An Alternative Voting System

[dr_mabeuse]

In case anyone would like to see what a histogram voting system looks like, I've got a story up in a BDSM site and the voting page is here:

http://www.bdsmlibrary.com/stories/review.php?storyid=2619

You can see how in this system the one-bombs would stand out and it would be easy to weed them out.

You can also see that the webmaster massages the voting statistically in some ways that I frankly don't quite understand (the weighted average). Even so, there's a lot more information here than what we currently get at Lit. Comments and feedback are also strongly encourages and I usually get more comments here than I do on Lit.

It's interesting that the site also uses vBulletin, but they must have a newer version.

---dr.M.

 

[Liar]

Everyone and their mother uses vBulletin, it's affordable, good and very adaptable to administrators' needs. But it's only the forum part on Lit that uses that system. The rest of the site is, as far as I can tell, Manu's own construct.

#L

 

[cantdog]

Not so much a "new system" as a readout display. We discussed this once, but there didn't seem to be a consensus about where to put it. In the author's "View Submissions" page? At the end of the story where they vote?
As a little graphic by each story in the lists? It now says (4.53) or whatnot; it would say that and also give a little bar graph.

If we have a unified position on this, we could recommend it concertedly to Manu, as a desirable improvement.

I want to see it in the listings, myself.

When I see a story's rating, I would then be able myself to handicap it, knowing how many of the votes were shit.

But others see it as a tool merely for the author to console himself alone with.

cantdog

 

[Pure]

mab, i actually like the idea, which is similar to tossing out the top and bottom (say 5%) votes, i.e., those that don't fit a 'bell' distribution.

as to DrM: //You can see how in this system the one-bombs would stand out and it would be easy to weed them out.//

This is always dicey. The weeding. What is a one bomb? An unthinking one? a malicious one? a one that's part of a 'get X' campaign, for personal reasons?

consider what histogram you'd get from passing out a bit of Ulysses to the riders on a local bus, or passing out a superman comic to a lecturehall at a college.

in fact the 'histogram,' as it were, defines a 'one bomb as something out of the bell curve (statistical outlier). the one (or one of a very few) voice that says (either truly or maliciously) 'it's shit.'

The answer, maybe you'll agree is to do NO weeding, let people make of the histogram, what they like. (ie., well, I've got a small group of determined enemies.)

 

[neonlyte]

I would lend support to the 'bell distribution' idea of discarding the top and bottom 5% of votes and taking a 'mean' of the remainder to set an average.

This would be 'relatively simple' to achieve with the current format.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

re:alternative voting system

Hey, you guys, aren't we getting a bit too serious for an amateur site. Sure, I love that I've got great scores for my first efforts - but really, the stat that gives me a buzz is the number of people who read my story. Play with your chi-squared distribution theory as much as you like. I write for people to read me.

Keep the current system. It's simple, democratic and everybody's voice counts - the good, the bad and the ugly.

When you start to play with the simple idea that everybody's equal and everybody matters, you start down a slippery slope.

If we were professional, we would count the number of sales - not the 'satisfaction' quota. Stop shaking your male tail feathers at being 'numero uno' and write stuff that we, the audience, want to read.

Sorry if this is a bit aggressive for my first post, but I love lit. for its glorious acceptance of all our diversity. Stop looking for your gold medal and keep writing. LOL

 

[neonlyte]

Dear e'od

Welcome to the forum.

The system of voting has been regularly and repeatedly questioned. None of the people posting on this thread is 'looking for gold medals' as you put it.

You will find, if you care to read threads on this subject, each poster here takes satisfaction from feedback rather than votes or ratings. There are, from appearances, malcontents who act deliberately to reduce voting ratings, this thread is an attempt to look at alternative voting systems or representations that offer a fairer or more transparent voting record.

Please bear in mind when viewing the 'stat that gives you a buzz' that as many as half of those 'hits' may not have read your story, simply scanned the first paragraph then moved on to another.

What counts is feedback that praises your creativity, story telling, descriptive powers and erotic intensity, not necessarily in that order. If you can move your readers sufficiently to garner a response, then you are achieving something as a writer. 'U made me Cum' as feedback only takes you part way.
Respectfully,
NL

 

[Carl East]

I can't help thinking that all that would happen here, is that your average troll would give you a three vote instead. Knowing that you couldn't prove whether or not it was given with malice or by someone who felt it only deserved a three. I do agree though, that the voting on this site needs to be changed for the better.

Carl

 

[Black Tulip]

I do not feel like going to look up my books on statistics, but I think the part about the weighted votes deals with the fact that a single 1 vote has less impact than say 4 out of 10 votes, because of the frequency. And not just simply because it is four times instead of one.

That would deal effectively with the malicious bomber since that can only be a one time thing.

I would appreciate little graphbars, but that's because I can read visuals better than numbers.
I'm with Cantdog, put it in with the listings.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
elfin_odalisque,

Stop shaking your male tail feathers at being 'numero uno' and write stuff that we, the audience, want to read.

I write stuff I like and it is very nice that other people appreciate it too. It's even better than nice if the appreciation is visible for everybody. What's wrong with that? Maybe I have tail feathers but they sure ain't male sweetie.

 

[wishfulthinking]

I'd vote for it!

I do agree that a 1-10 scale is probably a lot fairer than a 1-5.

Lit may be afraid that if we can see the trolls they would get an endless stream of authors requesting those votes be removed.
But just because we would be able to see the number of 1 or 2 or 3 votes wouldn't mean they have to be removed as troll votes. But it would give the author a fairer idea of how they are doing.

I for one would be willing to put my name down for a trial run for a month or however long. It wouldn't worry me if at the end of the day they decided not to go ahead with it and simply divided my score in two.

Shaking my tail feathers [and my titties since I lack a penis]

 

[wishfulthinking]

While I'm on the soapbox, why can't we have a system like ebay where categories are reduced into sub-categories? It would simply be a matter of chosing a sub-category when we post our story.

Some poor examples might be

Non-Human - vampires and werewolves - zombies and dead things - dragons or whatever. I can't pretend to know what they could be, but if one person is approving all these stories, then they would have a fair idea of how to break them down.

This would help people find the stories they are looking for, and maybe stop low-balling stories they didn't like and for some unexplainable reason couldn't find the back button.

I'm done now.

 

[cantdog]

Most of my stories don't fit just one category as it is. Screw zombies.

And I don't think the votes ought to be weighted, or scaled or any other damn thing. I just want to see them.

And how about putting them in the listings?

If they're dowm where the voting is done, at the end of the story, you will get more one votes, because people will know that others have voted one.

If you have it in the author's Submissions Stats page, I won't be able to tell if a story is really getting a bad rating or is just a victim of a low-baller, because only the author will see the votes.

cantdog

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Dear neonlyte & Black Tulip

Sorry if I seemed negative, I really didn't mean it that way. I agree with what you say. Even with only 3 submissions, I've experienced the downside of feedback and vote-bombing.

It's just that the idea of excluding or downvaluing votes worries me. Isn't the real problem that too few people vote, only vote when they like a story and vote too high.

On a 1-5 voting system, a better than average story should be scoring above 3 and there should be very few indeed above 4.5.

A 1-10 system would just give more scope to the 'bombers'.

With such a skewed distribution, surely the best solution is to give authors a breakdown of voting.

 

[neonlyte]

e'od
Introducing a histogram of the type proposed by Dr.M is feasible but would require a major modification to the site. We must be patient and see if the administrators can be pursuaded of the merit.

The low ratio of votes to 'hits' is really the root of the problem allowing mischievous individuals to 'manipulate' voting averages. Any statistically based system will be prone to distortion while voting is at such low levels. 'Forcing' people to vote before they exit the story page would cause even more problems - there is no solution other than to write in a manner that engages the reader and elicits the vote - in the end that must be the objective for all writers.

Where a histogram would be placed on the board then becomes an additonal problem. Tagged to the end of a story, at the head of a story, on the submission page? The permutations are endless and clear diverse opinions have been expressed.

If anything is adopted or changed by the board owners, it will still dissatisfy a significant percentage of writers.

What iritates writers is seeing their story vote sabotaged before it has garned sufficient votes to offset malicious voting. One solution might be to supress the 'public' posting of voting averages (including H's) until a story moves off the New List - it is everyones experience that the new list is where as much as 90% of votes are cast - the information would still be available to the writer through the submission page.

This would counteract the known practice of trawling the new list and top list and 'bombing' every story with a red H and allow, to a degree, averages to stabilise. It is far harder to damage the average for a story with 100 votes than one with 10 votes - the point at which it appears on the Top Story list.

It would not stop someone wanting to damage a particular writer simply because they disagree with the genre or hold personal anamosity.

NL

 

[wishfulthinking]

Hi Elfin, welcome to the boards! Sorry I forgot to say hello earlier.

If anything is adopted or changed by the board owners, it will still dissatisfy a significant percentage of writers.

I would even go far as to suggest that authors will be dissatisfied if there is no change, judging by the number of threads on trolls, especially lately for some reason, or maybe I'm just noticing it more.

What iritates writers is seeing their story vote sabotaged before it has garned sufficient votes to offset malicious voting. One solution might be to supress the 'public' posting of voting averages (including H's) until a story moves off the New List - it is everyones experience that the new list is where as much as 90% of votes are cast - the information would still be available to the writer through the submission page.

Not to be argumentative, but I get trolled just after I leave the new list and can't garner enough votes to overcome it, or just before the end of the comp period. Apparently there is no right or wrong time to troll

I'm not saying Dr Zoot's suggestion is the best way to go without comparing and researching several methods, but I am willing to give it or something else a try.

I would even go so far as to say scores should not be made public, or that readers must be logged in to vote -> and I also know that eradicating the top lists [and the ego stroke they provide by having your names up in lights ] or modifying them so that story date and score is not revealed, or making people log into what is essentially a free site, which is one of the best things going for Lit, would create a huge outcry and be a hugely unpopular suggestion.

 

[neonlyte]

Wishful

Hypothesis:
1. No one wants to change the ease of access to Lit.
2. No one wants to 'register' to vote
3. Votes are only truely relevant to writers, readers select from a genre that appeals. (This is the case with the New List, no voting figures, unless you go to the Top List by catagory and see what the vote is before you read the story, and, it is where writers get the highest percentage of votes. Yes the stories are 'new' but reader selection is not influenced by voting averages - until the 'H' goes up)

Keep instant voting records for authors only. Publish a monthly table of 'top' stories by votes, hits, and averages for each catagory.
H's only publically awarded after the story has been up for one month.

NL

 

[SummerMorning]

Elfin, hi!

Democratic, haha!

Democracy is not only a myth, it is just the latest incarnation of the circus bit of the old saw about keeping the "people" content. [please, don't need to respond to this sentence. I know many people view democracy as the ultimate in participatory politics - I just don't share that view. This, however, has precious little to do with this thread.]

As to the voting - maybe make it mandatory that everybody who wants to leave a story has to vote... but then again, that wouldn't work every time... sigh.

 

[Black Tulip]

Dear neonlyte & Black Tulip

Sorry if I seemed negative, I really didn't mean it that way. I agree with what you say. Even with only 3 submissions, I've experienced the downside of feedback and vote-bombing.

It's just that the idea of excluding or downvaluing votes worries me. Isn't the real problem that too few people vote, only vote when they like a story and vote too high.

On a 1-5 voting system, a better than average story should be scoring above 3 and there should be very few indeed above 4.5.

A 1-10 system would just give more scope to the 'bombers'.

With such a skewed distribution, surely the best solution is to give authors a breakdown of voting.

Hi elfin,

No need to apologize. Just have a good time and enjoy the squabbling, heated discussions and nonsensical threads.

 

[Pure]

The 10 point system is silly, imo. You can see by the clustering that the lower numbers tend not to be used**. Psychologists have looked into how many choices people need,--as in like, 'don't like' scales--and the answer is that 7 at most, or even 5 will capture what most people want.

Indeed, there's an argument for FEWER categories, i.e., awful, poor-fair, good, and excellent. (four choices)

At present, and in relation to the mythic 4.5, a 1 carries SEVEN times the weight of a 5. (It will take seven 5's to pull you back to 4.5).

With the four point scheme, the figure, would be FIVE. The simplest way, is to eliminate the 1 vote possibility, i.e, you can vote from 2(awful) to 5 (excellent). In that case, it would take FIVE 5's to counteract one 2. (Or one could rescale 1-4)

**or, as elfin points out, the 1 --in the hands of the mad bomber--would have an even deadlier effect, being SEVENTEEN times the effect of a 10, in relation to staying above 9.5

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Thanks all for the welcome.

neonlyte, I buy 1&2 of your hypothesis, but not really 3. With petty distractions like earning a living, ironing and persuading someone to cut the grass, I haven't enough time to read the 70+ new stories a day. And am I unique in being really interested in about 90% of categories?

As an author, I am totally with the idea of supressing 'H' until the delicate new shoot has a chance to establish. However, as an avid reader, I confess to using author name and 'H' to guide me.

My other half, who took math at university, says we are looking at this the wrong way. Statistics demand a random population, but we are concerned with the trolls, a maverick group.

He suggests, a very un-math solution, excluding votes more than 3 below the current score until there are a certain number of them. He claims this is loosely based on double regression analysis, whatever that means.

I can see the point though. If you are tootling along at 4.6 or 4.7, a single vote below 3 can't bomb you out. I can see problems but might it not be a start?

 

[snooper]

Try this ...

Perhaps we should use the Single Transferable Vote system recommended by the UK's Liberal party.

Every time a reader logs on to the site, (s)he should be presented with a list of all the stories on the site. (S)he should then put 1 against the "best" story, 2 against the next best, and so on. To avoid bias, the list should be in random order, different for every reader.

Once a day, all the votes should be tallied and the one with the most 1 votes should be the provisional best of site. Then the story with the lowest number of 1 votes should be eliminated and the 2 votes on those ballot papers should be added to the scores of the stories concerned.

This process should then be continued until only ten stories remain and these are then the TOP TEN stories (for that day).

 

[pop_54]

In case anyone would like to see what a histogram voting system looks like, I've got a story up in a BDSM site and the voting page is here:

http://www.bdsmlibrary.com/stories/review.php?storyid=2619

You can see how in this system the one-bombs would stand out and it would be easy to weed them out.

You can also see that the webmaster massages the voting statistically in some ways that I frankly don't quite understand (the weighted average). Even so, there's a lot more information here than what we currently get at Lit. Comments and feedback are also strongly encourages and I usually get more comments here than I do on Lit.

It's interesting that the site also uses vBulletin, but they must have a newer version.

---dr.M.

Yea Doc nice new skin to the vBulletin isn't it.. a couple of other sites I visit use this updated version... it has actually cured the slow page loading of one site so it must be a good upgrade.

As for the voting system... yes a nice bar graph would help I suppose, and the other action by site admin... but I tend to agree with the suggestion of doing away with the 'one' vote completely... After all we're told that the proof reading and acceptance rules of this site weed out total crap anyway... So everything posted here should be of a quality well above a 'one' vote category.

pops

 

[wishfulthinking]

Neon, I like the idea of 'monthly top stories'. This way you could also avoid publicising vote scores for everyone to bomb.

But I still like the idea of 1-10, simply to avoid the cluster around the 4.5 and above, since a score of 4 and above seems to be the norm. 1-10 may have a more bell curve shape.

And still like the idea of a graph or some other means in the members area so that the author can get an idea of what people are voting. If people troll you, you in your own mind have an idea of what your score should be.

Don't like the idea of excluding 1 votes altogether, because that implies readers are only to vote if they like a story. Not all 1 votes are trolls, unfortunately.

Elfin, the idea that maybe you need eg 5 x 1's votes before they count has some interesting possibilities.

Dr Zoot is strangely silent.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Dr Zoot is strangely silent.

Dr. Zoot would like to see something like the histogram method, but Dr. Zoot suspects that it would be a royal pain in the ass to switch the site over to that type of system, so, on the off chance that he might somehow have to get involved in implementing or even advocating something like that, he's shutting up.

I'm also mulling over this idea of eliminating the 1-vote altogether. Wouldn't that just make a 2 the same as a 1 is now? It reminds me of Spinal Tap's amplifiers whose dials went to 11 instead of just to 10: same meaning, just different numbers.

Also, I'm in the rather happy position of not having a horse in the nude day contest, so I'm feeling rather philosophical about the whole voting issue anyhow.

---dr. Zoot

 

[Rusty914]

I vote yes........no no.......ok yes......oh never mind