Time for a new rating system

tv46 said:

Trolls, along with their 1-bombs have an outsized influence on story ratings, especially in cracking the HOT barrier. For example, I can write two equally hot stories. But put even the slightest hint of two men touching in a group sex scene, and the trolls will come out in force.

Rotten Tomatoes has it right. Like, dislike, and then display percentage of likes. This will greatly reduce the influence of trolls.

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Trolls are going to troll. I think much more experienced authors than I have addressed the pros and cons of the current system.

As for your concern about homophobia, I would suggest that you post a warning up front such as I did at the start of "Mom and Daughter Face Penal Slavery"

"AUTHOR" S NOTE:

This story is set in the same near future universe as my Penal Slavery series. The series is set in a near future alternate world where incest is legal and criminals are sentenced to terms of slavery rather than jail or prison per se. Because this is Literotica, there is a lot of sex. No rape or violence, reluctance at worst.

I listed it as taboo\incest rather than noncon-reluctance because almost all the story flashes back to about 48 hours prior to the actual plea and sentencing hearing where the mother and daughter are convicted and enslaved. This story is first time, incest, group sex and threesomes. I expect there will be more parts, including crossovers by characters appearing in the Penal Slavery main series and other side stories that might go into different categories. I do not care for sadism and gratuitous violence but there will be some elements of discipline and corporal punishment in future installments. I thank those of you who are willing to give the story a read and value your feedback"

4.54 /217 votes. I believe if you warn a prospective reader in the open ended categories if I/T or Non Con of things that might be outside of their comfort zones you can reduce the people who might down vote you. Although, as I mentioned earlier trolls are going to troll It happens.

electricblue66 said:

Agree, but that's still the five-point system with a different threshold for Red H, isn't it?

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Changing the granularity matters.

A 5-star voting system is basically just a Like/Dislike system, with four variations on Dislike.

LW aside, a decent story is going to be above 4, so your choices are essentially "This is the equal of the best story I've ever read!" or "This story is currently overrated, and I would like to take an action to decrease its score", where you often want something between that.

My experience has been that, with 5-star systems, 4.5 is 'good but not great', whereas a 10-point system is more likely to have that point be around 7.5, allowing a lot more meaningful range to the votes.

(The problems of a 5-star system became a big deal with Uber, where rating a driver a 4 had a serious negative impact on them, which many passengers didn't realize.)

SimonDoom said:

Easy. A 10-point system. Multiply old scores by 2. Stories with 9 or 10 get the red H. This allows reader/voters to give a 9 knowing the story will get a red H (so they don't have to feel bad about hurting the author) while reserving the very best score (10) for only the best stories.

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Number of score points affects how people vote.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.417.9488&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Basically says that people will rate lower on a 10-point scale (in terms of distance from top vs bottom) than on a 5- or 7- point scale, so this would effectively penalise new stories relative to old ones.

Just wishing

I had an author friend recently leave the site. We were discussing the rating system and they pointed out that on some sites (like Amazon) a five-star system is used, but you can at least see how many of each star vote was given along with actual written reviews. I agree with my friend that a more detailed system like that would be nice in determining the stories I might want to read. Of course, I don't think there will be any action on the mods parts because my friend said many Lit authors have asked for changes over the years and been ignored.

How inconvenient that my friend quits right when I am working on stories to post.

Not sure about new rating but

I don't know if the rating system is the issue or just jerks on the internet. After the geek event I was pretty happy with all my scores on most of my stories. Everything I had written but one story was hot and most of my ratings were 4.6 to 4.75. All of my work was going up in scores every passing day. Nothing to shake a stick at. I am working on updates to all my stories but got really sick with the flu a few weeks ago. I log on today and see how things are looking and almost all my scores have dropped .10 or .20 in a week or two after almost all activity had disappeared last time I looked. Some of these stories have been up here for 2 years or more and were literally stagnant on score. It looks like some troll just went to all my work in the past week and just dumped a bunch 1 star reviews. I don't know if an new rating system is needed but some way to keep the trolls at Bay would be nice. I got no problem if you have issues with my work or think it sucks but no way did I get my score to drop so fast without someone just being a jerk and review bombing.

I will just repeat my dumb idea with I had posted a couple times already.

Keep the current system as is but add paid token option to vote 6-10 stars at exponentially increased prices (tokens go to the author of the story, site keeps a commission when those are bought and/or cashed out). After a some time when the data about how the new system works in practice is gathered (perhaps a year or so) apply a corrective coefficient to old story score (because otherwise those are penalized).

However, that is more of an idea how to monetize than how to change the voting system, but it would give 6 levels of like with five of them paid (and thus could be taken seriously).

For a lulz, a mean alternative/addition could be to make voting one-star or even zero-star into a paid option too.

TornConflict said:

I don't know if the rating system is the issue or just jerks on the internet. After the geek event I was pretty happy with all my scores on most of my stories. Everything I had written but one story was hot and most of my ratings were 4.6 to 4.75. All of my work was going up in scores every passing day. Nothing to shake a stick at. I am working on updates to all my stories but got really sick with the flu a few weeks ago. I log on today and see how things are looking and almost all my scores have dropped .10 or .20 in a week or two after almost all activity had disappeared last time I looked. Some of these stories have been up here for 2 years or more and were literally stagnant on score. It looks like some troll just went to all my work in the past week and just dumped a bunch 1 star reviews. I don't know if an new rating system is needed but some way to keep the trolls at Bay would be nice. I got no problem if you have issues with my work or think it sucks but no way did I get my score to drop so fast without someone just being a jerk and review bombing.

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The second you start talking about scores on your stories or how well they did the bombing starts.

Jerks on the internet is right.

LupusDei said:

I will just repeat my dumb idea with I had posted a couple times already.

Keep the current system as is but add paid token option to vote 6-10 stars at exponentially increased prices (tokens go to the author of the story, site keeps a commission when those are bought and/or cashed out). After a some time when the data about how the new system works in practice is gathered (perhaps a year or so) apply a corrective coefficient to old story score (because otherwise those are penalized).

However, that is more of an idea how to monetize than how to change the voting system, but it would give 6 levels of like with five of them paid (and thus could be taken seriously).

For a lulz, a mean alternative/addition could be to make voting one-star or even zero-star into a paid option too.

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I don't understand the point of this system. You want people to have to pay to vote? That runs completely counter to the policy of this site (which I like) of making thing as easy and free for readers as possible.

The more I think about it, and after reading the post by Bramblethorn (whose resource for arcane but on point information seems inexhaustible), the more convinced I am that there's no good way to change things that wouldn't significantly upset longstanding reader expectations and that wouldn't be out of sync with previous ratings, not to mention causing new problems of its own.

Trolls and bad people are a fact of life in social media. There's no way to get rid of them that isn't overinclusive. You'll throw out the baby with the bath water. We just have to get used to them.

Wattpad get round trolling by having a very simple system. One star. You vote or yo don’t, but there’s no rating system. They rank stories against the tags so you have varying scores depending on your tags. So I could be #4 in Asian and #734 in Romance. Seems to be based on a combination of reads and votes.

SimonDoom said:

Trolls and bad people are a fact of life in social media. There's no way to get rid of them that isn't overinclusive. You'll throw out the baby with the bath water. We just have to get used to them.

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Some authors seem to have the opinion that when they get a 5* vote, it's from a discerning reader. When they get a 1* vote, who's from a ninja troll who probably didn't even read the story. To me, the probable reality is that the 5* and 1* are both equally valid votes from two readers who happened to have very different reactions to the story. Some people are not going to like any given story, regardless of how good it is.

Some comments on one on of my stories that has a 4.81 rating:

Feminism is the least arousing thing ever
I was excited at the title, but then I started reading. I don't care how hot the girl is, feminist propaganda deserves no place here.

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Seriously?
Is feminism dogma now taking over erotic novels? This guy is a little cuck bitch and you had to just throw in "positive consent" bullshit into this? ffs.

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Nope
Lost me, when the entitled one kept being entitled ...

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this story was written by a virgin
so many things so horribly wrong and the characters just too 10/10 ... feels more like a fantasy of a boy than a real story 1/5

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Patronising
What is this cancer? I wish there was a feature the diametric opposite of favouriting.

Both making western society seem like Saudi Arabia, and the 'Good Samaritan smart girl parable': I've not read such conceited, fictitious proselytising in ages. It's an insult to truly intelligent women, and any man who's not a n utter fuckstick alike.

You're either unabashedly indoctrinated by some virulent ideological, or just plain ignorant.

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Could have been good
The feminist lecturing sucked all the fun out of it. This is a sex story site, not a damned women's studies class - and nobody with any talent or taste takes more than a semester of women's studies anyway.

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I assume all of those commenters gave my story a 1*. Those commenters opinions ran counter to the opinions of the vast majority of the readers of my story, but they're still valid opinions. That's life.

ChloeTzang said:

Wattpad get round trolling by having a very simple system. One star. You vote or yo don’t, but there’s no rating system. They rank stories against the tags so you have varying scores depending on your tags. So I could be #4 in Asian and #734 in Romance. Seems to be based on a combination of reads and votes.

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How do you like it? Does it seem to work? Do you think it provides readers with the information they need to choose stories?

SimonDoom said:

I don't understand the point of this system. You want people to have to pay to vote? That runs completely counter to the policy of this site (which I like) of making thing as easy and free for readers as possible.

The more I think about it, and after reading the post by Bramblethorn (whose resource for arcane but on point information seems inexhaustible), the more convinced I am that there's no good way to change things that wouldn't significantly upset longstanding reader expectations and that wouldn't be out of sync with previous ratings, not to mention causing new problems of its own.

Trolls and bad people are a fact of life in social media. There's no way to get rid of them that isn't overinclusive. You'll throw out the baby with the bath water. We just have to get used to them.

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The point of the system is to address the recurring comment "I wish I could vote more than just 5!" in context of "how to monetize publishing on Lit?" in context of a rant "one-bombs make unproportional impact" in context of "we have one 'like' vote and four gradual 'dislike' options" (made worse by part of readership thinking '4*' or even '3*' is a positive vote).

I do agree it's a strange idea, and probably too confusing for the general public indeed.

One could still vote 2-5* for free as it is, and '5*' still would be the 'official' maximum, and probably the displayed maximum as well (while above-5 ratings are possible technically). But for one token you could vote '6*', for five tokens '7*' for twenty-five '8*' and for 100+ tokens (enter your value: three digits required, four or even five accepted) a '9*' and in all those cases the tokens go to the author who can cash them out.

Perhaps on the other end of the spectrum you also would have to spend one token to vote '1*' and maybe ten (or more) for an completely atrocious '0*' while giving all the money spent for those tokens to the site (because, yeah, you are hating the story and/or author, obviously). (Of course, trolls would just move up to '2*' with they already partially do hoping those wont get swiped.)

Yes, it basically admits gamification of the rating exploiting the fans and haters to extort money from each other.
EDIT: Hover, the current system is a popularity contest with very little connection to the real quality of the story already. Giving die-loyal fans means to express out-of-proportion love of a story (or haters punish) wouldn't change the overall dynamics much, if only improve the result a little, because if something's clear 5* or above, it must be good enough for someone to be willing to pay to it voluntary.

But generally I agree, any changes to the existing system would be painful and probably not worth it.

Glad I spoke up

Glad I said something, just logged into see what was going on in this thread and all my scores are back or higher. Guessing someone did something. Thank you. Seemed wierd to me my highest rated story was 4.76 and when I checked today it was around 4.58 now it is back to 4.76.

Not much is going to change on this Web site, but anything involving payment of any sort just isn't going to happen and is DOA even to talk about. This is a Mom and Pop store. Payments explode the need for more manpower and the owners have shown zero interest in doing that.

Erasing the red H now that the numbers show on the story pages is the easiest, most effective fix, I think. Erasing the authors' needs to be preened and lifted over others would be even more effective, but that ain't gonna happen either.

TornConflict said:

Glad I said something, just logged into see what was going on in this thread and all my scores are back or higher. Guessing someone did something. Thank you. Seemed wierd to me my highest rated story was 4.76 and when I checked today it was around 4.58 now it is back to 4.76.

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Sounds like you got a sweep. It ID'd the 1 bombs and got rid of them.

KeithD said:

Not much is going to change on this Web site, but anything involving payment of any sort just isn't going to happen and is DOA even to talk about. This is a Mom and Pop store. Payments explode the need for more manpower and the owners have shown zero interest in doing that.

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They do, however, have tokens on the cam site that is at least associated with Lit if not part of it. Do they operate the payment system, probably no.

Do it is a good idea to introduce any form of payments to the story site, probably no.

Just in the context of discussion about any ideas about changing the unchangeable, that is my stupid take of one possibility how things might be, that's all.

SimonDoom said:

How do you like it? Does it seem to work? Do you think it provides readers with the information they need to choose stories?

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For all it’s flaws I think the setup on Literotica is better as regards voting.

Visibility is the challenge on Wattpad. I think they’re up to 70 million registered users and it’s far more international than Literotica and a far different audience. They have good demographic stats so you can see your readers by sex, age and geography and they’re working on some great tools for writers. They take over 100k new stories a day now, so a new story stream like Literotica would be impossible. It’s interesting to compare tho. They’ve put a lot of thought and research into what they do. I say just piggy back of that and cherry pick the best features and copy them.

8letters said:

Some authors seem to have the opinion that when they get a 5* vote, it's from a discerning reader. When they get a 1* vote, who's from a ninja troll who probably didn't even read the story. To me, the probable reality is that the 5* and 1* are both equally valid votes from two readers who happened to have very different reactions to the story.

...

I assume all of those commenters gave my story a 1*. Those commenters opinions ran counter to the opinions of the vast majority of the readers of my story, but they're still valid opinions. That's life.

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Yes, this. The bottom rating is there to be used - maybe not often, and yes many 1* votes are malicious, but not all of them. These discussions remind me of the Spinal Tap bit about making the amp go up to 11 so it can be louder.

LupusDei said:

Perhaps on the other end of the spectrum you also would have to spend one token to vote '1*' and maybe ten (or more) for an completely atrocious '0*' while giving all the money spent for those tokens to the site (because, yeah, you are hating the story and/or author, obviously).

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This gives the site a financial incentive to accept and encourage crappy stories. I'm not sure that's a great idea.

TornConflict said:

Glad I said something, just logged into see what was going on in this thread and all my scores are back or higher. Guessing someone did something. Thank you. Seemed wierd to me my highest rated story was 4.76 and when I checked today it was around 4.58 now it is back to 4.76.

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Who did you have to sleep with to make that happen? I’ve read all these suggestions for changing the voting and they all have one thing in common. They’re all too complicated for them to work. Except for my own suggestion, of course.

GroverLang said:

Who did you have to sleep with to make that happen? I’ve read all these suggestions for changing the voting and they all have one thing in common. They’re all too complicated for them to work. Except for my own suggestion, of course.

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It's a fairly typical bounce after a sweep goes through and pulls out the one-bombs and not so helpful fives. Your scores and view counts can move around quite a bit, especially just after a contest (when several sweeps might be carried out). The sweeps go through the whole story file, even if your story isn't a contest entry.

It seems to me that if just the shiny red H was done away with, the rating system in place would provide a more realistic gauge of reader opinion. The arbitrary 4.50 bar would disappear, which would probably de-incentivize some of the games people play—especially over time.

Granted, readers would then have to determine their own acceptable target score to use in selecting a work, but it seems that 'acceptable target' might become more flexible over time. Is a 4.45 story really that much worse than an H story? It's the arbitrary 'goalpost' that implies it is. Also, without that shiny H shining like a beacon, it would require much more effort for anyone wanting to move a score either up or down to find their targets...and even when they do their vote didn't change things much .

Thus, taking away that red 'line in the sand' would be a good thing. It's been said many times that many stories under the magic 4.50 are worthy and decent stories...the red H is working against readers finding those. One could argue that the red H is a disservice to both authors and readers.

Plus, it'd be very simple to implement this revision.

Bramblethorn said:

This gives the site a financial incentive to accept and encourage crappy stories. I'm not sure that's a great idea.

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To be fair it was a half-comical addition to my old thought on the spur here. Yes, I admit that's even weirder than the upvoting part, and may not be understood. Well, let's take it to the end, even for extreme (paid) downvotes, the tokens go the author. So it in theory is profitable to troll Lawing Wifes readership... if they care to pay for their rage... what no sane person would do, right? So the option is there, but no one should use it? They would, just because.

yukonnights said:

It seems to me that if just the shiny red H was done away with, the rating system in place would provide a more realistic gauge of reader opinion. The arbitrary 4.50 bar would disappear, which would probably de-incentivize some of the games people play—especially over time.

Granted, readers would then have to determine their own acceptable target score to use in selecting a work, but it seems that 'acceptable target' might become more flexible over time. Is a 4.45 story really that much worse than an H story? It's the arbitrary 'goalpost' that implies it is. Also, without that shiny H shining like a beacon, it would require much more effort for anyone wanting to move a score either up or down to find their targets...and even when they do their vote didn't change things much .

Thus, taking away that red 'line in the sand' would be a good thing. It's been said many times that many stories under the magic 4.50 are worthy and decent stories...the red H is working against readers finding those. One could argue that the red H is a disservice to both authors and readers.

Plus, it'd be very simple to implement this revision.

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I agree with this wholeheartedly. It is a useless gauge of a writer's ability and an incessant vanity for us as authors.

I've also wondered if votes were allowed only if they were tied to an account, and if that information was made public knowledge, if that would be a positive or negative factor.

But, KeithD is right--nothing will change. We're just a bunch of old folks, sitting in our lawn chairs bickering over the same arguments time and time again. Next up on the docket, underage characters!

yukonnights said:

It seems to me that if just the shiny red H was done away with, the rating system in place would provide a more realistic gauge of reader opinion. The arbitrary 4.50 bar would disappear, which would probably de-incentivize some of the games people play—especially over time.

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I tend to agree, as there are plenty of quality stories in the 4.1-4.49 range.

Allowing readers more control over their searches would be a plus. Searches by "score above #.##" and "more than ## favs" at the same time would help (show me all stories tagged with 'spanking' rated over a 4.1 sorted by number of faves). If readers have faved a story it's like leaving a positive review (though not faving a story is not a negative review).