tomlitilia
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2011
- Posts
- 842
I did it once. Nothing happened.
Star Ratings
- Thread starter keirakeenorg
- Start date
I did it once. Nothing happened.
C
CoffeeWithMonkeys
Guest
I strive for perfection. It was drilled into my head since birth. So when my stuff goes under 4.5 stars I have trouble not deleting it. My kids try to tell me I should be happy with anything 3 and above, and really 2.5 is half so I should even be okay with that.
But my fucked up mind doesn't let me.
Haven't been here for awhile and I see I should probably delete some stuff because I am under that unreachable, to me, goal of minimum 4.5.
But my fucked up mind doesn't let me.
Haven't been here for awhile and I see I should probably delete some stuff because I am under that unreachable, to me, goal of minimum 4.5.
TxRad
Dirty Old Man
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2005
- Posts
- 45,152
A perfect reason why trolls troll and one bomb.
At least wait until after the first for the end of month sweeps.
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
I wouldn't delete anything.
I'm constantly surprised that some of my old very low rated stories still get people who like them. I have had positive comments on stories rated BELOW 3.00 and votes that take the rating above.
Apart from my flawed early stories Stag Party and Hen Party, this one is the currently the lowest rated at 3.13:
https://www.literotica.com/s/trapped-7
It is in Loving Wives and SHE takes revenge in a femdom scene. A LW story with no cheating and a femdom wife. What was I thinking of? I pushed the trolls' buttons twice over.
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E
Exescort
Guest
^^^^^This guy knows the truth and talks the best sense^^^^^
keirakeenorg
Virgin
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2017
- Posts
- 2
Thanks All
Thanks everyone for your comments. They are all very true.
The perceptive amungst you may have detected a note of fragility in my comment, it is also true.
As an author your ONLY reward is appreciation and who wants a fuckwit crashing the party. I am over my moments weakness thanks to my real fans who eventually cancel the troll.
Thanks again all.
Thanks everyone for your comments. They are all very true.
The perceptive amungst you may have detected a note of fragility in my comment, it is also true.
As an author your ONLY reward is appreciation and who wants a fuckwit crashing the party. I am over my moments weakness thanks to my real fans who eventually cancel the troll.
Thanks again all.
ChloeTzang
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2015
- Posts
- 7,801
You're welcome. I have those fragile moments myself. It helps to come here and just read thru threads like this. Puts it all in perspective and you know you're not alone.
CoyoteMittens
Experienced
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2017
- Posts
- 43
Haha, still waiting for my first comment, but I guarantee I will leave it be and maybe even learn from it.
jezzaz
Really Experienced
- Joined
- May 11, 2013
- Posts
- 266
Honestly, I judge a story way more by the sheer number of comments it gets than I do the star rating.
While I do use the star rating - generally less than a 3.5 and I'm probably going to bypass it; a high star rating doesn't mean the story itself will be something I will enjoy - I find that if you've got 50+ comments, then something has been written that incites people enough to actually take the time to record a comment. And that, in itself, is a success.
Art, as my old college teacher used to say, is only successful when it moves you to feel something. And if it moves you to action, then one way or another, it's reached you.
When someone make a comment, then something has reached them. Now, often it's just so they can express their disgust that the story didn't go the way they would have written it, if they had that ability, but even then, contact has been made.
All that said, yeah, I tend to delete the posts that say "This is shit, you should just stop writing" or "Why don't you kill yourself?" (only had one of those so far, at least directed at me. Plenty directed at other authors who have commented on my stuff though.) If there's nothing remotely constructive in the post and it exists purely to just spew hateful shit out into the world, then away it goes.
I never used to be like that, but in the last couple of years, I've started to feel like the nasty shit - the shit that would never be said in person - has started to take over to a larger degree. It's always been there, but recently it's gotten a lot stronger and pervasive. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why that might be...
While I do use the star rating - generally less than a 3.5 and I'm probably going to bypass it; a high star rating doesn't mean the story itself will be something I will enjoy - I find that if you've got 50+ comments, then something has been written that incites people enough to actually take the time to record a comment. And that, in itself, is a success.
Art, as my old college teacher used to say, is only successful when it moves you to feel something. And if it moves you to action, then one way or another, it's reached you.
When someone make a comment, then something has reached them. Now, often it's just so they can express their disgust that the story didn't go the way they would have written it, if they had that ability, but even then, contact has been made.
All that said, yeah, I tend to delete the posts that say "This is shit, you should just stop writing" or "Why don't you kill yourself?" (only had one of those so far, at least directed at me. Plenty directed at other authors who have commented on my stuff though.) If there's nothing remotely constructive in the post and it exists purely to just spew hateful shit out into the world, then away it goes.
I never used to be like that, but in the last couple of years, I've started to feel like the nasty shit - the shit that would never be said in person - has started to take over to a larger degree. It's always been there, but recently it's gotten a lot stronger and pervasive. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why that might be...
ZeroDarkDirty
Virgin
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2017
- Posts
- 8
I want to like the rating system. I do. It's numbers, and I love numbers in a way that I would submit erotic poems about if only this site had a suitable category. But I just can't.
I consider the merits of the rating system as a long-time (anonymous) reader, recent author, and life-long math nerd with a yen for recommender systems.
As a reader, I want the rating to tell me how likely I am to enjoy the story, but I can't always trust that. Readers assign a score based on how much they liked the story, and there are (at least) two components to liking the story. First, was this a theme / scenario that they find erotic. Second, was it executed well. In some ideal world of dispassionate reviewers judging porn like Olympic gymnastic routines, you might think 5 stars means "This is a great story, assuming you are into that sort of thing" and 1 star means "No matter how hot you think the concept is, this is utter dreck." Then a reader could search for the tags and topics they like and use the ratings to determine which are the best interracial gay reluctant foot fetish stories to read. Or, barring such altruistic professionalism, if only people just rated the stories with themes they might actually enjoy if executed well.
That is not at all how it works.
I can't say I understand why someone would bother reading a story just to give 1 star because they are not aroused by the very concept, but they do. I made the mistake of writing a story involving an open relationship and was informed that there is a contingent of readers who would really rather that extramarital relations end in... Divorce? STDs? An honor killing? They were not clear on exactly what sort karmic retribution they wished on fictional characters for having a sort of relationship they themselves would rather not, but these anonymous commenters did helpfully wish harm, disease, and misfortune on me personally as the author before rating it 1 star.
As a reader, I can't tell if a story was rated low because it was poorly written or because a lot of people did not find the subject matter arousing. I can make the decision about whether I would like the subject based on the tags and section, and once I have done that the average rating is more noise than signal. As an author, the rating doesn't tell me whether the target audience of people who like whatever deviant behavior I am writing about are enjoying it because I can't separate the scores of those deviants from rest of the deviants who don't. And as a nerd...
If Literotica were Amazon where ratings translated into dollars and it was of paramount importance to make sure the rating each reader saw accurately reflected how they might like the story, there is lots of fascinating data science, statistical analysis, and linear algebra to re-weight, re-normalize, and personalize ratings based on how similar the tastes of the raters are to the reader in the multidimensional space of spank bank themes. But, alas, this online database of written porn doesn't generate trillions of dollars, a fraction of which could be funneled to my brothers and sisters in the pocket protector brigade to create a cutting edge intelligent recommender.
TL;DR - I stopped paying attention to the ratings.
I consider the merits of the rating system as a long-time (anonymous) reader, recent author, and life-long math nerd with a yen for recommender systems.
As a reader, I want the rating to tell me how likely I am to enjoy the story, but I can't always trust that. Readers assign a score based on how much they liked the story, and there are (at least) two components to liking the story. First, was this a theme / scenario that they find erotic. Second, was it executed well. In some ideal world of dispassionate reviewers judging porn like Olympic gymnastic routines, you might think 5 stars means "This is a great story, assuming you are into that sort of thing" and 1 star means "No matter how hot you think the concept is, this is utter dreck." Then a reader could search for the tags and topics they like and use the ratings to determine which are the best interracial gay reluctant foot fetish stories to read. Or, barring such altruistic professionalism, if only people just rated the stories with themes they might actually enjoy if executed well.
That is not at all how it works.
I can't say I understand why someone would bother reading a story just to give 1 star because they are not aroused by the very concept, but they do. I made the mistake of writing a story involving an open relationship and was informed that there is a contingent of readers who would really rather that extramarital relations end in... Divorce? STDs? An honor killing? They were not clear on exactly what sort karmic retribution they wished on fictional characters for having a sort of relationship they themselves would rather not, but these anonymous commenters did helpfully wish harm, disease, and misfortune on me personally as the author before rating it 1 star.
As a reader, I can't tell if a story was rated low because it was poorly written or because a lot of people did not find the subject matter arousing. I can make the decision about whether I would like the subject based on the tags and section, and once I have done that the average rating is more noise than signal. As an author, the rating doesn't tell me whether the target audience of people who like whatever deviant behavior I am writing about are enjoying it because I can't separate the scores of those deviants from rest of the deviants who don't. And as a nerd...
If Literotica were Amazon where ratings translated into dollars and it was of paramount importance to make sure the rating each reader saw accurately reflected how they might like the story, there is lots of fascinating data science, statistical analysis, and linear algebra to re-weight, re-normalize, and personalize ratings based on how similar the tastes of the raters are to the reader in the multidimensional space of spank bank themes. But, alas, this online database of written porn doesn't generate trillions of dollars, a fraction of which could be funneled to my brothers and sisters in the pocket protector brigade to create a cutting edge intelligent recommender.
TL;DR - I stopped paying attention to the ratings.
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sr71plt
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2006
- Posts
- 51,870
The rating will only tell you if you are likely to enjoy the story if you're the one who gave it the rating.
And I think it's a false assumption that very many people who rate a story with a 1 actually have read the story--certainly not to its conclusion.
And I think it's a false assumption that very many people who rate a story with a 1 actually have read the story--certainly not to its conclusion.
