At the risk of being bombed …

[SamScribble]

Does anyone have any explanations?

When I post a new story, I usually get a rubbish score. Not always, but usually. And then, after a day or so, the tide rises. What was a low-to-mid 3 becomes a high 3. And then, a week or so later, it becomes a 4.xx. A fair sprinkling go on to become 4.5x, and some go on to 4.6x, 4.7x. (Given that what I post is hardly wanking prose, 4.5x is not a bad score.)

Occasionally, there is an attack of the one-bombers – the 4.xx scores overnight revert to 3.mumble scores. (Although they usually come back up again with time.)

My question is this: What is it with the Day One readers? Or are they not really readers? Are they just a herd of ‘fuck you’ robots?

 

[sr71plt]

Are they just a herd of ‘fuck you’ robots?

Yep, pretty much. I have about the same, with a wrinkle. If my ratings soar, late on day two into day three, the story is systematically voted to below 4.5. If other readers aren't finished with it then, though, the ratings could go back up a bit again.

 

[NotWise]

My question is this: What is it with the Day One readers? Or are they not really readers? Are they just a herd of ‘fuck you’ robots?

As near as I can tell, the early low votes are an established pattern. What happens later can vary. Ogg has said that his scores drop over time. but I think he was talking about years, not days. So far (not having been around all that long) mine tend to go up after the first day and then settle.

I think Lit has a community of readers who have no other life. They jump on new stories and either love them or hate them. A day later, which unfortunately is when most of your traffic has passed, you get readers who are more balanced. Over time the normal readers have their effect.

 

[sr71plt]

As near as I can tell, the early low votes are an established pattern. What happens later can vary. Ogg has said that his scores drop over time. but I think he was talking about years, not days. So far (not having been around all that long) mine tend to go up after the first day and then settle.

I think Lit has a community of readers who have no other life. They jump on new stories and either love them or hate them. A day later, which unfortunately is when most of your traffic has passed, you get readers who are more balanced. Over time the normal readers have their effect.

I'm not sure that even most of them actually are readers.

 

[CyranoJ]

There are certainly readers out there who just go out and one-bomb stories, reading them be damned, because they have nothing better to do. At least one such has boasted about it here.

That said, I haven't found them to be all the significant, personally. Most of the peole who vote on stories seem to do it honestly enough.

 

[SimonDoom]

It's good to know my experience wasn't unique. When I posted my last story, which was only my second, I decided to follow the scores at first. I started with a few 5s and 4s, then -- holy crap -- I got a 3, then a 2, then a 1, all in the first 10 votes. Since then the scoring has been much more generous, and the overall score recovered -- with the help of a few sweeps, I imagine. But for a while there I was thinking this was a tough and highly unpredictable crowd.

 

[holliday1960]

Interestingly enough, what I have noticed is that stories get posted well after midnight, just about the time most bars close here. If you go to the recent comments on the stories page, you'll see Anonymous is hard at work during those hours. Come daylight, or mid-morning when Anonymous is sleeping, the numbers start to go up.

 

[oggbashan]

As near as I can tell, the early low votes are an established pattern. What happens later can vary. Ogg has said that his scores drop over time. but I think he was talking about years, not days. So far (not having been around all that long) mine tend to go up after the first day and then settle.

I think Lit has a community of readers who have no other life. They jump on new stories and either love them or hate them. A day later, which unfortunately is when most of your traffic has passed, you get readers who are more balanced. Over time the normal readers have their effect.

You are right. I meant that my story ratings drop over years. It's a slow process and very gradual but the ratings erode for most.

I have been hit recently by low votes in the first few hours of a new story, particularly for contest entries. If you don't get a Red H while still high on the New list it affects subsequent voting. I think that is anon's intention.

However some of my recent contest entries have not been as good as some others so the lower ratings could be justified. A few 4 votes and an occasional 3 could be genuine, but a number of 1 votes within the first 24 hours are not. None of my stories are bad enough to merit a quick succession of 1 votes.

Another however - I write some mild femdom. Those stories can produce a violent response by men, presumably men, who see their masculinity threatened by fictional women. It shows that my writing has had an impact.

 

[NicoleZ]

Yep, pretty much. I have about the same, with a wrinkle. If my ratings soar, late on day two into day three, the story is systematically voted to below 4.5. If other readers aren't finished with it then, though, the ratings could go back up a bit again.

That is pretty much my experience too even if mine is far more limited than yours. It would seem that what is going on is connected to certain writers rather than a general hatred of the subject matter (although such a component of moralist vigilantism cannot be completely ruled out).

Some writers seem almost immune to this and even if their stories have nothing to do with the contest theme except for a hastily tagged on epilogue, they still end up amongst the Contest Winners. It is as if a segment of the readership has decided that certain writers must never be allowed to remain on the Hot List and while their story is on the "New" list, it must enjoy as low a rating as possible as well as negative comments to steer the readership away.

 

[oggbashan]

Contest theme?

I am concerned that some readers have a very limited idea of what is on theme for a contest. Most of the themes are wide and allow for considerable interpretation e.g. Valentine's Day can just be 'Romance'.

The official statement is:

themes: romantic love, Valentine's Day, Cupid, sensuality, etc.

I don't see many contest entries that break the rules or even come close to twisting them. But some anons seem to be 'theme nazis' who want THEIR interpretation of the theme to be the only valid version.

Halloween is the worst for comments complaining about the lack of relevance yet the theme statement is:

themes: scary stuff, costumes, Halloween traditions (trick-or-treating, etc.), etc.

Halloween traditions are THIRD in that list. I'm not happy with writing about Halloween traditions. They have changed so much in my lifetime and become very commercialised. Trick or treating didn't happen when I was a child. It was rare even when my children were the right age and usually between close neighbours and immediate relations, not going around a wider neighbourhood.

 

[NotWise]

Halloween is the worst for comments complaining about the lack of relevance yet the theme statement is:

themes: scary stuff, costumes, Halloween traditions (trick-or-treating, etc.), etc.

Halloween traditions are THIRD in that list. I'm not happy with writing about Halloween traditions. They have changed so much in my lifetime and become very commercialised. Trick or treating didn't happen when I was a child. It was rare even when my children were the right age and usually between close neighbours and immediate relations, not going around a wider neighbourhood.

Off the original topic, but I have that problem with Halloween as well. It was widely celebrated when I was growing up but now it is not, and I have no inclination to write about it.

I live in a predominantly hispanic neighborhood. Dia de Los Muertos is widely observed, but Halloween is ignored. I had one trick-or-treater at my house this year. Last year, none. If the subject were expanded to cover All Saints Day then I could write about it.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Yeah, I see a pattern something like that. Posted, score shoots up, a 1-bomb, score starts to recover, a few more one bombs. If you get near a toplist, the 1-bombs start again, harder.

It's fun to speculate about this. The initial 1-bombs - yeah, some no lifer who is constantly on the new list, skimming and bombing anything not by his fave author or category or whatever. (You'd think Lit could identify and block someone like that though - it's an easy pattern).

The top list bombers... all I can figure is some popular author has a large extended family and they all bomb anything that's not hers, or whatever.

It is what it is. A score of one means "I hated it". Well, there's lots of reasons to hate something, some of them absurdly petty. I can say with considerable arrogance that I've never in my adult life written a line that "deserved" a 1, but scores here aren't about quality. They are about how many wankers in basements you're giving joy to vs how many assholes in basements want to give you one finger and one star.

Sweeps do seem to take out most of the garbage votes these days, though in fairness they probably aren't removing enough 5's. But they happen too late. Your score is generally trashed the entire time it's on the new list. Damage done, victory for the assholes. In effect, a tiny group of people is controlling what new stories get the clicks. No wonder they keep going - they actually have a kind of power over others, something they've probably wanted all their sad little lives.

Lit would do a tremendous favor by showing the history of votes on a story. Ideally associated with tokens representing the IP source. We could do our own filtering, tossing out the votes from the tokens who invariably give us 5s or 1s, and arrive at some sort of meaningful number of our own. But I don't see it happening.

 

[NicoleZ]

Sweeps do seem to take out most of the garbage votes these days, though in fairness they probably aren't removing enough 5's. But they happen too late. Your score is generally trashed the entire time it's on the new list. Damage done, victory for the assholes. In effect, a tiny group of people is controlling what new stories get the clicks. No wonder they keep going - they actually have a kind of power over others, something they've probably wanted all their sad little lives.

Lit would do a tremendous favor by showing the history of votes on a story. Ideally associated with tokens representing the IP source. We could do our own filtering, tossing out the votes from the tokens who invariably give us 5s or 1s, and arrive at some sort of meaningful number of our own. But I don't see it happening.

This is very good observations and an excellent suggestion! If readers could see that a new story has the following initial voting history: 4 - 5 - 5 - 4 - 5 - 5 - 5 - 1 - 4 - 1 - 5 - 4 - 5 - 1 - 1 for a score of 3.67, the dichotomy between the most common scores and the 1-bombs would hopefully make it perfectly obvious that the story has been the target of an attack and consequently is much better than the score would indicate - even if you allow for the possibility of half of the fives being "5-blasts". Your suggestion would be yet more helpful when stories receive hundreds of votes in a short period of time.

Besides, I've yet to come across a story that is so badly written that it merits either a "1" or a "2". Most, quite honestly, actually deserve at least a "4" (whereas not a few of the top-ranked stories do not merit the high scores accorded them).


(My excuses for not quoting your excellent reply in full as I'm only replying to the parts quoted. I do hope that you do not feel that I'm taking things out of context, as I'm accused of doing when I don't quote full messages.)

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I live in a predominantly hispanic neighborhood. Dia de Los Muertos is widely observed, but Halloween is ignored. I had one trick-or-treater at my house this year. Last year, none. If the subject were expanded to cover All Saints Day then I could write about it.

Yeah, it's dead as a kid's holiday. I blame economics; when I was growing up my mom would fuss over a costume and take me around. In today's one parent, or two parents and three jobs world, there's likely just no time. Add internet stories about blades in apples and it's all over. I buy a bag of candy and it ends up at work.

It's big on campuses though, sort of a legitimized Dress Like A Slut day for many women who have figured out that the scariest thing they can be is in charge of their own sexuality. Plus they get laid. So it's popular.

I think an All Saints day competition would be fascinating. Writing scary fuckmummies or bad men with chainsaws... we can do it in our sleep. But write someone good, opposing corporate this or drug lord that or political scummery the other... and still keep it hot... now that's a challenge. Being out your genuinely good heros.

 

[Hypoxia]

I live in a predominantly hispanic neighborhood. Dia de Los Muertos is widely observed, but Halloween is ignored. I had one trick-or-treater at my house this year. Last year, none. If the subject were expanded to cover All Saints Day then I could write about it.

No reason not to write about Hispanic fests, as I did in Vamos! Day of the Fucking Dead for a prior Hallowe'en contest. The festivals are pretty intense in Guatemala. The vibe has spread far beyond the Todos Santos season; we have XMas trees loaded with glittering skulls presided over by skeletal Katarinas, July 4th displays with skeletal Uncle Sams and Lady Liberties, etc. And dead Easter Bunnies too.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yeah, I see a pattern something like that. Posted, score shoots up, a 1-bomb, score starts to recover, a few more one bombs. If you get near a toplist, the 1-bombs start again, harder.

...

It is what it is. A score of one means "I hated it". Well, there's lots of reasons to hate something, some of them absurdly petty. I can say with considerable arrogance that I've never in my adult life written a line that "deserved" a 1, but scores here aren't about quality.

...

Lit would do a tremendous favor by showing the history of votes on a story. Ideally associated with tokens representing the IP source. We could do our own filtering, tossing out the votes from the tokens who invariably give us 5s or 1s, and arrive at some sort of meaningful number of our own. But I don't see it happening.

But how many authors have the statistical training to tell the difference between a genuine pattern of spurious votes and just ordinary variation?

I say "training" because it's not an ability that just comes instinctively. Anomaly detection is hard stuff. Not my specialty but I know enough about it to appreciate some of the difficulties.

Humans are very good at reading "meaning" into patterns that are pure chance. "If you read every 17th letter of the Bible you get a prediction for JFK's death" etc. etc. When you're a delicious ape-creature trying to avoid being eaten by lions, over-active pattern recognition is a Good Thing but here... not so much.

Needless to say, I don't hate any of the stories I post. But if NOBODY hates them, out of the thousands of people who read any new story here... that probably means I'm not taking enough chances. I don't write for the sake of preaching but my stories inevitably reflect my world view (racism bad, homophobia bad, Muslims mostly nice, affirmative consent good, HPL talented horror writer with inexcusable hatreds that ought to be acknowledged, cats nice, men overall less interesting than women, chicken soup recipes better than graphic threesomes, yada yada) and I KNOW not everybody agrees with those principles. So I presume some of my downvotes are legit statements of reader dislike, even if the sweeps algorithm almost always deletes them.

But if I wanted to find excuses to discount all my downvotes that's easy enough to do. 1s, 2s, and 3s are atypical (especially since all the previous 1s, 2s, and 3s got swept for being atypical...) This 4 came JUST after I argued with somebody on the forum. Those three 4s came from the same IP block (which is actually a major ISP with millions of users, but I don't know that and have no interest in knowing it). These 4s came from people who always vote low, so they should really be considered 5s. etc. etc.

In the end, each of us would come up with a filtering scheme to reassure ourselves that our stories are the REAL champions here, and nobody would agree on which scheme is actually correct. (Although it might give the real trolls some ideas about how better to cover their tracks.)

Honestly I think authors would do better to invest their efforts into learning to accept that ratings aren't ever going to be a perfect measure of worth.

This is very good observations and an excellent suggestion! If readers could see that a new story has the following initial voting history: 4 - 5 - 5 - 4 - 5 - 5 - 5 - 1 - 4 - 1 - 5 - 4 - 5 - 1 - 1 for a score of 3.67, the dichotomy between the most common scores and the 1-bombs would hopefully make it perfectly obvious that the story has been the target of an attack and consequently is much better than the score would indicate - even if you allow for the possibility of half of the fives being "5-blasts". Your suggestion would be yet more helpful when stories receive hundreds of votes in a short period of time.

Looking for outliers is a good way to detect problems in a scenario where scores follow a nice Gaussian distribution (bell curve) or similar. It's less reliable for something like Literotica where there's no reason to expect such a distribution.

Some stories are inherently polarising. Politics, Fdom, female adultery, religion, and various other topics are pretty much guaranteed to provide a mix of 1s and 4-5s with little in between. Humour can be that way too. To be crude about it, democracy means that terrible people with bad opinions get to vote just like anybody else; that's not cheating, just the down-side of an open vote.

Looking at the scores you list, it's noticeable that all the 1s are in the middle or the second half. But is that a significant cluster, or just the sort of thing that arises easily enough by chance? That's not the sort of question one can answer just by eyeballing it.

 

[TxRad]

Back before some changes were made, no one but you could see your score until you had ten votes. More than once I saw a perfect 5 turn into a 4.63 on the eleventh vote and a 4.33 on the twelfth vote.

Now, everyone can see the score from vote one. Not to mention, the scores are shown in many, many more places.

 

[NicoleZ]

Looking for outliers is a good way to detect problems in a scenario where scores follow a nice Gaussian distribution (bell curve) or similar. It's less reliable for something like Literotica where there's no reason to expect such a distribution.

Some stories are inherently polarising. Politics, Fdom, female adultery, religion, and various other topics are pretty much guaranteed to provide a mix of 1s and 4-5s with little in between. Humour can be that way too. To be crude about it, democracy means that terrible people with bad opinions get to vote just like anybody else; that's not cheating, just the down-side of an open vote.

I hear what you are saying and both agree as well as disagree with what you say. If everyone read every story, yes, I'd say you are correct. But why would someone whose preferences are, say, straight & romantic avidly read and vote on gay BDSM or incestuous non-consent, something they know beforehand that they will not enjoy?

What I'm trying to say is that you can expect readers to choose to read stories based on what they might like and avoid stories they know they would in all likelihood dislike. Because of this, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a gaussian distribution of 3s, 4s and 5s. Why would anyone read a story and vote on it if they know even beforehand that they are going to hate it?

Because of this, every 1 (barring possibly in Humour & Satire where personal taste about what's considered to be funny might differ vastly - Life of Brian anyone?) ought to be regarded as malice aforethought, either because the reader has chosen to read and vote on something they knew in advance they would hate, or because they have a hidden agenda. Even 2s are suspect as they do almost as much damage but are much harder to ascribe to "malice aforethought".

Looking at the scores you list, it's noticeable that all the 1s are in the middle or the second half. But is that a significant cluster, or just the sort of thing that arises easily enough by chance? That's not the sort of question one can answer just by eyeballing it.

It is a fictitious scoreline but it closely matches the voting patterns I've observed and from what others have said on this topic and previously, apparently this is also their experience.

Honestly I think authors would do better to invest their efforts into learning to accept that ratings aren't ever going to be a perfect measure of worth.

This is perfectly true. To paraphrase: You can please all of the people some time and some of the people all the time, but never throughout an entire story.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

But how many authors have the statistical training to tell the difference between a genuine pattern of spurious votes and just ordinary variation?

If just one does - and I think I spot two here - it's worth it.

Sample size will always be a problem though. Well on my stuff anyway.

But let's face it - probably nobody in this forum writes stuff that ever "deserves" a 1. I don't need to have a stats background to know that twenty 5's, three 4s, and a couple 1's is more a question of Spot The Assholes, than Spot The Anomaly.

 

[sr71plt]

I believe that a high percentage of the zap votes are coming from folks who aren't reading the stories at all. They have some agenda that isn't connect with the story content at all.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I hear what you are saying and both agree as well as disagree with what you say. If everyone read every story, yes, I'd say you are correct. But why would someone whose preferences are, say, straight & romantic avidly read and vote on gay BDSM or incestuous non-consent, something they know beforehand that they will not enjoy?

What I'm trying to say is that you can expect readers to choose to read stories based on what they might like and avoid stories they know they would in all likelihood dislike. Because of this, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a gaussian distribution of 3s, 4s and 5s. Why would anyone read a story and vote on it if they know even beforehand that they are going to hate it?

Because of this, every 1 (barring possibly in Humour & Satire where personal taste about what's considered to be funny might differ vastly - Life of Brian anyone?) ought to be regarded as malice aforethought, either because the reader has chosen to read and vote on something they knew in advance they would hate, or because they have a hidden agenda.

There certainly are some people who hate-read entire categories (LW and NC seem to be particular favourites) but I can't agree that every 1 is the result of malice. Categories (and even tags, and author notes) only tell readers so much about the story they're about to read.

For example, if a story is transphobic (not "involves transphobia as a plot element", I mean the story itself expresses transphobia) then that's a deal-breaker for me. No matter how good it might be in other ways, that's something that's going to ruin my enjoyment, and I'd make no apologies for giving it a 1 along with an appropriate comment. Ditto homophobia, racism, misogyny, etc. etc.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I hear what you are saying and both agree as well as disagree with what you say. If everyone read every story, yes, I'd say you are correct. But why would someone whose preferences are, say, straight & romantic avidly read and vote on gay BDSM or incestuous non-consent, something they know beforehand that they will not enjoy?

What I'm trying to say is that you can expect readers to choose to read stories based on what they might like and avoid stories they know they would in all likelihood dislike. Because of this, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a gaussian distribution of 3s, 4s and 5s. Why would anyone read a story and vote on it if they know even beforehand that they are going to hate it?

Because of this, every 1 (barring possibly in Humour & Satire where personal taste about what's considered to be funny might differ vastly - Life of Brian anyone?) ought to be regarded as malice aforethought, either because the reader has chosen to read and vote on something they knew in advance they would hate, or because they have a hidden agenda. Even 2s are suspect as they do almost as much damage but are much harder to ascribe to "malice aforethought".



It is a fictitious scoreline but it closely matches the voting patterns I've observed and from what others have said on this topic and previously, apparently this is also their experience.



This is perfectly true. To paraphrase: You can please all of the people some time and some of the people all the time, but never throughout an entire story.

As a rule I avoid fare I have no appetite for. At my age I no longer have the luxury of time to waste. Even with categories I love I'm ruthless with any writing that wastes my time. But I can judge and assess efforts impartially. There are objective standards to do it.

 

[NicoleZ]

but I can't agree that every 1 is the result of malice.

Out of curiosity, could you please give us an example of a submitted story where a "1" would be a valid rating and why it is so in your opinion? Or failing that, under which (realistic) circumstances would a score of "1" be appropriate?

I know you listed "stories where the story itself expresses transphobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny", but I can give you dozens of examples of stories rated 4.75+, even contest winners(!), which express such sentiments as an underlying foundation for the story itself. But as these stories are well-written and pander to the prevalent "malconceptions" of a large segment of the majority of readers, should these stories really have been rated "1" instead?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Out of curiosity, could you please give us an example of a submitted story where a "1" would be a valid rating and why it is so in your opinion? Or failing that, under which (realistic) circumstances would a score of "1" be appropriate?

I'm not really eager to go archive-diving just to look for stories that piss me off - I think we'd all agreed that was a weird and bloody-minded thing to do? Also I'm on phone only for the next few days, which makes such things inconvenient. But I daresay you can find several of the kinds I've mentioned, by searching on obvious slurs.

A couple that do spring to mind, though -

(1) author posted a popular series that was attracting a large readership, then mentioned in their last post that the final chapter would only be available to readers who paid the author for it. That seems pretty scummy to me, and IMHO readers would be well within their rights to go back and downvote every chapter.

(2) story that pushed a bunch of extremely harmful misconceptions about BDSM. I don't particularly appreciate it when authors encourage readers in the idea that abuse = BDSM = abuse, and I reserve my right to express that opinion with my vote.

I know you listed "stories where the story itself expresses transphobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny", but I can give you dozens of examples of stories rated 4.75+, even contest winners(!), which express such sentiments as an underlying foundation for the story itself. But as these stories are well-written and pander to the prevalent "malconceptions" of a large segment of the majority of readers, should these stories really have been rated "1" instead?

I'm sure you can. There are plenty of authors with terrible ideas and plenty of readers who dig that. But I'm also a reader, and if I hate a story for those reasons, I'm entirely within my rights to vote accordingly.

"Well-written" is ultimately in the eye of the readers, including those who didn't like the work.

 

[oggbashan]

Out of curiosity, could you please give us an example of a submitted story where a "1" would be a valid rating and why it is so in your opinion? Or failing that, under which (realistic) circumstances would a score of "1" be appropriate?

...

I can quote several of mine:

Hen Party and Stag Party - two of my very early works with obvious femdom that annoys some.

Donna - dark and unredeemed. Too realistic for some.

White Scut - either liked or hated or just weird.

Trapped - Fetish. If that fetish doesn't appeal it is rubbish.

I think any of them could attract a valid 1 vote. Trapped has attracted the most critical (valid) comments. After a long time I deleted the most offensive ones.