Earning your H’s (inspired by Imp’s troll thread)
- Thread starter Poussin
- Start date
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
I think that the H tag is too easily gained during the first hours/days after a story is posted. Your rating is invisible to others until you have 10 votes and many stories reach 10 votes with a perfect 5.00. Even I have had that.
After then, a more realistic voting pattern emerges. By 50 votes (and a few troll sweeps) the rating is likely to reflect the worth of the story by popular consent.
The public comment rating system acts as another score system. I think that a series of good comments is a more reliable indicator of the value of the story.
If the voting is really on a one to five grid then most stories should be rated at 3.00. In a normal distribution the majority of stories should be rated between 2.00 and 4.00. Very few would be rated above 4.00 and very few below 2.00.
The problem is that the real voting system is not 1 - 5; it is 3 - 5 or probably 4 -5. Therefore the mean rating is 4.50. A slight improvement from the mid-range gets an H. So an H equals slightly better than average.
Any newcomers to this site, or those who read the stories and don't visit the forums, are likely to assume that a vote of 3 is for an OK story, a 4 for a good story, and a 5 for a fantastic story. Even a 1 or a 2 vote can be justified in isolation if the story just doesn't work for you.
However, most trolls are NOT newcomers and are not innocent of the effect of their votes. They have a disproportionate effect because the actual voting system is skewed well away from the 1 - 5 range. If 3.01 was an H then 1 votes would not have such a dramatic effect. Getting 3.01 or lower is actually very difficult. I can, and I have achieved such a distinction. Very few members of the AH can equal that.
The trolls only have power because the normal vote is either a 4 or a 5.
Og
After then, a more realistic voting pattern emerges. By 50 votes (and a few troll sweeps) the rating is likely to reflect the worth of the story by popular consent.
The public comment rating system acts as another score system. I think that a series of good comments is a more reliable indicator of the value of the story.
If the voting is really on a one to five grid then most stories should be rated at 3.00. In a normal distribution the majority of stories should be rated between 2.00 and 4.00. Very few would be rated above 4.00 and very few below 2.00.
The problem is that the real voting system is not 1 - 5; it is 3 - 5 or probably 4 -5. Therefore the mean rating is 4.50. A slight improvement from the mid-range gets an H. So an H equals slightly better than average.
Any newcomers to this site, or those who read the stories and don't visit the forums, are likely to assume that a vote of 3 is for an OK story, a 4 for a good story, and a 5 for a fantastic story. Even a 1 or a 2 vote can be justified in isolation if the story just doesn't work for you.
However, most trolls are NOT newcomers and are not innocent of the effect of their votes. They have a disproportionate effect because the actual voting system is skewed well away from the 1 - 5 range. If 3.01 was an H then 1 votes would not have such a dramatic effect. Getting 3.01 or lower is actually very difficult. I can, and I have achieved such a distinction. Very few members of the AH can equal that.
The trolls only have power because the normal vote is either a 4 or a 5.
Og
cantdog
Waybac machine
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2004
- Posts
- 10,791
About H's.
It seems on the face of it that the number is too high, but the voting with the back button makes the scores inflate. That's the primary reason poetry has a more reasonable score average. People do not bail out with the back button on short poems, but wind up reading even the lousy ones and then see the vote slots.
Story scores are artificially high because you have to really dislike one to scroll ahead and vote a 2 when you can just as easily back out and get on with looking for a good story.
So we see a pretty darn high number of H stories. Dropping the standard would alter the proportion, but for stories the proportion is reasonable. I have stories which flit in and out of H status. It's a totally artificial issue. For the most part, my non-H stories are not my best. If they didn't flit in and out, I wouldn't root for the borderline ones all the time.
Poetry ought to meet a different number standard to bring the proportion more in line with the story proportion, maybe. I can see that.
I disagree about the locked in H. (Anyone can have ten friends.) Let them fade. I don't see the same meaning in the red H as you do, I guess.
An older story, written a year back, which still has an H is likely to be a good one.
I don't follow the contests.
The sport of picking them off out of the high spots on the toplists is a sick sport, but I can see its evil appeal, and I don't know how any system of any kind could defeat it. Undo it, yes, but never defeat it.
I admit I'm not being very helpful.
It seems on the face of it that the number is too high, but the voting with the back button makes the scores inflate. That's the primary reason poetry has a more reasonable score average. People do not bail out with the back button on short poems, but wind up reading even the lousy ones and then see the vote slots.
Story scores are artificially high because you have to really dislike one to scroll ahead and vote a 2 when you can just as easily back out and get on with looking for a good story.
So we see a pretty darn high number of H stories. Dropping the standard would alter the proportion, but for stories the proportion is reasonable. I have stories which flit in and out of H status. It's a totally artificial issue. For the most part, my non-H stories are not my best. If they didn't flit in and out, I wouldn't root for the borderline ones all the time.
Poetry ought to meet a different number standard to bring the proportion more in line with the story proportion, maybe. I can see that.
I disagree about the locked in H. (Anyone can have ten friends.) Let them fade. I don't see the same meaning in the red H as you do, I guess.
An older story, written a year back, which still has an H is likely to be a good one.
I don't follow the contests.
The sport of picking them off out of the high spots on the toplists is a sick sport, but I can see its evil appeal, and I don't know how any system of any kind could defeat it. Undo it, yes, but never defeat it.
I admit I'm not being very helpful.
impressive
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2003
- Posts
- 27,372
cantdog said:
Especially notable when one has an itch in need of scratching.
As for poetry -- given the relatively low number of votes, trolls take a BIG chunk out of any poem's score. A 1 vote against twenty 4s and 5s is far more damaging than a 1 vote against seventy 4s and 5s. Just take a look at the poetry Top List and note the number of votes the poems have.
As for the total number of H stories -- would you say it's more than 20% of the total number of stories? I have no idea ... just asking for the sake of discussion.
G
