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

[alohadave]

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.

Math teachers must love that.

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

Ah, I see now.

 

[YmaOHyd]

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 Popular list on the category page is not the same as the top list page.

 

[RocketGrunt]

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.

I did not receive a view bump from joining a contest, and I do not submit to contests anymore. My experience was that my 20k word contest entry got review bombed within ten minutes of being up on the site, and while the rating eventually recovered to Red-H territory, it didn't get enough ratings to overcome the trolls until it was no longer on the front page of the new releases.

Despite being on the high traffic T/I section, it still has less views than my SF/F Pokemon parody series. Because having a rating of 2.5 for many hours while you're on the new releases page loses you a LOT of views.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

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.

Same with those flying H and W flags.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I suspect, too, that this phenomenon is more pronounced with some categories, like Romance,

Romance is notoriously easy to score in. I've seen several poorly and even some horribly written romances score extremely well (4.8ish) with dozens of glowing rapturous comments. What do these stories do? They adhere strictly to the template - two perfectly deserving people meander through a slow burn towards a happily-ever-after.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Same with those flying H and W flags.

I'm not as sold on the power of the Red H as some people are. I'm sure it helps... but I don't think it drives massive traffic.
I have two stories in EC, released 2 weeks apart. One is a Red H, the other tracks in the 4.4-4.45 range. The one without the H has significantly more views and votes.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I have no idea if my taste is normal, but I've read and scanned enough stories to know that if I finished reading and voted on every one I'd give the average story of those I've read a 3. In practice, like most readers I don't usually give less than a 4 because I don't read stories I don't like.

I think even more than that, there are many readers who might want to give a 4 but they know that even a 4 hurts the chance for a Red H and they don't want to be the one who dips the score below 4.5 for an enjoyable read, so they either give it a 5 or they just don't vote. They want to avoid this:

Reader: Liked it, 4 stars.
Writer: I lost my Hot rating, gee thanks : /

The Red H score is so horribly designed.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I'm not as sold on the power of the Red H as some people are. I'm sure it helps... but I don't think it drives massive traffic.

The only story on my catalog that gets any traffic these days is my only one hanging onto a Red H. The Red H indicates a story in the 55th percentile or higher. The readers don't know this or don't care to know. They see that Red H and think that it means cream.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The only story on my catalog that gets any traffic these days is my only one hanging onto a Red H. The Red H indicates a story in the 55th percentile or higher. The readers don't know this or don't care to know. They see that Red H and think that it means cream.

My older stuff with a Red H doesn't get much traffic either. It upticks when I release something new, so I assume there is some "I liked this, let me see what else she wrote" going on. But absent that, the numbers don't really move.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

If you submit a 30k word story and within ten minutes of publication, a few of your followers have already given it five stars,

Gee, nice problem to have. : P

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Because having a rating of 2.5 for many hours while you're on the new releases page loses you a LOT of views.

Absolutely. Been there a few times. If a story gets a good score in its first few hours or maybe couple of days it will get legs. If the score is low out of the gate the game is over. The Red H matters for views. It matters a TON!

 

[iwatchus]

I'm not as sold on the power of the Red H as some people are.

I will say as a long term reader, I didn't understand them, but I was much more likely to read an H story than a non H story. So they made a big difference in what I chose to "read".

Of course, read might mean that I started a story and closed it again when I realized it sucked, from my personal taste characteristic.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

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

I've heard a similar number and was once told that my 420 wpm is extremely quick and my brother's 600 is impossible.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Math teachers must love that.

The one I had by the time I had to learn trigonometry didn't run away from our immature jokes. He leaned onto those to teach us, and he did it with a grin. Then again, he is passionate about math and teaching, so he was always a good teacher.

I've heard a similar number and was once told that my 420 wpm is extremely quick and my brother's 600 is impossible.

My mom used to have 600. Those are very quick numbers compared to average.

 

[nice90sguy]

I read about a page of a book a minute (on average ofc). I think that's around 300.

 

[IWroteThis]

Don't knock it until you've tried it.

Wouldn't knocking one out BE trying it?

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.

The same is true with series, as scores tend to trend up as the chapter count increases, unless the writer jumps the shark (or categories). People who like the series tend to continue to read and rate, while those who don't tend to not click on new chapters.

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.

That would be great for detecting 5* ratings that are just fluffing and 4* ratings that are trying to kill the hot rating without getting caught in the sweeps. Unfortunately, it starts to fall apart after that.

The truth is that anybody who truly hates or dislikes a story is not going to read the entire thing. Even earning a 3* (blah) rating doesn't guarantee somebody would want to read the whole story. The fact that most of those people simply X out of the story without voting has deluded many into believing that those who jump to the end and express their reason for leaving must have nefarious purpose.

You try to make it sound noble, but this is just another attempt to silence unflattering opinions.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

This is only about view clicks, not voting.

But hey, if you're not going to be on a page/story for more than 2-3 minutes, maybe you shouldn't be able to vote?





(Only 8 typos on this one Awk.)

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think that the 'uptick' above the 95th percentille reflects that there is a bit of a froth of stories that have enough votes to show a rating but have only received 5s as votes to date. If you have a look at the 99th percentile results:

https://search.literotica.com/?query= &page=14&period=1 year&sort=vote

you can see a whole lot of stories that have only had around 1000 views and minimal comments. I wouldn't read too much into this bump.

Note also the downtick at the other end of the graph. It's not as obvious because the slope there is steeper, but the very lowest percentiles for recent stories are quite a bit lower than the matching percentiles for all-time. This would be consistent with the same explanation, stories with fewer votes having noise in the scores.