Can you see vote distribution?

[coldwater1]

Is there a way see a breakdown of votes cast on a story: how many 5's, how many 4's, etc., not just the running average?

I have seen some posts that seemed to imply that the author had that info.

 

[tomlitilia]

Is there a way see a breakdown of votes cast on a story: how many 5's, how many 4's, etc., not just the running average?

I have seen some posts that seemed to imply that the author had that info.

Nope, it is not possible. But I agree it would be useful. And not just for authors, also for readers.

The way authors might partly have an idea of the distributions is by keeping a close watch on the voting, calculating backwards from the updated vote score when a new vote appears.

 

[lovecraft68]

No way to do that.

If you write in a very low voted category you can figure it out by basic math, but once you start getting over a hundred votes it gets difficult. Then a sweep will come along and totally screw up your tally

 

[coldwater1]

Thanks.

I ask because I posted a story where I had some difficulty coming up with the right tags to inform the readers of the content. I wasn't entirely satisfied with what I settled on. I was pretty certain one of the tags would result in attracting some viewers that would not be getting what they came for. Thus I expected some low votes sprinkled in.

I would feel different about a score that was lots of 5's with a few 1's sprinkled in, vs. mostly 3's and 4's even if they produced the same average. The former would tell me that my target audience thought I had written a really good story, but I pissed off a few readers who were looking for different content. The latter would say the story wasn't that great.

-cw

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Don't take the scores here seriously. There's several factors that make them unreliable guides.

 

[NotWise]

I have seen some posts that seemed to imply that the author had that info.

The site doesn't provide that service. If your story is in a category where the votes come in slowly and you have the time then you can monitor the change in the votes and scores and figure out the distribution. There are often uncertainties when you get more than one vote between observations. The process doesn't work well if you get a lot of votes.

The first time I tracked votes I found my story was getting predominantly 5s and 1s. I posted it to the wrong category and the readers were polarized.

 

[Hypoxia]

I'll suggest that obsessing on votes is fun but neurotic. I've been there. I built a subtle spreadsheet to harvest and crunch numbers so I could assess story performance. Ha. One 'improved' sweep flushing away most of my Red H's cured me of that. Now I'm happy that faves keep sliding in on my back catalogue.

Let the numbers fall where they may. Number-watching makes sense if one is being paid for efforts. I write for fun, not production goals. Your motivation may vary.

 

[coldwater1]

I'll suggest that obsessing on votes is fun but neurotic. I've been there. I built a subtle spreadsheet to harvest and crunch numbers so I could assess story performance. Ha. One 'improved' sweep flushing away most of my Red H's cured me of that. Now I'm happy that faves keep sliding in on my back catalogue.

Let the numbers fall where they may. Number-watching makes sense if one is being paid for efforts. I write for fun, not production goals. Your motivation may vary.

Sage advice, no doubt, but I probably need to suffer through a neurotic phase first before I heed it.

 

[NotWise]

I think there is a value in knowing the distribution of scores, but then I'm a numbers guy. For instance, the story that I mentioned getting 1's and 5's for most of the votes had an average score near 3. Initially I thought it was being received with a resounding "Meh." That turned out not to be the case and I was glad to know the truth.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think there is a value in knowing the distribution of scores, but then I'm a numbers guy. For instance, the story that I mentioned getting 1's and 5's for most of the votes had an average score near 3. Initially I thought it was being received with a resounding "Meh." That turned out not to be the case and I was glad to know the truth.

I have one like this right now in LW it's high 3's but I'm getting the feeling its a lot of 1 then 5 with a hand full 3/4.

It was written for that affect though, a little experiment. I made the beginning look like a humiliating cuck story which inflames the 'real men' there.

But after page one you get the feeling hubby's more willing than he is letting on and at the end you discover he fully enjoyed watching his wife with the other guy to the tune of fucking her rough and nasty himself when the guy left, then they cuddle up all happy and satisfied.

The experiment was how many knee jerk bombs I would get from people not reading all the way through.

 

[Kethandra]

Sage advice, no doubt, but I probably need to suffer through a neurotic phase first before I heed it.

You can still have fun with the obsessive number-watching phase too. Enjoy it.

Watching my scores, especially in high readership/voting categories, leads me to trust polling results more: rarely do stories eventual scores vary far from where they were at 25-50 votes. Some, but not much. Sweeps bump them up, trolls bump them down, but they find a mean close to where they were half way through the first day or earlier (an Incest story might have 300+ votes after 12 hours).

And, as others have said, I really enjoy seeing older stories get votes when new stories draw readers in.
My valentines contest entry (in Incest/Taboo) drew in enough crossover readership to boost my Christmas Loving Wives story - which I thought/hoped would rub some the wrong way with the surprise cuckish ending - onto the top list. Unsurprisingly, crossover readers are more generous than LW readers.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I'm reminded of the 2 LIT readers who went off to war together. When they spotted the enemy each fired her rifle. One missed a foot to the right, the other missed one foot to the left. Delighted with their average, they hugged each other.

 

[Kethandra]

I'm reminded of the 2 LIT readers who went off to war together. When they spotted the enemy each fired her rifle. One missed a foot to the right, the other missed one foot to the left. Delighted with their average, they hugged each other.

Yup, and all the average Billionaires in the bar with Bill Gates hugged each other, delighted, until they left the bar and suddenly averaging felt mean.