New Author Rating Question

[iwatchus]

I just started publishing stories in February, but I have been seeing what I thought was an oddity. One of my early ratings is usually a 1. I am very pleased with my other ratings. When it happens early, it seems to suppress readership of the story. A few times it seems like either the rating gets changed or its gets dropped. One time that definitely happened, because I had the same number of votes but a notably higher average.

Is this normal or did I manage to piss someone off at me?

And I am missing the way to see the numbers of votes at each rating? Or is that not possible to see?

 

[lovecraft68]

What category?

There are weirdos who will go up and down the new story list bombing everything, and double the number in certain categories.

 

[StillStunned]

Welcome to Rate Watchers! (I just thought of that, hehehe.)

Yes, it seems like you've picked up a troll somewhere. Or else you publish in a category known for its antagonist readers. Do you write Loving Wives stories by any chance?

Yes, trolls happen. Usually you can ignore them, but I agree, if they get their 1 in early on it can seriously hurt your views.

There's not much you can do about it, unfortunately. Personally, I make sure to leave my own vote on a a new story during the half hour between when it goes live and when the New Stories list is updated. That way, you've got the first 5* rating in there, which will draw readers to your story. The more readers you attract, the less your troll's 1* will hurt your rating.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Unfortunately, it's normal. Welcome to the community.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Is this normal or did I manage to piss someone off at me?

Absolutely normal. There's a bunch of clowns out there who delight in one bombing a story as soon as it gets published. No-one can explain why. The site runs a sweep process regularly, especially towards the end of Contests, to remove spurious votes. Don't speculate out loud how it works, suffice to say it mostly does.

And I am missing the way to see the numbers of votes at each rating? Or is that not possible to see?

You have to track your votes coming in to see what's going on. The site doesn't give authors the breakdown. After a while you get to see the patterns. After a while you get to accept it, and carry on.

A Red H is at least ten votes giving you an average of 4.50 or higher.

 

[BearNextDoor]

Gotta admit, it never occurred to me to vote on my own. I think I'd give myself at least a three

 

[RejectReality]

If you see vote totals that are the same, barely lower, or barely higher than they were the last time you looked, but your score has taken a mathematically impossible leap upward, it means your story has been visited by the sweeps. The sweeps remove illegitimate votes, no matter their value, but with the proliferation of trolls slinging poo, it's frequently their 1-bombs that get removed. When that happens, your score will rise. How much depends upon how many votes you have. It's an average, so fewer votes = bigger jump.

Seeing the same number of votes but a higher score means that since you last looked, you got the same number of new votes as the number that were swept.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Personally, I make sure to leave my own vote on a a new story during the half hour between when it goes live and when the New Stories list is updated. That way, you've got the first 5* rating in there, which will draw readers to your story. The more readers you attract, the less your troll's 1* will hurt your rating.

Gotta admit, it never occurred to me to vote on my own. I think I'd give myself at least a three

 

[Offeredup]

Exact same thing here. Exhibitionist category. Totally hurts. My last story finally made it to 4.7 but it would have been way better if it didn't get trolled at the start.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I'll be honest - I read through my category each morning (interracial) and I almost invariably click on the lowest scored stories first. Why? Because I want to see if they're really bad and deserve the low score. If they aren't, I give them a 5. If they deserve the score, I just walk away quietly.

After a few months, that original score is meaningless, and is not really suppressing anything. Maybe it stopped a few folks from clicking, but unless you're in like I/T or LW where there are like twenty new stories a day, the hardcore fans of a specific subgenre are probably doing what I do and clicking almost everything at least to see it.

 

[AwkwardMD]

A score isn't really stable or meaningful until you get to about 80 votes. Fewer than that, and it only takes a couple dillweeds to outweigh what would otherwise be the consensus score according to your readership.

 

[iwatchus]

What category?

There are weirdos who will go up and down the new story list bombing everything, and double the number in certain categories.

Mostly in exhibitionist and voyeur

 

[lovecraft68]

Mostly in exhibitionist and voyeur

Probably just a new story troll. E/V's crowd is usually pretty laid back. However, its a low traffic category so any one bomb will take an obvious toll.

 

[SimonDoom]

Totally normal. Happens to me all the time.

 

[THBGato]

A score isn't really stable or meaningful until you get to about 80 votes.

Not even then.

Back in October I had 8 stories with over 200 votes at 4.9 or higher.

Not any more! Some have dropped quite a bit since, but probably just lots of 3s and 4s so the sweeps aren't changing them. Of course, it's happening to everyone in the lesbian category with a score over 4.88.

My point was I suspect it's more like 800 votes you need for real troll-proof stability.

 

[RejectReality]

Not even then.

Back in October I had 8 stories with over 200 votes at 4.9 or higher.

Not any more! Some have dropped quite a bit since, but probably just lots of 3s and 4s so the sweeps aren't changing them. Of course, it's happening to everyone in the lesbian category with a score over 4.88.

My point was I suspect it's more like 800 votes you need for real troll-proof stability.

How much have the rankings in the toplist changed, though?

The ones I'm familiar with have all dipped in score, but the rankings haven't shuffled around much more than they have in years past. It's widespread, more or less equal downward pressure on absolutely everything from the toplists that I have a frame of reference for.

 

[THBGato]

You're right to an extent - the long established writers are still at the top, but most of those stories are 4, 5, 6 years old. It's more recent stuff that has been affected. Even great writers like OneHitWanda, with thousands of followers: the stuff she published last year that went in at number 1 has all dropped down - it's her older stories with thousands of votes that are still up there.

 

[RejectReality]

You're right to an extent - the long established writers are still at the top, but most of those stories are 4, 5, 6 years old. It's more recent stuff that has been affected. Even great writers like OneHitWanda, with thousands of followers: the stuff she published last year that went in at number 1 has all dropped down - it's her older stories with thousands of votes that are still up there.

That's normal. It's the lower vote totals compared to the ones that have been here for years that make them dip and rise like a roller-coaster on the troll votes and sweeps.

What isn't normal is all those old stories dipping .05-.10.

 

[THBGato]

What isn't normal is all those old stories dipping .05-.10.

That was my point. I was replying to Awkward who said 80 votes made a score stable. Maybe for mid-range stories, but at the top it doesn't guarantee stability. Some of those stories have 3000+ votes.

 

[RejectReality]

That was my point. I was replying to Awkward who said 80 votes made a score stable. Maybe for mid-range stories, but at the top it doesn't guarantee stability. Some of those stories have 3000+ votes.

Nothing makes your score stable when you hit the toplists, even under normal circumstances. They've always been a hotbed of trolling and cheerleading. It just takes a lot of work to chip away at those multiple thousand vote stories. Somebody's been making the effort.

For anything below what it takes to hit page 1 of your toplist, 80-100 isn't a bad number. So, anything below 4.85 or so, depending upon the list. Those who hit the toplist are the exception.

Then again, most people who are getting upset about their scores are usually set on that path because they fell off page 1 of the toplist, and subsequently lost that massive traffic draw. So, dropping the caveat makes sense as well.

 

[TheLobster]

My point was I suspect it's more like 800 votes you need for real troll-proof stability.

This "stability threshold" depends not only on how exposed your story is to trolls and 1-bombers, but also how high its score is (and conversely, what do you consider a meaningful drop). Math alone tells us that the higher it is, the more vulnerable a score is to the effects of <5 votes. If you have really high scores, it takes very few votes, even if large extant vote count, to see a notable dip in score.

 

[Bramblethorn]

That was my point. I was replying to Awkward who said 80 votes made a score stable. Maybe for mid-range stories, but at the top it doesn't guarantee stability. Some of those stories have 3000+ votes.

There are two different kinds of stability to discuss here.

One is troll-proofing, which depends on how dedicated your trolls are and on how high a score you're looking at. For a story that's sitting on about 4.5, it takes seven 5s to cancel out one 1, but for a story that's on 4.9, you'll need 39 5s. Assuming trolls are willing to cast several votes, then yes, it takes hundreds of votes to provide mitigation against them at the top of the lists.

The other kind is that even if all the trolls are on holiday, there will be random noise in your scores. Let's say I post a story which is good enough that the 'natural' voting pattern ought to be 50% 4s and 50% 5s, then just treating each vote as a coin-toss choice between 4 and 5:

After 1 vote, my "average" will be either 4.00 or 5.00, 50/50 probability.
10 votes: ~98% chance that the average score will be between 4.10 and 4.90.
50 votes: ~95% chance to be between 4.36 and 4.64.
100 votes: ~95% chance to be between 4.40 and 4.60.
200 votes: ~95% chance to be between 4.43 and 4.57.
1000 votes: ~95% chance to be between 4.47 and 4.53.

Authors will look at their scores and rack their brains about why one story got a 4.45 and another one got a 4.55, but until those stories get into the hundreds of votes the most likely explanation for the difference is probably "luck".

It's also easy enough to get a situation where a story does a bit better than the expectation over the first few votes, but then drifts towards its long-term average. Say my "actually a perfect 4.5" story is moderately lucky and averages a 4.64 on the first 50 votes, but then gradually homes in on that long-term 4.50 as more votes come in. It's easy for me to look at that - it was doing so well! and now it's in danger of losing its H! - and assume foul play. But actually what's happening is an early "error" in the average being slowly corrected over time.

There's no bright line at which scores suddenly become meaningful, but 80 votes is a reasonable enough number; at that point one can expect scores to be approaching +/- 0.11 of the long-term average.

These margins will be smaller for stories on a higher score, but then authors scoring at that level are more likely to care about small differences; if you're hoping to make the front page of the category top lists, even 0.01 can be a lot.

I don't deny the existence of trolls, but it's very easy to overestimate their effect on scores and underestimate that of random noise effects.

 

[alohadave]

The math is all well and good, but it doesn't matter much when you can get dozens of votes without your score changing at all.

There is something broken, either a bug or intentionally, with the scoring system. I've seen it on many of my stories. The scores get 'sticky' at some point. My wild ass guess is that it has something to do with sweeps.

 

[Lathanar1]

I used to have someone that would 1 star bomb me right out the gate, within 12 hours of publishing. Irked me for a time, but you get used to it after awhile. Now it takes a couple weeks for the score to drop suddenly before slowly climbing back.

 

[THBGato]

what do you consider a meaningful drop

Oh yeah, as Bramblethorn says anything under a 0.1 shift is just normal fluctuation. Though what is meaningless for me might be meaningful for others. I'm not going to tell somebody they are wrong to care...

I don't deny the existence of trolls, but it's very easy to overestimate their effect on scores and underestimate that of random noise effects.

I've had a story drop 0.4 in 30 votes over 2 weeks, all coming in batches of 4 very close together. (When previously the same story had been getting about 1 vote a week for months.)

I think it's sad really. Not the score dropping. I mean... it's just numbers. Doesn't affect my life in any meaningful way. No, it's sad that there's somebody out there who has so little that's good in their life that they seek some kind of satisfaction in trying to lower the scores of stories on a free erotica site. I feel sad for them, I really do.