A rating oddity?

[myrionomos]

There is only one story (Educating Harry) submitted under this name, a novella written by my partner. It ran to 20 mainly fairly short 2/3 page chapters submitted over a number of months. The first chapter was initially rated at 4.9 in 2011 and it stayed on that score for 10/11 years. Really that was generous as there were a fair number of technical glitches. All of the subsequent chapters rated between 5 and 5.7. Then some time between 2020 and 2022 (we don't often check) chapter 1 crept over 5. A slow, a very slow starter, but once it hit 5, chapter 1 continued its slow rise and is now 5.3 I think that the other chapters may have nudged up a bit but not so much. I cannot figure out why such an old story would move so much, indeed at all.

I'll now go back to my usual lurking.

 

[StillStunned]

Are you sure those ratings are right? Normally they run from 1 to 5. I'd be over the moon with a 5.3.

 

[onehitwanda]

5.3's not possible on a site that rates 1 to 5. I suspect OP means 4.3 etc; having looked at their submission list everything falls between 4.3 and 4.7 roughly.

 

[lovecraft68]

A 5.3 rating sounds like a SOL type score from what I here. You on the right site?

 

[alohadave]

Are you applying US to Australian currency conversion rates to your scores?

If I set my location to Australia, can I get that score conversion too?

 

[myrionomos]

Apologies. My mistake, the scores should all have started with a 4 the first starting at 4.49 and progressing to 4.53. onehitwanda got it right.

Maybe Lurking really is my skill. I have edited the first post and hope it now makes sense.

 

[Rustyoznail]

If I set my location to Australia, can I get that score conversion too?

I can categorically state that we don't get a sympathetic conversion rate.

 

[lovecraft68]

Apologies. My mistake, the scores should all have started with a 4 the first starting at 4.49 and progressing to 4.53. onehitwanda got it right.

Maybe Lurking really is my skill. I have edited the first post and hope it now makes sense.

I think the answer is that when a story is new it gets its share of trolls who just like to bomb stories. There's also some people that checked it out because it was on the new list and maybe just didn't care for it.

But as time goes by the story can only be found by searching tags, the category hub, or by looking up your name or random chance. In that case its being read by people looking for that type of story so you're probably getting more favorable votes which slowly nudge it up.

I have a story that debuted in 2012 at around a 4.2 and eight years later had crawled up to over 4.5

Once you get out of the crosshairs of trolls stories will tend to rise.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I can categorically state that we don't get a sympathetic conversion rate.

Only freedom units on this site, mate.

 

[AchtungNight]

Be aware you might get back into troll crosshairs with previous stories if you write something they don’t like in the New listings. This happened to me and other authors who ran afoul of the Loving Wives denizens. The only way to win the high vs low ratings game far as I know is not to play.