Favorites vs. Ratings

[LucilleCF]

In your opinion, which is a better reflection of the overall success or failure of a story on Literotica? Favorites or ratings?

Before I posted my most recent story (The Androgyne Files: Meet Jennifer), my lowest-rated story (The Confessor) had the most favorites of all my works. It took over 20k views and over 200 ratings over three years to get to that point.

However, after four days and 4k views at the time of this post, 'The Androgyne Files: Meet Jennifer' already has more favorites than 'The Confessor'.

In my mind, a favorite carries more weight than even a 4 or 5 star rating. It's a statement by the reader that not only did they enjoy the story, but they also want to read it again in the future.

In an environment where some readers give a 1 or 2 star rating in bad faith, I'm beginning to think that the number of people who hold on to a story and follow the author is a much better metric for success on this site.

Thoughts?

 

[KeithD]

Neither, really. Neither guarantees the story was even read (or started to read). Readers are still favoriting big glops of an author's story listing to maybe read later and a view just means it was opened. The reader may have not gone any further with it. So, of those two . . . I wouldn't bother thinking about it much in terms of an index to a "successful" story. Having statistics available doesn't guarantee they'll tell you much worthwhile.

 

[LucilleCF]

Neither guarantees the story was even read (or started to read). Readers are still favoriting big glops of an author's story listing to maybe read later and a view just means it was opened.

Wow. I didn't realize that 'read later' and 'favorite' were the same thing.

There goes my theory.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is the way I think about it.

"Success" to me means two things:

1. It means writing the best stories I can.

2. It means reaching out to and connecting with readers who like my stories and appreciate them. I want to reach out to as many such readers as possible.

The stats and data that Literotica provides are a highly imperfect, noisy, error-filled, but not totally useless indicator of whether I'm achieving success by my standard.

Numerical ratings, IMO, aren't useless -- they mean something -- but they're a highly imperfect measure of whether my stories are any good or whether people like them.

I like favorites, but they're limited too. A bad Incest story might have far more favorites than a good Erotic Couplings story. That tells you more about the relative popularity of the categories than anything else. It certainly tells you nothing about the relative merits of the Incest story and the Erotic Couplings story.

My advice: Look at stats as a highly imperfect but useful tool and/or data source for you to try to achieve whatever you want to achieve at Literotica. Whatever choice you make, you're not wrong.

 

[KeithD]

Wow. I didn't realize that 'read later' and 'favorite' were the same thing.

There goes my theory.

They aren't designed to be, but that's how some readers use them. In the last two days I've had two separate readers favorite over a dozen stories in my file each within the space of a half hour. I don't think that means they've actually read the stories they have favorited yet--or prove that they'll ever read them.

 

[RejectReality]

Wow. I didn't realize that 'read later' and 'favorite' were the same thing.

There goes my theory.

The ability to save things to the "read later" lists is quite recent. It takes readers a while to adopt new features, so many are probably still using favorites as bookmarks, even though a separate bookmarking feature is now available.

Once the majority of the readers have adapted, the favorites will be a little more meaningful.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I get far fewer Faves than Votes, by an order or two of magnitude, so I always go with the statistical indicator that contains the most information. Despite all the anomalies, the Voting system gives me more of an idea of a story's reception than the binary Faves will ever do.

As an example, i have a recent story with the following stats:
14.1k views, 24 faves, 4.78 / 124, 8 comments

So five times more people left a vote than hit the fave button, which is roughly 1:100, whereas faves is roughly 1:500. A 1% response rate is very low in the first place, but a 0.2% response rate isn't even a bump in the road, it's barely even a painted line.

 

[HeyAll]

Here's the important thing to realize:

People will down-vote a story based on a theme.

Meaning, if a story has any type of noncon or coersion, there are people who will vote that down. Certain fetish stuff is also hit-or-miss.

So a story could be well-written but have a low to moderate score.

I've also written stories that have a high favorite ratio, but a low overall score. That's just the way it goes.

To answer the main question, I'd say favorites is the best indidicator of a story's success. But also it depends on context.

If a story has 10,000 views and has 100 favorites, with a score of 4.3.... to me that's a massive success.

But if a story has 10,000 views with 5 favorites and a score of 4.7.... something seems off, like most readers aren't making it to the end, and only a small number of readers had bothered to vote.

 

[TadOverdon]

Views matter to me, but I'm most interested in followers.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'd lean towards favs because they can't be removed by trolls whereas trolls can bomb a story down.

Favs can be gamed as well, but you have to create a real account to fav, meaning creating a new e-mail address and that's a lot of work, and most people aren't going through that to a degree that would make a big difference.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Comments from actual readers, and followers mean the most.
Actually, new Followers is the ultimate compliment because it means they want to see more of your work.

Then favourites and bookmarks, then votes.

Views are a function of how wide-appealing the title and tagline and tags are, rather than the quality of the story, and number of votes goes with appeal/disgust more than quality of storytelling. On average a well-written and constructed story will do better than one that isn't, but if you only get 10-20 votes the score will be skewed.

 

[dmallord]

This is the way I think about it.

"Success" to me means two things:

1. It means writing the best stories I can.

2. It means reaching out to and connecting with readers who like my stories and appreciate them. I want to reach out to as many such readers as possible.

The stats and data that Literotica provides are a highly imperfect, noisy, error-filled, but not totally useless indicator of whether I'm achieving success by my standard.

Numerical ratings, IMO, aren't useless -- they mean something -- but they're a highly imperfect measure of whether my stories are any good or whether people like them.

I like favorites, but they're limited too. A bad Incest story might have far more favorites than a good Erotic Couplings story. That tells you more about the relative popularity of the categories than anything else. It certainly tells you nothing about the relative merits of the Incest story and the Erotic Couplings story.

My advice: Look at stats as a highly imperfect but useful tool and/or data source for you to try to achieve whatever you want to achieve at Literotica. Whatever choice you make, you're not wrong.

I like your thoughts on approaching writing for Lit. I've looked at and tried to make something meaningful out of the lit downloads - but cannot draw much of a conclusion from them.

I am making it a point to sent a PM thanking readers who add my story to their list or follow me. [not many of those, so its not hard to do! Not sure if readers actually are reading those PMs]

What is nice, at least it brings a slight smile out, is that some of those stat numbers are pleasing; today for instance I found these:

• My first two stories posted on November 28, 2020. 28th story posted this week, 9 Mar 22.
• I posted my 100th forum comment today
• Just crossed over 200 followers today
• My number of views for all 28 stories, summative, just crossed 300,000 views [although that, as stated in this thread, doesn't mean read]. Just nice to think that 300K people at least glanced to take a look!
• My average rating of all stories is 4.55; highest 4.82, lowest 4.24 [I read that as my stories seem to be at least interesting to some.]
• By my Excel Extrapolation: 6,367 votes: 1-1star, 1-2star, 51-3star, 2,628-4star, 3,686-5stars. [give or take a star - one way or the other]
• I have articles in six Lit. categories so far as part of my 'bucket list'

Most of all, writing helps bring a bit of calmness to mind in these twilight years ;-)

 

[davion2308]

I like the numbers and seeing how people react but I have maybe 20-30 stories saved as Favorites and I haven't visited any of them in maybe 8 years or more. I read them and I liked them but I'm not that engaged. So I'll be jaded when I see that people favorite my stories. The same goes with scores.

Honestly, I get a thrill seeing the "H" for my better scores but having a bunch of people comment, good or bad, and having a bunch of people vote on a score, good or bad, means I created some kind of impression with them that's making them take that extra step of scoring (even in anger) and that means I impacted their day. That's success to me.

13 votes and a 4.74 is awesome and I'll take it but 350 votes and a 3.9 means more people are actively doing something regarding my story and even if they don't like it as much, it's giving them a reaction. That's my ultimate measure of success.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Wow. I didn't realize that 'read later' and 'favorite' were the same thing.

There goes my theory.

If you write a long series, the use of Favorite as a bookmark becomes apparent.

When, over a course of several days, a reader favorites Chapter Five, then Chapter Twelve, then Chapter Nineteen, it's most likely that they are doing so to save their place.

 

[Djmac1031]

Views matter to me, but I'm most interested in followers.

Agreed. A "follow" means they enjoyed something you wrote enough to want to be made aware when your next story publishes.

 

[NotWise]

Agreed. A "follow" means they enjoyed something you wrote enough to want to be made aware when your next story publishes.

A lot of the readers who follow me also follow a long list of other authors -- dozens, maybe hundreds. They probably aren't using their dashboard to find new stories. They'd be inundated with new stories if even a small part of their list was still active.

I've also had readers follow me multiple times, sometimes in a short time span. I think, instead of wanting to get a notice of my next story, they're just using "follow" as a compliment to the author.

 

[KeithD]

As I have experienced (am experiencing, I think), those who want to actively attack any story you post are helped by favoriting you. They are notified each time you post a new story and don't have to monitor your file to find that out for themselves. On that basis, I could do without the favoriting system here altogether.

 

[TadOverdon]

A lot of the readers who follow me also follow a long list of other authors -- dozens, maybe hundreds. They probably aren't using their dashboard to find new stories. They'd be inundated with new stories if even a small part of their list was still active.

I've also had readers follow me multiple times, sometimes in a short time span. I think, instead of wanting to get a notice of my next story, they're just using "follow" as a compliment to the author.

A lot of writers aren't active, or disappear for years so it seems. Following them lets you know if or when they resurface. I imagine that for some people who follow a lot of writers, many in their list aren't active.

 

[pumpkindice]

I don't put that much stock in the rating system, mostly because I figure that a lot of people are rating every story a 5 just to be polite to the author. Sort of how you always just tap five stars on Uber, because the ride was always fine, and you know the driver can't work without a certain rating. I've not really had that much of a problem with review-bombing, as I figure that's only something that happens to much more established authors than myself.

With regards to ratings, my worst rated story was the first one I posted, my second worst rated story was the second one. I deserved every single one of those votes, as I didn't really know what I was doing at first. I made serious mistakes in how I started things out. With the feedback I received, I'd do it differently if I had to do it over again.

One thing I've also noticed: my rating for a story always seems to start out low, and then build up higher as time goes along. The rating after the 1st day the story is out is always the low point. I don't know if that means anything, but I'd appreciate it if anyone can lend some insight into why that might be. It's something I find puzzling.

 

[NotWise]

My theory is that readers who get to the new stories fast are looking for quick gratification. If they don't get it, then some vote low. It's all up hill after the low early start.

 

[ElectricBlue]

One thing I've also noticed: my rating for a story always seems to start out low, and then build up higher as time goes along. The rating after the 1st day the story is out is always the low point. I don't know if that means anything, but I'd appreciate it if anyone can lend some insight into why that might be. It's something I find puzzling.

There are clowns out there who deliberately one-bomb new stories. God knows why, but they do it. Over time, higher votes will slowly pull the score up, and the site also runs a "sweep" through the data on a regular basis (especially during contests) to remove spurious votes (both high and low).

My advice, ignore the scores for the first two or three weeks (if you can, but nobody can), and come back later - then you'll see a truer story rating. Straight out of the gate, it's all too volatile to make much sense of it all.

 

[pumpkindice]

There are clowns out there who deliberately one-bomb new stories. God knows why, but they do it. Over time, higher votes will slowly pull the score up, and the site also runs a "sweep" through the data on a regular basis (especially during contests) to remove spurious votes (both high and low).

My advice, ignore the scores for the first two or three weeks (if you can, but nobody can), and come back later - then you'll see a truer story rating. Straight out of the gate, it's all too volatile to make much sense of it all.

I see. Thank you for the insight, I appreciate it!