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Every story I post gets 1 star’d

ElectricBlue said:
People keep saying this, but how do you account for the spread of scores an author gets?

I've got 137 chapters/stories posted, with scores ranging from 4.94/16 down to 3.24/51.

The range of scores in between tells me that readers do use a fair chunk of the scale (in my case, between 3s - 5s). The range of scores doesn't match to a binary thumbs up, thumbs down. My catalogue and the scores tell me that readers do use the nuance of a 1 - 5 scoring system - even if we writers don't know what their criteria is, when a reader drops a score on a story.

I get the feeling that many writers only think in terms of the binary, a 1 or a 5, and never stop to wonder, how do you get a 4.65/185? Obviously, it's a mix of scores. It certainly tells me something, which stories score higher than others - it pretty much lines up with my own view, when I think, that's a pretty good story.

Of course there are outliers when a response surprises me, but equally, there are stories which I know are good, where the response from readers is not so good.
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I'm almost out of the door to teach, so sorry for an incomplete reply - I would argue your story with a 3.24 rating with 51 votes could just as easily be a majority of those votes being binary (5 or 1 - remembering it doesn't take many 1s to drive an average down) with a smattering of other scores. Or, it could be a total range: the maths could work either way.
 
ElectricBlue said:
how do you get a 4.65/185?
Click to expand...
By getting 16 1-stars and 169 (nice) 5-stars, for example. I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by citing averages over a large number of samples; they could very well be achieved in a binary like/dislike system (which, in this example, would result in 91% favorable rating).
 
ElectricBlue said:
People keep saying this, but how do you account for the spread of scores an author gets?

I've got 137 chapters/stories posted, with scores ranging from 4.94/16 down to 3.24/51.

The range of scores in between tells me that readers do use a fair chunk of the scale (in my case, between 3s - 5s). The range of scores doesn't match to a binary thumbs up, thumbs down. My catalogue and the scores tell me that readers do use the nuance of a 1 - 5 scoring system - even if we writers don't know what their criteria is, when a reader drops a score on a story.

I get the feeling that many writers only think in terms of the binary, a 1 or a 5, and never stop to wonder, how do you get a 4.65/185? Obviously, it's a mix of scores. It certainly tells me something, which stories score higher than others - it pretty much lines up with my own view, when I think, that's a pretty good story.
Click to expand...
Because I am a nerd, I wrote a simulator.

Code: 
Given a probability skew of votes based on the following:

SKEW = [1,1,1,1,2,2,3,4,4,5,5]

namely, that a 1 is twice as likely as a 2, 4 or 5, and a 3 is the rarest response, I'd expect a probability distribution of the following:

target score of 4.75 from 1000 votes - 1000 runs
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 [    *] : min   26, mean   38, max   48
 [   **] : min    7, mean   19, max   32
 [  ***] : min    2, mean    9, max   20
 [ ****] : min    7, mean   19, max   37
 [*****] : min  897, mean  913, max  924

My methodology is hardly rigorous, but it does tally pretty closely with the changes i see in my scores as the weeks go on.

I am now pretty certain that voting is bimodal. One star reviews are used almost exclusively by readers to indicate all forms of dislike, though the rare two will be used. Fours and Fives are used to indicate like. Even with fours and fives weighted evenly, the asymptotic nature of the scoring system means that fives HAVE to be preferred for scores to be as high as they are.

And the downward corrections are too quick to be as a result of twos and threes. The mathematics is brutally clear on that.
 
One thing all of us would like to think is true, but isn’t: other people acting in good faith.

Outside of this forum, the art of acting in good faith has taken an absolute battering from a small, vocal minority where the large majority comply happily.

I don’t think you can system engineer out bad faith people. Therefore you can only make sure the system is as fair as possible to those who do act in good faith. Which is the majority.

I think there is some discussion to be had about what an “H” is - but I note at 4.73, my only story to date would not be an “H” if it was lowered to that suggested earlier!
 
HordHolm said:
I'm almost out of the door to teach, so sorry for an incomplete reply - I would argue your story with a 3.24 rating with 51 votes could just as easily be a majority of those votes being binary (5 or 1 - remembering it doesn't take many 1s to drive an average down) with a smattering of other scores. Or, it could be a total range: the maths could work either way.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but I know it's not one of my better stories, so a bunch of 3s and 4s would be appropriate. The trick here is to have an idea of your own story quality - if you're realistic about it, I reckon the punters are pretty good judges.
 
TheLobster said:
By getting 16 1-stars and 169 (nice) 5-stars, for example. I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by citing averages over a large number of samples; they could very well be achieved in a binary like/dislike system (which, in this example, would result in 91% favorable rating).
Click to expand...
I don't believe the 1 or 5 paradigm for a second. That's an authors' conceit. I reckon readers, when faced with a 1 2 3 4 5 scale, vote the way anyone would, faced with such a scale. It's no different to your typical survey, "On a scale of 1 to 10 (in our case 1 to 5), rank your reaction."

Authors have given themselves the bugaboo of one bombs, and how dare anyone give me a 3 = average, right in the middle of the bell curve. I also think that most people, if they don't like a story half way through, they're not going to jump to the end and give you a 1. They've got better things to do, than be petty. I give readers the benefit of the doubt, to act like an adult on an adult web site. There are obviously exceptions, but given the rarity of people even bothering to vote, I reckon the malevolent are down in the noise.
 
onehitwanda said:
Because I am a nerd, I wrote a simulator.

Code: 
Given a probability skew of votes based on the following:

SKEW = [1,1,1,1,2,2,3,4,4,5,5]

namely, that a 1 is twice as likely as a 2, 4 or 5, and a 3 is the rarest response, I'd expect a probability distribution of the following:

target score of 4.75 from 1000 votes - 1000 runs
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 [    *] : min   26, mean   38, max   48
 [   **] : min    7, mean   19, max   32
 [  ***] : min    2, mean    9, max   20
 [ ****] : min    7, mean   19, max   37
 [*****] : min  897, mean  913, max  924

My methodology is hardly rigorous, but it does tally pretty closely with the changes i see in my scores as the weeks go on.

I am now pretty certain that voting is bimodal. One star reviews are used almost exclusively by readers to indicate all forms of dislike, though the rare two will be used. Fours and Fives are used to indicate like. Even with fours and fives weighted evenly, the asymptotic nature of the scoring system means that fives HAVE to be preferred for scores to be as high as they are.

And the downward corrections are too quick to be as a result of twos and threes. The mathematics is brutally clear on that.
Click to expand...
See, this is the expectation, my score experience doesn't match it.

The scores don't drop quickly, they drop over a period of multiple votes in a day here and there.

For example, I have a story of 4.71 on 257 votes. Watching the votes come in recently (in the past two months on 7 votes) and the story has dropped from a 4.77 to 4.71. Seeing the score in real time the first two votes were 4s, which was in line with all previous voting (From what I could see, the story had basically all 4s and 5s. If there were 1s or 2s I never saw the large drop I would expect from such, particularly early on.) The next five votes were all 3s.

Now, I'm not sad about this score. It's a cuckold story, that it is even still in the 4s has me pretty damn thrilled. I wrote it expecting a sub-4 score. I'm actually quite thrilled with this score. But it represents the voting on my stories recently. Namely in the past two-ish months.

I'm not getting votes of 1 except very rarely. Everyone keeps mentioning a J curve, which would indicate a rise at 1 and 4/5. My rise is at 3 then drops off to basically nothing on the 2-3 side.

And I'm one of the people who think a vote of 1 is a legitimate vote even if the person only reads the first line. They are allowed to judge my writing on that story on whatever criteria they want to.

I'm just saying the voting pattern on my stories seems to go against the norm.

I feel like most of the voting conspiracies would go away if authors could see the breakdown of the stars awarded. The speculation makes people lean toward 1s being the only vote to do significant damage to a story. These 3s have been slowly dropping my score and if the pattern holds at say 3 votes of 3 stars per month with no other votes coming in, the score will drop to a 4.49 by the end of the year.

It would honestly be less suspicious for someone to drop a handful of 1s over the course of a year. Particularly on a story with polarizing subject matter where I *expected* a low score and wouldn't have thought twice about seeing 1s come in.

The only stories that haven't fallen under this pattern are my essays, poetry, and audio, which remain having only 5 and 4 star votes, seemingly.

Like I said earlier in the thread, I'm largely amused by this. I've apparently gotten under the skin of some people or person and I don't know why or how. Nor do I care. It's their damage and character on display, not mine. From my perspective, my stories still score a majority of 5s and 4s. I came to this site *hoping* to land around a 3, which I thought should fall just above average. Instead I'm falling to the actual site average with horribly inflated scores and I'm fine with that.

Speaking frankly, nothing I've posted here is actually worthy of anything over a 3.5. There are some authors here deserving of 4.5 or higher on their writing, but they are in the minority. Most of us are 3.5 at our best, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The majority of writers on the site are realistically a 2 or under. For every story I finish, there are about twenty I never make it past the first paragraph for. For every story I really like, there are about five that I think are decent.
 
TheLobster said:
There’s more to the score distribution than just the average. The expected value for a score is definitely inflated, but it’s the shape of the distribution that’s the problem.

You’d think it should be somewhat symmetrical, concentrating around three, but the reality is closer to an uneven bimodal. There is a huge peak around four and five, a smaller peak at one, and practically nothing in between. This is completely contrary to the intention behind a five-point scale, making it effectively into a scuffed binary.
Click to expand...

That's just how people vote. You have to remember that the voters by and large aren't schooled critics. Very very very few readers understand anything about prose or literature (Stacnash is one of the few who does btw). What they do know is their own fantasies and what gets them off. Either than or they vote socially. Such a voting distribution is to be expected.

The problem is the writers. They seem to expect that the scores should have a standard curve and that they should be on that leading edge of the curve to affirm that they are a good writer. We're asking people with little to no expertise on literature that have the mouse in one hand and their privates in the other to tell us that we're good writers, dammit! The voting system is far from perfect and a perfect system likely does not exist, but the writers' expectations are a far bigger problem (for the writers) than any voting system that one can come up with.
 
It would be nice to have a critics score. Or maybe just a writers score. So if you publish x amount of stories, your rating of other stories is a separate average, kind of like what we'd see on Rotten Tomatoes. Abusive critics can be removed from the program so their score counts as a regular vote.
 
Erozetta said:
See, this is the expectation, my score experience doesn't match it.

The scores don't drop quickly, they drop over a period of multiple votes in a day here and there.

For example, I have a story of 4.71 on 257 votes. Watching the votes come in recently (in the past two months on 7 votes) and the story has dropped from a 4.77 to 4.71. Seeing the score in real time the first two votes were 4s, which was in line with all previous voting (From what I could see, the story had basically all 4s and 5s. If there were 1s or 2s I never saw the large drop I would expect from such, particularly early on.) The next five votes were all 3s.

Now, I'm not sad about this score. It's a cuckold story, that it is even still in the 4s has me pretty damn thrilled. I wrote it expecting a sub-4 score. I'm actually quite thrilled with this score. But it represents the voting on my stories recently. Namely in the past two-ish months.

I'm not getting votes of 1 except very rarely. Everyone keeps mentioning a J curve, which would indicate a rise at 1 and 4/5. My rise is at 3 then drops off to basically nothing on the 2-3 side.
Click to expand...
And this right here is a great example of how - without the actual data - we're all just constructing hypotheses. It's entirely possible that the votes on my stories are bimodal, while yours follow a different distribution.

I feel like most of the voting conspiracies would go away if authors could see the breakdown of the stars awarded.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and it really wouldn't be a hard change to make on the front-end. Sigh.
 
BlueZen said:
It would be nice to have a critics score. Or maybe just a writers score. So if you publish x amount of stories, your rating of other stories is a separate average, kind of like what we'd see on Rotten Tomatoes. Abusive critics can be removed from the program so their score counts as a regular vote.
Click to expand...
But writers are just readers with an inflated ego, and critics are just failed writers.

👀
 
onehitwanda said:
It's a somewhat useful tool for finding authors I might potentially want to spend some time on, but that's about it. Simplistically, a ratio at least removes the time component of scoring, where people who've been around longer will by default have more thumbs up / recommendations etc.

But yes, it's a vexing system. A web / recommendation network would probably work better - i.e. if someone sees I like your works, and they try one of your works and like it, they might try works of other authors that I like.

But that doesn't help new authors get discovered. :/ which is I think one of the most important parts of the rating system.
Click to expand...
Perhaps it works in some instances...
My experience is it is of no value...
Early on I did use the score, initially at least. I quickly found that the score means nothing....
The number of times I opened a high scoring story, only to find it sucked... So it didn't take me long to figure out.... You cannot rely on the score....
I'm not sure if it is because the scoring systems is so easily manipulated, or if my tastes in literature are so divergent from the norm...
Either way, I learned to ignore the score...
I choose stories to read by their descriptions. I open and read a page, sometimes not even a page...
Most of us are intelligent enough to know if it's any good by then...
If it's good, I read on, if not I back out. I very rarely offer a score...
In my mind, the scoring system is a complete waste of time and energy...
Although, without it to moan about, this forum probably wouldn't exist...

Of course, I am not suggesting it would fix anything, but it sure as hell would stop a lot of whining...
Just my thoughts.

Cagivagurl
 
Writer61 said:
It is not a guarantee of quality, but neither is a score <4.
Click to expand...
Exactly my point...
The score is not a reliable indicator.
which is why I ignore it...
By ignoring the score, I also take pressure off myself...
If my story scores badly... I can shrug it off...
The score creates more problems than it solves....

In my opinion of course...

Cagivagurl
 
ElectricBlue said:
I don't believe the 1 or 5 paradigm for a second. That's an authors' conceit. I reckon readers, when faced with a 1 2 3 4 5 scale, vote the way anyone would, faced with such a scale. It's no different to your typical survey, "On a scale of 1 to 10 (in our case 1 to 5), rank your reaction."
Click to expand...
Every time voting comes up, people say they either vote 5 or nothing. They vote 5 if something is really good, or they really liked it, or to support an author. People vote 1 as a penalty for bad writing, or bad story, or they just don't like someone.

Unless a story affects them in some way, good or bad, the vast majority do not vote. We know this by the views:votes ratio.
 
To any newcomers out there: be cautious about using Lit as a source of self-validation. The platform is simply too volatile to lean on in that way.

I’d also like to see a breakdown of the ratings, but given the site’s track record with improvements, let’s not be surprised if a few unexpected bonus complications features appear elsewhere.

onehitwanda said:
But writers are just readers with an inflated ego, and critics are just failed writers.
Click to expand...
Well. That escalated quickly into an identity check… Who am I? What am I?
 
SugarStorm said:
Well. That escalated quickly into an identity check… Who am I? What am I?
Click to expand...
I think you're secretly one of the Scandinavian Doorknob Maiming League - you and your polo-necked brethren and sistren sit at minimalist, ergonomic workstations in stylish, off-white lighting, designing down to excruciating, atomic detail the exact shape necessary for a doorknob to reliably hook my jeans any time I walk by. At night, you all drive your Saabs to the local Sami delicatessen where you toast your day's maimings while ice-blonde Sybils dance on a manufactured stone stage under the reproduced intense pink hue of the high-altitude Aurora.

How'd I do?
 
alohadave said:
Every time voting comes up, people say they either vote 5 or nothing. They vote 5 if something is really good, or they really liked it, or to support an author. People vote 1 as a penalty for bad writing, or bad story, or they just don't like someone.

Unless a story affects them in some way, good or bad, the vast majority do not vote. We know this by the views:votes ratio.
Click to expand...

There are also a lot of readers who like stories and don't vote. I get people tell me in chat that they love my writing. They've read 1 or 2 or 3 titles. But my votes still don't move, like for days or even weeks, no one has voted.
 
onehitwanda said:
How'd I do?
Click to expand...
To be honest, I feel slightly offended.

We don’t do door knobs here, we do door levers. What are we, savages? They are precision instruments, angled just so, designed to catch you exactly once when you least expect it. Consider it a lesson in mindfulness.

And naturally, not everyone has a Saab; some commute by moose. Other than that, yes, disturbingly accurate.
 
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