The Official Author's Hangout 2015 Valentine's Day Contest Support Thread

Non-Con may very well have placed at some point, but those 26 stories that have been pulled from the site make it impossible to discover what category they were in.

How do you know that 26 stories were pulled? It's so oddly specific. Has the site had a change in TOS for what is allowable and not? If so, I wasn't aware. I thought it was all the usual taboos (underage, etc).
 
From the date on the document, I'm assuming I pulled that 2011 data just before the Halloween contest, so here's the update through 2014. One more story couldn't be checked for category.

Transexuals&Crossdressers - 1
Reviews and Essays - 1
Letters and Transcripts - 1
How-To - 1
Mind Control - 1
Anal - 2
Loving Wives - 2
Interracial - 2
Humor and Satire - 3
Incest - 4
First Time - 4
Novels and Novellas - 4
Group Sex - 5
Mature - 6
BDSM - 6
Non-Human - 7
Exhibitionist and Voyeur - 8
Non-Erotic - 9
Lesbian - 10
Gay Male - 10
Erotic Horror - 14
Erotic Couplings - 19
Sci-Fi & Fantasy - 20
Romance - 45

Non-Con may very well have placed at some point, but those 26 stories that have been pulled from the site make it impossible to discover what category they were in.

Actually, I'm pretty sure #26 was Incest, so that number should actually be 1 higher, but I'm not absolutely sure, so I left it out.

Where the sweep is "unequal"....maybe I should say "unfair" is that it treats each vote equal

Pint is if you have 800 votes you have a disadvantage because each vote is worth less.

Stories with 120 votes get huge jumps because each vote is worth more towards their score.

So that is my explanation of unequal. a 100 vote to a 1000 vote story us a totally different effect.

And I think people know this. Want to win? Go to a low voted category for a better chance.

As for certain categories having an edge..of coure they do Romance is a very soft voted category, rarely trolled. Give HEA get a 5 not more else is asked.

Incest? Incest takes the brunt of the sweep issue as its most heavily voted. The most heavily read/voted/viewed category and probably #2 in comments (to LW and who wants those comments) has only placed 4 times....period.

That doesn't look funny to anyone? Especially when you look back at the last contest.

TTT #2 author on the site top stories in 5 categories...rolls out of bed into 4.8+ and he doesn't place in a contest in lits biggest category?

Fact is incest is the money maker here, but the-pardon the irony-red haired step child the site is equally ashamed of.
 
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They should just call this the Romance competition and be done with it.

I enjoy the contests because they are fun and creative, but as a true competition they are silly. If a sweet gentle romance "beats out" an intense and long Erotic Horror does that really mean anything? They're totally different voting groups. Obviously certain categories are privileged and others are disadvantaged. Oh, er, um, unless Romance writers are just simply the best writers on lit.

No one but no one sits down and reads the themed entries one by one trying to decide which is the best V-Day or Winter story. Maybe some authors do. But how many are totally unprejudiced about it. Case in point: RedZ skippin' over the Incest stories. (Totally understand: I don't touch BDSM with a ten foot pole). Half the time the "Winning" story has nothing to do with the theme beyond a vague reference. It really is silly to me to pit categories against one another. Some just have a built-in cap on ratings no matter how good.

I would like to see competitions within Categories. Best EC story, Best Incest story. That would be more honestly competitive, and I think the readers would like it, too.


From the date on the document, I'm assuming I pulled that 2011 data just before the Halloween contest, so here's the update through 2014. One more story couldn't be checked for category.

Transexuals&Crossdressers - 1
Reviews and Essays - 1
Letters and Transcripts - 1
How-To - 1
Mind Control - 1
Anal - 2
Loving Wives - 2
Interracial - 2
Humor and Satire - 3
Incest - 4
First Time - 4
Novels and Novellas - 4
Group Sex - 5
Mature - 6
BDSM - 6
Non-Human - 7
Exhibitionist and Voyeur - 8
Non-Erotic - 9
Lesbian - 10
Gay Male - 10
Erotic Horror - 14
Erotic Couplings - 19
Sci-Fi & Fantasy - 20
Romance - 45

Non-Con may very well have placed at some point, but those 26 stories that have been pulled from the site make it impossible to discover what category they were in.

Actually, I'm pretty sure #26 was Incest, so that number should actually be 1 higher, but I'm not absolutely sure, so I left it out.
 
No way I'm clicking every story since the turn of the century and ticking off what category it was in :p

However, I pulled up my spreadsheets from a few contests and tallied those up.

These figures come from Valentine's 2012, Earth Day 2011, Nude Day 2010, Summer Lovin' 2011, Halloween 2011, and Winter Holiday 2010. That gives the full range of contests, so it should be fairly representative. Valentine's gets more Romance. Halloween gets Horror. Nude Day gets E&V. So on and so forth.

Letters - 2
Celebrities - 2
How-To - 3
Audio - 3
Novels - 3
Reviews - 4
Interracial - 4
Illustrated - 4
Toys - 6
Transexual - 7
Mind Control - 7
Anal - 8
Non-Con - 10
Lesbian - 10
Fetish - 11
First Time - 12
BDSM - 14
Mature - 14
Non-Erotic - 15
Humor - 15
Non-Human - 21
Loving Wives - 22
Gay Male - 26
Group Sex - 30
Horror - 33
Sci-Fi - 35
Exhibi&Voy - 40
Romance - 59
Erotic Couplings - 66
Incest - 68
 
I don't know how extensive the current sweep has been (but from what others have posted, it's been extensive), but I see where one of my contest stories went from 3.50 to 4.31 overnight, which, I think pretty much points to massive voting cheating in the contests. Which isn't particularly adult, is it?
 
How do you know that 26 stories were pulled? It's so oddly specific. Has the site had a change in TOS for what is allowable and not? If so, I wasn't aware. I thought it was all the usual taboos (underage, etc).

The links no longer work. The contest pages are available from the beginning ( although, you have to know the URL structure to find the more recent ones, since the index page doesn't have them listed )

Many of them were from authors I know, and the stories were removed by the author. Some removed them to publish them in the marketplace. Some left the site for various reasons. Odds are that almost all of them fall under this category.

============

As to weighing the scores by vote totals, we all know what will happen there. Incest will take 2 out of 3 places in every single contest. A few categories like Mature and a few authors like TTT will be able to pull out wins, but otherwise, the disproportionately higher numbers of votes in Incest will destroy everything else.

Does flipping the current situation upside down really solve anything?
 
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I've just hit the submit button for my third entry.

I have looked in my incomplete folder for Valentine's Day stories. There are eight more there, some more than a decade old.

Maybe I'll complete one or two for next year. But don't hold your breath. Plot bunnies breed faster than my old stories get finished.
 
No way I'm clicking every story since the turn of the century and ticking off what category it was in :p

RR, I wasn't suggesting you should for a moment! I just wished to point out the limits of drawing conclusions from the figures you collected.

I agree that the various competitions do a reasonable job balancing the categories but there is still plenty of scope for author preferences to skew the number of entries per category.
 
Yes a massive sweep....the story already far in the lead mentions a 100 vote loss

My 1100+ story lost a total of 2 votes, no score change:rolleyes:

You can end this today, we have our winner. Nothing against SS, she's done well across the board here, but she hit the magic combination of a good story in a site fav category.
 
I don't know how extensive the current sweep has been (but from what others have posted, it's been extensive), but I see where one of my contest stories went from 3.50 to 4.31 overnight, which, I think pretty much points to massive voting cheating in the contests. Which isn't particularly adult, is it?

Must be scouries.

That's what all the newbies are trained to think, isn't it? Its scouries all by himself doing all the trolling, all the cheer leading....he must steal votes and hold back totals as well, somehow.

And...according to TX rad he spends all day everyday manipulating the entire top 250 fav author list.

Jimmy is one busy boy.
 
Yes a massive sweep....the story already far in the lead mentions a 100 vote loss

My 1100+ story lost a total of 2 votes, no score change:rolleyes:

You can end this today, we have our winner. Nothing against SS, she's done well across the board here, but she hit the magic combination of a good story in a site fav category.

And?

SS said that the initial burst changed nothing, and the latter dropped the score by .01. How is this a sure sign that the winner has already been determined? What does it have to do with anything?
 
How do we tell how many votes a given story -other than our own, which show in the Submission screen- has received? Is there a link or a report out of which I'm (likely) unaware?

The 30-day tab of the category toplists ( all of which function properly, unlike some of the all-time tabs ) are as close as you can get.

They only update once per day, though.
 
How do we tell how many votes a given story -other than our own, which show in the Submission screen- has received? Is there a link or a report out of which I'm (likely) unaware?

You can tell for a short time. As long as it's one of the latest twenty stories in that category to post, the number of votes can be retrieved from the category hub page.

And if it ranks on the Top Lists (http://www.literotica.com/top/top-rated-erotic-stories/), you can get the number of votes from there. The story in question is now #15 in the 30-day top list, with a rating listed of 4.87 and number of votes listed at 744. Of course these numbers aren't up-to-the-minute correct.
 
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Anywhere public numbers are available is out of date to some degree. Most only update once per day, and none of them update at the same time.

It's not even unusual for the category hub to show one score in the "new stories" tab and a different one in the "popular" tab, because they update on a different schedule.

I'd forgotten about the listings on the hub. Those do update more often ( though how often, I've never tried to time )

In some categories, it will work for a good log time. In some, you may not even see every story that posted that day in the list.
 
I've thrown splashes of MM (and not just oral) into Group, Incest, and Mature stories with no ill effects. The MM was not the major theme of any of those.

ah, well, MM is the main lead-in to this one. i'll toss (no pun) a coin. ;)
 
As I've been saying for years, I rarely see a story in the winner's circle that I don't believe deserved to win. In the very few cases I have, it's because I felt the story wasn't on theme -- not that it wasn't a fine read that deserved to be highlighted and recognized.

I'm just a stickler for theme, and understand that the readers don't necessarily care.

Yep, as they are themed contests, I find it a bit disrespectful if a 'normal' story is chucked in. If I have to engage the search facility to locate the word 'Valentine' (or Halloween, etc), for me, it shouldn't be in the contest.

Many weren't happy with Red's last winner, a story that was favorited only 6 times, yet won a contest. I just checked her page and its in the mid 4.6's

I'm not saying it wasn't a good story, but I have difficulty with thinking the' 'majority' did.

When the readers fee jilted it shows.

I don't know who the 'many' is. :confused: Had a couple of troll comments, that's it (less than I've seen on similar stories). It was bombed down after the announcement, it recovers then goes back down. Similar to the VD story.

I don't have a massive following that will automatically 5* all of my stories, or a group of trolls which'll bomb them (well, I probably do now after all the reviews I've done, but that's by the by), or a terribly recognisable name, so I don't get the reads that others do. As someone else pointed out, it's easier to troll a less-read story and keep the vote low than to troll down a well-read story. I think for a UK author (and that does play a part), the story's still doing OK.

(Also had a shitload of author favouriting, which means more to me than individual story favouriting.)

I've said before I know it wasn't my best story (I don't even think it was my best story in that contest), but I must admit I didn't think there weren't many stand-out entries overall - I read a good deal of the list and wasn't really blown away by any of them. Unlike this VD contest, where IMO there's several strong entries.

Which falls to the main problem again of how many readers in each category?

Right now the way to win is either enter in Romance, lesbian or any category that hardly anyone reads and you're in. Romance and Lesbian have the added help of being categories popular with the holder of the pen and low voted take advantage of an unequal sweeping system.

Only fools and the very naive deny this at this point

I purposely wrote and entered Cool in a less-likely-to-win category (Group), as I fancied the challenge. I asked before the contest started which were the least likely to win, Group was mentioned by several people.

(I've also been told to not write about Afrikaners, but as above, I'm a bit bloody-minded. Plus adding some cyclists too, well, I was asking for trouble...:devil:)

No one but no one sits down and reads the themed entries one by one trying to decide which is the best V-Day or Winter story. Maybe some authors do. But how many are totally unprejudiced about it. Case in point: RedZ skippin' over the Incest stories. (Totally understand: I don't touch BDSM with a ten foot pole).

I can't be the only one who's tried to read all of them, can I?

What's stopped me before is not remembering which ones I've read (I clear the cache regularly), but this time I have a spreadsheet of notes. Hehe. :)

I can't claim not to be prejudiced about the remainder; it would take someone with no personal interactions with anyone here to be able to objectively assess them all. However, by giving reviews, I'm hoping that some of the lesser-known authors may have a few more people reading their stories.

Would like to see someone doing a précis of the Incest stories, if possible please? Pretty please?

I would like to see competitions within Categories. Best EC story, Best Incest story. That would be more honestly competitive, and I think the readers would like it, too.

I'd like to see that too. Apples with apples an' all that.

You can end this today, we have our winner. Nothing against SS, she's done well across the board here, but she hit the magic combination of a good story in a site fav category.

I thought the same thing for the Winter Contest, there was a story (either EC or Romance) out in front on the high 4.8s for most of the time. It didn't even place.

I haven't been checking the scores this time around as I thought it would bias any review, I wanted to start reading with a completely open mind. If I've been curious, after reading, I've had a look, and there's nothing looking out of place (artificially high or low) that I've seen. However, I suspect one will bounce, a lot. Will be interesting.
 
I was actually speaking more about the general reader. Most people have zero interest reading beyond their particular fetish. But some authors might go through them all like you did, I don't know.

I used to see "Contest" floating above the New Stories list. Could never have cared less. Paid no attention. It mostly all comes through the hubs and how its received in it particularly category. I would guess.


I can't be the only one who's tried to read all of them, can I?

.
 
Reading all the stories used to be common practice on the support threads. So was voting and commenting when you finished reading. That was simply part of the culture. Nobody held it against you if you didn't, but everyone was there with a pat on the back if you made it through the whole list, or gave it a good try.

It's one of the many positive things we've lost over the years that used to make the contests an enjoyable experience.

For any newcomers, here's what the contests looked like for many years.

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=485307
 
Reading all the stories used to be common practice on the support threads. So was voting and commenting when you finished reading. That was simply part of the culture. Nobody held it against you if you didn't, but everyone was there with a pat on the back if you made it through the whole list, or gave it a good try.

It's one of the many positive things we've lost over the years that used to make the contests an enjoyable experience.

For any newcomers, here's what the contests looked like for many years.

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=485307

Reading all the stories? I'm trying to. I tend to wait until I have submitted my last entry so I'm not influenced by other people's work.

Voting, yes. Commenting? I don't feel competent to comment on others' stories. My training in English Literature was at the time when deconstructing works was the norm. I wouldn't be looking at how the story affected me, or its overall impact, but nit-picking details such as grammar, similies, use of dialogue and literary devices. Doing that destroys any enjoyment I might get from the story.

What has changed over the years is the response to works being featured in the support threads. There used to be more appeals for votes because we were falling short of the minimum 25. That is rare now. We used to feature contest stories we liked; we used to have lists of comparative ratings several times during the contest i.e. X's story is currently on 4.87; Y's on 4.76.

Some of us saw a negative response from trolls to ANY mention of a story or its rating, so as soon as X's high rating was mentioned it would be attacked by 1 bombs, as would any story that was mentioned favourably.

Trolls can be vicious to contest stories.

The number of entries has increased over the years. The number of votes on contest stories has grown significantly. No longer do we need to plead for a few more votes to reach the 25 minimum.

But what has changed most is the quality of the entries. There are more good, well-written, entertaining and popular stories in the contests than there used to be. There were always some in every contest but now the proportion of good, competent stories has increased.

There are always good stories that are unpopular, perhaps because of the category, theme, or lack of overt sex. That is why I started the Authors' Hangout Last Place (tm) Contest, to highlight stories that were low-rated still but worth reading. The Last Place contest has passed its time, and is no longer relevant because ANY entry to a themed contest gets read.

Should we comment openly on the thread about other people's contest entries? I don't think the trolls have gone away.

As a contestant, I would feel uncomfortable about openly praising or criticising someone else's entry, at least until after the result is announced. I think any comment by me could be seen as biased.
 
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