The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 09

[old_prof]

I looked at the earliest data for Evy's Love. At the time I was just recording votes on a legal pad, so no other data available. If I look at the first 40 entries and ignore the sweep effects I get this:

View attachment 2585053

That comes as close as I can get to the pattern you described. The score excluding the sweep effect was 3.69, and the actual score was 3.9. If it stayed that way, either of those scores would be my lowest. The problem was that I posted the story to the wrong category.

Low votes come with an emotional impact, and that can make us overestimate their prevalence.

Or some of us actually watch our votes come in with too much attention, so we know exactly what our vote spectrum is, and it does not follow the distribution you presume.

 

[NotWise]

Or some of us actually watch our votes come in with too much attention, so we know exactly what our vote spectrum is, and it does not follow the distribution you presume.

I'm not "presuming" the distribution. It's the only distribution I've seen. What does yours look like after the first 50 votes or so?

 

[ICantLeafYou]

I wasn't around when my RP partner had some free time earlier tonight, kinda bummed on both of our parts. Don't know if we'll cross paths online again this year.

Sort of want to write them a short something with our characters. I'm prodding the muses with a stick right now.

 

[Asilverfox23]

I wasn't around when my RP partner had some free time earlier tonight, kinda bummed on both of our parts. Don't know if we'll cross paths online again this year.

Sort of want to write them a short something with our characters. I'm prodding the muses with a stick right now.

I hate when that happens!

 

[Belegon]

well, my fiction writing is stalled.... but I have submitted two new poems in two days! One is about the dissolution of my fifteen year marriage. it's been a week and a year since she kicked me out. No divorce papers yet, but then she only talks to me if there is something about money or if something needs to be found that is missing. me? I've finally given up on sending texts that say "I miss you" or something like it. why send something that is just going to be ignored? But I do wonder about closure and about divorce. If she is so desperate to have me out of her life, why are we still married? I think I'll eventually have to do the paperwork unilaterally... but I sure it would be easier if we could cover some issues first.

The second is about a young lady who messaged me through my dating profile. and I think I'm allowed to call her a "Young lady" if I'm twice her age. which I almost am. but she's pursued me and I find it quite flattering, and would certainly love to be caught by her pursuit. the poem is only about the physical attraction, but that part is at least undeniable. And I don't feel guilty about lusting after someone 27 years younger when she lusted after me first!

My latest fiction WIP is sitting at about 9800 words so far and no sex scenes yet, although sex is defintely being discussed and is an important part of the story. I think this one is going to run into the novel length area. Maybe not 100K words, but I'd be surprised if I get everything in my head developed and resolved in only 40K more words, and 50K is usually what publishers mean when the first start referencing "Novel Length" works. It's going to be a novella at the very least.A lot of backstory already hinted at that will need to be addressed and a reawakened romance from my protagonists college days has only been hinted at so far and I fully intend for those two to end up together. Her husband is already switching his attachment to the changeling left in her place by the fairies.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Hot Fried Spam for breakfast.

 

[ICantLeafYou]

Hot Fried Spam for breakfast.

I had fried Tocino Spam and potatoes for dinner yesterday.

 

[ICantLeafYou]

Got things up and running, the entire scene planned out in my head and I'm starting to put words down.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I had fried Tocino Spam and potatoes for dinner yesterday.

Did you invite the women's from your city without verify ?

 

[ICantLeafYou]

I wasn't around when my RP partner had some free time earlier tonight, kinda bummed on both of our parts. Don't know if we'll cross paths online again this year.

Sort of want to write them a short something with our characters. I'm prodding the muses with a stick right now.

And that's now finished at 512 words.

 

[old_prof]

I'm not "presuming" the distribution. It's the only distribution I've seen. What does yours look like after the first 50 votes or so?

I have tracked all of mine to past 100. As I have told you before, 3 is by far my rarest vote. Most of my stories (at least through the first roughy 150 votes) have never gotten a three. For the typical story, the vast majority of votes are 5's with a few 4's and a sprinkling of 1's. The other authors I talk to who track their votes have seen very similar distributions to what I have observed. If the votes represented a natural distribution, I would expect a curve like yours.

But the reality is there are enough people (it's a small number, but still notable) who hate vote rather than giving honest opinions to disrupt the natural curve. Maybe it does work for most writers, but not for me or the people I know who are obsessive like I am. Of course, maybe I'm just the grating of a personality, which is a definite possibility, so I attract haters. Maybe they're still hanging around trying to bomb iwatchus.

The question is, was losing the bombers worth losing all my christmas presents?

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Now the warmup is beginning, with expected highs in the upper 60s for Christmas day. I think I'll put up my Christmas wreathe today.

There's fresh coffee brewing and the teapot is ready. The donuts and Christmas treats look yummy and on the counter. I do believe I see some figgy pudding there, too.

I'll be over in the corner working on my story which is proceeding apace. With the number of presents I see here, we will need to put up a second tree next year because there's not enough room under the tree we have now.

 

[Duleigh]

Or some of us actually watch our votes come in with too much attention, so we know exactly what our vote spectrum is, and it does not follow the distribution you presume.

I download the Story Stats file every night. myPublishedStories.csv is a break down of all your stats in a comma separated values format. I download them every night at 10:30 PM and put them in an excel workbook which allows me to view voting trends and analyze what the readers like and don't like. But it also gives you an insight to troll activity.

Picture this: A story 14 chapters long has been sitting on Lit since 2022 waiting patiently for someone to discover it and begin reading. Suddenly chapter 3 gets hammered by a very low vote. It gets hit day after day with low votes while the other chapters go untouched, in fact their view count doesn't change. At the same time chapter three on two other series is getting the same treatment, vote after vote driving the score down while the other chapters in the series go untouched. Weird you say? Yes, weird, but I saw it this past summer, and I have the database to prove it, and I'm sure it happened to other writers but they didn't notice because they're not tracking their story stats.

I reported this to Manu and Laurel, and not long after I reported it, that's when the issues with the Lit backoffice hit. Was this a creative troll who figured a way to hit a single story they didn't like multiple times or was it a low vote that got stuck in a loop and hit night after night? I don't know the cause but I have evidence of the results, and I have an excel database that go back years. Why? Mostly because I like to play with Excel, it's one of my favorite computer games (Word is my favorite) but it gives me some kind of an insight to what readers like because it's rare that a reader actually comments.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

The question is, was losing the bombers worth losing all my christmas presents?

I double checked and apparently someone went through all of the presents and changed the tags from @iwatchus to @old_prof so I think you're okay.

 

[old_prof]

I download the Story Stats file every night. myPublishedStories.csv is a break down of all your stats in a comma separated values format. I download them every night at 10:30 PM and put them in an excel workbook which allows me to view voting trends and analyze what the readers like and don't like. But it also gives you an insight to troll activity.

I download mine at 1PM, but yeah. Daily does not give you enough resolution to watch invidiual votes. If you get 20 votes a day, which is what I used to get on a new story, you have to check every 15 minutes or so to be pretty certain you catch any vote below 4 in isolation (or multiple 4's at once). I said I was obsessed.

I have gotten better, but my first day votes come in faster now, which means it becomes harder to be certain of vote spreads.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I download the Story Stats file every night. myPublishedStories.csv is a break down of all your stats in a comma separated values format. I download them every night at 10:30 PM and put them in an excel workbook which allows me to view voting trends and analyze what the readers like and don't like. But it also gives you an insight to troll activity.

Picture this: A story 14 chapters long has been sitting on Lit since 2022 waiting patiently for someone to discover it and begin reading. Suddenly chapter 3 gets hammered by a very low vote. It gets hit day after day with low votes while the other chapters go untouched, in fact their view count doesn't change. At the same time chapter three on two other series is getting the same treatment, vote after vote driving the score down while the other chapters in the series go untouched. Weird you say? Yes, weird, but I saw it this past summer, and I have the database to prove it, and I'm sure it happened to other writers but they didn't notice because they're not tracking their story stats.

I reported this to Manu and Laurel, and not long after I reported it, that's when the issues with the Lit backoffice hit. Was this a creative troll who figured a way to hit a single story they didn't like multiple times or was it a low vote that got stuck in a loop and hit night after night? I don't know the cause but I have evidence of the results, and I have an excel database that go back years. Why? Mostly because I like to play with Excel, it's one of my favorite computer games (Word is my favorite) but it gives me some kind of an insight to what readers like because it's rare that a reader actually comments.

I've seen this too, starting back in early 2024 and have also reported it. It's my belief that someone has figured out how to create a bot to drop votes on stories without opening them since the story itself didn't register any views half the time.

 

[NotWise]

Happy Solstice!

 

[NotWise]

I've seen this too, starting back in early 2024 and have also reported it. It's my belief that someone has figured out how to create a bot to drop votes on stories without opening them since the story itself didn't register any views half the time.

The attack on the Romance top list probably also used 3* votes. It's hard for me to say because my story that was there has over 1300 votes, and it's hard to even estimate the incoming votes.

Views are not reported as they come in. When I was paying attention, they were updating every 10 minutes. Someone else recently said it was fifteen. It's possible that one of the recent changes was to make the reporting interval longer, at least during low-traffic periods. Votes seem to be reported as they come in, so if the interval between votes is short, then there might be no change in the views between two votes.

 

[NotWise]

But the reality is there are enough people (it's a small number, but still notable) who hate vote rather than giving honest opinions to disrupt the natural curve. Maybe it does work for most writers, but not for me or the people I know who are obsessive like I am. Of course, maybe I'm just the grating of a personality, which is a definite possibility, so I attract haters. Maybe they're still hanging around trying to bomb iwatchus.

I don't see that pattern. People claim to see different distributions, but no-one has every produced their evidence.

8letters compiled votes cast in every category for a month and posted them to the forum.

This is the pattern for all the votes he recorded, along with a modified geometric distribution fit to his results.


The predicted pattern contains a small bump in 1* votes that doesn't exist in the observed votes. That bump resulted from taking any vote predicted below 1* and treating it as a 1* vote.

This is the pattern for Loving Wives, where comments led me to expect a lot of hate.


In this case the observed votes contains a small bump at 1*. Some other categories have a similar pattern, and it is most pronounced in the Romance category. From experience, there are category police in Romance who will bomb stories that aren't Romances.

These graphs are for aggregate data sets rather than for individual stories, but if there were a lot of hate votes I'd expect to see it -- especially in LW. The actual effect is pretty small.

 

[old_prof]

I don't see that pattern. People claim to see different distributions, but no-one has every produced their evidence.

8letters compiled votes cast in every category for a month and posted them to the forum.

This is the pattern for all the votes he recorded, along with a modified geometric distribution fit to his results.

View attachment 2585123
The predicted pattern contains a small bump in 1* votes that doesn't exist in the observed votes. That bump resulted from taking any vote predicted below 1* and treating it as a 1* vote.

This is the pattern for Loving Wives, where comments led me to expect a lot of hate.

View attachment 2585124
In this case the observed votes contains a small bump at 1*. Some other categories have a similar pattern, and it is most pronounced in the Romance category. From experience, there are category police in Romance who will bomb stories that aren't Romances.

These graphs are for aggregate data sets rather than for individual stories, but if there were a lot of hate votes I'd expect to see it -- especially in LW. The actual effect is pretty small.

Although I have not written down my minute by minute votes, I have shown you the vote distributions I observed. I believe others have too. As far as I can tell, you choose to ignore any evidence that contradicts your hard held belief. Including that 8letters varied notably from your model. (Nor does it reflect my experience). You like a nice person and very reasonable away from this topic. I’m just tired of having you pronounce the data I have observed(and shared with you) is fictitious or imagined

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I've seen this too, starting back in early 2024 and have also reported it. It's my belief that someone has figured out how to create a bot to drop votes on stories without opening them since the story itself didn't register any views half the time.

I've seen that, and wondered.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Shuttered in place.

I go NO where until 1/5 or so.

 

[Duleigh]

I've seen that, and wondered.

I saw that too and that's when I though there was a db issue counting a vote that wasn't cast. You can't vote without opening the story... right? It's impossible to do... right?

I hate thinking about this

 

[NuclearFairy]

Shuttered in place.

I go NO where until 1/5 or so.

I wish I could do that. Unfortunately they wouldn't allow me to get my blood pressure meds refilled last week, and they will run out before the first. :/ I'm gonna have to go out or send someone out after Christmas to get those refilled... Also I have a doctors appointment on the 29th to recheck my iron levels.

 

[NotWise]

Although I have not written down my minute by minute votes, I have shown you the vote distributions I observed. I believe others have too. As far as I can tell, you choose to ignore any evidence that contradicts your hard held belief. Including that 8letters varied notably from your model. (Nor does it reflect my experience). You like a nice person and very reasonable away from this topic. I’m just tired of having you pronounce the data I have observed(and shared with you) is fictitious or imagined

We did have that discussion, but you said just a few posts up this thread "I download mine at 1PM, but yeah. Daily does not give you enough resolution to watch invidiual votes." That's the state of most of our collected data. It isn't necessary to know every vote to understand the distribution of votes, but few people take the extra steps to work it out.

I'm not ignoring a lot of significant mismatches.

The model rarely matches observations exactly, but there are widely-understood statistical measures that describe how well models fit observations. Among my own stories there are some where the (r squared) pearson correlation is less than 98%--meaning that the model accounts for less than 98% of the observed variation. In most cases, the model accounts for at least 98% of the variations, and 99.9% is common.

Among the categories in 8letters' data with more than 50 votes, all but one has a correlation with the model that is over 99%. The exception is Erotic Coupling, where the correlation is 98%. These aren't even "best-fit" models. The distribution is estimated entirely from the percent of 5* votes. There are two categories (Letters and Transcripts and Illustrated) where there were fewer than 50 votes. I didn't look at those.

There are exceptions to the pattern. I know that stories with low vote totals may deviate. I know about punitive voting. I know about systematic attacks. I suspect that low-scoring stories may have a different pattern. I've seen all of those on my own stories. I pointed out up-thread that it's fairly common for the model to come in low on 4* votes, and high on votes below 4*.

Despite the exceptions, the geometric model appears to be a generally good model.