How are monthly award winners picked?

[thanagar]

Caveats:

1. Yes, I know the voting/rating system on this site is messed up.
2. Yes, I know it just a monthly award.
3. Yes, I know this will likely get me targeted for downvoters.
4. No, I am not crapping on anyone’s story or saying mine is better than someone else's. Odds are if you’ve written something 4.7 or higher, it’s pretty good or excellent. After that, it’s just a matter of personal taste.


Can someone please explain to me how selection for the monthly awards go? I thought it was the highest rated story of the month, assuming you got 50 votes, but that’s obviously not the case.

The reason for my confusion is that I have a fairly successful serialized story going. I’m thrilled that it’s been widely read and generally very well liked. Ten chapters in and all but one chapter is rated 4.8 or higher. For a new writer on the site, I understand that I’m incredibly lucky to get that good a rating. Most of the comments have been positive and I’ve gotten useful feedback when I’ve done stuff wrong.

That should be enough and I am happy. But I guess I’m greedy because I haven’t won a monthly award….and I don’t understand why. There was a period back in the Spring where for seven weeks or so, my stories were the highest rated in the Mature (Last 30 Days) subhead. Neither of them won. During the summer one of the Chapters was listed as the highest rated Mature story *of all time* on the site (I know it's not the best, no need to point it out to me.) and it didn't win.

On Sept. 2 I put out Chapter 9. It stayed on top of the Last 30 Days for the entire month, except one day. At the end of September, it had a 4.88 rating. It settled down to around 4.85, and then got zapped last weekend to drop it to a 4.82. Annoying but it was still the highest rated story of the month. Still didn't win.

I know it's silly to care about this. A monthly award is a minor ego boost. But it’s also my understanding you don’t get considered for the year end awards unless you win one of the monthly awards. And I’d like that shot, because I can’t help but feel I have lightning in a bottle with my current story. I may never get this close again.

It's also starting to distract me when I write, which is annoying. Yes, I know, stop doing that. Most of you are writers. How's your success rate in telling your brain to stop doing things?

So yeah, if someone can explain it, I’d love to hear it.

 

[KeithD]

I thought it was the highest rated story of the month, assuming you got 50 votes, but that’s obviously not the case.

I think it's this, but the points at which the Web site takes a reading for separate reasons change and the ratings don't remain static for very long. For the themed contests, for instance, what shows to the general readership at a given point in time differs from both what shows to the author and yet again to what shows to the Web site.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Do you enter your story into the contest?

 

[lovecraft68]

Do you enter your story into the contest?

Every story is eligible for the monthly contests except those that placed in a theme contest.

Its supposed to be based on highest score, but each category gets nominees and then the three finalists are picked and they don't always seem to be the highest of all the nominees...so how its ultimately figured no one really knows.

What's known is because its based solely on scores chapter stories have an unfair advantage, win the majority of these, and its been a point of contention for years here, and there's usually an annual promise to fix it...

 

[MelissaBaby]

The winner is not the story that gets the most votes in the month it was published. If it was, a lot of stories would get cut off from consideration because they went online too late to get the required number of votes.

It is not just possible, but common, for stories to flip back and forth in the lead spot, and a story could have the highest score on Monday, drop to second on Tuesday and take the lead again on Wednesday, and not win the award because Tuesday was the day on which the line was drawn.

I feel for you, this had happened to me several times. In one case, my story was .05 higher than the winner a couple days after the prizes were announced.

 

[TxRad]

From what I've read over the years, the scores are taken from the middle of the next month or maybe the next month. That way, everyone has a 30 day period. That is why the monthly sweeps are done in the middle of the month. After that, I have no idea.

 

[thanagar]

What's known is because its based solely on scores chapter stories have an unfair advantage, win the majority of these, and its been a point of contention for years here, and there's usually an annual promise to fix it...

Well then you'll love this. I went back and checked. Every monthly winner in the Mature category this year has been a stand alone story. Not a single chapter from a long running story has won. Maybe that's coincidence; maybe it's not. But it certainly is interesting. And judging by how "Autumn Light" is doing so far in in October, let's make it 10 in a row.

If that's true, and the Mature category is some kind of test run for this sort of thing, that's insanely frustrating.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Well then you'll love this. I went back and checked. Every monthly winner in the Mature category this year has been a stand alone story. Not a single chapter from a long running story has won.

That's how it should be, I reckon, to encourage new writers. Otherwise, it's only the never ending series that get a look in because of loyal fans rewarding every new chapter with high scores.

 

[lovecraft68]

Well then you'll love this. I went back and checked. Every monthly winner in the Mature category this year has been a stand alone story. Not a single chapter from a long running story has won. Maybe that's coincidence; maybe it's not. But it certainly is interesting. And judging by how "Autumn Light" is doing so far in in October, let's make it 10 in a row.

If that's true, and the Mature category is some kind of test run for this sort of thing, that's insanely frustrating.

I'm not sure what you mean by winner....do you mean Nominee?

Because here are the September winners and as you can see? All three are chapters.

https://www.literotica.com/s/literotica-monthly-awards-2021-09-september

One is #8 another #10 the other #14 clearly proving the unfair advantage and why people are frustrated.

The categories are SCi-fi(and this is the biggest chapter offender by far) Romance and Erotic couplings. So whatever the scores of the Mature nominees are, they're still not enough to over come the long series advantage.

If you look at the top lists, 7 of 10 Mature on the 30 list are chapters, then 5 of 10 for the 12 month. The All time its only 4 and the reason being the stand alone stories on that all time list have an enormous amount of votes(most chapter series don't get a lot of votes, that's another advantage because of how sweeps work) and can't be easily trolled down by the fans of the series.

One story in the Mature Hall of Fame top ten has over 11k votes.

 

[jaF0]

Aren't chapters excluded from contests? At least some state they must be stand alone stories.

 

[desecration]

My $0.02 --

There's no fair way to pick award winners.

Either you do it the Nobel prize way, and have a committee of experts, and everyone hates it, and eventually someone crazy gets on the committee and wrecks it.

Or you do it the democratic way, by scores, and then it's as gamed as Reddit or Instagram.

I always read the stories that were nominated but did not win, because often stuff that fits my readership profile hangs out there.

In a world where Game of Thrones, Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and fidget spinners are the most popular, sometimes you have to look off the beaten path.

 

[jsmiam]

Btw for reference. Top list rank is based on the score rounded to two decimal places and for ties, then also number of votes for ties. (more votes/same 2 DP score is higher).

Also I believe with reasonable confidence, the scoring is based on a mostly unknown moment in Time , although it’s safe to say somewhere within a few days of the 12th.

And a little bombing does seem to take place when winners are announced, I won’t go all the way to conspiracies, but a one bomb when there are smaller amounts of votes swings a score enough to make a difference. So if the competition scoring happened at 2:00 am gmt - 5 one night and you happen to wake up at 8:00 am, the score you see then isn’t necessarily what the score was at 2:00 am.

By chance I was online the night the summer lovin scores got posted (coincidentally the same day/evening/next early morning that the forums were down. The three winning scores went down a drastically shortly after the announcement. It’s probably fair to say that happens with the monthlies too.

It’s imperfect. But so are Amazon reviews, and nowadays, so is almost every form on online ratings. The stakes got too high. At Amazon, my routine is: don’t consider products without a lot of votes, but critically important, scan the reviews too, since product switcheroos happens too. And Amazon doesn’t appear to do anything about that.

At least here there’s not a way for votes for a different story to be applied elsewhere. Lit beats Amazon in one way. Go lit!

 

[Bramblethorn]

In a world where Game of Thrones, Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and fidget spinners are the most popular, sometimes you have to look off the beaten path.

Hey now. Fidget spinners are great.

 

[lovecraft68]

Btw for reference. Top list rank is based on the score rounded to two decimal places and for ties, then also number of votes for ties. (more votes/same 2 DP score is higher).

Also I believe with reasonable confidence, the scoring is based on a mostly unknown moment in Time , although it’s safe to say somewhere within a few days of the 12th.

And a little bombing does seem to take place when winners are announced, I won’t go all the way to conspiracies, but a one bomb when there are smaller amounts of votes swings a score enough to make a difference. So if the competition scoring happened at 2:00 am gmt - 5 one night and you happen to wake up at 8:00 am, the score you see then isn’t necessarily what the score was at 2:00 am.

By chance I was online the night the summer lovin scores got posted (coincidentally the same day/evening/next early morning that the forums were down. The three winning scores went down a drastically shortly after the announcement. It’s probably fair to say that happens with the monthlies too.

It’s imperfect. But so are Amazon reviews, and nowadays, so is almost every form on online ratings. The stakes got too high. At Amazon, my routine is: don’t consider products without a lot of votes, but critically important, scan the reviews too, since product switcheroos happens too. And Amazon doesn’t appear to do anything about that.

At least here there’s not a way for votes for a different story to be applied elsewhere. Lit beats Amazon in one way. Go lit!

Contest winners being bombed isn't conspiracy, its fact and can easily be seen. Winners scores always drop after the announcement and once there are no more sweeps those stories can continue to drop over time. People see a W on someone' page they don't like, they click and bomb.

Most of mine have stayed somewhat high, but I have one from awhile back that placed at a 4.85 and is now mid 4.70's and I've seen other authors go lower than that.

 

[lovecraft68]

Aren't chapters excluded from contests? At least some state they must be stand alone stories.

Themed contests don't allow chapters. That's why there's a lot of long entries

Monthly contests allow them

 

[jsmiam]

Contest winners being bombed isn't conspiracy, its fact and can easily be seen...

I see it also, and said it, that it happens. The difference is the definition. One sore loser / non winner is one person, and with a story with anything other than a very large vote count, that one person singlehandedly can alter the score. It’s wrong, whether it’s just one person or a gang of thousands. But the math says it can quite easily be just one person.

The “most reads” all time topic is different, that does take a lot more than one person and/or more than one “person” (bot or other form) to swing vote and or readership counts significantly.

When we are down to the 1/100th of a point being the difference between winning and losing, any story with less than at least 500 votes will see a score change with just a single one bomb, with some variables regarding exact decimal rounding. And the fewer the votes, the more the impact.

So one single sore loser can do it, it’s not necessarily a gang of cheats co-conspiring. I’m not saying there can’t be conspiracies too, but unfortunately for all of us with cheating and sabotage, a single person can cause the scores to change.

 

[JuanaSalsa]

I honestly don't pay much attention to the monthly awards except when I think one of my stories might be in the running.

So that's why I know that the September monthly winner for humor/satire (3.76 score, 55 votes) had a much lower score and fewer views than dmallord's story (4.66 score, 255 votes), which confuses me. I suspect my story did not hit the minimum number of votes, as it has just 21 votes. So, I don't get why dmallord's story wasn't the monthly nominee though?

 

[SimonDoom]

In a world where Game of Thrones, Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and fidget spinners are the most popular, sometimes you have to look off the beaten path.

I had to look up "fidget spinners." Interesting. Somehow, they had escaped my notice.

I don't think Game of Thrones deserves to be mentioned with Twilight and 50 Shades. GOT has its flaws but I think it's great. The TV show even more than the books. Twilight and 50 Shades, on the other hand, are pretty low-grade stuff.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Winning a monthly contest is nothing I ever have to worry about! Winning a contest here is nothing I have to worry about, a'tall.

 

[thanagar]

First of all, thanks for all the comments and information. I appreciate it as it's bringing me some peace of mind. Hopefully it allows me to stop obsessing about what's going on so I can complete my next few chapters and finish my story.

I've spent too much time try to puzzle this out. Is it the number of days at #1 in a category? Is it some formula that accounts page views/rating/number of votes. Or is it just whatever story in the Mature category is #1 at a given moment?

I actually thought a chapter story was a disadvantage, but goes to show what I know.

I've just been focused on winning the nomination in the Mature category. Best overall for the month, or the Contests are not on my radar. Certainly not the contests, which I know are a bloodbath of downvoting.

I can speak with some certainty as a new writer who got obsessed with winning one of these monthly nominees (oh, you've all done it) that there were months where no other story had a higher rating, including last month. I know it's mostly likely a "moment in time". On the morning the September winner was announced, I was still 0.02 ahead and that was the closest it had every been.

The same thing happened in other months, I just didn't track as carefully.

I guess we can argue the merits if that's fair. I just know as someone on the losing end right now, it's a bit disheartening and frustrating.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I, for one, don't try to compete in contest. The Halloween contest is the only one I have entered. I compete with myself only, trying to improve my stories. I don't have a large following, I don't have a huge library of work here, and I don't feel the need to have every story ranked high.

I write because I love writing. I love telling stories, and do enjoy it when I provoke emotional responses in readers. If they hate the story, that's an emotion, if they love it, that to is an emotion.

You cannot satisfy every reader, it's hopeless to try.

Winning an award would be nice, but it won't change how I pick my shoes (which I pick a lot of) or my clothes, (Yes, I'm clothes whore), or what Jo and I do for fun. My stories are generally in the most read categories, my work is an acquired taste, not something that anyone falls in love with head over heels. I don't generally get 50 votes on story that has a high ranking inside one month.

I think trying to win a competition would be frustrating and make writing more difficult.

 

[lovecraft68]

I had to look up "fidget spinners." Interesting. Somehow, they had escaped my notice.

I don't think Game of Thrones deserves to be mentioned with Twilight and 50 Shades. GOT has its flaws but I think it's great. The TV show even more than the books. Twilight and 50 Shades, on the other hand, are pretty low-grade stuff.

GOT's first couple of seasons were good, but it just kept going further over the top, it was a celebration of rape and humiliation of women, over the top torture and gore, plot lines that out clevered themselves and went in circles and just became shock value.

What they did do right, and he characters that they kept people invested in derailed in the next to last season which was shortened, and the last season and finale speak for themselves. Short of that Mountain/Hound show down it was all garbage.

Perhaps if the quaddruple cheeseburger eating narcissist had been able to meet one of his countless deadlines it could have been better, but he was too busy blowing himself over the shows success.

To date he is barely halfway through that book, and there's supposed to be one more. At his age, rate of writing and being a heart attack waiting to happen, I doubt even the fans of the written series will ever see it.

Now HBO is going to do prequels and people will watch them.

A parting shot-and not aimed at you, but justifiers of the show. There were idiots who claimed the show had a feminist
edge

This was based on the fact the two still standing at the end were woman...but hey, can't show titties, rape or humiliate them if they're dead but in the end...

who say on the thrown? Oh, look a guy...not to mention one who's entire side plot was useless AF

But no woman was every going to come out on top in anything penned by that pig or directed by HBO

 

[lovecraft68]

Winning a monthly contest is nothing I ever have to worry about! Winning a contest here is nothing I have to worry about, a'tall.

I don't know, your Halloween entry is pretty damn good so far.

 

[SimonDoom]

First of all, thanks for all the comments and information. I appreciate it as it's bringing me some peace of mind. Hopefully it allows me to stop obsessing about what's going on so I can complete my next few chapters and finish my story.

I've spent too much time try to puzzle this out. Is it the number of days at #1 in a category? Is it some formula that accounts page views/rating/number of votes. Or is it just whatever story in the Mature category is #1 at a given moment?

.

A few thoughts and pieces of random advice.

The winner of a contest is whoever has the highest score at the point when the contest ends and who has enough qualifying votes. The score represents a moment in time. Scores can shift dramatically after a contest ends.

It is totally counterproductive and pointless to fret about whether one wins a contest. It's nice if it happens. I haven't won one yet, and I'd be tickled to do so. But I spend zero time fretting about it. It's not worth thinking about. Contests and scores are useful to me for one thing: garnering more readers.

Chaptered stories do well for the obvious reason of self-selection and attrition. By Chapter 20, the only people continuing to read the story are those that like it. It stands to reason that scores go up as chapters progress.

My recommendation is not to focus on scores. In my view, too many people are way too obsessed with scores. Focus instead on, number 1, writing your stories and enjoying writing them, and, number 2, connecting with readers that appreciate what you write. Think about it. It's better to have 200 followers and an average story score of 4.5 than to have 20 followers and an average story score of 4.8, right? Why would anyone choose the latter? Just do your thing, do the best you can, and have fun.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't know, your Halloween entry is pretty damn good so far.

Thank you for your kind words. But it has only 25 votes and is at 4.52 right now. I doubt it will gain any ground and won't be in the standings even near the third slot by the end of the thing.