New Author Rating Question

[Actingup]

It's very easy to fall into the trap of score watching. For me, I've found it helpful to look at the percentile scores of my stories in terms of how they've rated in that category, and then think about two separate questions:
a) how could I have improved my writing?
b) how could I improve my connection to that audience (or, in the case of Loving Wives, to the multiple audiences who will probably never agree on anything!).
I'm emphasising the 'to that audience' bit because if you accept that the audience that you're writing for includes people who you would never invite to dinner (or, depending on the context, to your orgy), the whole 1-bomb thing is easier to handle.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Unfortunately, the issue is not new. One reason new stories often start off with a "bomb" or two is that the New Stories list releases before those new stories appear in their categories' front page each day. Someone uses that New Stories list as a one-stop shop to downvote stories before anyone has a chance to read them. This problem can be compounded if you put a long standalone story onto the site. You may have people who look at the story length and immediately give it a low score without bothering to read it.

Meanwhile, people who are actually reading and enjoying the story won't get around to voting until they finish.



This was an extreme example, of course. The story hit the I/T frontpage with a score of 2.6. No idea how many potential readers never bothered to give it a look based on that horrible score. It took a few hours to climb from there, but that makes me wonder who was blitzing through it that fast, or gave it a 5-star rating without reading it.

 

[nice90sguy]

Unfortunately, the issue is not new. One reason new stories often start off with a "bomb" or two is that the New Stories list releases before those new stories appear in their categories' front page each day. Someone uses that New Stories list as a one-stop shop to downvote stories before anyone has a chance to read them. This problem can be compounded if you put a long standalone story onto the site. You may have people who look at the story length and immediately give it a low score without bothering to read it.

That sounds plausible.
I think it would be pretty easy for the site owners to identify that behaviour, even if the user was anonymous.

 

[alohadave]

The story hit the I/T frontpage with a score of 2.6. No idea how many potential readers never bothered to give it a look based on that horrible score. It took a few hours to climb from there, but that makes me wonder who was blitzing through it that fast, or gave it a 5-star rating without reading it.

I wonder if hiding the score for the first day or so would help or hurt.

 

[LexxRuthless]

I wonder if hiding the score for the first day or so would help or hurt.

That would be something of a double-edged sword. Several readers have commented to me in e-mails that they don't have time to read all the new stories in the categories they follow every day, so they won't bother to read ones that don't at least have that red "H." Since you get a significant chunk of your views and initial votes while the story is on the frontpage, it would likely cost you a lot of that attention if your story doesn't have a score yet. Not that it would help if your story has been down-voted below that threshold.

These same folks mentioned that they almost never read series, either, unless they really enjoyed something else by that author first.

 

[RejectReality]

What would be funny, helpful to authors who are regularly bombed right out of the gates, and potentially revealing of individual trolls would be to queue every 1 vote. Don't add it to the score immediately. A few times a day, have that queue of 1 votes automatically swept, looking for patterns. What survives, survives, and goes into the score. What doesn't is probably revealing assholes pissed off that the score hasn't dropped and bombing it again, and again, and again...

Lot of coding, so I wouldn't expect it to happen, but it would be funny as fuck.

Yes, they could just switch to 2s, and you can't keep chasing that, but 1s are the most harmful, and the preferred weapon. It would also be something that actually can stop trolling at the point of casting the vote. Problem is, people will just complain that the 1s that survive are trolling runs happening "at the same times every day", and that hand-wringing will eventually alert the more intelligent trolls, who do the most long-lasting damage.

 

[gunhilltrain]

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.

I've never gotten anywhere near 800 votes. 224 is the best one. Less than ten is very common.

The OP should realize that this is not The Paris Review. It's mass media, with hundreds or thousands of people, many of whom are not registered members, tramping through each day. It's like a small city, perhaps, and you can imagine the variety of people residing in this hypothetical town.

If you gain followers, expect them to be mostly missing in action for your stories.

 

[gunhilltrain]

That would be something of a double-edged sword. Several readers have commented to me in e-mails that they don't have time to read all the new stories in the categories they follow every day, so they won't bother to read ones that don't at least have that red "H." Since you get a significant chunk of your views and initial votes while the story is on the frontpage, it would likely cost you a lot of that attention if your story doesn't have a score yet. Not that it would help if your story has been down-voted below that threshold.

These same folks mentioned that they almost never read series, either, unless they really enjoyed something else by that author first.

There is a distinction between readers, author/readers, and authors. I gave up reading almost everything on here because writing for Lit and AH are all the time I wish to put into this now.

Regarding sweeps: sometimes they will eliminate a suspiciously high score. That happened to me at least once.

 

[InvisibleHarvey]

I'm also new here, and it seems like the review bombing and troll voting really function to punish new authors.

I just experienced my first clean-up, and all of my stories jumped up significantly. Of course, that hardly matters because the ratings only do anything while your stories are visible, and the trolls have complete control in that time frame.

At first I was surprised that all of the review bombing and troll voting is permitted. It's not a terribly complicated issue to deal with if the people maintaining the site were interested in dealing with it. I think it's just not a problem for them. Like, they have more than enough people dropping stories here every day. They don't need more. If anything, more new authors creates more work for them without giving them much value in return.

The only thing you can do is to try to put the votes in perspective. Here's a handy guide to what they mean:

5-Star, with comment: "This is a great story! I want to encourage you to write more!"
5-Star, no comment: "I enjoyed this story."
4-Star, with comment: "This had potential, but I have a few significant issues with it."
4-Star, no comment: "This was fine, but if you never wrote anything again that would be fine too."
3-Star, with comment: "There are some serious problems with this story."
3-Star, no comment: "I would rather not be reading any of your work."
2-Star: "I am an incel, and your story offended me."
1-Star: "I am an incel. I didn't read your story, but I assume it would have offended me."

 

[alohadave]

Regarding sweeps: sometimes they will eliminate a suspiciously high score. That happened to me at least once.

I've had 5s removed as well as 1s. They are looking for vote manipulation, not mean voters.

 

[alohadave]

The only thing you can do is to try to put the votes in perspective. Here's a handy guide to what they mean:

5-Star, with comment: "This is a great story! I want to encourage you to write more!"
5-Star, no comment: "I enjoyed this story."
4-Star, with comment: "This had potential, but I have a few significant issues with it."
4-Star, no comment: "This was fine, but if you never wrote anything again that would be fine too."
3-Star, with comment: "There are some serious problems with this story."
3-Star, no comment: "I would rather not be reading any of your work."
2-Star: "I am an incel, and your story offended me."
1-Star: "I am an incel. I didn't read your story, but I assume it would have offended me."

Everyone has their own criteria for giving out stars.

Read these threads long enough and you'll find that most people (in this forum anyway) will mostly vote 5 if they like the story or want to encourage the author. They'll not vote if the don't like the story or it has major problems.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I'm one of these people.

Everyone has their own criteria for giving out stars.

Read these threads long enough and you'll find that most people (in this forum anyway) will mostly vote 5 if they like the story or want to encourage the author. They'll not vote if the don't like the story or it has major problems.

 

[RejectReality]

The majority of voters are 1 or 5. Either they're throwing away tissues, or they're throwing up. There's only a relative handful that use the rest of the scale, and the majority of those are trolls attempting to outwit the sweeps.

 

[InvisibleHarvey]

Everyone has their own criteria for giving out stars.

Read these threads long enough and you'll find that most people (in this forum anyway) will mostly vote 5 if they like the story or want to encourage the author. They'll not vote if the don't like the story or it has major problems.

Moving on and not rating is the non-troll response.

If you start reading something and it's not for you, a decent person just moves on.

On a typical story, I think I get about one rating for every one hundred views (for me, I don't know what your numbers look like). I can tell people were into what I was doing when I get a rating for every fifty views. You have to have a special kind of spite in your heart to flip to the end just to try to punish the author with your impotent troll-rage. Doubly so if it's a story that's been tagged as containing content you don't enjoy.

The thing is, troll-rating kinda works. I'm not going to tell you what other authors are here for, but I just enjoy writing and want to connect with people who want to read the kinds of things I want to write. Looking at the numbers can be very discouraging. That's why it's good to keep perspective.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I'm also new here, and it seems like the review bombing and troll voting really function to punish new authors.

I just experienced my first clean-up, and all of my stories jumped up significantly. Of course, that hardly matters because the ratings only do anything while your stories are visible, and the trolls have complete control in that time frame.

At first I was surprised that all of the review bombing and troll voting is permitted. It's not a terribly complicated issue to deal with if the people maintaining the site were interested in dealing with it. I think it's just not a problem for them. Like, they have more than enough people dropping stories here every day. They don't need more. If anything, more new authors creates more work for them without giving them much value in return.

The only thing you can do is to try to put the votes in perspective. Here's a handy guide to what they mean:

5-Star, with comment: "This is a great story! I want to encourage you to write more!"
5-Star, no comment: "I enjoyed this story."
4-Star, with comment: "This had potential, but I have a few significant issues with it."
4-Star, no comment: "This was fine, but if you never wrote anything again that would be fine too."
3-Star, with comment: "There are some serious problems with this story."
3-Star, no comment: "I would rather not be reading any of your work."
2-Star: "I am an incel, and your story offended me."
1-Star: "I am an incel. I didn't read your story, but I assume it would have offended me."

When this has come up before, there have been debates here about whether non-registered, anonymous people should be allowed to vote and comment on stories. It is true that on another, smaller site that requires registration, a calmer, less fraught atmosphere prevails. Of course, one will be lucky to get 3,000 views because the number of people there is so much smaller.

On Lit, one can be registered and still comment anonymously. During those earlier discussions, there were some people who liked having that choice. I came down on different sides of the debate at times. In any case, I doubt the Lit management is going to change anything.

 

[InvisibleHarvey]

When this has come up before, there have been debates here about whether non-registered, anonymous people should be allowed to vote and comment on stories. It is true that on another, smaller site that requires registration, a calmer, less fraught atmosphere prevails. Of course, one will be lucky to get 3,000 views because the number of people there is so much smaller.

On Lit, one can be registered and still comment anonymously. During those earlier discussions, there were some people who liked having that choice. I came down on different sides of the debate at times. In any case, I doubt the Lit management is going to change anything.

I'd be very surprised if it changed. The whole site runs on traffic, and putting up barriers to users isn't in the interest of the people who run the site.

I think the trick is to find ways to connect with your audience that bypass the rating system they have in place. I'll let you know when I've figured out how to do that, lol.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Moving on and not rating is the non-troll response.

If you start reading something and it's not for you, a decent person just moves on.

That shouldn't be so.
It's only due to this rating system being broken in so many ways that we resort to such an approach. When reading a story that is badly written rather than just not fulfilling their kinks and expectations, the reader should give it a low score. The ratings should be there to let other readers know not to waste time with something that's terribly written. The ratings should be there to help readers find what they want, to sift through so many stories without needing to browse and check everything out themselves. That's how ratings should work, but it is not so.

What @alohadave said is accurate; We do mostly rate stories in such a way because that's how we adapted to this terrible system. I suggest you find a way to adapt to it as well because experience teaches us that the system will never change.

 

[TheLobster]

It's only due to this rating system being broken in so many ways that we resort to such an approach. When reading a story that is badly written rather than just not fulfilling their kinks and expectations, the reader should give it a low score.

That's the ideal, but humans are lazy. When you start reading a story and promptly realize it's a total trainwreck, the simplest and most straightforward thing to do once you decide "this shit is unreadable!" is to close the tab.

Scrolling down to the page selector, clicking the last page, scrolling to the rating box, clicking 1* or 2* -- all of this is extra effort. And it would be the same effort even if the votes were tallied differently, the impact of Red H was lessened or eliminated, and generally if the rating system was "fixed" in any of the myriad ways that has been proposed on this forum.

Most readers aren't looking the play the role of a literary critic. Perhaps that is for the better -- would you really want 10, 100, 1000, 10000 people who are as, ahem, dedicated to the cause as Stacnash?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

That's the ideal, but humans are lazy. When you start reading a story and promptly realize it's a total trainwreck, the simplest and most straightforward thing to do once you decide "this shit is unreadable!" is to close the tab.

Scrolling down to the page selector, clicking the last page, scrolling to the rating box, clicking 1* or 2* -- all of this is extra effort. And it would be the same effort even if the votes were tallied differently, the impact of Red H was lessened or eliminated, and generally if the rating system was "fixed" in any of the myriad ways that has been proposed on this forum.

Most readers aren't looking the play the role of a literary critic. Perhaps that is for the better -- would you really want 10, 100, 1000, 10000 people who are as, ahem, dedicated to the cause as Stacnash?

I agree with most of what you said, but I am not sure about the last statement.
Sure, Stacnash is very opinionated, but would having so many readers who thought they were top-notch literary critics be worse than what we have now - readers spamming 5* on stories that provide kinks they crave regardless if they are crap or not, and readers one-bombing kinks they dislike and authors who annoyed them on the forum?
Call me insane, but I would take that setup over this crap we have now any day.

 

[InvisibleHarvey]

That's the ideal, but humans are lazy. When you start reading a story and promptly realize it's a total trainwreck, the simplest and most straightforward thing to do once you decide "this shit is unreadable!" is to close the tab.

Scrolling down to the page selector, clicking the last page, scrolling to the rating box, clicking 1* or 2* -- all of this is extra effort. And it would be the same effort even if the votes were tallied differently, the impact of Red H was lessened or eliminated, and generally if the rating system was "fixed" in any of the myriad ways that has been proposed on this forum.

Most readers aren't looking the play the role of a literary critic. Perhaps that is for the better -- would you really want 10, 100, 1000, 10000 people who are as, ahem, dedicated to the cause as Stacnash?

It's even more work than that.

If you're a decent human being, you realize that another human put time and effort into this submission, and had the bravery to post it for the world to see. You might still give it a low rating, but decency would compel you to do more than that. You would leave a comment, maybe point the author to some resources. That's a lot of work.

A 1-Star review with no comment should only be for spam or AI garbage.

 

[LexxRuthless]

You can scroll back through this forum and find hundreds of threads on this topic. Over the past 25 years, a lot of really smart people have come up with clever ideas for improving the system. Then other smart people will point out vulnerabilities in those good ideas. What I've realized is that the scoring system really isn't designed for us as authors. It's designed to give readers an idea of what other readers thought were good stories.

As writers, we can't really rely on the ratings our stories receive as any kind of indication for what we should be writing next. That was a lesson that took me a while to learn, and by the time I figured it out I had already kind of pigeonholed myself into pumping out the same sort of stories that "did well" in a couple of popular categories. It wasn't what I had envisioned writing when I started here. I made the mistake of thinking that those stories were somehow "better" than the other stuff I'd written because they got more views and higher scores.

I occasionally write something radically different, but those stories mostly sit on my hard drive. I have a distinct brand of stories that some readers really enjoy, and I only hoped to write and share some stories that I thought people would like.

It can be downright infuriating when your story gets "bombed" by people you know haven't even bothered to read it, but that's what happens when you give a bunch of anonymous assholes the right to vote. This isn't unique to Literotica. As flawed as the system is, it mostly does what it is supposed to do: Give readers a general idea of stories they will likely enjoy. When we try to over-analyze what the scores "mean" it's only going to keep us from being more productive as writers.

 

[alohadave]

Most readers aren't looking the play the role of a literary critic. Perhaps that is for the better -- would you really want 10, 100, 1000, 10000 people who are as, ahem, dedicated to the cause as Stacnash?

We could only dream of that level of interaction.

 

[Izanami9]

This is a really helpful thread for us noobs. I haven’t reached *nearly* 80 votes on anything, so it’s all beyond me in that sense - but I did find some answers here to questions I wasn’t sure how to articulate. Thanks to OP and to everyone who took the time to explain! Much appreciated.

 

[InvisibleHarvey]

This is a really helpful thread for us noobs. I haven’t reached *nearly* 80 votes on anything, so it’s all beyond me in that sense - but I did find some answers here to questions I wasn’t sure how to articulate. Thanks to OP and to everyone who took the time to explain! Much appreciated. View attachment 2524599

I'm figuring it out with you, but I'm happy to have company on this journey!

As a side note, you probably want to update your signature. Right now anyone who clicks it gets their own works, and only you get yours. You probably want this: https://www.literotica.com/authors/Izanami9/works/stories

 

[Izanami9]

I'm figuring it out with you, but I'm happy to have company on this journey!

As a side note, you probably want to update your signature. Right now anyone who clicks it gets their own works, and only you get yours. You probably want this: https://www.literotica.com/authors/Izanami9/works/stories

Omg thanks! I know I changed it a couple of times but for some reason I can’t see it so I assumed it wasn’t working.

[My relationship with anything remotely tech is the same as the guy in Twilight Zone whose appliances conspire to murder him. I’ve been that guy since I first watched it as a small child with my grandma and started viewing the refrigerator with deep suspicion. But I’ll do my best to update that correctly, thanks so much for your help!]