Crickets

[CanadianTease]

I've been away for a while - it seems to me that reader responses to new stories have just about dried up; has anyone else noticed this?

 

[NotWise]

I've been away for a while - it seems to me that reader responses to new stories have just about dried up; has anyone else noticed this?

You started here long before I did, so I don't know what you're comparing it to. Within my experience, it isn't drying up.

 

[oggbashan]

I'm not seeing any shortage of assholes who don't like my stories and vote 1 and/or leave abusive comments.

 

[KeithD]

I don't think my direct reader response to stories has changed much at all over the fourteen years I've been here in a couple of account names. Never has been much to begin with. It is what it is.

 

[LexxRuthless]

There is a delay now for new comments, and that may be what you are noticing. Comments used to post immediately, so you would see a bunch of them on most of the "New" stories for each category. Now they have to go through moderator approval first, which means you might not see them until after a story has slipped down the frontpage for the category. If the comment is particularly vile, you might never see it anymore--either the site or the author can delete them before those comments ever become available for public viewing. I'm sure it has deterred some of the trolls who used to enjoy taking a big, wet crap on everything.

 

[RejectReality]

Public comments went into a slow, mild decline once the favorite story listing was greatly expanded, and then infinitely expanded somewhere around 2010. I'd have to dig back to remember exactly when it happened.

As more favorites came in, there were slightly fewer comments. I was tracking most of the themed contests during that transition period, and it was plain as day in the data. With every new contest, there would be more favorites, and fewer comments. My own numbers tracked the same way.

The change in the number of comments is only down a little, but the number of favorites has skyrocketed. For instance, the first track in Aprill 2011 where I calculated 1 per X views, I was getting 1 comment for every 4932 views, and one favorite per 15874 views.

Three months later, those numbers were 5157, 11796. Three months later, 4561, 8312. The numbers were dead even by November 2012 at 4700ish, and flipped three months later, where I was getting more favorites than comments.

The last few years the numbers have been 4989, 2821 | 5350, 1991 | 5432, 1764

My guess is that at least some people prefer clicking a favorite to show their support as opposed to coming up with something to comment. My personal observation is that the drop in comments has been from people who left short "thanks, 5-star" type comments. Those are the people clicking favorite instead.

If you're talking about views, I'm almost positive that an updated filter set was put in place a few years back that eliminated more bots and spiders from that number. That's what makes sense when comparing the same stories on other sites and the ebb/flow of their traffic ratings. A lot more automated noise was removed from that statistic. Also, see below.

# of Votes do seem to be down slightly, but not by much. That's likely due to a drop in traffic ranking ( at least according to Alexa ) When the views plummeted overnight, Lit was still holding the mid to low 2k Alexa rating it had maintained forever, and did so for quite some time after. That has slipped in the last couple of years, and has been around mid 5k to mid 6k, so that's likely causing some dip in all pure # statistics.

The closest competition in text erotica is around 25k Alexa ranking, for some perspective. The difference in actual traffic is undoubtedly much larger than 5x.

 

[KeithD]

Public comments went into a slow, mild decline once the favorite story listing was greatly expanded, and then infinitely expanded somewhere around 2010. I'd have to dig back to remember exactly when it happened.

I would surmise that votes did as well. I frequently see that someone who has favorited a story of mine didn't vote on it. They appear to believe that it's all the same.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

I would surmise that votes did as well. I frequently see that someone who has favorited a story of mine didn't vote on it. They appear to believe that it's all the same.

How do you know who voted on a story? AFAIK there's no way to determine who voted on a story.

 

[NotWise]

I would surmise that votes did as well. I frequently see that someone who has favorited a story of mine didn't vote on it. They appear to believe that it's all the same.

For my stories that probably varies from story to story and from time to time, so I suspect it also varies from author to author.

With newish stories I often see votes and favorites coming in at the same time, so probably from the same person. With my older stories, I think there's a tendency for readers to favorite, but not vote.

 

[RejectReality]

I would surmise that votes did as well. I frequently see that someone who has favorited a story of mine didn't vote on it. They appear to believe that it's all the same.

Quite likely. On one of the other sites I post to, there's an announcement in your activity feed for new votes and favorites. ( comment announcements come via PM ) There's no ambiguity about what activity is happening, though who cast a vote isn't revealed to you. ( They were for a while, and that did not go well. Bad blood and retaliation for 4-bombs. Yes, I said 4-bombs the scoring there is so skewed that anything less than a perfect 5 puts a story so low on the highlight list it's essentially invisible, and 4s are thought of with the same hate that 1s are here. )

Favorites without votes are fairly common, even though favorites themselves aren't. It's more or less a direct inverse of here, where comments are far more common than favorites. You get comments without votes as well. You can never be absolutely certain that a vote/favorite/comment combo all come from the same person because the voter's identity is masked, but it's obvious when no vote is accompanying other activity.

I would imagine there's a lot of favorites without votes here since the list was expanded to an unlimited capacity. ( that anyone has found, anyway ) Marking something as a favorite serves as a thumbs-up to the author while being useful to the reader if they ever want to read it again. Has to be an appealing option to some, where a vote is just cast into the void with no benefit to them.

 

[Emirus]

How do you know who voted on a story? AFAIK there's no way to determine who voted on a story.

It’s not possible all the time to be certain someone who has favourited a story has or has not voted but it can be done, on some occasions, if you keep an eye on your total votes. It’s something I do every time a story has been favourited, as I did yesterday.

After seeing the notification I looked at the votes and saw there hadn’t been an increase. To me it’s then obvious the person hasn’t voted. As I’ve said, that’s not always possible but enough times to know what KeithD has said is correct.

 

[CanadianTease]

I suppose statistical tallies of "favoritings" and the like can be interesting, but I much prefer language. For me a handful of words is worth far more than a thousand mouse clicks.

 

[RejectReality]

I suppose statistical tallies of "favoritings" and the like can be interesting, but I much prefer language. For me a handful of words is worth far more than a thousand mouse clicks.

Comments have never been all that common. If you're seeing fewer than you did back when you were more active, it's likely a result of being less active. The more your name is out there with new work, the more people are finding your old stuff and adding to those tallies.

 

[oggbashan]

Comments have never been all that common. If you're seeing fewer than you did back when you were more active, it's likely a result of being less active. The more your name is out there with new work, the more people are finding your old stuff and adding to those tallies.

Since posting three entries to the Summer Lovin contest, I have had some comments on much older stories, and some of them have been favorited as well.

Whether the comments are welcome? Not all of them.

 

[SimonDoom]

Favorites were instituted around 2010-2011, I think, well before my time as an author. So I didn't have any personal contemporaneous experience their impact on Literotica feedback, generally.

But I have noticed that the top of the all-time story favorites list is populated by an unusual number of stories from that time period as opposed to earlier stories. So, obviously, the favorites option took off very quickly.

I get very, very few comments as a proportion of story views and votes, so I'm appreciative when any reader goes to the trouble of leaving a comment.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Contest and event readers seem to be much more willing to comment than other readers - I have almost no comments on my other stories, except from readers who liked contest entries. Odd.

 

[KeithD]

Favorites were instituted around 2010-2011,

I don't remember there not being favorite lists when I first arrived in 2006.

 

[RejectReality]

I don't remember there not being favorite lists when I first arrived in 2006.

You're right, they were around. They were just extremely limited. If I'm remembering correctly, you could only have 10 authors and 10 stories in your lists.

I think there were two bumps after that to 20, and then shortly therafter, 50. When it went unlimited is a little hard to suss out because the second bump was far larger than what almost anyone was utilizing. There was a limit for a while after that first bump, though. I do remember a few odd people who mentioned someone hitting it. I think it was someone using the favorite list as a way to track contest stories.

At some point, folks started noticing people with over 100 favorites, and there seems to be no boundary any longer.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Favorites were instituted around 2010-2011, I think, well before my time as an author.

Bit earlier than that. Wayback has the Favorites Portal active as of March 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080303205025/https://www.literotica.com/stories/favoritesportal.php

It has references to that page as early as 2005, but everything before 2008-03 is dead links - I suspect the earlier ones might have been when it was still under construction. Looking at the favourites counts, my best guess would be that it went live some time in 2007, but there are no snapshots during that year to check.

 

[SimonDoom]

You're right, they were around. They were just extremely limited. If I'm remembering correctly, you could only have 10 authors and 10 stories in your lists.

I think there were two bumps after that to 20, and then shortly therafter, 50. When it went unlimited is a little hard to suss out because the second bump was far larger than what almost anyone was utilizing. There was a limit for a while after that first bump, though. I do remember a few odd people who mentioned someone hitting it. I think it was someone using the favorite list as a way to track contest stories.

At some point, folks started noticing people with over 100 favorites, and there seems to be no boundary any longer.

OK. I didn't come around until 2016 as an author. I thought I recalled somebody else with more experience saying it was around 2010 but it might instead have been that the lists were made unlimited then. That would make sense, because clearly something happened around then that affected the composition of the most favorited story list. Some people have favorites lists with hundreds and hundreds of stories, and that makes a difference.

 

[lovecraft68]

OK. I didn't come around until 2016 as an author. I thought I recalled somebody else with more experience saying it was around 2010 but it might instead have been that the lists were made unlimited then. That would make sense, because clearly something happened around then that affected the composition of the most favorited story list. Some people have favorites lists with hundreds and hundreds of stories, and that makes a difference.

To show you the difference going unlimited made on the fav author list

When I first made the top 250 list it was with 384 favs. That was in 2011 and I think at the time Selena Kitt and Many Feathers were going back and forth for the #1 spot and it was I want to say 5 or 6k favs

The #250 author on the list now is at 1840

Silk has over 31k

Big difference

 

[spyndrix]

need a little help

I want to write stories and submit them here.
How do i get started?
Where should I write them?
How do I submit/post them here?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I want to write stories and submit them here.
How do i get started?
Where should I write them?
How do I submit/post them here?

FAQ:
https://www.literotica.com/faq/05235347.shtml

 

[HeyAll]

It ebbs and flows. Just like views/votes. A few stories can have a downward trend. Then the batch after that, months later, will have more. Then the cycle repeats itself. That's my observation from posting stories here for years. It's a role of the dice.

 

[oggbashan]

I started posting on Literotica long before comments or favorites.

But I got thousands more views than anywhere else I had put a story. That's still true. Comments are great. Readers are essential.