A virgin roughly handled by ratings - some thoughts and questions

Getting a 1 rating is like getting a slap in the face - the natural reaction is "what did I do?"

An extreme rating without a meaningful comment is pretty much worse than useless. How can I learn from "I hated it."

I would like to suggest that any rating of 1, and maybe of 5 as well, should not be accepted without a useful comment such as - Your characters are wooden -your dialogue is stilted - your plot is unbelievable- I don't like stories that have bears and cows in the same scene - your tag said it was about incest and there was't enough incest . something for the author to either reject - consider. Even "boring" might be a little useful.

comments like "It sucked" wouldn't be accepted.

A question - have any of you turned off the voting, and if so, has it affected the number of viewers you receive?

Another suggestion - why not have a system where the ratings are visible to only the writer and the administration. After all, from the way they are written the ratings are for the benefit of the writer rather than as endorsements or warnings to other readers.

Okay, you can call me a wimp now.

A comment won't really help you accept rating disappointment. If anything, having your story run down on top of the rating will probably just make you fixate on it more.

The only thing that will make you stop caring about the numbers is when you stop caring about the numbers. It's out of your hands: Readers will vote however they like, and sometimes they will vote lower than you want them to. It's inevitable, unavoidable, and for that matter entirely natural. It will always happen because there is no useful mechanism that can possibly hinder it.

Your stories are all doing perfectly fine right now. Stop thinking about it. Channel this energy into writing more.

In the words of the old Bard, "Welcome to Lit."

Thick skin is necessary to brave the slings and arrows.

Thanks for the encouragement

But do bad ratings drive off potential viewers?

Probably. But that's like asking "Does size matter?" No matter what the answer is, you can only keep working with what you've got.

Ratings

Some categories have more trolls. Loving Wives, for instance. A troll will give a poor rating to a 40,000 word story within an hour of its posting--doubtful the guy can read so fast!

But I kind of like trolls. They lend comfort. You can count on them to let you know you are starting at the bottom. They remind me of my wife.

Don't be too down about it. One or two really good reviews/comments will get noticed more than an initial bad rating with a throw-away disparagement. It's a marathon.

Malraux

TxRad said:

In the words of the old Bard, "Welcome to Lit."

Thick skin is necessary to brave the slings and arrows.

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Lol. If you don't like them, turn them off. You can turn off ratings and comments. But if they're on, you takes the bad with the good. Just remember if you publish, you can't turn Amazon comments off so you may as well toughen up now

Very, very soon you'll stop caring. It shouldn't take you long to realize the scores are largely meaningless in and of themselves. An individual 1 should not bother you.

What IS useful are the trends. A long chain of high ratings should let you know you're on the right track and have selected the correct category.

A long chain of low rankings? Perhaps your writing isn't as good as you thought it was.

People are mean. As long as someone out there enjoyed your story, then you're good.

Don't take it to heart.

Vladimir Nabokov's Ardor would get a 3.5 on this site, and it is, for my money, the greatest incest story ever told. And this is an incest-loving site. It just isn't to taste.

By comparison, there are stories here in the 4.80's that are barely cohesive.

This isn't to say that ratings are meaningless. They aren't. They, and vote count, approximate the closest this site comes to "sales."

If you are consistently failing to meet a decent mark, then it's a fair indication that no one here wants what you are selling (giving away).

What that means to your writing skill in a more general sense is positively inscrutable.

I have always suspected that Lit is exactly and precisely like the rest of the world, if the rest of the world were, at all times, preoccupied with rubbin one out. Your writing is a vehicle for that act of completion to many people here and nothing more. If you are able to have more of an impact than that, kudos. But don't expect it. Think about pornography, how the smallest things--puffy nipples or spitting, for
instance--can completely ruin a scene for people. Here is no different.

It's all casting your pearl necklaces before swine.

DarcyLansdowne said:

Thanks for the encouragement

But do bad ratings drive off potential viewers?

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The New list shows whether or not your story is currently rated at 4.50 or more and the category hub gives the score. Some readers may prioritize the red H stories on the New list, go for the higher rated stories in the category hub, and then never get to the lower rated stories.

you say this should not be accepted, that should not be accepted. Well, then, who will moderate that? There are probably tens of thousands of ratings and comments submission on lit every day. It would require several people working full time to sort through that.

Also, treat ratings as a common denominator. Don't pay attention to 1s and 5s separately. For one thing, they get removed a lot during the purge every week, so yu may find some of your marks disappear into nothingness. It can both raise your overall rating and drop it.

If you have nore than 10 people give you a rating - and it sucks, then your story was bad. Although there is a catch. For example if you post anything with ANY deviation into "loving wives" - they will go for your blood instantly. They can be triggered to give you a 1* for anything as innocent as a suggesting of cheating. Or a loud argument between your characters. Anything not sugarcoated will get bashed really badly.
What I'm saying is that if your story is good but you made a wrong category choice - the ratings would be bad.

But if you did everything correctly and still get a bad rating - then you have problems. Either with plot, grammar or something else. Get an editor or a beta-reader for those.

I post stories when TEX MEX is in detox and PILETTE goes to Bangkok.

To the question of making comments attach to a one or five vote, I'm sure this would cut down on the number of those votes given. Whether this is good or bad would remain to be seen.

On the ratings being only for the author, no, they are used by readers to help guide what they select to read. Again, whether it serves them in finding good reads is a maybe/maybe not proposition.

The bottom line, though, is that the system isn't likely to change.

Question answered

Thanks to everybody for responding. The information was very helpful, and surprisingly consistent.
I think I get it.
Thanks

PS to question answered

That Susan J Parker broad can't find me, can she?

And by the way one of the main characters in my 1 story is a Mrs Parker - go figure.

Having written a story (in the Loving Wives category, of course) that received a bunch of 1s that WERE accompanied by comments, all I can say is . . . comments don't necessarily tell you that much. They often shed more heat than light. But they can be very entertaining. Imposing some sort of comment requirement wouldn't make things on this site better -- just a little bit duller.

There are lots of trolls on this site. It's part of the landscape. You can't take it personally.

DarcyLansdowne said:

That Susan J Parker broad can't find me, can she?

And by the way one of the main characters in my 1 story is a Mrs Parker - go figure.

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That "Susan" "broad" is a middle-aged guy named Freddie. Our very own performance artist.

SimonDoom said:

Having written a story (in the Loving Wives category, of course) that received a bunch of 1s that WERE accompanied by comments, all I can say is . . . comments don't necessarily tell you that much. They often shed more heat than light. But they can be very entertaining. Imposing some sort of comment requirement wouldn't make things on this site better -- just a little bit duller.

There are lots of trolls on this site. It's part of the landscape. You can't take it personally.

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Ditto. As long as you don't take it personally, it's fun.

1s will usually get scrubbed in sweeps if you wait a few weeks. If you require people to comment with a 1 you'll just get something like "rubbish" or "I hated it"; those won't get cleaned up automatically.

Also, changing the voting system makes it very hard to compare results from before and after the change.

You can seek or ignore the numbers. The numbers may exalt or fuck you. You may look at the numbers and decide to write more or less in whatever categories. But the numbers will not affect your external life unless you let them.

You can game the system to get higher numbers. Write pandering shit in lesser-read categories -- you'll get nice scores. Or pander in the biggies. Write sleazy unreal "Oh Daddy! Oh Mommy!" stories for Incest-Taboo and get many reads. Write BBC gangbangs in InterRacial, horny unicorns or orcs in SciFi-Fantasy, extended serial gangbangs in Group Sex, etc. Note the tastes of each audience and go there.

Or you can consider that LIT is hobbyist or training space. Write for yourself. Write what fucking turns you on. Write because you want / need to. Fuck the numbers. Just write.

Hypoxia is correct. Just write...and write...and write some more. You're a little sleeping beauty, arent you, Darcy? Your humor is adorable.

DarcyLansdowne said:

Getting a 1 rating is like getting a slap in the face - the natural reaction is "what did I do?"

An extreme rating without a meaningful comment is pretty much worse than useless. How can I learn from "I hated it."

I would like to suggest that any rating of 1, and maybe of 5 as well, should not be accepted without a useful comment such as - Your characters are wooden -your dialogue is stilted - your plot is unbelievable- I don't like stories that have bears and cows in the same scene - your tag said it was about incest and there was't enough incest . something for the author to either reject - consider. Even "boring" might be a little useful.

Comments like "It sucked" wouldn't be accepted.
Okay, you can call me a wimp now.

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No, not a wimp.
However, you may not be aware that there are those 'readers' who's idea of 'fun' is to 1-bomb a story just because they can.
I do not know what the proportion of 'real' readers, (who can and will make a reasoned judgement or even practical comments), to those for whom the board's equivalent to 'pissing on the wall' is real fun, but it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Welcome to the real world.

The sad fact is that the trolls tend to target new writers, presumably in an attempt to put them off. Whether that's simply because it amuses them, or they're religious nuts, or even that they're existing writers determined to kill off any potential new competition, I wouldn't like to hazard a guess.

Once you've built up a catalogue of stories and have gained a following, they'll give up, knowing that they are too few to influence your results.

Stories in Loving Wives will immediately attract all those pathetic husbands whose wives have run off with other men (presumably because they were pathetic husbands) and want to take their frustrations out on somebody but quite why they like to read stories that remind them how pathetic they were as husbands is something I have yet to work out.

The only way you're going to avoid 1*s and inane, adverse comments from that bunch is by making sure that the wife and her lover get their come-uppance on the final page (known as Beat the Bitch or BTB) and you really shouldn't be doing that just to pander to them.

Stories that only get a few votes on their first day in the New list are always going to be vulnerable to this sort of attack. The answer, I have discovered, is to get your story posted in Incest. All you have to do is include a short scene in which mom walks into son's bedroom (or better still daughter's) while said offspring is dressing and comments 'My, what a big boy/girl (as appropriate) you've become since you turned 18', followed by a quick grope. As an Incest story it will get hundreds of votes on the first day, which will drown out the trolls. Then complain that your incest scene is but a tiny part of the whole story and ask for it to be transferred to a more appropriate category. Or just leave it where it is and watch the votes and views build up.