Disappearing votes?

[SimonDoom]

Stat update:

I haven't published any stories in about 35 days, so my daily numbers should be at what I call "background" levels, which have historically been traditionally fairly stable, with a very gradual decline in views for old stories offset by the votes brought in by newer stories.

There's been a puzzling surge in daily view totals in the last week -- about 10% more than what they were before. Most of this is accounted for by my most-viewed story. I can't figure out what's caused that. It doesn't rank prominently on any special lists.

I am receiving more votes per views, by a lot, than before. My aggregate story vote totals are now at their highest level ever, so whatever I lost between March 10 and March 24 has been fully restored, and is being added to daily.

Something puzzling, though: While my vote total is now higher than it was on March 10, my aggregate mean score still is noticeably lower. So many votes were restored, but not all, and the ones I lost were higher than my average, UNLESS for some reason new votes in the last two weeks have been lower on average than they were before.

At least the ratings bleeding has stopped, for a day. There's been no change in mean aggregate score in the last 24 hours.

For the first time in a while, the aggregate mean score hasn't dropped.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Well, it doesn’t seem to have stopped. Votes coming in, story ratings still falling. Yay!

 

[KeithD]

Good for you.

I don't really care about cranking out as many stories as I can;

Neither am I, and it's insulting to insinuate that high production equals low quality. That's just being nasty; you haven't read my work.

 

[KeithD]

Not sure where you get that info. Funny to see you accusing others of being nasty.

You irrelevantly introduced quality into this discussion that, from your portfolio status you have no reason to be in the discussion at all (because you have nothing at all of your own recently to base observations on), in post #149 and then pushed the tired old "quality not quantity" irrelevant nonsense. To answer this thread discussion with "just write good stories then" is, yes, just nasty.

I'm commenting the tenor of YOUR post to this thread.

Only one of the GM stories that have posted today has hit the 4 level yet (the last time I looked). There are only two GM stories posted in the last week that have hit Hot. If that's happening across the categories, something very different is happening here of late--and its not encouraging to authors putting in the effort to post stories here.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Only one of the GM stories that have posted today has hit the 4 level yet (the last time I looked). There are only two GM stories posted in the last week that have hit Hot. If that's happening across the categories, something very different is happening here of late--and its not encouraging to authors putting in the effort to post stories here.

I've been keeping a close eye on I/T, Anal and Mature, and I am seeing the same trend there. Those are categories in which I have posted most of my stories, so I have a pretty solid feel for how stories there typically should score as well as how many votes would normally be expected. The vote count is 3-4 times normal on everything new, while the scores are down an average of .50 from what I would normally expect.

I have also browsed several stories in each category, because I wondered if the problem was a slew of sub-par stories. That was not the case. If anything, reading through all those stories only made it more obvious that someone is downvoting stories repeatedly without bothering to read them. Several stories were sitting right about a 4 rating that should easily have secured "Hot" ratings and been closer to 4.7-4.8, based on how similar stories have performed in those categories just a few weeks ago.

All three of those categories typically get a vote once every 100-130 views. Now they're getting a vote closer to every 30 views.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've been keeping a close eye on I/T, Anal and Mature, and I am seeing the same trend there. Those are categories in which I have posted most of my stories, so I have a pretty solid feel for how stories there typically should score as well as how many votes would normally be expected. The vote count is 3-4 times normal on everything new, while the scores are down an average of .50 from what I would normally expect.

I have also browsed several stories in each category, because I wondered if the problem was a slew of sub-par stories. That was not the case. If anything, reading through all those stories only made it more obvious that someone is downvoting stories repeatedly without bothering to read them. Several stories were sitting right about a 4 rating that should easily have secured "Hot" ratings and been closer to 4.7-4.8, based on how similar stories have performed in those categories just a few weeks ago.

All three of those categories typically get a vote once every 100-130 views. Now they're getting a vote closer to every 30 views.

This is consistent with what I'm seeing, too, based on analyzing my own daily stats and looking at the recent toplists and category hubs.

1. My daily views seem to be a little bit lower than before. Until a couple of months ago my daily views for older stories were remarkably stable over time, with a very gradual decline, but they seem to have fallen more noticeably lately except when a new story stimulates views of old stories.

3. I agree there's been a big shift in the view:vote ratio. For me it had been about 100:1, now it's about 30:1. That's dramatic. It's hard to understand.

4. The view numbers on the toplists are definitely lower than they used to be. The most-viewed story on the 30 day toplist has only 96,000 views. Four years ago the top story almost always had 130,000 to 160,000 views, or even more. I suspect it's because views are being spread out over more stories today than in the past, but I don't know that. Weighing against that hypothesis is the observation that the decline has been recent.

5. Scores continue to decline, slightly. It seems like a Site-wide thing, so I'm not worried about it, but it is odd.

6. Something to keep in mind about the so-called importance of ratings: HeyAll and VixGiovanni co-wrote a story that currently is number 2 on the 30 day most viewed list, with 89,000 views after only six days. It has 170 favorites so far, which is good in absolute terms and relative to the number of views. And you know what? It has a score of 3.84, which is ridiculously low for the quality of the story relative to others. So for those who think a low score is a kiss of death for a story and means it won't get read, or won't pick up favorites from readers, that's not necessarily true. It's never been true for me or my stories.

 

[LexxRuthless]

This is consistent with what I'm seeing, too, based on analyzing my own daily stats and looking at the recent toplists and category hubs.

. . .

6. Something to keep in mind about the so-called importance of ratings: HeyAll and VixGiovanni co-wrote a story that currently is number 2 on the 30 day most viewed list, with 89,000 views after only six days. It has 170 favorites so far, which is good in absolute terms and relative to the number of views. And you know what? It has a score of 3.84, which is ridiculously low for the quality of the story relative to others. So for those who think a low score is a kiss of death for a story and means it won't get read, or won't pick up favorites from readers, that's not necessarily true. It's never been true for me or my stories.

I would disagree with that assessment, Simon. This is a story by HeyAll and VixGiovanni and it got the coveted top spot on the New Stories list that day. I would not have been surprised at all to see it open with a rating above 4.80 and rapidly accumulate over 100k views the first day before the usual culprits bombed the score down to 4.3 or something. Please remember, the vast majority of readers don't have Literotica accounts, don't understand how the site really works, and don't understand how difficult it is to write and submit a good story. They merely open the first page of categories they like to read, and when they see such low scores they often assume the stories aren't worth reading.

I've had several readers reach out to me via e-mail and say something along those lines. "I hate to admit it, but I'm something of a snob when it comes to reading these stories. Usually if it doesn't have a 'Hot' rating, I won't bother to read it."

If I had published my first couple chapters now rather than three years ago, I would have seen those terrible scores and thought, "Wow! People really don't like my writing. Oh, well. At least I tried." That would have been it for me. It worries me because I hate to imagine how many wonderful authors and stories this community will lose because new authors are receiving this horrendous reception.

 

[NotWise]

If I had published my first couple chapters now rather than three years ago, I would have seen those terrible scores and thought, "Wow! People really don't like my writing. Oh, well. At least I tried." That would have been it for me. It worries me because I hate to imagine how many wonderful authors and stories this community will lose because new authors are receiving this horrendous reception.

You might take a detour to the feedback forum and offer some support for authors whose darlings have assassinated.

 

[LexxRuthless]

You might take a detour to the feedback forum and offer some support for authors whose darlings have assassinated.

Will do.

 

[SimonDoom]

It worries me because I hate to imagine how many wonderful authors and stories this community will lose because new authors are receiving this horrendous reception.

"Horrendous reception"?

Ratings are entirely arbitrary and relative. There is no absolute value or meaning in a score of 4.7, or in a red H. The sole function of a score is to communicate information to potential readers about the quality of the story relative to other stories. That's it. It's not to make authors feel good. That's how I see it, and while some may disagree I think they would spare themselves a lot of angst if they stopped getting so invested in ratings. To me, it's strange.

It may be that the way voting and scoring has been handled has been recalibrated. I don't know. But if that's so, then what is happening is not a "horrendous reception." It's just a recalibration, and we all have to get used to it. We're all in the same boat.

What you said about Heyall and Vix's story is theoretically plausible, but that's not how it in fact happened. The story was rated poorly from the very first day, and yet it's done extremely well in terms of views and favorites. I'm sure there are some readers who will only choose high-rated stories, but if the average score across the board goes down then reader expectations will have to shift as well.

I've monitored the statistics of my stories fairly closely for four years. I have 36 published stories, and my experience simply does not substantiate the degree of concern that many have that a failure to get high scores will mean one won't get readers. I have an Exhibitionist story that currently sits at 4.48 and has rarely cracked 4.5, but has over 200,000 views and 264 favorites. It seems foolish to me to spend a moment of my mental energy being distressed about its score.

Every author should keep in mind that scores often do not reflect story quality. They reflect to a substantial degree the "fit" between the story and the expectations of the readers of the category in which that story is published. Good stories can be punished for going "off category" -- but that has nothing at all to do with quality.

It seems particularly odd to me that you are concerned about it because you have achieved such a high degree of success across the board -- ratings, favorites, views, followers, everything.

 

[NotWise]

I don't think you can use HeyAll as a representative example. He has such high name recognition that the pattern of voting on his stories should be different from the norm.

There is a "Report a Problem" link on the bottom right of the pages on the main site. The link produces a bug report page. I've been thinking about filing a bug report for "voting anomalies."

The anomalies I can list are:

Readers changing votes (could be designed behavior, but would like to know)
Votes reported incorrectly (as described by Lexx)
Some people report they can see prior votes, some cannot.

I probably want to wait until after I see a sweep before I report the low ratings as a bug, but something seems awry.

Using I/T as an example, the 30-day top list contains 53 stories with scores of 4.5 or more. All else being equal, almost half of those should have been published since the new story page became the default early on 3/19, but only eight of those 53 stores were published on or after the 19th. Things are clearly not equal.

I glanced at the views toplist, and that seems to show a similar pattern, but there were at least three days starting on the 19th when views were lost, and that might account for the difference.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think you can use HeyAll as a representative example. He has such high name recognition that the pattern of voting on his stories should be different from the norm.

There is a "Report a Problem" link on the bottom right of the pages on the main site. The link produces a bug report page. I've been thinking about filing a bug report for "voting anomalies."

The anomalies I can list are:

Readers changing votes (could be designed behavior, but would like to know)
Votes reported incorrectly (as described by Lexx)
Some people report they can see prior votes, some cannot.

I probably want to wait until after I see a sweep before I report the low ratings as a bug, but something seems awry.

Using I/T as an example, the 30-day top list contains 53 stories with scores of 4.5 or more. All else being equal, almost half of those should have been published since the new story page became the default early on 3/19, but only eight of those 53 stores were published on or after the 19th. Things are clearly not equal.

I glanced at the views toplist, and that seems to show a similar pattern, but there were at least three days starting on the 19th when views were lost, and that might account for the difference.

I suspect they are aware of the problems, but it can't hurt to send them a report on what you are observing.

 

[OpulenceAwake]

There are so many accomplished and prolific authors chiming in on this thread. I feel in the company of giants

From what I've gathered, my views and votes are likely out of step. 600+ votes on 4,500 views seems unlikely, in any case. My story was published 3/20, so just in time for the snafu. In any case, the feedback and relief of being published here is a high I'm still riding. Cheers!

 

[8letters]

An interesting test case is silkstockingslover's story that she published today. silkstockingslover is the most favorited author on Literoica by a very wide margin. She's published 140 incest stories, which gives an excellent feel for what is the likely range for the story's rating based on past experience. Here's the breakdown of her I/T ratings for the 139 stories published before today:
4.80-4.89 - 3
4.70-4.79 - 32
4.60-4.69 - 71
4.50-4.59 - 25
4.40-4.49 - 6
4.30-4.39 - 1
4.20-4.29 - 1

For an average of 4.64. Her lowest rated story prior to today was 4.25.

Her story published today has a rating of...4.16

 

[NotWise]

An interesting test case is silkstockingslover's story that she published today. silkstockingslover is the most favorited author on Literoica by a very wide margin. She's published 140 incest stories, which gives an excellent feel for what is the likely range for the story's rating based on past experience. Here's the breakdown of her I/T ratings for the 139 stories published before today:
4.80-4.89 - 3
4.70-4.79 - 32
4.60-4.69 - 71
4.50-4.59 - 25
4.40-4.49 - 6
4.30-4.39 - 1
4.20-4.29 - 1

For an average of 4.64. Her lowest rated story prior to today was 4.25.

Her story published today has a rating of...4.16

I have to wonder how the sweeps will change that -- assuming they start again.

Lesbian Sex has been one of the author-friendliest categories on Lit. This morning I checked on the last month of voting. There have been 129 stories posted in a month, and 23 of them have a score at or over 4.5, which is much less than I expected. Of those, twenty were published before March 19th and three (3) were published since.

 

[LAHomedog]

I posted about this earlier and I would like to jump in again.

In the last two weeks I have seen my votes, scores, and amount of votes changing erratically. I've had four stories that have been scored above 4.5 for months now below it. In some cases, way below it.

I have gone from six stories labelled "Hot" to only one. And my 750 words story, "Christmas Surprise" that was published 3 & 1/2 days ago only has 19.8k readers but 870 votes! That is more than double the amount of votes I have on my most popular story that has been up since the beginning of December. That one has 48.1k readers and only 386 votes. Three months! Also, that series has six parts and three of the parts have been labeled "Hot" for months and now none of them are.

Go figure. Being a 750 word story I was expecting a lower vote total based off the the discussions on the 750 Word Project page, and "Christmas Surprise" has been holding a steady 3.5, but the others are like the tide suddenly got pulled out of the harbor and every ship has hit bottom and is landlocked.

Strange...

 

[RejectReality]

I have to wonder how the sweeps will change that -- assuming they start again.

Lesbian Sex has been one of the author-friendliest categories on Lit. This morning I checked on the last month of voting. There have been 129 stories posted in a month, and 23 of them have a score at or over 4.5, which is much less than I expected. Of those, twenty were published before March 19th and three (3) were published since.

Assuming they're off. That's just one theory that fits the observations. There are more votes than people are expecting, and lower scores. New stories are hit harder than older ones. More popular stories are harder hit than less popular ones when it comes to older stuff.

Just ran mine again vs. the 25th. A couple of days ago I was up 2229 votes, with 7 scores going down .01, and 8 scores going up .01. There were three outliers of -.02, -.03, and +.10

Today vs. the 25th I'm up 2592 votes, 10 scores have gone down .01, 13 scores have gone up .01, and there are three outliers of +.03, +.02, and +.11

So, there have still been extensive queries running until very recently. That's a sensible reason to have the sweeps shut off. Once that activity dies down ( and it's certainly tailing off ) the reason to have them turned off goes away.

 

[HeyAll]

There are 2 big mom/son stories that are multi-page out today. Both have solid views and plenty of favorites. Both have really low scores.

https://www.literotica.com/beta/c/taboo-sex-stories

6. Something to keep in mind about the so-called importance of ratings: HeyAll and VixGiovanni co-wrote a story that currently is number 2 on the 30 day most viewed list, with 89,000 views after only six days. It has 170 favorites so far, which is good in absolute terms and relative to the number of views. And you know what? It has a score of 3.84, which is ridiculously low for the quality of the story relative to others. So for those who think a low score is a kiss of death for a story and means it won't get read, or won't pick up favorites from readers, that's not necessarily true. It's never been true for me or my stories.

Regarding the story "Wrong Prescription for Mom"

What's amazing about it is that it currently has 3,700 votes within a week, and the score hovered around 3.84 and 3.85.

That means the average sweep wouldn't put a dent in that score. For sweeps, I usually lose around 20 votes, more for incest stories.

Also keep in mind that the story is 1 page (200 words short of the 1 page limit). My 1 page stories score between 4.2 and 4.5ish so I was really suprised the score was so low. But again, I'm also shocked that it got so many votes.

I'm not sure what's going on.


As far as the score impacting the number of readers, this particular story has far more readers than my previous mom/son stories which have scored a lot higher. More favorites too. So people are still reading regardless of the score.


As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I think scores mean less now because of the new Hubs. The scores are are in smaller font and there are other metrics now that make a story look appealing, such as the number of favorites it has.

 

[RejectReality]

SR just brought up a possibility in another thread. Asstr is dead as of a couple of weeks ago. There's been a significant spike of traffic here and at SOL since the site went down, according to Alexa.

Refugees not used to the voting mechanic and those who preferred the more extreme stories available on Asstr could be driving votes up and scores down. No sign of that on SOL, but it requires membership to vote, ( plus some other limitations ) so it would be slower to show up there than here.

 

[SimonDoom]

What's amazing about it is that it currently has 3,700 votes within a week, and the score hovered around 3.84 and 3.85.

I'm not sure what's going on.


As far as the score impacting the number of readers, this particular story has far more readers than my previous mom/son stories which have scored a lot higher. More favorites too. So people are still reading regardless of the score.


As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I think scores mean less now because of the new Hubs. The scores are are in smaller font and there are other metrics now that make a story look appealing, such as the number of favorites it has.

3700 votes in one week is insane. You're getting 4 votes for every view. That's an incredibly high ratio. As a reference, I published a mom-son story in January that now has 83,000 views -- not quite as many as yours got in 6 days but close -- and a score of 4.61, and it has 1800 votes, half as many. Its view:vote ratio of 45:1 is twice as good as my normal story, and your story has a ratio twice as good as mine, despite that score.

Something has changed significantly with voting at the Site.

 

[roowa]

SR just brought up a possibility in another thread. Asstr is dead as of a couple of weeks ago. There's been a significant spike of traffic here and at SOL since the site went down, according to Alexa.

Refugees not used to the voting mechanic and those who preferred the more extreme stories available on Asstr could be driving votes up and scores down. No sign of that on SOL, but it requires membership to vote, ( plus some other limitations ) so it would be slower to show up there than here.

This is quite insightful and could explain a lot of the recent craziness. (Not the bulk vote disappearances that occurred, but perhaps many of the other observations, like huge increases in views and such.)

Also, I'm curious how you asked Alexa about the spikes in traffic. (Not joking. I want to try it.)

 

[RejectReality]

This is quite insightful and could explain a lot of the recent craziness. (Not the bulk vote disappearances that occurred, but perhaps many of the other observations, like huge increases in views and such.)

Also, I'm curious how you asked Alexa about the spikes in traffic. (Not joking. I want to try it.)

Alexa, the site, not Alexa the device.

 

[NotWise]

Maybe I should put the big increase in votes into my list of anomalous voting behaviors. I haven't seen it myself, but I haven't published since August.

I'd be careful with things like high votes/view. Remember that there were hardly any views for more than four days (nineteenth through at least part of the twenty fourth) after the new story page became the default.

How are you guys distinguishing between new votes cast on stories, and old votes once lost and now being restored to the stories?

 

[RejectReality]

Maybe I should put the big increase in votes into my list of anomalous voting behaviors. I haven't seen it myself, but I haven't published since August.

I'd be careful with things like high votes/view. Remember that there were hardly any views for more than four days (nineteenth through at least part of the twenty fourth) after the new story page became the default.

How are you guys distinguishing between new votes cast on stories, and old votes once lost and now being restored to the stories?

HeyAll would have a pretty good idea what a story is going to do. When he's shocked by the number of votes, it's a fair bet that it's out of the ordinary.

My two most recent releases not good yardsticks. While they're drastically outperforming ( extremely low ) expectations, they're very short and extremely off-brand.

If I finish Curl & Figure and get it out, that will be a good gauge. I'm expecting that one to pull 800-1000 votes and a score barely hovering above H under normal conditions. ( Older man doesn't do as well as Milf scorewise, and the setting is going to be alien to the folks on the coasts )

 

[HeyAll]

3700 votes in one week is insane. You're getting 4 votes for every view. That's an incredibly high ratio. As a reference, I published a mom-son story in January that now has 83,000 views -- not quite as many as yours got in 6 days but close -- and a score of 4.61, and it has 1800 votes, half as many. Its view:vote ratio of 45:1 is twice as good as my normal story, and your story has a ratio twice as good as mine, despite that score.

Something has changed significantly with voting at the Site.

My normal mom/son views-to-vote ratio:

[For perspective, my previous mom/son story is 2 pages (6,600 words, around that) with 45,000 views and 933 votes. Published a few weeks ago. Not great by my standards, but the ratio is about right.

My normal mom/son ratio is that 45,000 views should get 1,000 votes. Rough estimate. My normal page count is 2 pages.]

My normal mom/son score:

If a story is 2 pages, and it's played safe, it'll get above a 4.5 score with a red H.

By playing it safe, that means it hits the incest benchmarks; lovable mom, respectable son, fun premise, lots of tension, lots of sex.

Deviating from that could result in a lower score; including anal, a more bizarre plotline, perhaps the mom is a villain (ie mafia), and so forth. Those kinds of elements are appreciated by some, but others don't like it.


1 page mom/son stories:

Have you ever written a 1-page mom/son story?

It almost-always (leaning more towards always) gets a higher vote/view ratio, because of course it's a 1 page thing.

Stories are like movies. People always abandon movies. That's why when Netflix says "80 million people watched this movie" in a month, people then ask, 'what's the definition of a view?'

I've read before that Netflix counts a few as watching only a few minutes.


But anyway, that's the reason I sometimes like writing 1-page stories, because it gives people something quick that they can read to the end. And it'll have more people that read the whole thing (hence the higher ratio of votes it has).

I've read lots of comments from people saying that if the story is too long, they won't read it (which is fair, it's their time). A 1 page story is the opposite. They see the length and they're more likely to finish it.


On a side note, a 1-page story (just below 3,500 words) is its own craft. It's a fun challenge to make something small, but packs in a lot plot/erotica points.