any half-assed statistician can tell you that mathematically averaging qualitative categories is meaningless anyway. But we all do it. And we understand kind of what it means.

All voluntary rating systems, like this or Amazon reviews (at least the ones not paid for) and imdb reviews and any other online review scores have the same problems. The people most likely to vote are those with a particularly passionate views on it, so the votes tend to be somewhat bimodal, at least when compared to the views of the population as a whole. So we see disproportionately more 1's and 5's than the overall readership would award.

Some people don't feel qualified to judge others. Some don't want to make an author feel bad, so they will either give a 5 or nothing. Some don't finish the story. I might upvote a story because it matches my kinks, but I would not downvote because it didn't. Not to mention individual interpretations of the meaning of the scale will vary. I got a comment (from someone on the AH) that said "Very good story. Solid 4 *" To me those two halves don't go together, but I understand the feeling. Or maybe they didn't really believe the first half, but wanted to say something nice. I'm quite sure how to interpret that one.

On the other hand, if I look at one of my stories getting a 4.8 or a 4.9 (up to 99 votes), I don't think "Wow, I must be a great writer." It means I've written a good story, by literotica standards. It does not mean it's even a good story in some other context. Would it be a good story if I put it up on Amazon as an e-book? It wouldn't be the worst story there, but it would not stand out, and would probably be well below average. It would be terrible by the standards of stories accepted by New Yorker. Literally, unacceptably bad. I understand I'm not a very good writer by real world standards. But this site is a good playground to learn to write. Maybe I will get good enough to feel I need to move on. But I'm certainly not using the ratings to tell me that.

I have commented previously. I think the ratings are far from perfect, but serve the readers reasonably well. They mostly, again not perfectly, differentiate the terrible writing from the adequate writing, which is what most readers want. They do a terrible job at separating the good writing from the occasional great writing that is found here. I doubt that great writing actually scores better than good writing, for a range of reasons. But in AH, we keep trying to use it for that.

The contests are fun but I think we give too much credence to the results sometimes. Everybody who writes a good story gets a lottery ticket. A great story might get slight better odds, but the ratings aren't good at distinguishing the two. I got lucky with one of my two lottery tickets. (And my bitchy FMC, gave me little chance on the non-winning one.) I think the blue W makes it a good bet that it's a good story, worth reading.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

lit should another category: Math.
so many math fetishists.
they should have a category of their own.
you know, you wake up in the morning, feel horny.
you open a story, look at a graph, read a table, and rub one off.

Don't kink shame me for logging my sessions with minutes, putting the words I've written, and using all kinds of formulas to calculate the amount of time it would take me to make the sun cum after its light hits an asteroid somewhere on the Kuiper belt!

Surreal jokes aside, I'm really interested to see an erotica that just drops a trigonometry lesson in the middle of sex. I'd do it considering my subject matter, but math is not my strong suit.

 

[SimonDoom]

Certainly, you can not say that a 4.7 means almost everyone loves your story. But that's not the way ratings work anywhere. Any half-assed statistician can tell you that mathematically averaging qualitative categories is meaningless anyway. But we all do it. And we understand kind of what it means.

All voluntary rating systems, like this or Amazon reviews (at least the ones not paid for) and imdb reviews and any other online review scores have the same problems. The people most likely to vote are those with a particularly passionate views on it, so the votes tend to be somewhat bimodal, at least when compared to the views of the population as a whole. So we see disproportionately more 1's and 5's than the overall readership would award.

Some people don't feel qualified to judge others. Some don't want to make an author feel bad, so they will either give a 5 or nothing. Some don't finish the story. I might upvote a story because it matches my kinks, but I would not downvote because it didn't. Not to mention individual interpretations of the meaning of the scale will vary. I got a comment (from someone on the AH) that said "Very good story. Solid 4 *" To me those two halves don't go together, but I understand the feeling. Or maybe they didn't really believe the first half, but wanted to say something nice. I'm quite sure how to interpret that one.

On the other hand, if I look at one of my stories getting a 4.8 or a 4.9 (up to 99 votes), I don't think "Wow, I must be a great writer." It means I've written a good story, by literotica standards. It does not mean it's even a good story in some other context. Would it be a good story if I put it up on Amazon as an e-book? It wouldn't be the worst story there, but it would not stand out, and would probably be well below average. It would be terrible by the standards of stories accepted by New Yorker. Literally, unacceptably bad. I understand I'm not a very good writer by real world standards. But this site is a good playground to learn to write. Maybe I will get good enough to feel I need to move on. But I'm certainly not using the ratings to tell me that.

I have commented previously. I think the ratings are far from perfect, but serve the readers reasonably well. They mostly, again not perfectly, differentiate the terrible writing from the adequate writing, which is what most readers want. They do a terrible job at separating the good writing from the occasional great writing that is found here. I doubt that great writing actually scores better than good writing, for a range of reasons. But in AH, we keep trying to use it for that.

The contests are fun but I think we give too much credence to the results sometimes. Everybody who writes a good story gets a lottery ticket. A great story might get slight better odds, but the ratings aren't good at distinguishing the two. I got lucky with one of my two lottery tickets. (And my bitchy FMC, gave me little chance on the non-winning one.) I think the blue W makes it a good bet that it's a good story, worth reading.

I agree with all of this.

Even if your story has many votes, there are multiple factors that go into the score that have nothing to do with quality, and I agree there's a certain "lottery ticket" element to where your story ends up, score-wise, which is yet another reason not to get too attached to scores. I was a beneficiary of this "lottery" once, with a story that reached its peak, at 4.92, at exactly the right moment to place in a contest, and then subsequently saw its score plummet. It's sitting at 4.48 now but I've still got that W.

I heartily agree that very high scores at Literotica don't distinguish good stories from "great literary" stories. Very high scores at Literotica, in my opinion, based on my experience as a reader, correlate with stories that generally have decent prose and plot lines and characters that fit well with certain things that readers are looking for. Scores also tend to go up as stories get longer or when they are late chapters in long series, probably because of attrition, not quality.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I agree with all of this.

Even if your story has many votes, there are multiple factors that go into the score that have nothing to do with quality, and I agree there's a certain "lottery ticket" element to where your story ends up, score-wise, which is yet another reason not to get too attached to scores. I was a beneficiary of this "lottery" once, with a story that reached its peak, at 4.92, at exactly the right moment to place in a contest, and then subsequently saw its score plummet. It's sitting at 4.48 now but I've still got that W.

I heartily agree that very high scores at Literotica don't distinguish good stories from "great literary" stories. Very high scores at Literotica, in my opinion, based on my experience as a reader, correlate with stories that generally have decent prose and plot lines and characters that fit well with certain things that readers are looking for. Scores also tend to go up as stories get longer or when they are late chapters in long series, probably because of attrition, not quality.

Let's admit it. If you submit a 30k word story and within ten minutes of publication, a few of your followers have already given it five stars, those aren't legit indicators of quality, as grateful as you may be for them.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Finish the story? We don't even know how many finished the first page ... or first paragraph.

I've said before, I look at a story to see the word count before I even begin reading and back out if it's going to be over about 6-8K words.


I have no idea what kind of coding it would take to set a timer before the page click registers. Figure out how long it takes an average person to read a page and set the timer for that duration. Much less, no click.

 

[lc69hunter]

There is no way to know how many people read the first page of a story, or maybe even just a few paragraphs, decide it sucks and just nope out and move on to a different story. I suspect that it's a much larger segment of the readership that we might think.

I will open a story, and the first thing I do is look at the tags, and then the tone of the author in the first few paragraphs. That apparently counts as a view. If I see it as totally objectionable I will go the the end and rate it as a 2.

Question for the @Actingup . At any given time, I may have twenty or so stories to read later (too long to read at the time). How does that factor into your data?

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I have no idea what kind of coding it would take to set a timer before the page click registers. Figure out how long it takes an average person to read a page and set the timer for that duration. Much less, no click.

If modders could set up timers in DooM through tics, the Web 2.0 must definitely can. It's just that Lit is a wobbly Jenga tower, so it will require some patience, or else we'd all stop existing because of a typo.

IIRC, average person reads at an average speed of 250 words per minute.

 

[alohadave]

I trust @Actingup data more than any anecdotes, but my wife passed me one comment she saw on social media last week that has an interesting viewpoint. Someone criticized writing as being "like something from Literotica in the 2000's". So elsewhere, outside our own bubble, there appears to be a perception that the writing here is better now that it was twenty years ago.

Again. I trust data more than this, but I thought it was interesting.

Things in the past were always better. Music from 20 years ago was better than the garbage they make today. TV has gone downhill since the good old days. Etc, etc, etc.

We forget all the absolute trash that came out back then.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

That apparently counts as a view.

You click, the view is registered before the page loads enough for you to read anything.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

We forget all the absolute trash that came out back then.

'My Mother, The Car'?

Which considering the propensity lately for Moms in cars, could make a Lit story with a twist.

'I took Mom out for a ride ...'

 

[Kelliezgirl]

This is obviously all made up nonsense.
I've been assured that Lit is dying and all the "beloved authors" have left, or are no longer posting.
I've also been told by Lit experts that the "pending" glitch has overwhelmed the site and no new stories are appearing.
So clearly the number of stories being posted is a lie, and any that do are obviously trash.

 

[TheLobster]

If modders could set up timers in DooM through tics, the Web 2.0 must definitely can.

You could track eye time for each paragraph and even word, since it’s pretty easy to know if an HTML element is in view (and if the browser tab is focused). These days it wouldn’t even drain the battery much, compared to what ads burn, if you did it with low enough granularity (>1 sec between checks).

 

[TheLobster]

Surreal jokes aside, I'm really interested to see an erotica that just drops a trigonometry lesson in the middle of sex.

Okay, I knew that some folks associate sex with sin, but that’s the first time I see it being linked to sine.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Okay, I knew that some folks associate sex with sin, but that’s the first time I see it being linked to sine.

The "Sin" from math, in Spanish, it's called "Seno," which is also a word for "boob." "Cos" is also "Coseno," so you can add 2 + 2 now and imagine all the immature jokes.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'd go so far as to speculate that the majority of views do not result in a complete read. People like to give their opinions, even when not wanted. Most readers not finishing, could in part, explain the low percentage who vote and/or comment.

This is certainly true. It's always been obvious to me that this is true when looking at the view:vote ratio, which for me averages somewhere around 90:1. Only a fraction of those who view, read, and only a fraction of those who read, vote.

 

[iwatchus]

Things in the past were always better. Music from 20 years ago was better than the garbage they make today. TV has gone downhill since the good old days. Etc, etc, etc.

We forget all the absolute trash that came out back then.

Except the statement was that things were notably WORSE her 20 years ago.

 

[RocketGrunt]

I'm very interested in the sharp uptick in the 95th-100th percentile. I haven't looked at the Loving Wives category at all, but looking at the changes in Toplist scores over the last few years in Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Romance, NonHuman and Novels and Novellas as well as the overall all-time Toplist shows pretty significant declines in rating from 2024 to 2025. I'd also be quite interested to see what these numbers look like in two weeks, as I don't think the sweeps did much to affect non-contest stories (which is why a 2025 Winter Holiday Contest story is #1 on the all-time toplist right now).

Not interesting at all. A 5.0 rating just means no one has downvoted it yet, which is a good proxy for it having less votes. No one gets to 100 votes without someone hitting the 4 star. Or the 2 star. That most of those are "this year" is the least surprising possible result. Stories with less votes have a tendency to have been posted recently.

The all-time toplists are currently bugged to hell. The top of the "all time" list for SciFi Fantasy is currently chapter 71 of a Warcraft fanfic that has been favorited *four* times. Not one hundred and four, literally just four. The top three stories on the seven day list all share the distinction of not having a Red-H, meaning that they have been rated less than ten times. Whatever filter is supposed to be in there for engagement levels is NOT working, and the tops of the top lists are just populated by stories that haven't earned enough interest to get a downvote.

Remember that the average ratings are driven by the downvote ratios. An upvote is a 5, but three hundred upvotes is also a five. A downvote can be cast with a four star rating, but a single person is allowed to throw two, three, or even four downvotes at a time by giving 3, 2, or 1 stars. Average rating is unsalvageable as metric for top lists, because it's so thoroughly controlled by a small number of haters. The top lists are currently occupied not by stories popular enough to get lots of upvotes, but by stories insignificant enough that no one has bothered to send them a downvote.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

This is certainly true. It's always been obvious to me that this is true when looking at the view:vote ratio, which for me averages somewhere around 90:1. Only a fraction of those who view, read, and only a fraction of those who read, vote.

It makes you wonder how much of the view bump from contests is just people clicking a title, seeing it isn't a category they like and clicking back out.

All the more complicated stuff aside, just knowing the percent of people that clicked on to page 2 would be interesting to know.