HOT: Should it be 4.1?

[TheIntrepidBoyager]

I know it will never change and no doubt this has been discussed before, but I was just curious what other's thoughts were on this? Do you think HOT ratings should be for scores of 4.1 instead of 4.5?

Maybe that dilutes it too much but on the other hand I feel like getting a score above a four, especially considering the broad variety of voter preferences our stories are exposed to, is significant. I've read some very hot and well done stories out there in the 3.5-4.5 range. I realize the score takes into consideration more than the pure hotness of the story, but it is the one marker we can get and no doubt has an some influence on reader's choices.

I know, a lot of you don't care about scores, that's cool. But for the others, just curious about your thoughts.

Again, I'm not advocating for any change, just tossing out a topic for discussion.

 

[Voboy]

I don't think it's a bad idea at all.

But it's been suggested here about 11,000 times, and so far? Nada. I think peoples' minds are generally fairly inflexible on the topic of ratings. There are only about 10-15 people who routinely post about them, and I have little doubt they'll be around shortly. It's an opportunity for all of us to reiterate our views again.

 

[TheLobster]

I think the threshold should be 4.2, because 4.2 is the ans.wer to everything.

 

[onehitwanda]

I think the threshold should be 4.2, because 4.2 is the ans.wer to everything.

Technically it's 1/10th of the answer to everything.

 

[TheIntrepidBoyager]

I don't think it's a bad idea at all.

But it's been suggested here about 11,000 times, and so far? Nada. I think peoples' minds are generally fairly inflexible on the topic of ratings. There are only about 10-15 people who routinely post about them, and I have little doubt they'll be around shortly. It's an opportunity for all of us to reiterate our views again.

I figured it had been discussed but I guess I underestimated how much!

 

[Duil2]

Hi, as far as I know you only get your H when you've achieved an average of 4.5 over 10 votes. To get this you need to have scored five 5* votes and five 4* votes. If we reduced it to 4.1 average over 10 votes then you'd only need to have one 5* vote which I don't think would really show it as being something a bit special. Would it not also mean then that there would be just too many stories flagged as H and it wouldn't guide the reader any more?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Do you think HOT ratings should be for scores of 4.1 instead of 4.5?

Hi @Voboy - those people, right ?

@TheIntrepidBoyager, I think you are basing this on an erroneous assumption, that people vote 3️ for an average story, 4️ for a good one, and 5️ for an exceptional one. They don’t. There is bias is toward awarding 5️s.

4.1️ is not a good score, meritorious of a red H. Even 4.5️ is not a good score. A good score in my mind starts around 4.75️.

People have done decile and centile analyses and - broadly speaking - these bear out what I say above.

 

[TheIntrepidBoyager]

Hi, as far as I know you only get your H when you've achieved an average of 4.5 over 10 votes. To get this you need to have scored five 5* votes and five 4* votes. If we reduced it to 4.1 average over 10 votes then you'd only need to have one 5* vote which I don't think would really show it as being something a bit special. Would it not also mean then that there would be just too many stories flagged as H and it wouldn't guide the reader any more?

Excellent points. Thank you.

 

[EmilyMiller]

To offer a more positive suggestion, not that it will be taken up of course. Bronze, Silver, and Gold stories.

Bronze stories are the top decile (in a category as the voting varies by category) and have at least ten votes (as per now).

Silver stories are the top 5% of stories in a category and have at least fifty votes.

Gold stories are the top centile in a category and have at least one hundred votes.

—

To clarify, a top 5% story in - say - Lesbian with 49 votes would still be bronze, not silver.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Most people who like a story will give it a 5. It's part of the psychology around scoring with less precision (5-scale is less precise than 10-scale) more generally, but also because Lit made the H appear at a 4.5, so the reader is then subconsciouslly cued that anything less than a 5 means you didn't actually like it all THAT much.

 

[anthrodisiac]

To offer a more positive suggestion, not that it will be taken up of course. Bronze, Silver, and Gold stories.

Bronze stories are the top decile (in a category as the voting varies by category) and have at least ten votes (as per now).

Silver stories are the top 5% of stories in a category and have at least fifty votes.

Gold stories are the top centile in a category and have at least one hundred votes.

I'm weary of anything that takes number of ratings into account, with the exception of top lists or contests. For those of us who are thankful to even get 30 ratings, it's a massive disadvantage and skews things toward the most popular people, or the people who know how to pander to get votes, rather than people who are writing for themselves, who have enough to get the H, but would probably never see a silver or gold star even if they had a perfect score.

Which, by the way, is most writers outside of a handful of categories. Not all of us are so lucky to have hundreds of followers, hundreds of thousands of views, and anything other than moderate levels of engagement. It also incentivizes perfect scores, because if you like a story, and it has a gold star, you wouldn't want to give it anything less than perfect and bump it down to silver because it slipped out of that top 1%. A story with 100000 ratings that is 1.01% is then indistinguishable from a story with 50 votes that's at 5%.

The H system is a lot more egalitarian, which is a godsend to us niche writers, who'd otherwise be trapped at nothing more than a bronze, while the popular kids get all the silvers and golds.

 

[SimonDoom]

I know it will never change and no doubt this has been discussed before, but I was just curious what other's thoughts were on this? Do you think HOT ratings should be for scores of 4.1 instead of 4.5?

Maybe that dilutes it too much but on the other hand I feel like getting a score above a four, especially considering the broad variety of voter preferences our stories are exposed to, is significant. I've read some very hot and well done stories out there in the 3.5-4.5 range. I realize the score takes into consideration more than the pure hotness of the story, but it is the one marker we can get and no doubt has an some influence on reader's choices.

I know, a lot of you don't care about scores, that's cool. But for the others, just curious about your thoughts.

Again, I'm not advocating for any change, just tossing out a topic for discussion.

I don't think it makes any sense at all. It's been statistically demonstrated that in most categories, a 4.5 is about a median score. That's 50 percentile. It's no better than average. If you lowered it to 4.1, then you would be giving a special award to the top 70% or more stories. That's diluting things so much that it's worthless.

I've long advocated that the system should be converted to a per-category percentile system, where, say, the top 25% in each category get a red H. This is unlikely to happen because it means red Hs would be taken away from a lot of authors and they would be upset about it. But, as I've long said, scoring systems exist for readers, not for authors.

 

[SmilingLez]

IMO, this would be a better way to go

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/what-if-authors-could-be-hot.1651271/

 

[BeechLeaf]

I maintain there's a big difference between average opinion and average vote. I still treat the button texts literally: 2 if I don't like it (very common), 4 if I like it, and so on. If I voted on every story I clicked into, I'd give lots of 2's. But I never vote unless I read to the end, and of course by then it pretty much has to rate 4 or 5 to get me there. So when I vote 4, for me that's better than average.

If lots of people vote like this, the average vote is at a much higher point than those voters' opinion of the average story. So the number at the end has a mean of somewhere near 4.5, but that doesn't mean a 4.5 is merely an average-quality story.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I'm weary of anything that takes number of ratings into account, with the exception of top lists or contests. For those of us who are thankful to even get 30 ratings, it's a massive disadvantage and skews things toward the most popular people, or the people who know how to pander to get votes, rather than people who are writing for themselves, who have enough to get the H, but would probably never see a silver or gold star even if they had a perfect score.

Which, by the way, is most writers outside of a handful of categories. Not all of us are so lucky to have hundreds of followers, hundreds of thousands of views, and anything other than moderate levels of engagement. It also incentivizes perfect scores, because if you like a story, and it has a gold star, you wouldn't want to give it anything less than perfect and bump it down to silver because it slipped out of that top 1%. A story with 100000 ratings that is 1.01% is then indistinguishable from a story with 50 votes that's at 5%.

The H system is a lot more egalitarian, which is a godsend to us niche writers, who'd otherwise be trapped at nothing more than a bronze, while the popular kids get all the silvers and golds.

I’m mostly a niche writer too. Out of 140 stories, I have precisely two with over 50,000 views. And only one if you ignore me tweaking noses in Loving Wives with a story about a lesbian marriage.

Most of the chapters of my novel have less than 1,300 views.

I didn’t really see the above as being prejudicial, but the thresholds for views could also vary by category.

 

[SimonDoom]

If lots of people vote like this, the average vote is at a much higher point than those voters' opinion of the average story. So the number at the end has a mean of somewhere near 4.5, but that doesn't mean a 4.5 is merely an average-quality story.

I don't understand this. Your analysis contradicts your conclusion.

Analysis: Many people think if 4 as a "good" score, but there is so much withholding of scores under 5 that the result is that 5 is the most commonly given score, followed by 4. Few people give lower scores.

Conclusion: Numerical scores OVERSTATE what people really think of stories. 4.5 "looks" good, but it's no better than average. People aren't really voting in line with what they actually think of stories. Scores are way too high.

Awarding a red H to a 4.5 story means the site is making it look like these stories are special when in fact they're just average. That's what the numbers show.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I’m mostly a niche writer too. Out of 140 stories, I have precisely two with over 50,000 views. And only one if you ignore me tweaking noses in Loving Wives with a story about a lesbian marriage.

Most of the chapters of my novel have less than 1,300 views.

I didn’t really see the above as being prejudicial, but the thresholds for views could also vary by category.

Could you perhaps explain what you're talking about when you say you're a "niche" writer? You write across a fairly wide swath of categories and subjects, which to me is the opposite of niche. I'm meaning it as someone who writes almost exclusively for a specific sub-genre, which means they're going to struggle to get meaningful engagement unless their niche is something incredibly popular or has very enthusiastic fans.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I think it's correct as is.
With my simple math brain, (@EmilyMiller, no laughing now) I look at the 5-star scale thusly. Each 0.5 is a tenth of 5.
So, a 4.5 rating would be 9 tenths or 90, which in my school days was an A.
Yes, it's very juvenile, but a red H feels to me like I got an A on my story.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Could you perhaps explain what you're talking about when you say you're a "niche" writer? You write across a fairly wide swath of categories and subjects, which to me is the opposite of niche. I'm meaning it as someone who writes almost exclusively for a specific sub-genre, which means they're going to struggle to get meaningful engagement unless their niche is something incredibly popular or has very enthusiastic fans.

I’m a niches writer .

I don’t really frequent the honeypot categories - except to do experiments - I have more stories in SciFi & Fantasy than any other category, and you’re lucky to get 2k views there.

 

[dirk2024]

I'm weary of anything that takes number of ratings into account, with the exception of top lists or contests. For those of us who are thankful to even get 30 ratings, it's a massive disadvantage and skews things toward the most popular people, or the people who know how to pander to get votes, rather than people who are writing for themselves, who have enough to get the H, but would probably never see a silver or gold star even if they had a perfect score.

I agree as that wouldn't work for the less popular genre's, like SciFi.

Which, by the way, is most writers outside of a handful of categories. Not all of us are so lucky to have hundreds of followers, hundreds of thousands of views, and anything other than moderate levels of engagement. It also incentivizes perfect scores, because if you like a story, and it has a gold star, you wouldn't want to give it anything less than perfect and bump it down to silver because it slipped out of that top 1%. A story with 100000 ratings that is 1.01% is then indistinguishable from a story with 50 votes that's at 5%.

The H system is a lot more egalitarian, which is a godsend to us niche writers, who'd otherwise be trapped at nothing more than a bronze, while the popular kids get all the silvers and golds.

Yes, it's unlikey that newer writers would build an expansive readership under a changed system as flawed as it may be. And without those readers, would not hit the number of votes needed to flip the switch from silver to gold.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I know it will never change and no doubt this has been discussed before, but I was just curious what other's thoughts were on this? Do you think HOT ratings should be for scores of 4.1 instead of 4.5?

At 4.5 45% of stories get a Red H. You want that amount to go up? What is this, kindergarten? You want the Red H to be a participation ribbon?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

If you lowered it to 4.1, then you would be giving a special award to the top 70% or more stories. That's diluting things so much that it's worthless.

Actually I think it's closer to 85% if I'm not mistaken.

 

[SmilingLez]

I think it's correct as is.
With my simple math brain, (@EmilyMiller, no laughing now) I look at the 5-star scale thusly. Each 0.5 is a tenth of 5.
So, a 4.5 rating would be 9 tenths or 90, which in my school days was an A.
Yes, it's very juvenile, but a red H feels to me like I got an A on my story.

Your A would be based on the theme of your story (strokers do better than non-strokers when it comes to ratings) since the average reader doesn't give a damn about structure, grammar etc. So the grade is subjective, and not like getting an A on a math test

 

[EmilyMiller]

I’m a niches writer .

I don’t really frequent the honeypot categories - except to do experiments - I have more stories in SciFi & Fantasy than any other category, and you’re lucky to get 2k views there.

I just checked and I have 31 stories with less than 5,000 views.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I’m a niches writer .

I don’t really frequent the honeypot categories - except to do experiments - I have more stories in SciFi & Fantasy than any other category, and you’re lucky to get 2k views there.

Gotcha. I'd probably consider that more genre writing than niche writing, but that's just me, who is very clearly in their lane and writes in a specific subgenre, with the occasional ventures out of it. You define yourself however you want, the definition isn't super strict, and far be it from me to tell anyone how to identify themselves. You do you, my friend *

*I have no idea how to make this not sound like it might be sarcastic, passive aggressive, or anything like that. It's not, promise. We just have different definitions of nichedom, and that's perfectly fine.

Anyway, a system like what you propose greatly benefit established writers with large followings and high engagement, and makes it that much more difficult for newer writers and writers who write very specific subgenres. Readers almost certainly wouldn't really consider the nuance of, "Oh, well this person is new, so obviously they only have a bronze star because they haven't yet built up a large following, but if they had a larger following, they'd obviously be gold, so I should click on this!" They'll see, "Oh, just bronze? Probably isn't that good. I'll go with silver or gold, since those are obviously the best ones." The medal system has a lot of baggage and existing associations that basically punish those of us who are happy with what little engagement we get.