We are new to Lit - lots of views but very few scores

[SilverHotwife]

Good afternoon Literotica lovers!

We are fairly new to Lit and have posted a number of chapters of our series, Fifty Shades of Silver. It seems like the number of views outstrip the votes, and definitely the comments, by a large margin.

We welcome all comments, especially constructive criticism. Is it normal that a story would get 3k+ views and only 40 or so votes? We are trying to set expectations, but do not have enough experience to know what’s good and not so good.

In any case, we would love to hear from you!

Xo,
Silver & Gabriel

We’d love for you to join us on our Florida vacation!
https://www.literotica.com/s/fifty-shades-of-silver-ch-01

 

[Soshameless11]

I'm not sure what a "normal" ratio would be, but I have one story with over 80,000 views and just 558 votes out of that, and another with a couple thousand views with only 15 votes. Just write what you love, and the views will come!

 

[ElectricBlue]

My rule of thumb, over ninety or so chapters and stories (just under a million words):

One Vote per hundred Views
One Comment per thousand Views.

Roughly consistent across categories, some are more responsive, some less so. Regarding Comments - if your story is very good or very bad, readers will let you know. If it's bang in the middle of the bell curve, expect silence.

Your response is pretty typical - 40:3k+ is 1:100 ish.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yeah, that 1:100 is fairly normal.

 

[shakespeare_i_aint]

My personal scoring system on Literotica is to not score anything unless I can score it a 5. Because anything less than a 5 critically hurts your story score.

If 50 people gave you a 5 and 50 people gave you a 4, you would be sitting at a 4.5 and have a well-deserved "H" next to the story title. Then I come along, and I just personally find your style to be prolix. So I give you a 3. Now your story loses it's "H" and WON'T EVER GET IT BACK until your finished story suddenly manages to sustain more than 4.5 averages. I've read that stories get higher marks as they age, so maybe longevity will replace that lost badge of honor.

I'd think you'd only want votes from people who dig your style and are thanking you for the effort with a 5, rather than someone who whacks you with a 4 because you didn't mention Silver's age, race, body type, hair color or hair style. Most stroke stories cover those deets in the first sentence and I'm not certain you have even included them in the first chapter. Maybe you know Silver better than the readers do and you are assuming we just know what she looks like. We don't. If you don't say it, it doesn't get said.

At the start of the story Silver is going to South Florida. In the second paragraph, they start the 2 and a half hour drive to Houston for a reason explained only at the end of the paragraph. It turns out that the Houston Airport was an initial destination, not Houston itself. The word "airport" needs to be in the first sentence of that paragraph or Silver should be surprised with a weekend "flight" to South Florida rather than a "weekend away". Then we'll know why there is a long trip to Houston at all.

"Without a bra, I can clearly see her perky nipples pressing against the bright yellow fabric." Who is wearing the bra? You or Silver? It isn't made clear and sport can be made with the construction of the sentence.

I'm pretty sure the Literotica how-to articles mention that readers expect much longer chapters than these. There are a ton of writers on literotica who could knock a chapter like this out over a sandwich. So you can't necessarily expect good marks or good comments for short chapters.

If you'd like a quick honest appraisal of your series, I'll do it. I have a self-quarantine going, starting yesterday. If not, that's fine. Good luck with your series.

 

[Emirus]

It seems like the number of views outstrip the votes, and definitely the comments, by a large margin.

We welcome all comments, especially constructive criticism. Is it normal that a story would get 3k+ views and only 40 or so votes?]

I can’t tell you how views of my stories are as opposed to votes because I never look at the views.

It’s impossible to tell from the number of views how many people actually read the story, how many skimmed through it, and how many read the first few paragraphs and then gave up. Like everyone else, I like to see a story with a lot of votes and, although I like to see that H (as does everyone else), I realise if it’s above 4.00 then the vast majority liked it.

I comment on the majority, practically all, of the stories I read whether I liked the story or not but only if I’ve actually read it.

A 4 means I liked it and a 5 means I really liked it (which isn’t the same as saying it’s an outstanding masterpiece) using the yardstick provided by Laurel. The voting system is there for a reason and one of the reasons is feedback to the writer.

If I vote 3, which is very rare, I always leave a comment saying why and try to be constructive. I never leave a comment that isn’t, in some way, constructive.

I never vote 1 or 2. No matter how bad the story is the writer has devoted time to it, done their best, and doesn’t deserve a kick in the teeth. In those circumstances I leave what I consider is a constructive comment and explain why I didn’t vote.

Voting 5 or not voting at all, particularly if you don’t comment, tells the writer nothing and, unless you are a complete egotist, every writer wants to improve and constructive comments help you to do do.

..

 

[mletrout]

My first chapter of my first story went up about two hours ago and I got the little notice thing, so I went to look and make sure it went up the way I wanted, and I immediately noticed that it had 1 vote with a score of, wait for it... 1.0 which is very special.

I think someone saw the tag "impotent" and felt immediately threatened.

I'm only posting a story because I like to post comments - actually, I like the comments more than the stories, usually - and I got a response from an author saying, "How can you critique my writing when you're not even an author?" So rather than argue about how one can actually be an author without having a story on Literotica, I figured I'd post a story and then I could point to it and say, "See? I can actually form a coherent sentence...Now let's talk about your story."

Anyway, it's a funny place and I wouldn't take scores very seriously. In fact, I wouldn't take them at all. I don't vote unless I'm giving five stars. Why would I? And ignore comments, the good ones and the bad ones. Even mine. The nasty things people will say to you in a text box, they would never say to your face. They're strangers. They might be smart, stupid, psychotic, generous, spiteful, loving, maybe even liars. Who knows? Not you, so ignore them. Look at your downloads, which is the only thing that really matters, but mind the yardstick you decide to use, and if you want real opinions bring your writing into a controlled, author-friendly environment, like this forum, for example.

I'm sure you can get an honest opinion from someone around here.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've published 33 stories. The average for my stories is about 90 views to each vote. The biggest ratio is 180:1, and the smallest ratio is 52:1. Interestingly, the lowest ratio is for my lowest-rated story. The reason for that is that I published it in Loving Wives, which has a very responsive readership, and it's a "cuck" story, so it drew a great deal of spirited hostility.

I've found, too, that the ratio increases slowly over time. My guess is that this is because people re-read stories but obviously don't vote on them again.

If you're new, and you're curious about numbers, my advice is to have fun with them and learn whatever you can or want to learn from them, but don't take them too seriously.

 

[Wark2002]

I wonder if the answer to the rating problem isn't to keep the red "H" for stories with 4.5 or higher and to maybe give a yellow "H" or "E" (excellent) or something like that to 4.0 - 4.49. I think it's only fair to give a 4 star "like it but not love it" rating, but I hate to have my opinion drop something from contention or viewing.

 

[SimonDoom]

I wonder if the answer to the rating problem isn't to keep the red "H" for stories with 4.5 or higher and to maybe give a yellow "H" or "E" (excellent) or something like that to 4.0 - 4.49. I think it's only fair to give a 4 star "like it but not love it" rating, but I hate to have my opinion drop something from contention or viewing.

I think the better choice would be to get rid of the red H altogether. It's arbitrary. It incentivizes gamesmanship and dishonesty in voting. It discourages people from giving 4s, and it incentivizes trolls to give 1s. A red H conveys no meaningful information that the score itself does not convey.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I think the better choice would be to get rid of the red H altogether. It's arbitrary. It incentivizes gamesmanship and dishonesty in voting. It discourages people from giving 4s, and it incentivizes trolls to give 1s. A red H conveys no meaningful information that the score itself does not convey.

The vote ranges I see against my file suggests to me that, overall, most readers do vote with 3s 4s and 5s using their own scaling criteria, and the five band range is sorta kinda useful, somehow, with regards to... something.

I agree, though, that the Red H has inadvertently set up a false voting premise, as evidenced by the number of folk who comment they only give fives. If the majority do that (and we have no way of knowing if they do) then there's a false skew, right from the start.

 

[NotWise]

The vote ranges I see against my file suggests to me that, overall, most readers do vote with 3s 4s and 5s using their own scaling criteria, and the five band range is sorta kinda useful, somehow, with regards to... something.

I agree, though, that the Red H has inadvertently set up a false voting premise, as evidenced by the number of folk who comment they only give fives. If the majority do that (and we have no way of knowing if they do) then there's a false skew, right from the start.

Can one of you give a concise statement of the problem you want to fix?

 

[mletrout]

I didn’t know the red H or whatever it is had anything to do with scores. I haven’t really noticed a direct correlation between scores and quality, or at least nothing as obvious as that between scores and genre. Anyway, I’ve started giving all the stories I open five stars, now that I know there’s an incentive program. Until today it was just the stories that I thought had the best comments. And to be honest, with a few very notable exceptions, namely just one, every author here deserves a little red H next to their story.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Can one of you give a concise statement of the problem you want to fix?

All I'm saying, based on the number of folk who say, "I only give a five, for fear what an (implied) truer vote might do to someone's story ranking," is that that's a skew from the start.

I'm usually a fan of five band ranking systems - where three is either a middle or a neutral position - because if they are consistently applied, they can be quite information rich. But a skewed system, by the weight of that skew, compresses in one direction (in this case, high scores) and stretches out in other (in this case, low scores) such that three is no longer an average, and there's no alternative definition of what a score "means". The more it skews, the more it tends towards binary - and in my view, yes/no isn't a rating, it's a decision.

As a writer, I make sense of my scores only in terms of my own stories against themselves, but sometimes I get curious to know how they compare to someone else. I can't really do that here. I'm not saying there's a problem per se, I'm just observing that the scores mean something but I don't really know what it is.

 

[Lovecraft_lore2]

I don't think the voting means much of anything. Even stories that have less than 2 stars are sometimes good, just no what people want.

 

[jaF0]

Anyway, I’ve started giving all the stories I open five stars ...

That is completely the wrong thing to do.

 

[SimonDoom]

Can one of you give a concise statement of the problem you want to fix?

Yes. The red h incentivizes people to game the system and results in skewed scores. Some dont give less than a 5 ever. Some give bombs to deny an author the H. It's not necessary. It conveys no additional info that the score does not.

 

[mletrout]

That is completely the wrong thing to do.

I disagree. The voting system has zero relevance to my opinion. I much prefer sending a PM, which I make a point to do for about half or two thirds of the stories I read. Sometimes short, sometimes lengthy, but always honest about what I like and don't like. With the other stories, I'm usually able to express my opinion adequately in the comments section. I write a metric ton of feedback on any given day, on Lit and other places. Votes don't tell an author anything useful, but if I can boost a score to generate additional downloads, that's good for the author, the readership, and the site. My only goal is maximum exposure.

Of course, I could be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Ringil]

Views, Scores, Comments, ... Writer Satisfaction

I've been a reader for, .. well it feels like centuries, but is more like 10 years, but only decided to submit stories recently. I created an account less than a year ago and have published a few stories.

When I was "only a reader", I never read any comments. I didn't care what anyone else said about some writer's effort. I only cared about how it made me feel.

My first story took months and I agonized over what to say, how to put into words what I wanted to share and at what point in the story to end it. GOSH! It seemed really long, maybe I should re-format it into chapters. ... blah, blah, blah. I proudly posted it and excitedly awaited the positive comments I knew would roll in. The comments absolutely crushed me! Getting "1*'s" and reading comments like "you ought to just go kill yourself" made me reevaluate. With time, I received some very positive comments and some very sincere constructive criticism. I then began reading comments like crazy. Essentially studying the art of commenting here on LIT.

Since then I have published several more and one is "HOT" marked. My most recent has 21.7K reads, 601 votes, and 39 comments. That's a vote for every 37 reads and a comment for every 560 reads.

SO! My pointseses are that ...
1. Your experience is not surprising.
2. Don't get down about reader reactions. Other people's reactions do not obligate you to be anybody but yourselves.
3. Write what makes you feel good. You're not getting paid anything but your own self satisfaction.

I vote a full 5-point scale, but usually only put positive things in a public comment. I give serious constructive suggestions in private, "contact the author" communications.

I suggest people use the full 5 points because it reflects how people feel, and that if you are hunting for "HOT" tags, you need to relax and try not to be frustrated. You got some sincere and very pointed suggestions in at least one of the comments above, seriously consider seriously given suggestions.

 

[SimonDoom]

The voting system has zero relevance to my opinion.

Your perspective is as legitimate as anyone else's, but this definitely is not my opinion, and, more importantly, it is not the opinion of thousands of readers who are looking for stories to read.

The common flaw of posts and threads in this forum is that people only focus on the author's perspective. That's understandable, because it's the Author's Hangout, but the readers' perspective matters too. I have said, and I believe, that the reader's interest is significantly more important than the author's interest at this site. There are more of them than there are of us, and they are more important to the success of the Site.

I've been an author for almost 4 years but a reader for over 15. Heck yes, scores matter. I'm much more likely to read a 4.8 story than a 4.2 story. I have found, after reading of hundreds and hundreds of stories here, that scores do correlate positively with story quality. Not perfectly, but positively. They are helpful to me in identifying a story I am likely to find has a) good grammar and punctuation, b) well-drawn characters, c) a good storyline, and d) satisfying erotic content.

I understand people who don't want to give scores less than 5. It arises from kindness and wanting to be supportive. But it also means that scores will be less useful, to authors and readers alike. They will convey less accurate information about how you REALLY feel. It seems especially silly when the desire not to give a 5 arises from a completely arbitrary award of a red H that is supposed to be a badge of honor but in actuality only tells you that the story is somewhere between the top 10 and 30%, depending on the category.

 

[NotWise]

Yes. The red h incentivizes people to game the system and results in skewed scores. Some dont give less than a 5 ever. Some give bombs to deny an author the H. It's not necessary. It conveys no additional info that the score does not.

I'll agree with you that the Hot icon conveys no additional information. What it does do is set a threshold. I think the top 10% to 15% of stories should be highlighted so the readers' can find them easily -- it's for the readers, not the writers. In some categories the 4.5 threshold is too low. In some categories it's too high. On average, it's probably about right.

I don't see a lot of evidence of people gaming the system. I think people who now vote nothing but 5s would do so with or without the Hot icon. And bombers will be bombers whether there's an H or not -- they do it in LW all the time when there's not a red H in sight.

To me, removing the Hot icon would be an inconvenience for readers that would net little or nothing for the writers.