As a reader how do you use the rating system?

[Rob_Royale]

Yes, ANOTHER rating thread.
I got a comment tonight on my latest story and he listed all the things he really liked about the story. That's it. He ended by stating he rated it a 3/5*. Which got me wondering. How do you approach the 1-5 star rating system?
When I have been rated at work, annually, the companies I have worked for, have used a 1-7 scale or a 1-5 scale with 4 and 3, respectively, being the baseline. I've never thought of someone using this system here.
I read 4-8 stories a week here. I rate all of them. Comment on most.
I have always started at a 5 on Page 1, Line 1. After that, it's up to the writer to keep me at a 5. I try to discount things that aren't to my taste, such as anal, or an occasional homophone switch, and not let that sway my opinion on the final piece. If I enjoyed it, that's my baseline. 5 stars, all day long.
How about you? Do you use 3 as a baseline and let the work increase or decrease your rating? Or start at five and work down as necessary? Or some other thought process?

 

[KeithD]

I read very few stories here and rate even fewer than that. My "thing" is in writing stories.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've been reading stories at Literotica for about 20 years, and I've read a lot of stories, and I have a pretty good idea where I think a story stacks up on a percentile basis (according to my completely subjective tastes).

I think of a 5 as a story in the top 10-15%.

4 equals top 70-85/90 %.

3 is in the middle.

2 is below average.

1 is bad, almost unreadable. Usually the grammar and punctuation are so bad I can't get through it.

I only vote on stories I finish, and as a practical matter I seldom finish stories I don't like, so I rarely actually award any scores other than 4 or 5. If I think a story is not good enough to give it a 5 but good enough that I don't want to hurt the author's chances of getting a red H (4.5) then I may choose not to vote.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

I don't often have time to read here on Literotica. I typically read new author publications, or work of authors on site who have intrigued me over the forums. Occasionally I read work that has been referred to me by another author. My writing endeavors have been piling up, so not much time to read these days.

When I do take time to read a story, I consider myself gracious on the rating scale. I have very few category hang ups, just about anything can draw my interest, especially if it is well written. I don't deduct for petty grammatical errors or typos. Most of us are amateur authors publishing for free/for fun on a smutty adult website with two million registered members and are not employing editors or beta-readers... the very last thing I'm going to sweat are a few typos.

I rate almost entirely on the basis of if the story flows well, has an interesting cast and a point to be made, and how well it is written. I try not to judge new writers too harshly, likewise with stories that are obviously pure smut penned with the intent of arousing the reader and nothing more. Five stars are the baseline for me. I deduct if it is difficult to read, or if I have lost interest.

I rarely rate below three stars, unless the story was just that god awful... as in I couldn't make it through due to error or poor tone. If I dislike a story too intensely and read it through, I will not rate it at all.

 

[alohadave]

5 is exceptional. Few stories get this.
4 is a good story that I enjoyed.
3 is flawed, but has merit.
2 has a lot of problems.
1 truly awful garbage.

I don't vote that often, and when I do vote, it'll be a 4 unless the other loose criteria apply.

 

[lc69hunter]

I read and rate a lot (I am #17 on the comment list). No matter how bad the story, I do not give 1's, as I feel they will be swept. Those stories get a 2, and if I give a 2, I tell the author why. I give mostly 3's and 4's, with occasional 5's, especially if I am trying to help offset the anonymous trolls who have trashed it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't read a huge amount here, but when I do, I generally vote 4s and 5s and an occasional 3. My ranking criteria is much the same as Simon's and alohadave's - and if a story is diabolical I'd be long gone, and would never vote on it.

I might comment on half of what I read, usually picking out something special. Or face palming when Simon writes "waste"...

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I rarely rate a story. Though I'll often leave a comment, especially for a new author who I think has talent. I'd rather encourage them to keep writing than give them a three or four on a story that I know they worked hard on (no pun intended.)

Occasionally, if a story is exceptional I will give it a five just to let the author know how much I enjoyed it. I never leave anything less than a five. If a story isn't doing it for me, I just move on.

 

[tenyari]

Because of the way the the site lists stories any vote other than 5 is pushing a story towards obscurity.

I keep that in mind when I rate. So I very rarely rate a story unless it is notably problematic or I really enjoyed it and want to see the site promote more work like it. So stories will get a 5, 1, or 3.

5 if I liked it. 3 is I really disliked it but didn't form a hostile opinion of something. 1 gets saved for works or authors so problematic I'm hoping to actively shadow ban them. I've probably used 1 less than 2 or 3 times - I'm certain I've done it but I can't recall an example.

If the site did more to promote works that had scores below 4.99 (or at least 4.5 where you get the 'H'), then I might vote differently.

 

[Euphony]

I wish I could use nuanced good, better, best numerical voting but I can't in good conscious.

4s and 5s make up the bulk of my votes.

If it's a piece of it's only solid but I can sense the crowd dragged simply because they tried something different/against category conventions I am softer in my criticisms.

If it's a usual story, the execution needs to be on point to make up for lack of difficulty.

I may be wrong but the way the numbers skew here suggest few are making full use of all the increments instead voting 5 if liked and, far worse, bombing 1s if they disagree with any of the content, have an axe to grind, see modest grammatical errors, or simple operate on an extremes scale.

Hanging in the AH, I know others experience the same struggles in creating the work and stretching audiences outside usual comfort zones.

I'm pro author and just feel like the voting is broken enough I can't translate my opinions through numbers with all the other statistical noise going on.

I wish the system were better tuned or we paid less attention to the scores but even with my keeping it top of mind, the monster bites me sometimes. Can't blame others for getting bit too.

 

[Djmac1031]

I have no shame in admitting I'm pretty generous with my ratings.

If I feel a genuine effort was made, the story engaged me, I finished it and I liked it, it gets a 5.

If I find myself bored, or discover as I go that it's not my kind of story, I usually just move on, no vote.

If it's a new author who's struggling but made a valiant and honest effort, I figure my 5 counters at least one 1 Bomb left by a less forgiving reader.

We as writers really shouldn't concern ourselves with ratings.

But we do.

As @seraph_nocturne pointed out, we do this for fun. And for free.

So I tend to be forgiving of mistakes, and try to be encouraging as opposed to overly critical.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I have no shame in admitting I'm pretty generous with my ratings.

If I feel a genuine effort was made, the story engaged me, I finished it and I liked it, it gets a 5.

If I find myself bored, or discover as I go that it's not my kind of story, I usually just move on, no vote.

If it's a new author who's struggling but made a valiant and honest effort, I figure my 5 counters at least one 1 Bomb left by a less forgiving reader.

We as writers really shouldn't concern ourselves with ratings.

But we do.

As @seraph_nocturne pointed out, we do this for fun. And for free.

So I tend to be forgiving of mistakes, and try to be encouraging as opposed to overly critical.

I feel the same way, I hate to think how easily someone marks down a story just on a whim. We all know it's not easy creating something interesting that will hold a reader's attention, and hopefully get their pulse racing.

I think if a new author is sitting at home waiting to see what everyone thinks, a little encouragement with a positive comment and nice big five, if their story is good, could just be the boost they need to keep writing.

I either vote 5 on a good story, or not at all. The same goes with comments. If I really didn't like it, I won't leave a comment. I imagine there are enough readers happy to share what they think, especially if it's hard to get through, or poorly written. But if I really enjoy a story, I'm happy to let the author know that the hours they spent crafting their story were well worth it.

 

[TheRedChamber]

The problem, as other's have said, is that most stories in most categories average between 4-4.5. Thus it can be that I've enjoyed a story but feel like it's not perfect and that the current, say, 4.3 rating is fair - in which case it doesn't make much sense to vote either 4 or 5. Occassionally I'll give these stories a 5 just to be nice. Generally I don't like to give any story a score that'll lower it's rating - if it's a LW story that's langushing on say 2.something then sure, I'll give it a 4, or similarly if its something that is at 4.9 and (to my mind) overrated, I might vote it down a bit, but more often than not I just end up not voting.

If the story is a very solid good then I'll give it a 5.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I have adapted my personal rating system to the way ratings work on Lit. If it's a good story, I'll give it a 5, regardless if I think the story really deserves a 5. The rating system is fucked up and giving a 4 (which is arguably still a high score) would ruin the chances of the story to be recognized in the present system. The exposure of a story really depends a lot on the category, but also on the red H, so I feel I should always support authors who have potential, even if the story isn't really something that deserves a full 5. If a story isn't that good, then I usually don't vote at all, unless it is a story that is heavily underrated and even a 4 would improve its rating. I never rate badly written stories. Well, there was one exception: One story I read contained some judgmental and brainless political statements, so I gave it a 2 without finishing the story.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What truly shocked me, though, was not the score but the mere 3K views it had, despite being in the most viewed category! In most genres, unless you have the coveted "H" label, you are destined for obscurity.

My heart aches when I think of the countless talented writers who dared to meddle and got hurt.

Why does it shock you, though? We live in a world where crap is always more popular than quality stuff. It only makes sense that things are the same on Lit as well. That being said, if the story barely had any smut, I suppose the readers' reaction was expected. There are a couple of categories where the lack of sexual content flies without problem, but I/T certainly isn't one. Readers will usually accept a slow burn story, or even if it takes a chapter or two to get to the sexual content, but a standalone story without sexual content? Not in I/T in my opinion.

 

[John_Vandermeer]

Probably the rating system should be a "thumbs up", "a thumbs down" and that is it. I am not even convinced about having a "thumbs sideways". It would still give an outlet for all the people that want to vote "5" or "1", who are the ones who want to vote anyway. And it would probably increase the vote/view ratio, that is a more important objective in my view. You could still do some basic statistics like thumbs up/view, or percent up and percent down of total. But not stress it too much.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I have adapted my personal rating system to the way ratings work on Lit. If it's a good story, I'll give it a 5, regardless if I think the story really deserves a 5. The rating system is fucked up and giving a 4 (which is arguably still a high score) would ruin the chances of the story to be recognized in the present system.

If you think this, what's your explanation for the range of scores you see in any writer's list?

When I go look at a writer's list, I see a band of scores, and you can quickly see where that writer sits in the grand scheme of things. For example, I've got around 110 separate chapters/stories. One is rated above 4.90, but it's only got nine votes, so it's a nothing. I've then got pretty much the same number of stories in each of the six decades down to 4.30, then a dozen or so below that.

This means that readers are giving me a range of scores mostly between 4 and 5, with some 3s - I know I've got 2s and 3s, because I've seen them arrive. And I'd have to say, in the context of my own story list, that the ranking of those stories, with only a few exceptions, pretty much aligns with my own perception of each story's quality (relative only to my own story list, not relative to anybody else's).

If, as some people seem to think, readers are only awarding fives or ones, then those score bands wouldn't exist - they'd all be skewed to 4.90 or higher, or down around 2.00 (whatever the maths is). But they're not. Which tells me that readers overall, those that vote, do so with their own criteria, and that criteria is most likely across the whole range of five - erring on the 3 - 5s, because I also believe that most readers who bail on a story because it is crap, and really is only worth a one or a two, don't bother to vote, because they're gone from the story in the first minute. They're not wasting their time by umping to the end and voting.

I think it's highly likely that most readers (and noting that most readers aren't writers), don't apply the same criteria to scores that most AH aficionados do. We're the odd ones out, I reckon, thinking that all readers think the same way we do.

Everything tells me that, overall, the differences in scores, the ranges that we do see, are telling us something. The thing is, some folk don't like what that something is. But that's an issue for their story writing, it's not an inherent fault in the scoring system.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think it's highly likely that most readers (and noting that most readers aren't writers), don't apply the same criteria to scores that most AH aficionados do. We're the odd ones out, I reckon, thinking that all readers think the same way we do.

Everything tells me that, overall, the differences in scores, the ranges that we do see, are telling us something. The thing is, some folk don't like what that something is. But that's an issue for their story writing, it's not an inherent fault in the scoring system.

I think you hit the nail on the head right here. We keep wringing our hands over the rating system in this forum, and the reality is that 95% of Literotica "members" (if you count readers) don't give a crap about any of this. Authors may be reluctant to give a story a 4 because they're working on a "Vote unto others as I would have them vote unto me" principle. I do that, somewhat. But readers aren't going to do that. They'll give 1s, 2s, 3s with impunity. The main limiting factor for lower scores probably isn't that readers are nice, it's that if they hate the story they won't finish it.

The single guiding principle for all these issues/debates/discussions is this: the site will not do ANYTHING that turns off readers. It's completely pointless to talk about doing something that will do that. That's why the site is not going to get rid of its voting system (it shouldn't) and it's not going to get rid of the category system. Readers have become accustomed to these things over 25 years and the site isn't going to risk angering them.

 

[HordHolm]

The problem with the rating system, as with all similar such 5 star review systems, is that anything other than a 5 is seen as containing a failure of some kind. Hell, if I do a Meet with one of my students and it asks me to rate it afterwards, Google then wants an in-depth assessment of just what went wrong if I don't give it a 5. I understand that Google want to improve their system (actually, I don't believe that - I believe they just want to make me think they care, but that's another story), but the whole set up breeds the conception that anything less than perfection is failure. Of course, the whole point of grading is that the median score is a 'pass', and above that is 'above average', but that only seems to work in the academic environment now, and even there I'm finding increasing pushback from students for whom pass is increasingly seen as fail unless it includes distinction. Gripe over.

Notwithstanding the fact that I believe the whole system is essentially flawed, I agree with SimonDoom: it ain't going away and we're stuck with it. So when I read, if I vote, I vote kindly. If I can't finish something I don't vote. If I finish something it means I enjoyed it, and if I enjoyed it I will leave a four or a five.

 

[onehitwanda]

You don't need a master's degree in business administration to recognize that if the two entrepreneurs are still personally handling most of the laborious tasks even after 25 years, there may be a flaw in their business plan. Despite having good traffic, their potential for growth remains largely untapped.

or perhaps they simply don't want to deal with the additional stress of dealing with growth, and the site does well enough in and of itself to keep them in the style they are accustomed to?

 

[SimonDoom]

You don't need a master's degree in business administration to recognize that if the two entrepreneurs are still personally handling most of the laborious tasks even after 25 years, there may be a flaw in their business plan. Despite having good traffic, their potential for growth remains largely untapped.

You get no argument from me on that. I get the sense there is enormous untapped value. But I don't think the ratings and category systems are what hold them back. The site's traffic is far greater than other erotic story websites, so the problem isn't traffic. I think they haven't monetized the site as well as they could, and the result is they can't afford to hire people who would improve the site's functionality as well as updating its interface.

 

[SimonDoom]

or perhaps they simply don't want to deal with the additional stress of dealing with growth, and the site does well enough in and of itself to keep them in the style they are accustomed to?

I suspect you are right. I think they probably see it as a labor of love rather than a potential cash cow.

 

[onehitwanda]

I suspect you are right. I think they probably see it as a labor of love rather than a potential cash cow.

Honestly, if I had ever been motivated (and lucky) enough to build something like Lit and it was paying all my bills and giving me corset money the last thing I'd be interested in was disturbing the equilibrium.

 

[HordHolm]

Many moons ago I had a business and I can honestly say those were the most stressful, depressing years of my existence. I stepped back from it precisely because my two partners wanted to expand and I figured I didn't have enough of a life as it was.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I'm with SimonDoom and HordHolm. If a story (no matter how high it has been scored when I open it) is not personally pleasing, then I leave without scoring. IMO, scoring without finishing is unethical and I haven't got enough years left to waste them reading less-than-delightful stories. I accordingly tend to hand out mainly 5s.