Voting - A Devils advocate perspective.

[Dark_Logan_]

Voting - A potentially devils advocate perspective.

Let me start by saying I'm potentially playing Devil's Advocate as the below might rattle a few cages

On one of the message boards recently there was a thread about 'best form of validation' for stories... the differences in opinions made for interesting reading.

Then came the 'crisis' in respect to lack of views being captured and votes being lost for what constituted a matter of days. Frustrating admittedly, disheartening to not see the regular trends replicated if you'd had work published at this time, definitely. I've accepted that I may never know how many reads one of my chapters had in those 4 days... I'll sleep at night still though.

However, this did get me thinking and while admittedly I can't speak for all I can only suggest with an analysis of read rates and total votes I have received in my short time here then said votes are from 0.4% of my readers.

I might be over simplifying the maths here while making assumptions that every click constitutes a full read, but the numbers are the best anyone has to work with.

Assuming that this is a repeated trend for the majority of accounts it leads me to question...

What do votes actually represent around here?

Its nice to see a high score, obviously, but its all a just a little sterile. How ever it's dressed up its all anonymous feedback of the best or worst kind. And given that (as I understand) a score can be left on a story without a registered account it all seems a little more facile.

The voting range itself is very limited with only 5 possible classifications... the first 3 of which are negative in their connotation. C'mon who'd view 'Average' as a compliment?

To reach the the cherished 'Hot' mark is a very commendable feat if you consider the Maths involved in doing so.... it only takes a rogue 3, a poorly justified 1 to pull the rug from the batting average.

We're all aware of the various reasons trolls or otherwise will 'dive bomb' freshly published story's in the first day or so with low scores for sake of nothing better to do. And I've seen it mentioned numerous times how some won't approve of the content/theme of something like a 'Non Con' or Incest tale and drop a 1 for their own moral stand point.

Equally where's the difference in a writer with say a healthy social media following encouraging followers to read and rate 5 on a competition entry (Don't say it doesnt happen... I've seen it)



To my mind its a false economy

Ever looked at the scores on something like IMDb before a film has even launched, there's as more 1 votes than anything else from reviewers who cant even have seen a film prior to release - dig deep and many admit this in the feedback.

It's a reflection of the times we live in

Ever ordered a 5 star product on Amazon and its been half the size of what you expected and not fit for purpose?

And it's a little similar to how restaurants these days no longer list on what used to be popular review sites.

(Although with the above examples at least justification for scores are requested and left )



I get its contentious for many as they have understandable pride in their recent and historic works.

I appreciate people have lost cherished and long held Hot Tags - but that might have only been a cluster of votes away from being legitimately lost.

I know there was a competition running (in its final stages) while this happened - so timing could not have been worse.


less than 1% though folks?


Admission: I turned off voting on all my published tales weeks ago for many of the above reasons


OK I've not been here for years, I'll admit I'm not here to enter contests and win prizes.

I'm not looking for confrontation or a revolution, I'm not looking for a change in the system. (We'd all run everything different to how its actually run... this therefore isn't a dig at Literotica)

I'm just speaking my mind on matters and applying a little bit of perspective


I'll stand back and prepare to dodge the slings and arrows in review of this submission. After all everyone's entitled to their opinion


Let me reiterate I might be playing Devils Advocate

 

[MelissaBaby]

If you are playing Devil's Advocate, shouldn't you actually be advocating something?

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm not sure if you're a Devil's Advocate because I can't figure out, exactly, what you are advocating. Can you summarize it in one sentence?

Re one of your points: a "view" definitely does not represent a full "read." No one knows, exactly what percentage of views constitutes, on average, a full read of a story, but my guess is it's no more than 25%. I know from my own behavior that I click on many stories that I never read to completion, and my guess is many others do the same thing. All we can say with much confidence is that the number of reads of a story lies somewhere between the number of views and the number of votes.

My opinion regarding the value of votes is that votes are data, just like comments, favorites, views, scores, etc., and data, cumulatively, give me significant though imperfect feedback about my stories and how they are being received. I try to glean whatever useful feedback I can from the stats without taking them too seriously.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Here's the thing...

When I first started writing and posting, I figured the ratings of my story would serve as my course evaluations had when I taught at our community college. It would let me know what I wrote well, and what kind of stories readers wanted me to write. Then I hustled to write as many different kinds of stories as I could manage over the next three months.

The thing is, story rating winds up affecting your views, and then everything else. It is one of several examples of how "the rich get richer" on this site. A story that scores well initially will draw more views right away. Many readers won't bother to read a story that doesn't even have a "Hot" rating. So, those down-votes really hurt you as an author, and make readers less likely to even look at your story.

What gets even more aggravating is that the most active down-voting turd blossoms clearly aren't even reading the stories. They bomb almost every new submission as soon as it hits the site. Anything with a really high score becomes a target. Many popular authors can expect to get hit with a slew of down-votes as soon as their story gets published -- every single time!

Just look at how HeyAll and geronimo_appleby's new stories got hammered as soon as they posted this morning. Those are good stories from established authors, and they're struggling to hold onto four stars! That's some bullshit.

None of us want to care that much about scores, but we all wind up getting annoyed when we see stuff like this happening.

 

[Dark_Logan_]

One sentence summary you say, how’s about....

Have some perspective on what a vote constitutes

The rest of what you say almost backs that up ;

 

[jomar]

Scores mean more when one is new here, but remains fun to see how new stories get read and rated.

 

[SimonDoom]

The thing is, story rating winds up affecting your views, and then everything else. .

This is true, to some degree, but it's not as true as many think it is, and people fret about it way too much.

My most popular Exhibitionist story has spent most of its time the last four years at 4.49, right below the magic red H. It's never been on any toplists. But it still gets more views and favorites than any other non-incest story I've written. Somehow, people find their way to it.

My most popular (in terms of views and favorites) Incest story is far from my highest-rated Incest story. It too was never on any ratings toplist, but it's received extremely high view numbers and plenty of favorites for four years. One way or another, readers find it, despite the fact it's never had a great score.

In your case, for example, your numbers, in terms of views, favorites, and followers, are so high that I cannot imagine what you have to be concerned about. You're one of the most followed authors at Literotica. Once you reach that point it doesn't matter what your scores are, in any long-term meaningful sense.

 

[MelissaBaby]

One sentence summary you say, how’s about....

Have some perspective on what a vote constitutes

The rest of what you say almost backs that up ;

I spent years suffering from low self esteem. High scores are good for my self esteem. My Red H's make me happy. That's good enough for me.

 

[Payne_Hall]

Votes factor into a favorite game of mine called “how dark and twisted can I make the content while still getting away with romanticizing it”. Tis a lot of fun, too! Although, I don’t play that game with contests. It seems a bit audience specific and I do try to warn. That’s why the Bio says “Payne Hall’s hall of... joy!”

So, that being said, the system is definitely imperfect, but it seems to hold a decent correlation of when I go a little too far with some things, actually, at least in my experience when compared with the responses I’ve gotten via comments and feedback messages.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

When I first started writing and posting, I figured the ratings of my story would serve as my course evaluations had when I taught at our community college. It would let me know what I wrote well, and what kind of stories readers wanted me to write. Then I hustled to write as many different kinds of stories as I could manage over the next three months.

The thing is, story rating winds up affecting your views, and then everything else. It is one of several examples of how "the rich get richer" on this site. A story that scores well initially will draw more views right away. Many readers won't bother to read a story that doesn't even have a "Hot" rating. So, those down-votes really hurt you as an author, and make readers less likely to even look at your story.

What gets even more aggravating is that the most active down-voting turd blossoms clearly aren't even reading the stories. They bomb almost every new submission as soon as it hits the site. Anything with a really high score becomes a target. Many popular authors can expect to get hit with a slew of down-votes as soon as their story gets published -- every single time!

Just look at how HeyAll and geronimo_appleby's new stories got hammered as soon as they posted this morning. Those are good stories from established authors, and they're struggling to hold onto four stars! That's some bullshit.

None of us want to care that much about scores, but we all wind up getting annoyed when we see stuff like this happening.

This. Agree 100%.

I logged in to post a promo for a story HeyAll and I collaborated on that just went live. It’s not Salman Rushdie and it’s not pretending to be; it’s a three-minute or less stroke fantasy.

When I looked, the story was struggling to hold 3.85. That’s bullshit.

When I post new stories, a few piss & vinegar haters stop by and two-bomb my handful of votes, most likely attempting to make my otherwise straight fives look more “fair”. My assumption is that a lot of other low-readership/high quality authors deal with this too. Otoh, HeyAll, geronimo, Jasmine etc that are the site’s most popular authors get straight bomb-attacks for no other reason than their numbers make them targets—I think it’s very clear that those bombs make their scores unfair, and imho fairly useless as data.

I agree with Payne that the voter feedback is an imperfect system. I personally don’t think there’s much to learn from it or, beyond the site’s contests, value to votes or Hs. In this instance, I learned a lot more working with HeyAll than from the story’s (so far) 26k views or its score.

 

[8letters]

I logged in to post a promo for a story HeyAll and I collaborated on that just went live. It’s not Salman Rushdie and it’s not pretending to be; it’s a three-minute or less stroke fantasy.

When I looked, the story was struggling to hold 3.85. That’s bullshit.

The value of a rating is unimportant. What is important is the rating is consistent with how stories have been rated in the past. Something is going on that I/T stories are getting lower ratings now than what they used to. I've been noticing that over the last few days. Lots of stories with sub-4 ratings, when that used to be fairly rare. Few stories with Red H's, when that used to be common.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

The value of a rating is unimportant. What is important is the rating is consistent with how stories have been rated in the past. Something is going on that I/T stories are getting lower ratings now than what they used to. I've been noticing that over the last few days. Lots of stories with sub-4 ratings, when that used to be fairly rare. Few stories with Red H's, when that used to be common.

Hey Eight !

*nods in agreement* 100%. Definitely is odd the way the scores are trending, and the issues with lost votes, etc.

About a year ago, tomilitilia, BrokenSpokes and I brought up in the AH that we’d lost hundreds of votes on our stories and basically were “informed” by other authors that our scores were probably lost because they were scam voting or part of a sweep.... Instead, it seems that the site admins have finally discovered this is part of a glitch with the beta rollout.

Hopefully this gets fixed.

 

[KeithD]

I don't really see the utility of either trying to figure out how the system here works or putting any thought into how it could be improved. Literotica is what it is. The users don't have much input into that.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I don't really see the utility of either trying to figure out how the system here works or putting any thought into how it could be improved. Literotica is what it is. The users don't have much input into that.

Probably so. Lol, but nonetheless, we’ll all navel-gaze and opine on it just like we do everything else about writing on this site

Good talking to everybody. Ttys

 

[NotWise]

The value of a rating is unimportant. What is important is the rating is consistent with how stories have been rated in the past. Something is going on that I/T stories are getting lower ratings now than what they used to. I've been noticing that over the last few days. Lots of stories with sub-4 ratings, when that used to be fairly rare. Few stories with Red H's, when that used to be common.

I feel like this has been going on for a few months, and it may be getting worse. It isn't just in I/T. The Lesbian and Sci-Fi hubs used to be littered with red H's, and now they're hard to find. You can pick out just about any category and it'll show you the same thing.

I think it's affecting the AF contest as well. I've never seen such low contest scores. As of the last update, only about 1 in 7 stories have a score of 4.5 or more. From past experience I'd expect that to be more like 40%.

 

[SimonDoom]

This. Agree 100%.

I logged in to post a promo for a story HeyAll and I collaborated on that just went live. It’s not Salman Rushdie and it’s not pretending to be; it’s a three-minute or less stroke fantasy.

When I looked, the story was struggling to hold 3.85. That’s bullshit.

When I post new stories, a few piss & vinegar haters stop by and two-bomb my handful of votes, most likely attempting to make my otherwise straight fives look more “fair”. My assumption is that a lot of other low-readership/high quality authors deal with this too. Otoh, HeyAll, geronimo, Jasmine etc that are the site’s most popular authors get straight bomb-attacks for no other reason than their numbers make them targets—I think it’s very clear that those bombs make their scores unfair, and imho fairly useless as data.

I agree with Payne that the voter feedback is an imperfect system. I personally don’t think there’s much to learn from it or, beyond the site’s contests, value to votes or Hs. In this instance, I learned a lot more working with HeyAll than from the story’s (so far) 26k views or its score.

I read the story, and it's a good example of what I mean: scores don't matter as much as some think they do. It's less than one day old and it already has over 28,000 views. It has 51 favorites, which is a good number for a story with that many views.

The story is well-written, and it's a nice short stroke incest tale, but it has two things going against it. It's short, and stories of that length tend to get downvoted at Literotica, and it's an oddball premise. HeyAll is a master of zany mom-son story premises (which I like), but this one is pretty darn zany, and it's not surprising that the premise is too much for some, diminishing the erotic appeal, despite it being well written.

I look at this story and see an example that proves my point: don't fret about the score. It's not preventing people from reading the story, and it's not preventing it from getting plenty of favorites. The story gives both you and HeyAll nice publicity. Plenty of people like the story, but there obviously are some people for whom this story is not to their taste. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not BS that they want to register the fact it's not to their taste.

The score is likely to go up before long and after a sweep.

 

[SimonDoom]

Something is going on that I/T stories are getting lower ratings now than what they used to. I've been noticing that over the last few days. .

This is my observation as well.

My impression in the past was that I/T was a good category for having a high probability of a red H, but not the highest scores. It was easy to get a 4.5 in I/T, but not easy to get a 4.8. But it seems like the average has ratcheted down lately. Like you, I imagine, I have a pretty good idea after four years how my recent stories stack up compared to my older stories, and the scores on some of the new ones surprise me. But what I've noticed as well is that regardless of the score there are readers who comment favorably and readers who favorite the story, at pretty much the same rate as before, so I don't worry about the rating number too much.

 

[KeithD]

Probably so. Lol, but nonetheless, we’ll all navel-gaze and opine on it just like we do everything else about writing on this site

Good talking to everybody. Ttys

Not all of us. Some of us will use the time/effort just to write. Nice that this is being reported and getting some indication the message at least was received. Any acknowledgment at all is a rather new thing at Literotica.

 

[SimonDoom]

Not all of us. Some of us will use the time/effort just to write.

We're all different and there's no one-size-fits-all balance between story-writing and navel-gazing.

 

[KeithD]

We're all different and there's no one-size-fits-all balance between story-writing and navel-gazing.

That's rather obvious. Interesting to see what various people think that this writing stories to the Internet is all about, though. (A little depressing to see too.)

 

[Payne_Hall]

That's rather obvious. Interesting to see what various people think that this writing stories to the Internet is all about, though. (A little depressing to see too.)

Depressing? May I ask how so?

 

[KeithD]

Depressing? May I ask how so?

Of course you may ask. I'm not interested in where that discussion would go, so I'll leave it there. I'm busy writing, which, from historical perspective, is much more productive than discussing what Literotica could do with user discussion of its systems.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I read the story, and it's a good example of what I mean: scores don't matter as much as some think they do. It's less than one day old and it already has over 28,000 views. It has 51 favorites, which is a good number for a story with that many views.

The story is well-written, and it's a nice short stroke incest tale, but it has two things going against it. It's short, and stories of that length tend to get downvoted at Literotica, and it's an oddball premise. HeyAll is a master of zany mom-son story premises (which I like), but this one is pretty darn zany, and it's not surprising that the premise is too much for some, diminishing the erotic appeal, despite it being well written.

I look at this story and see an example that proves my point: don't fret about the score. It's not preventing people from reading the story, and it's not preventing it from getting plenty of favorites. The story gives both you and HeyAll nice publicity. Plenty of people like the story, but there obviously are some people for whom this story is not to their taste. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not BS that they want to register the fact it's not to their taste.

The score is likely to go up before long and after a sweep.

You’re right, it’s not bullshit— HA told me the vote count so far. It’s a real sample size, and still growing; and it’s numbers that tbph I wouldn’t have contemplated for just a couple of hours on the first day of posting, because it’s far outside of my experience. You’re right it’s more likely there’s real feedback from people who disliked this story for their own, perfectly valid, reasons and voted how they felt.

I appreciate the kind words, but also definitely agree with your feedback that the story was too short. We agreed to keep the story under 3500 words (a difficult task for me; my sex scenes are usually ~ 3500 words), and then we just sort of went...

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/959723025949198424/38F1F41B7BB10603CEB5FD276C9439EA9C95CEF8/

In retrospect, that was somewhat myopic—the story’s over-the-top, so it needed more balance. Instead, we instead left a lot of good and plausible material on the cutting room floor.

Now, I really do have to run! Keith, you’re in charge—I left money for pizza; if anybody calls, tell them I’m in the shower.

Hope everybody’s well. Ttys

 

[Payne_Hall]

I think my happy go lucky stands defeated.

 

[lovecraft68]

The value of a rating is unimportant. What is important is the rating is consistent with how stories have been rated in the past. Something is going on that I/T stories are getting lower ratings now than what they used to. I've been noticing that over the last few days. Lots of stories with sub-4 ratings, when that used to be fairly rare. Few stories with Red H's, when that used to be common.

I noticed that the other day when I looked around the new story list and 30 day list for the first time in months.

Not sure if there's more trolls, or the sweeps seem to think there's a lot of suspicious fives or maybe....

This may rattle a few cages, but I was speaking to a friend I made here several years ago, we usually e-mail back and forth a few times a month talking about writing and stories both on lit and for sale as he publishes as well.

He mentioned that he felt a lot of the newer taboo writers don't seem to be able to rival some of the older authors who for one reason or another aren't around anymore.

he may have a point, but then that made me take another spin in that maybe because so many of the same themes have been done time and again long time readers aren't as receptive, or possibly newer readers have higher expectations?

All I know is the numbers there used to be massive and the scores somewhat higher than I see now.

Is what it is.