Who makes the 1 votes?

Why is there so much game playing with votes?

All my stories recently have taken big jumps in the average and cuts in the number of votes after they are off the new stories or recently popular lists.

Is it other authors trying to knock down someone else’s rating? I suspect it may be in a couple of cases, but I’m far from certain.

In any case the question I ask myself is: Why submit myself to such horseshit?

I am thinking about closing the voting on future submissions. Not sure whether I want to do so yet. But I find myself paying too much attention to the vote totals.

For myself. I give a story a five, if I like it. I don't vote otherwise. I do not consider myself a literary critic, only someone who enjoys a good story.

Thanks for the chance to rant.

Readers and/or other authors. Messing with votes has happened since the get-go.

As for myself, I've had my voting off for years except for current contests. I've been much happier since I don't pay attention to the voting game anymore.

You have to weigh how much it bothers you against how it limits your exposure to new readers, because turning off voting undoubtedly does that.

Those new readers will offset the down-voters in time, because fans are more likely to vote than the average reader, and they tend to vote 5.

Neonurotic said:

As for myself, I've had my voting off for years except for current contests.

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Pussy...

StrangeLife said:

Pussy...

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Yes, I'll have some please.

I've turned off voting and comments. Voting, because I really don't care about the vote and comments, because I really don't care what trolls have to say.

Pussy? I'll have some too please.

I suspect it's because some sick blaggard just wants to cause difficulties and or chaos, rather than giving a genuine assessment.

I wrote one story in the loving Wives category, and they replied with unvarnished hatred. That was my first story and the only story in the 3.00 rating area. Then my other stories started to bleed.


-From time to time I'll see massive leaps forward and then dramatic collapses.


-Sometimes I submit stories under my old profile to escape the trolls.

Some people just want to watch the world burn...

...or, possibly some readers just really, really disliked that particular story. It's bound to happen sooner or later.

Borntolust said:

Why is there so much game playing with votes?
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For myself. I give a story a five, if I like it. I don't vote otherwise. I do not consider myself a literary critic, only someone who enjoys a good story.

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(Did I hear a calls for a pussy? )

Hey there! Welcome to this board. There is a bit of teasing here and we muck around in the threads, but you just ignore that. You can also get good answers to serious questions.


The way I live with game playing voting is to play a game back. Like, for a long time I would see my stories get 1s and 5s - hardly anything in between. Well, that dragged the scores down but I figured it meant I hit a spot. If people either loved or hated it but never thought it was mediocre, perhaps it meant I was doing something right. And if anyone was trolling it, I felt a bit flattered cuz I was a newbie and it was good to get any attention.

There is universal trolling, and I believe there was a really big clean of the votes recently in the Nude Day contest because of this, so there is action on the site's part to try to prevent votes that are just aimed at rigging the system.

If you only vote 5s that may not help writers, who are looking to get a sense of how their story is going down with a Lit audience. Some people do come on here with a story just hoping it will get adulatory scores, that makes us feel good when people like our story, and that's fine. Sometimes, though, we come on with a story we want to try out. The marks can be helpful there, suggesting it needs a bit of work. Even more helpful are comments to say what it was meant you didn't award a 5, or even a 4.

I do enjoy the thrill of posting a new story where I've put some thought into what might work, and watching how the voting goes. Even if the story doesn't hit Hot, I can usually figure if the work I did on it was worth it, watching how it compares to earlier stories I wrote.

Recently I started reposting chapters in a series I have after a long enforced break. They didn't do as well as earlier chapters. Partly I think I lost my core fanbase. But partly I thought too that I had got out of the style I used to write in, so I am trying to get that back. The lower scores helped me think that through, although admittedly it was a bit tough without any comments on the chapters.

Good luck with your future writing! whether you decide to keep with the voting or not.

I forgot to add, that we do get distracted by the red Hot H. Don't forget that 3 and 4 are also votes that say you wrote a good story, just one which wasn't 'one of the best' in that reader's opinion. We can't all always be writing the best stories ever EVAH!

NaokoSmith said:

I forgot to add, that we do get distracted by the red Hot H. Don't forget that 3 and 4 are also votes that say you wrote a good story, just one which wasn't 'one of the best' in that reader's opinion. We can't all always be writing the best stories ever EVAH!

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And don't forget that some newbies can and do think that the rating of 1 to 5 means that a 3 is the norm for an average story that isn't particularly good or bad. Unless they work it out for themselves they can happily vote 3 or 4 all day long, thinking they are praising the author.

oggbashan said:

And don't forget that some newbies can and do think that the rating of 1 to 5 means that a 3 is the norm for an average story that isn't particularly good or bad. Unless they work it out for themselves they can happily vote 3 or 4 all day long, thinking they are praising the author.

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And theyre correct. FIVES should be rare at LIT. I throw away half the books I buy.

NaokoSmith said:

The way I live with game playing voting is to play a game back. Like, for a long time I would see my stories get 1s and 5s - hardly anything in between.

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You touch on a good point. Since 1 is lowest and 5 is highest they both ought to be relatively rare. 1 should only be given to a story with absolutely no redeeming qualities - bad prose, poor spelling, no plot, bad characters and so on - while 5 ought to be reserved for the the sublime where the technical and artistic come together in a perfect synergy. Yet it is my impression that many voters use the 5-step scale as binary and only use 1 or 5, as in....

"I don't like" - 1
"I like" - 5

Probably out of some instinctive (and correct) sense that their votes count for most in the overall rating if they do it that way. And people want to matter... they want to have an impact... they don't want to be ignored. If they don't like a story, they want the writer, they want society, THEY WANT THE WORLD (muhahaha) to know - so they give it 1 to ensure highest impact.

Obviously, there are some people that vote a particular way for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of a story. They may be propping up or punishing a particular author, sometimes because they like or dislike them personally, others because they are trying to elevate the work of others. Then there are the votes that penalize just to penalize, rampant in the LW category for reasons other than the story.

That brings us to the "real" voters. For me, I tend to keep in mind that this is an amateur site. If a story is well written and thought out and is mostly free of grammatical errors, it will end up with a 4 or 5 from me. I won't ding someone for missing a couple of editing things in a story that runs several pages. We all have those errors. If something has a lot of good elements, but is too rough and seems like a decent edit would have cleaned it up, I might give it a three. I don't know if I've ever given a two. I rarely give ones either, if at all. I think that even with a cursory screening, really bad stuff doesn't make it to the site, so perhaps the ones and twos have been eliminated at the get go.

There are probably others like me here too, but I realize there are those that look at stories as if they were advanced creative writing instructors in a university. It will be tough to please those folks with much of anything you write.

Swilly said:

Obviously, there are some people that vote a particular way for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of a story.

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Hmm. I have to agree with Swilly.

I enjoy reading. I also, sometimes, write reviews on what I read in amazon. I didn't quite pay a lot of attention to the reviewing ranks until I found that I could use the rank number to jump straight into the forums.

What .... a horrible ... reading experience.

When I read the mentality, contention, arguments, lack of respect and general ornery disposition of most reviewers, I lost a bit of my naivety.

Reviewers come from all walks of life, religions, cultures and backgrounds. In addition they(we) come with varying degrees of intelligence, insanities, preconceptions, disorders and ambitions.

Contend yourself with the few reviews and star votes that truly wish to provide an honest expression of their thoughts and feelings for your work. Endure the rest with as much strength and grace as you can.

I never usually give anyone less than five stars, if i don't like a story i usually just don't vote. when i'm voting on IMDB however my vote doesn't always reflect what i think, it reflect what the vote currently is. If I really don't like a film and it has a high vote I'll give it a 1 instead of a 4 out 10, similarly if i think its better than the vote reflects I give it a 10 even though i might think its worth an 8. I wonder if readers do that too?

I must admit with my own stories I want them to consistently score over 4.50 so they get the little red H. I'm often disappointed, and really there's no room in that mindset for anyone voting less than 4 -very silly way to think really.

karaline said:

I never usually give anyone less than five stars, if i don't like a story i usually just don't vote.
<...>
I must admit with my own stories I want them to consistently score over 4.50 so they get the little red H. I'm often disappointed, and really there's no room in that mindset for anyone voting less than 4

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Ditto, except that I *very* rarely vote 2 if I think it really really sucks, or 4 with a constructive comment on what I considered its less-than-5-worthy flaw(s), mostly lousy precepts. Like, "For a quite competent writer, you sure picked a dumb idea to work on." And I get a few of those comments myself.

And yes, more of my entries deserve the red H. What is WRONG with readers!? I pour my fucking SOUL into a tale and I get measly 4.05!? [/me reaches for bottle]

What is a passing grade? 70%? A score of 3.5 is 70%. So what is the problem?

I don't think people understand scores.

TxRad said:

What is a passing grade? 70%? A score of 3.5 is 70%. So what is the problem?

I don't think people understand scores.

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I know, I know, I'm ridiculous

TxRad said:

What is a passing grade? 70%? A score of 3.5 is 70%. So what is the problem?

I don't think people understand scores.

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It's an emotional issue, not rational. Red H's mean the author it HOT! Don't we want HOT lovers, HOT orgasms, HOT whatever? Passing means OK. Do we want our lover(s) to say, "Oh, you were OK (yawn) we'll have to do it again sometime (yawn)" ?? Jump from Human Sexual Inadequacy to Authorial Sexual Inadequacy -- well, some authors are admittedly human, but... whatever.

Anyway, scores below 4.5 and especially below 4.0 seem to tell us that we are INADEQUATE! Worse than the heartbreak of psoriasis, even. So we go apeshit, pulling out the authorial equivalents of penis pumps and breast stretchers. These don't work, either. Oh, the humanity...

Regardless of the labeling of the scoring system, stories that don't receive an H suffer lower readership than they would if they had one. The effect is even stronger on the first day. An early H can mean dramatically more readership on the new stories lists.

No matter what significance you attach to the score, that H has an impact, and it's most often plainly visible in your numbers, leading to the potential for anxiety.

RejectReality said:

Regardless of the labeling of the scoring system, stories that don't receive an H suffer lower readership than they would if they had one. The effect is even stronger on the first day. An early H can mean dramatically more readership on the new stories lists.

No matter what significance you attach to the score, that H has an impact, and it's most often plainly visible in your numbers, leading to the potential for anxiety.

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This is true. But if every story had a red H, it would have no impact.

When we first started Lit, we didn't have voting. We added it because authors requested it. I will be honest and say that I was not in favor of this. I was afraid (and not without reason) that writers would become too focused on the numbers. At the end of the day, what is a 4.5 story? What is a 3.25? If one of my stories has a 3.7 and another has a 3.65, does that mean the former is 0.05 better than the latter?

This isn't to say there is no value to the numbers. It gives readers an idea of what other readers think of a given story in relation to other stories on the site and within categories. And they do enable us to run fun contests - which we do because they are fun for readers and authors.

But I don't believe that vote scores are particularly useful in determining something as subjective as story quality or story "worth". Feedback like direct reader comments and favorites is much more useful. The numbers are too subjective. A "3" to one reader may mean an average story; that person may only give out 5s to perfect stories (or never). Another reader may give out 5s to every story they didn't hate. Still another may 1-vote your story because the protagonist's name is the same as their boss's.

Yes, getting an "H" and having a story on the Top Lists will get your work more widely read. If that's what you want - if you're writing for mainstream success, so to speak - then you could study the Top List stories in your category, note what qualities are important to readers within these stories, and write a story with these qualities. If you do this enough, you can eventually write a "mainstream" mass-market Lit hit. If that's what's important to you.

But maybe you're writing because you have stories to share, and those stories are not exactly mainstream audience blockbuster hits. They're stories that many people might not care about, but those who do will be totally and completely moved by them. And regardless of that audience, they are stories you want to tell, or that you have fun telling. In that case, you really shouldn't worry about how your stories rank on the big lists. Instead, cultivate a following of likeminded readers, listen to their comments and feedback. Take the vote score next to the title with a grain of salt. Understand that it does have value, but only very limited. Don't fret over it. Have fun. Life is short.

Now that the scores are visible everywhere, it might be a good idea to do away with the H altogether. It's a bright red signpost that adds to the anxiety and most likely obscures other stories -- especially those just below 4.5.