Hateful reviews

[Bramblethorn]

2. Lol. Like ROFLMAO type lol. When a story drops ANY amount without ANY new votes, it's likely someone manipulating the data. My beef, which I clearly stated, is that my ratings drop without the total number of votes changing. They almost never go up, only drop. Tell me smart guy, how exactly do you explain that?

"Without the total number of votes changing" isn't a thing you can actually know, because this site doesn't send you a notification when that number changes. All you can do is hit refresh on your story stats once in a while, which will tell you whether there's been a net change since the last time you looked, but that's not the same thing.

Sometimes votes get added, i.e. somebody read your story and voted on it. Sometimes votes get removed, i.e. the site has identified them as bad-faith or duplicate. (Search this forum for "sweeps" and you'll find countless discussion on that topic.) If you check your stats, and then the sweeps remove a high vote and a reader adds a lower vote, and then you check again, what you'll see is the same vote count as before with a lower score. But that doesn't actually tell you that the total vote count hasn't changed; it just means there were two changes and you didn't observe it in between them.

I've looked at your stories before. You tend to write long stories, about eight pages or so. The usual pattern with stories that length is that most readers drop out along the way, and only the ones who really liked the story make it through to the end where they're prompted to vote. So those stories end up with relatively high scores (why would anybody read eight pages into a story they don't like?) but low vote counts.

Those low vote counts then make the scores sensitive to even small changes in the votes. For instance, if you have 60 votes, losing one 5* and gaining one 3* will drop you three percentage points.

From a quick look at your story stats, almost all your stories are above 4.00. You have five rated "hot", with the highest at 4.82. All I can say is, if your speculation was true and Laurel was personally taking the time to change your scores as part of some vendetta against you, she hasn't done a very thorough job of it. If somebody really was modifying your scores, it'd be much simpler just to add a bunch of low votes on your stories.

Nothing you've posted here supports the speculation you're making. There's an obvious legitimate way for this to happen, and it's not clear why you think Laurel and/or Manu would choose to go after you in particular out of the masses who post political opinions in Politics/GB.

I also noticed that one of my stories dropped 3pts overnight. Perhaps that's my imagination as well?

If it was "Wage Slave", that may have been me.

I read this discussion a couple of days back. I like to be informed when I talk about something, and the topic of this particular discussion was your stories and the voting on them. I thought I'd give one of them a closer look - if you had a really good story that was getting an unaccountably low score, that would go some way to support your claim.

So I read through it. You haven't asked for a critique so I won't give one; let's just summarise my reaction as "disliked but not atrocious". I voted honestly on it as I would on any other story - I think I gave it 2*, might have been 3*. That was my personal opinion, but comparing it to other stories from other stories, the overall average (currently 4.22, would've been slightly higher before my vote) was about what I'd have expected.

That's not a conspiracy, just a normal and foreseeable consequence of starting a discussion about alleged irregularities in the scoring of your stories. Since it wasn't my thing, I'm not likely to read or rate more of your stories, but you are of course at liberty to read mine and to vote on them according to their merits.

(Disclaimer that I rarely check my stats these days, so I probably won't see whether you do.)

 

[sjreardon]

I'm a rank amateur, with only 9 stories to my name, and I got my first hater recently. Someone called a story of mine "repetitive drivel"!

It seems awfully silly to get angry about free porn online. Some people just want to watch the world burn.

I'm thinking I may have picked up a silent hater this week. I write mostly in the Gay Male category, and at the moment I have a multi-part story coming out which has two narrators, one gay, one straight. It's also pretty long, so I put it in Novels and Novellas. But - key thing, and something I haven't done before - I added a copyright symbol AND MY NAME at the end of each instalment, which reveals my gender as female.

I think this has offended somebody, who presumably feels I'm all up in their space or something. I was at my keyboard when the third instalment of my current story came out, and somebody gave it a 1-star before it had been up ten minutes, which...if you've had enough after three paragraphs, you click away, surely? Not click through to the final page and take the trouble to rate it?

The same thing happened three days later when the fourth instalment came out. It hasn't happened with the fifth and sixth, but today alone two of my existing Gay Male stories have been given 1-star ratings, and this is something I literally haven't had happen before in close to a year of posting stuff. I feel kind of sick at the idea that a person can just run through my entire output and make it look shitty with the click of a mouse. And then if they use their phone as well they can do it over again! I don't think people who are just consumers on the site have any idea of the WORK involved in getting a story up on Literotica.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

I'm thinking I may have picked up a silent hater this week. I write mostly in the Gay Male category, and at the moment I have a multi-part story coming out which has two narrators, one gay, one straight. It's also pretty long, so I put it in Novels and Novellas. But - key thing, and something I haven't done before - I added a copyright symbol AND MY NAME at the end of each instalment, which reveals my gender as female.

I think this has offended somebody, who presumably feels I'm all up in their space or something. I was at my keyboard when the third instalment of my current story came out, and somebody gave it a 1-star before it had been up ten minutes, which...if you've had enough after three paragraphs, you click away, surely? Not click through to the final page and take the trouble to rate it?

The same thing happened three days later when the fourth instalment came out. It hasn't happened with the fifth and sixth, but today alone two of my existing Gay Male stories have been given 1-star ratings, and this is something I literally haven't had happen before in close to a year of posting stuff. I feel kind of sick at the idea that a person can just run through my entire output and make it look shitty with the click of a mouse. And then if they use their phone as well they can do it over again! I don't think people who are just consumers on the site have any idea of the WORK involved in getting a story up on Literotica.

The are periodic ratings sweeps that remove suspected bogus votes. You can request a vote sweep by going into the story, cluck report and request sweep. Inless that changed, ive been away a bit.

 

[Mikoda]

I’m going to defend the commentators who dislike the stories and use the given tools to express their dislike. Accept the ones that are personal attacks, that should never be allowed.

The site owners are largely to blame as they refuse to add the appropriate categories and allow multiple ones. Loving Wives should be removed as it is stupidly misnamed. And the must have Cuck, Cheating, Weak/wimp male and Sharing categories implemented asap. New readers looking for an actual loving wife story are subjected to the above and rightly so appalled and disgusted.

One thing I despise is writers putting down and personal attack negative commentators of stories. Prime example is Lovecraft(68-Lore) calling them Incels and TadOverdon that their live must suck etc. and BiscuitHammer, Sub-humanity really? I personally think what you “writers” do is one much worse and two at-least the same as the worst of the commentators.

I use the comments to see of the story is worth is and if it is filled with Cuck, Cheating, Weak/wimp male and Sharing. I’m one of “those” who absolutely hate it. And I will comment negatively and use low scores to voice my dislike and to warn others to skip that one.

Because of the lack of adequate categories comments are the only way to be warned. Therefore personally I feel writers should not be allowed to block comments. And only admins should be allowed to delete unwanted comments. To compensate, no more anonymous comments and use bans to people with unacceptable behavior.

Yes, that means that you can only access the site with an account but necessary to be able to keep control.

I’m convinced that the “hate’ will be greatly reduced with a good functional category system.

I know some of you will look add my profile and use that to discredit my comment because apparently only writers and posters with thousands of posts are allowed to have an opinion.

Both writers and readers have become toxic.

 

[JoRay]

I'm a rank amateur, with only 9 stories to my name, and I got my first hater recently. Someone called a story of mine "repetitive drivel"!

Non repedative porn:

Louise leaned back and Jerry lifted her left leg up against his chest. She shuffled her butt forward to the edge of the bed, and he slowly penetrated her wetness to his full length. He gave her one stroke, slowly pulling out and driving back in a litte harder than at first, then another in-and-out, slightly harder than the second...

Then he released her leg, backed up, and left the bedroom.

"What the hell are you doing?" She yelled to him as he walked away.

"It was getting repeadative. I think I'll make a sandwich."

"Fuck, Jerry... Really?"

"Yeah, roast beef and swiss on wheat, with horseradish sauce..."

"Will you make me one?"

"I'll make a Black Forrest ham on rye with cheddar for you."

 

[windar]

I’m going to defend the commentators who dislike the stories and use the given tools to express their dislike. Accept the ones that are personal attacks, that should never be allowed.

The site owners are largely to blame as they refuse to add the appropriate categories and allow multiple ones. Loving Wives should be removed as it is stupidly misnamed. And the must have Cuck, Cheating, Weak/wimp male and Sharing categories implemented asap. New readers looking for an actual loving wife story are subjected to the above and rightly so appalled and disgusted.

One thing I despise is writers putting down and personal attack negative commentators of stories. Prime example is Lovecraft(68-Lore) calling them Incels and TadOverdon that their live must suck etc. and BiscuitHammer, Sub-humanity really? I personally think what you “writers” do is one much worse and two at-least the same as the worst of the commentators.

I use the comments to see of the story is worth is and if it is filled with Cuck, Cheating, Weak/wimp male and Sharing. I’m one of “those” who absolutely hate it. And I will comment negatively and use low scores to voice my dislike and to warn others to skip that one.

Because of the lack of adequate categories comments are the only way to be warned. Therefore personally I feel writers should not be allowed to block comments. And only admins should be allowed to delete unwanted comments. To compensate, no more anonymous comments and use bans to people with unacceptable behavior.

Yes, that means that you can only access the site with an account but necessary to be able to keep control.

I’m convinced that the “hate’ will be greatly reduced with a good functional category system.

I know some of you will look add my profile and use that to discredit my comment because apparently only writers and posters with thousands of posts are allowed to have an opinion.

Both writers and readers have become toxic.

Most of the sites I write on don't allow blocking comments, but even if they did, I wouldn't do it. That said, I think personal attacks are out of line, whether directed at the author or the commenter. That those are allowed is something I fault the site owners for. Comments take hours to appear, supposedly because they are being "moderated", yet any kind of garbage seems to come through.

The real solution to your problem (if indeed reading a story you don't like is a "problem") are blurbs. That's how anyone outside this site chooses books to read, so why they don't have them here is really beyond me.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I’m going to defend the commentators who dislike the stories and use the given tools to express their dislike. Accept the ones that are personal attacks, that should never be allowed.

...but then you're calling for removing the options that would allow authors to deal with personal attacks. This site doesn't have nearly enough admins to police that kind of thing. "Should never be allowed" is kinda meaningless if there's no effective way to enforce that.

Not to mention all the other kinds of trash comments - misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. etc. - that don't fall under "personal attack" because they're not directed at a specific person.

The site owners are largely to blame as they refuse to add the appropriate categories and allow multiple ones. Loving Wives should be removed as it is stupidly misnamed. And the must have Cuck, Cheating, Weak/wimp male and Sharing categories implemented asap. New readers looking for an actual loving wife story are subjected to the above and rightly so appalled and disgusted.

Yes, the category is poorly named, but anybody who's spent more than five minutes in LW can figure out that it's primarily a category for cuck/cheating/etc. stories. Anybody who's been there long enough to notice that but continues reading in the category and complains about finding those sort of stories is a numpty who has only themselves to blame.

One thing I despise is writers putting down and personal attack negative commentators of stories. Prime example is Lovecraft(68-Lore) calling them Incels and TadOverdon that their live must suck etc. and BiscuitHammer, Sub-humanity really? I personally think what you “writers” do is one much worse and two at-least the same as the worst of the commentators.

I'm pretty comfortable with "incel" for the kind of people who show up in the comments to ragewank about how a REAL MAN would have murdered his cheating wife and her lover. And yeah, if people have nothing better to do than read a category full of stories they don't like just to complain about how they don't like them, it seems safe to assume that those people have a pretty sucky life.

I recall one reader who commented on chapter 12 of a series in Gay Male to complain that it had gay male content. Why shouldn't people like that be put down and called names?

Because of the lack of adequate categories comments are the only way to be warned.

Most readers don't read comments until after they've finished reading a story. It makes more sense to look at the tags first, especially now that they're visible from the first page of the story.

I’m convinced that the “hate’ will be greatly reduced with a good functional category system.

I know some of you will look add my profile and use that to discredit my comment because apparently only writers and posters with thousands of posts are allowed to have an opinion.

Both writers and readers have become toxic.

You don't have to have written stories here to voice an opinion. But it's worth keeping in mind that writers put in a lot of time providing stories here for no pay whatsoever. The least readers can do in return is show a modicum of courtesy.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Most of the sites I write on don't allow blocking comments, but even if they did, I wouldn't do it. That said, I think personal attacks are out of line, whether directed at the author or the commenter. That those are allowed is something I fault the site owners for. Comments take hours to appear, supposedly because they are being "moderated", yet any kind of garbage seems to come through.

The pre-moderation is there to catch spam, not abuse. It's easier to spot when 10 comments all have pretty much the same wording than it is to recognise whether a unique comment is abuse.

 

[SimonDoom]

I use the comments to see of the story is worth is and if it is filled with Cuck, Cheating, Weak/wimp male and Sharing. I’m one of “those” who absolutely hate it. And I will comment negatively and use low scores to voice my dislike and to warn others to skip that one.

Because of the lack of adequate categories comments are the only way to be warned.

No, you can look at the tags. By looking at the title, tagline, and tags you can nearly always tell whether a story involves cuckoldry, hot wives, or sharing. Just don't read the story. You don't need to read comments and you don't need to leave comments. You just want to inflict your outrage on people whose fantasies are different from yours. That attitude baffles me.

The original purpose of this category was to offer exactly the kinds of stories you hate, so you and others who think like you are in no position to say these stories shouldn't be in this category. That's what the category is for. Go ahead and hate them. It makes no sense to me that you feel compelled to spoil other people's fun.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I like to be informed when I talk about something, and the topic of this particular discussion was your stories and the voting on them. I thought I'd give one of them a closer look - if you had a really good story that was getting an unaccountably low score, that would go some way to support your claim.

So I read through it. You haven't asked for a critique so I won't give one; let's just summarise my reaction as "disliked but not atrocious". I voted honestly on it as I would on any other story - I think I gave it 2*, might have been 3*.

So basically, you admit that you went to read a story of mine with the intent of down-rating it.

Not sure whether you're deliberately lying there about what I said, or just catastrophically inept at reading comprehension. I must admit I don't have a high opinion of your integrity, but I also am prepared to believe that you really are just that stupid.

Either way, I'm happy to leave my words there and let other folk judge for themselves whether you represented them accurately.

 

[purplishy]

"Yeah, roast beef and swiss on wheat, with horseradish sauce..."

"Will you make me one?"

"I'll make a Black Forrest ham on rye with cheddar for you."

Wow. Did it just get really hot in here?

 

[sjreardon]

The are periodic ratings sweeps that remove suspected bogus votes. You can request a vote sweep by going into the story, cluck report and request sweep. Inless that changed, ive been away a bit.

This is interesting to hear, thanks for letting me know. I had a look and I see the button you mean. I guess I'm wondering what counts as a 'bogus' vote, though. I've received five one-star ratings in the past two weeks, having never received any in the eleven months before that. These happenings coincide with my having revealed my gender, which is what led me to suspect that it's all one person having some sort of hissy fit, but so long as they're not voting multiple times per story or campaigning elsewhere to get others to do the same, it seems to me I'm just gonna have to wear it. It's childish and dickish...but I have voting turned on.

To compensate, no more anonymous comments and use bans to people with unacceptable behavior.

Yes, that means that you can only access the site with an account but necessary to be able to keep control.

I would definitely be up for not being able to comment anonymously. That way, amongst other things, if you get a really vile comment from somebody but you know from your own reading inside the category you usually contribute to that this individual is just a general seaguller, shitting all over everything from on high, then you can disregard it. And so far as I can see, it wouldn't mean that you need an account to READ things on the site but you would need one to contribute, which, let's face it, is pretty standard out there.

I know some of you will look add my profile and use that to discredit my comment because apparently only writers and posters with thousands of posts are allowed to have an opinion.

I like it when readers have profiles, especially when they have favourites and reading lists. I've found some absolute gold mines of reading material that I might otherwise have missed that way . Also (and I might be weird here) it increases the sense that your stories are being read by PEOPLE when readers supply details about themselves. Otherwise it's just a business of this many clicks and this many likes and this many followers and it's all a bit dry and technical...

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

This is interesting to hear, thanks for letting me know. I had a look and I see the button you mean. I guess I'm wondering what counts as a 'bogus' vote, though. I've received five one-star ratings in the past two weeks, having never received any in the eleven months before that. These happenings coincide with my having revealed my gender, which is what led me to suspect that it's all one person having some sort of hissy fit, but so long as they're not voting multiple times per story or campaigning elsewhere to get others to do the same, it seems to me I'm just gonna have to wear it. It's childish and dickish...but I have voting turned on.

The PTB dont discuss what or how they determine whats bogus to avoid people figuring out how to get around them.

I'm pretty sure I figured out one criteria they use, but I won't say publically so I dont help anyone game the system if I'm right.

 

[RetroFan]

My impression of Loving Wives is that a lot of the readers there actually want to read stories they hate so they can give 1 star votes and leave negative comments about the story, its characters or the person who wrote it. This differs from other categories where negative comments are common - Incest/Taboo is one where I have found readers difficult to please at times - where if they leave a negative comment it means they read the story wanting to enjoy it but they didn't like some aspect of it, or the story overall.

One thing I don't do in any category is leave critical messages in response to people who dislike my stories, no matter how petty the reasons may be. This just causes more problems, if they want to leave negative comments about my work let them. I can learn from genuine criticism and sometimes negative reviews can be funny. As one example, a body swap series I wrote in IT a few years ago attracted many negative comments about how offensive they found the story, and it was like I had written Literotica's answer to Freddy Got Fingered. The angry and vitriolic comments were probably funnier than the story itself.

 

[jsmiam]

I remain a little unconvinced, that as few as one thoroughly obsessed person(s)/people with strong technical skills isn’t responsible for hundreds, possibly even thousands of the super negative anti-cheating burn-the-bitch type comments each day. Not just technically skilled, but on a mission, in their own mind. (Hell, it could even (also) be someone (I’m not in any way implying a forum regular) who writes BTB stories and wants their story rated higher. Or just wants BTB stories overall to do better.

At the same time, we see that the world is full of followers too. So I won’t say there’s just one person overall. But one person definitely producing many of them.

But based on writing styles, punctuation, word choices, etc., I’m convinced that there’s definitely one single person who produces hundreds of hate reviews per day.

I’m curious about the feedback portal too, how many people lurk there. It’s an interesting place, that’s partly where I formulated my “one person writes a lot of them” theory. The writing styles across dozens of different comments are all in one convenient place for comparison.

 

[HisArpy]

Not sure whether you're deliberately lying there about what I said, or just catastrophically inept at reading comprehension. I must admit I don't have a high opinion of your integrity, but I also am prepared to believe that you really are just that stupid.

Either way, I'm happy to leave my words there and let other folk judge for themselves whether you represented them accurately.

Lol. You outed yourself as a troll and try to blame me for it. Lol-ing forever over that one.