Score Vandalism

[MrPixel]

Let me preface this in noting that I have made it a personal goal over the past several years to NOT discuss LitE scoring in public. I learned early-on that it draws fire.

However, it is time to say something, especially because several of my stories' scores are suddenly getting hammered as it is, for no good reason beyond somebody or several somebodies wanting to punish them for... what?... having the vaunted "red 'H'"? A personal squick mentioned in passing? Existing in the first place?

What did I do to you, whoever you are?

The more prolific, established, and/or "senior" authors on the site wave-away discussions like this, asserting, "Scoring doesn't bother me." Okay, that is fine for you, you publish in popular categories and have many followers who are willing to "vote". Those of us whose interests are in the lightly-trafficked topics tend not to accumulate followers, and vote-to-reader ratios are very low in some categories.

Scores are important for "lesser" authors because they are: 1) indicative of overall reader interest; 2) a useful indicator of story quality; and 3) especially valuable in driving interest in the first place. Readers - this one included - will gravitate towards stories with higher scores in any given category.

Point-blank: maliciously-damaged scores reduce readership.

"There's no solution, @Laurel and @Manu aren't going to change how it works."

I disagree with "no solution". The system is clearly broken, and is penalizing writers in less-popular categories. This needs to be fixed. "One-bombs" and other user-accessible manipulations have a too-strong statistical effect on scores of well-written stories in minority categories.

The solution I propose is one proposed many times: only registered users can vote. OR, anonymous votes are simply recorded but ignored in computing the score average. Anonymous voting has run its course and proven to be detrimental to site and author participation.

 

[Trionyx]

only registered users can vote.

Are you suggesting that their votes would be public? If not, (and I don’t recommend that they should be) then your proposal would not solve your problem. Registered readers can trash a story’s score just as easily as anonymous readers.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Let me preface this in noting that I have made it a personal goal over the past several years to NOT discuss LitE scoring in public. I learned early-on that it draws fire.

However, it is time to say something, especially because several of my stories' scores are suddenly getting hammered as it is, for no good reason beyond somebody or several somebodies wanting to punish them for... what?... having the vaunted "red 'H'"? A personal squick mentioned in passing? Existing in the first place?

What did I do to you, whoever you are?

The more prolific, established, and/or "senior" authors on the site wave-away discussions like this, asserting, "Scoring doesn't bother me." Okay, that is fine for you, you publish in popular categories and have many followers who are willing to "vote". Those of us whose interests are in the lightly-trafficked topics tend not to accumulate followers, and vote-to-reader ratios are very low in some categories.

Scores are important for "lesser" authors because they are: 1) indicative of overall reader interest; 2) a useful indicator of story quality; and 3) especially valuable in driving interest in the first place. Readers - this one included - will gravitate towards stories with higher scores in any given category.

Point-blank: maliciously-damaged scores reduce readership.

"There's no solution, @Laurel and @Manu aren't going to change how it works."

I disagree with "no solution". The system is clearly broken, and is penalizing writers in less-popular categories. This needs to be fixed. "One-bombs" and, recently, "two-bombs" (which apparently do not currently get caught in database "sweeps") have a too-strong statistical effect on scores of well-written stories in minority categories.

The solution I propose is one proposed many times: only registered users can vote. OR, anonymous votes are simply recorded but ignored in computing the score average. Anonymous voting has run its course and proven to be detrimental to site and author participation.

Welcome to the club.

As I pointed out with the 26thNC account in another thread, there are authors with named, no story accounts to use in their vandalism. So, placing restrictions on anonymous accounts is merely an inconvenience to those who attack others.

I KNOW I'm a shitty amateur writer. So, I seriously ask everyone to take a critical look at their own stories. Does it really rise to the level of a literary masterpiece deserving special recognition? And the site using the cut-off of TEN votes to award the Red-H? Is that realistic to award recognition with such little attention, when we have stories with HUNDREDS or even over a thousand votes, where any single 1 or 5 is merely a drop in the bucket?

To say that damaged scores reduce readership is a stretch, because this site is free and depends on "clicks". As long as LitE is gaining more clicks, they are achieving their goals of selling ad space and there's no reason to change the status quo. And there is little incentive on the part of the Admins to put forth work in making changes, unless that work might result in MORE CLICKS.

 

[Bamagan]

A few points, which are not intended to either refute or support your overall position.

First, it's not a certainty that your new, unwelcome voters are actually anonymous. I mean, yes, they're unknown to you, but they may be coming from registered users who are otherwise silent, of which there are many.
Second, I also write fairly niche stuff and was therefore subject to votes that were probably indictments of the genre as much as of my specific offerings. I received a few comments that suggested as much. If one is writing to cater to niche interests, it is almost inevitable that one will draw fire for doing so, and there are plenty of vocal registered users who find their handle/username provides sufficient anonymity to feel emboldened to express their disdain.
Third, I've long known that the scores were a poor guide for me locating things I want to read, as my tastes have gotten more niche over time and, as you say, niche interests don't always get high scores, especially if they get widely read. So I largely ignore the scores when I look for things to read, and I disabled voting on my stories. I'm sure it reduces readership, but I'm skeptical that many of the people who only want to read the so-called Hot Ones would appreciate my stories in the first place, so I doubt it has much effect on my actual audience of people who enjoy the kinks I write about.

As an amendment to your proposal, I'd float the idea of having two scores displayed: one with all votes, and one with only registered votes. I'm not sure it would make much difference overall, though it might be a point of interest to be able to see just how many truly anonymous voters exist.

 

[Privates1stClass]

I agree with you 100%. Anonymous voting should be curtailed. Perhaps voters whose names we know can also one-bomb your story, but at least you'd be able to identify them.

 

[SimonDoom]

I sympathize with your frustration, but it should be crystal clear at this point that your suggestion will never be adopted, and there is an extremely compelling justification, with which I agree 100%, why it should not be adopted. Here's the reason:

Readers matter more than authors do. Your feelings do not matter. The site wants to maximize readership and traffic, as it should. Scores do not exist to make us happy or boost our stories; scores exist for readers. They are a way of assisting readers in choosing the stories they want to read.

Either Laurel or Manu has said this explicitly at one point or another. The majority of votes are by unregistered readers. There is not a chance in hell that Literotica is going to adopt a policy that prevents unregistered readers from voting. This would deprive value from readers, and that's not something Literotica wants to do. I spent about 12 years being an unregistered reader, and I would have been pissed off if all of a sudden Literotica told me I couldn't vote or comment.

Plus, you have no clear basis for saying that unregistered voters are worse than the registered ones. You have no idea. Registered readers can vote and comment anonymously. You are speculating.

Another significant drawback: By eliminating over half the voters, which is what your proposal would accomplish, you would make scores MORE volatile and more susceptible to gamesmanship and downvoting. Why do that?

You say "Anonymous voting has run its course and proven to be detrimental to the site and author participation."

I don't believe that. The Site obviously doesn't believe that. What reason do we have to believe that? OK, there are some pissed-off authors. So? Do you really think that has any impact on the traffic to or success of the Site? I don't. There's so much content here that it makes no difference. The Site is in a much better position than we are to determine what is detrimental to it. If it had reason to believe that anonymous voting was somehow hurting it, it would change its policy.

There is no point in continuing to advocate this change, which very obviously will never happen, and many of us authors strongly oppose it happening.

 

[MrPixel]

Registered-only serves two purposes.

One, it's like putting a deadbolt on your front door in addition to the normal knob latch. It's not going to keep the evil-doers completely out, but it is going to slow them down. Making registration a requirement might have the "too much trouble" effect for somebody just wanting to spray a little paint.

Sure, registered users - even other authors - bomb stories. But that they are doing so is recorded, especially the "bomb-only" accounts. These can be outed with simple database queries by site admins. As to what to do about it? That's their call.

Simon, we shall agree to disagree.

 

[MrPixel]

...it draws fire.

Yep. Two bombs, and it hasn't even been an hour since I started this thread. This is madness, and reflects badly on the community.

 

[StillStunned]

(Even when your story has a thousand or more votes, it hurts to see it drop .01 or .02. It's happened to me. And you know that it has to be some kind of concerted effort then, because a few random 1s aren't going to have such a huge effect.)

Here are my suggestions for solving this problem.

1. Everyone who wants to drop a 1 has to write a 750-word essay explaining precisely what they didn't like about the story, and how the author could improve it. With concrete and specific examples.

2. A 5 is the only possible vote.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

This is of course a perennial question and I myself have flipped back and forth, Mr. P.

I'm not sure it's entirely fair to wave off comments or advice by, as you put it, senior or established writers, nor is it entirely fair to say they owe that status by writing in popular categories. Some writers do limits submissions to one or two categories, but others do spread them out.

In any case, stories in 'popular' categories are as likely to accumulate malevolent vandalism as those in less popular ones, although of course the effects tend to be somewhat less.

One point I have consistently made (no offence to you, I assure you, this is more a general bit of advice for the new writers here) is that it is not a good idea for individual writers to complain about how much vote-bombing hurts them. My logic is that the trolls live to cause annoyance.

IMHO, trolls are like toddlers; unable to build with blocks, they take their fun by knocking down others' work. To complain about it is to validate their twisted actions and, I think, encourage them to continue. Discussion in general is good and let's have at it, but in this context, saying 'just ignore it' is a legitimate strategy for the creative ones among us. Discuss it as a general problem but never complain about being upset yourself.

WRT vote-bombing decreasing readership, I presume you mean that in terms of red H stories being more likely to be read. Fair point, perhaps.

As I said, I've flipped back and forth on this. I once strongly favoured limiting votes to registered members. If one of those is becoming a nuisance, then it becomes easier for the site to block them. Gotcha, seen and agreed.

Against that very logical argument however are several others. First, we are probably going to see fewer readers voting in the first place. (Comments probably wouldn't change as those already require registration.) Maybe that's important, maybe not. Some people treasure big readership numbers.

A more cogent argument against it is how easy it is to open email accounts these days and the ubiquity of VPNs. The dedicated troll will have no problem in creating a number of IDs. Sure, it would make it more trouble for them, but I doubt these creatures have much else to do with their time anyway. If somebody's really P'd at an author, it'll happen.

Anyway, good question and hopefully the site will take some more steps to deal with a very real problem. While I'm (slightly) on the Needn't Register side, I'm open to hearing arguments showing why we should.

tp

 

[KeithD]

Understand and appreciate your frustration on scoring, but requiring registered voting only (as opposed to registered commenting only) won't do anything here. It takes moments to register an additional account that's then usable forever here. That's what those bent on bringing scores down will do. Also, as noted before, votes (as opposed to comments) aren't identified. It isn't given that it's unregistered voting that's voting a work down.

 

[OnlyHappyEndings]

I think anonymous voting and commenting can be valuable to writers. More feedback is good and you are asking for less. If I could get the volume of interaction on my straight fiction that I get here I wouldn't feel the need to write so much erotica.

Sometimes the feedback seems unfair or misguided. Maybe I'm missing views because of it. Then I remind myself that I'm getting more views and ratings here, magnitudes more, than I get on any other site I've tried.

Then I get that anonymous comment that says it was a good story and well told. There are reasons why the reader wouldn't want their identity associated with a porn account. But I'm grateful they were able to share their thoughts with me.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Yep. Two bombs, and it hasn't even been an hour since I started this thread. This is madness, and reflects badly on the community.

But I ask you "Has your drop in ratings in any way decreased the LitE web site's daily number of clicks on new stories?"

The site Admins have counters which show them the number of clicks per day. And that number drives their ability to sell ad space. So, even anger among the readers and fights between authors which cause more postings and clicks is to the site's advantage, and not worth them trying to stop!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The more prolific, established, and/or "senior" authors on the site wave-away discussions like this, asserting, "Scoring doesn't bother me." Okay, that is fine for you, you publish in popular categories and have many followers who are willing to "vote". Those of us whose interests are in the lightly-trafficked topics tend not to accumulate followers, and vote-to-reader ratios are very low in some categories.

I can only speak for my personal case, I do not write in popular categories, do not have a following, and my scores stink. I'm just not about to cry over "the stroke throng not recognizing my genius" which I am not suggesting that you are doing (yet we know that several have in the past).

Scores are important for "lesser" authors because they are: 1) indicative of overall reader interest; 2) a useful indicator of story quality; and 3) especially valuable in driving interest in the first place. Readers - this one included - will gravitate towards stories with higher scores in any given category.

I completely disagree with point 1. Scores are no indication of quality whatsoever. I've read plenty of 4.7s that sucked and many 3.2s that are very strong. However, I will agree with you on point 2. A higher score will get you more traffic.

I disagree with "no solution". The system is clearly broken, and is penalizing writers in less-popular categories. This needs to be fixed.

I agree and will append that it penalizes all writers. The scores are inaccurate because the scoring system is poorly designed.

Solutions:

1 ~ Get rid of the Red H. First, it's a jealousy target. Second, it discourages people from using the whole scale. So many voters (maybe half?) will always give a 5 to something that they thought was a 4 simply because they feel it would be rude to kill the Red H. The Red H basically turns the scoring system into 5 or nothing, gets thousands of 4.3s and 4.4s ignored, and makes the first 4 stars redundant.

2 ~ Once a story gets over 10 votes, start removing the top 10% and bottom 10% of the votes. This will remove a decent amount of outliers.

3 ~ Put guide words on the numbers: 1~poor, 2~adequate, 3~good, 4~excellent, 5~amazing. This will entice voters to use the whole scale and give all of the stars relevance. Voters will now be more inclined to give a good but not perfect story a 4 or a decent story a 3. Scores will come down but will be more accurate, and writers can be pleased with a well-earned 4.2 that means something.

It won't be perfect because the voters are the voters and they can be weird, but it will be miles better.

These changes will never fly though, since the fat egos around here will never let go of their Red Hs and a system that gives their pandering fap sheet an inflated 4.8.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yep. Two bombs, and it hasn't even been an hour since I started this thread. This is madness, and reflects badly on the community.

What if people, prompted by this thread, were intrigued by your assumptions, chose to check out the story, and genuinely hated the story? Their 1 votes are as legitimate as any other votes. The Site gives people the option to give 1 star. I know I have received many, many 1 stars. I know it because I sometimes carefully track the scoring in the early going, and I know it because some of my readers tell me! So? Who am I to say those votes are illegitimate? The Site has a sweep policy that is intended to filter out "illegitimate" votes, whatever they are (including illegitimate 1s and illegitimate 5s) but what is the basis for assuming 1 votes are illegitimate across the board other than "I personally like my story so much it can't possibly be legitimate for someone to dislike it?" That's not a basis for a policy.

If you, or others, are getting downvotes in response to starting or posting in threads like this one, then it increases the likelihood that the downvoting is happening from registered, not unregistered, members, who are much more likely, I would think, to be reading your comments in this thread. Your example undermines your own argument.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Second, I also write fairly niche stuff and was therefore subject to votes that were probably indictments of the genre as much as of my specific offerings. I received a few comments that suggested as much. If one is writing to cater to niche interests, it is almost inevitable that one will draw fire for doing so, and there are plenty of vocal registered users who find their handle/username provides sufficient anonymity to feel emboldened to express their disdain.

Disagree there. Number one way to score is to pander. Bar none. Although it does depend what category you're. If you post in a fractious category (like LW or BDSM) you're bound to draw criticism from the opposite camp, true.

 

[Bamagan]

Your example undermines your own argument.

Unless this is all an elaborate ruse and sting operation designed to needle such retributive voters into outing themselves to the sweepers!
https://media.tenor.com/RnstscDaeY0AAAAM/dundundun-shook.gif

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Readers matter more than authors do. Your feelings do not matter. The site wants to maximize readership and traffic, as it should. Scores do not exist to make us happy or boost our stories; scores exist for readers. They are a way of assisting readers in choosing the stories they want to read

Totally agree, except that the scores are completely inaccurate (at least to quality of work).

 

[MrPixel]

Unless this is all an elaborate ruse and sting operation designed to needle such retributive voters into outing themselves to the sweepers!
https://media.tenor.com/RnstscDaeY0AAAAM/dundundun-shook.gif

Don't think this didn't cross my mind! You guys know who you are!

 

[SimonDoom]

Solutions:

1 ~ Get rid of the Red H. First, it's a jealousy target. Second, it discourages people from using the whole scale. So many voters (maybe half?) will always give a 5 to something that they thought was a 4 simply because they feel it would be rude to kill the Red H. The Red H basically turns the scoring system into 5 or nothing, gets thousands of 4.3s and 4.4s ignored, and makes the first 4 stars redundant.

Totally agree. This, I think, is a demonstrably broken system, because the red H conveys no extra useful information beyond the score itself, and in fact it misrepresents what the score means, since it does not control for other factors, and it fools people into thinking it is a measure of quality when it's not, AND it incentivizes gamesmanship. There's literally nothing good about it, except that it's become a bauble valued by authors who get them and it's a fundamental part of the status quo, which the Site understandably does not wish to disturb. My compromise solution is to award red Hs based upon a percentile within a category--say, only the top 25% get a red H within that category. This would improve the meaning of the red H, and it would lessen the incentive for gamesmanship, but some authors would lose their red Hs so they'd put up a fuss about that. I might lose some of my red Hs. I wouldn't care.

Once a story gets over 10 votes, start removing the top 10% and bottom 10% of the votes. This will remove a decent amount of outliers.

This is an intriguing and, I think, promising idea. I agree with you that it might well eliminate much of what we are concerned about.

Put guide words on the numbers: 1~poor, 2~adequate, 3~good, 4~excellent, 5~amazing. This will entice voters to use the whole scale and give all of the stars relevance. Voters will now be more inclined to give a good but not perfect story a 4 or a decent story a 3. Scores will come down but will be more accurate, and writers can be pleased with a well-earned 4.2 that means something.

I'm not sure if readers would stick to these guidelines, but some guidance probably is better than none.

These changes will never fly though, since the fat egos around here will never let go of their Red Hs and a system that gives their pandering fap sheet an inflated 4.8.

I'm not sure about this, because I'm not sure if the Site cares about authors' egos. It cares about traffic, and I doubt very much that its traffic is affected much by whether our egos are assuaged.

 

[SimonDoom]

Totally agree, except that the scores are completely inaccurate (at least to quality of work).

I know you believe this, and you are entitled to your opinion, but it's not true for me and I suspect it's not true for many readers.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

"One-bombs" and, recently, "two-bombs" (which apparently do not currently get caught in database "sweeps")

How do you know that 2s aren't swept? As someone with very low traffic and action on my scores (often weeks between votes) I can tell you that on several occasions, my score AND my vote count has gone down - 5s get swept out. Yes they do.

 

[MrPixel]

Once a story gets over 10 votes, start removing the top 10% and bottom 10% of the votes. This will remove a decent amount of outliers.

Oo. I actually agree with Simon on this point. It's a good idea. If it worked to defuse the Russian and Romanian judges from bombing Olympic diving scores, it should certainly work for us.

 

[MrPixel]

5s get swept out. Yes they do.

I knew that, and the reasoning behind it.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

My compromise solution is to award red Hs based upon a percentile within a category--say, only the top 25% get a red H within that category

I thought about that, and it's certainly far better than the 4.5 bar, but it still doesn't remove the jealousy target.