Not voting

[LargoKitt]

I'm noticing a (new) phenomenon, that stories of mine have been sitting with less than ten votes for ages. Even when I shamelessly ask for a vote or three. Maybe several thousand readers (or viewers--folks in AH have pointed out that they are not the same.) Still, it puzzles me that a story would get the kind of votes to make it Hot, but very few votes. (Others tick along at 4.48 for eons. Some with nice comments.) Oh well, people like what they like and do what they do.

 

[iwatchus]

what category?

 

[MillieDynamite]

Many people, I don't know who they are, pick to either , vote, comment, or do all three. However, more often than not, don't do all three and sometimes only one out of the three. And most do none of them.

 

[NotWise]

I think, when you get few votes for the number of views, that it shows the readers aren't engaged in your story. That's a characteristic of the story, not so much a characteristic of the readers. Maybe the opening doesn't grab their attention. Maybe it's in an unpopular category. Maybe it's long. Maybe there's something in the story that knocks readers out. There are probably other reasons.

The score is unrelated to reader engagement. The readers who bail out usually don't vote. The readers who do stick with the story can respond with positive votes.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The votes pile up when the story is on the new lists. Once they drop off the traffic dries up. I just posted a new story a couple weeks ago. Before that one published I had gone two or three months without a single vote on my entire catalog (11 stories). My oldest story has had maybe 1 vote in the past year-and-a-half. I have 2 stories that have less votes now than they did in say January. Most, if not all, of my stories go weeks if not months between single votes. Don't worry, You're normal. ; )

 

[THBGato]

what category?

I was going to ask this too. I was really surprised by how low the votes to views ratio was for my single E/V story when compared to my stories in other categories.

 

[TheLobster]

I was going to ask this too. I was really surprised by how low the votes to views ratio was for my single E/V story when compared to my stories in other categories.

Well, that’s to be expected: E/V fans like to view, not interact.

 

[stickygirl]

I wonder if readers are worried that if they vote they lose their anonymity - as though they’d be recorded by … whoever.

There’s another view that because they read stories here for free, why should they bother - does it matter?

They’re all wankers anyway so they need to focus on wiping up and hiding the tissues from Mom

 

[Bazzle]

The longer the story, the more pages the reader has to click, the fewer the votes.

Sooooo many of the multi chapter stories are 2500-3000 words = 1 lit page.

Which is why "My amazing story Pt. 3890" and "My amazing story Pt. 3878" and "My amazing story Pt. 2342" often fill the top ten of the Lit lists.

The authors know how to write chapters, to leaving the reader wanting more at the end of each chapter, they get the eyeballs and the votes.

Its no different to Dickens et all in the Victorian period. They would publish 1 chapter at a time in a weekly periodical. It worked for them and the periodical.

No different for lit.

 

[stickygirl]

The longer the story, the more pages the reader has to click, the fewer the votes.

Oh yes - reader exhaustion

 

[iwatchus]

The longer the story, the more pages the reader has to click, the fewer the votes.

Sooooo many of the multi chapter stories are 2500-3000 words = 1 lit page.

Which is why "My amazing story Pt. 3890" and "My amazing story Pt. 3878" and "My amazing story Pt. 2342" often fill the top ten of the Lit lists.

The authors know how to write chapters, to leaving the reader wanting more at the end of each chapter, they get the eyeballs and the votes.

Its no different to Dickens et all in the Victorian period. They would publish 1 chapter at a time in a weekly periodical. It worked for them and the periodical.

No different for lit.

In my own stories, which very pretty widely in length, there is no correlation between length and likelihood to vote. Category swamps almost everything else. Most chapters actually get lower votes/view, except the very last and the very first. Someone (I forget who) looked at this more thoroughly and found that ratings go up non-trivially for longer stories and votes go down, bu only slightly. I think this is an exhaustion factor, but unless you REALLY alienated them, they are not going to skip forward to vote you down.

For each additional story in a series, the ratings will rise (and the views will decline and the votes decline). This is a general trend and a better intermediate story will get better ratings than a worse one, generally speaking. The rational for this phenomenon is pretty obvious: only people who liked the earlier parts of the series will keep reading. So later chapters are preselecting a population that likes the story line and like your writing.

 

[Bazzle]

In my own stories, which very pretty widely in length, there is no correlation between length and likelihood to vote. Category swamps almost everything else. Most chapters actually get lower votes/view, except the very last and the very first. Someone (I forget who) looked at this more thoroughly and found that ratings go up non-trivially for longer stories and votes go down, bu only slightly. I think this is an exhaustion factor, but unless you REALLY alienated them, they are not going to skip forward to vote you down.

For each additional story in a series, the ratings will rise (and the views will decline and the votes decline). This is a general trend and a better intermediate story will get better ratings than a worse one, generally speaking. The rational for this phenomenon is pretty obvious: only people who liked the earlier parts of the series will keep reading. So later chapters are preselecting a population that likes the story line and like your writing.

That maybe the case...but chapter stories dominate the top lists. Not many standalone stories. That is my point.

 

[Statius]

.y longer stories have the most votes and

 

[iwatchus]

That maybe the case...but chapter stories dominate the top lists. Not many standalone stories. That is my point.

Absolutely true. Giving separate single story and series top lists would be near top of my wants for the site. And unlike most my others, this is as much for the readers as the authors.

 

[UnexpectedLuggage]

Personally, I'll only leave a vote on a story if I  really enjoyed it. If I get to the end and go "that was alright," I'll usually just move on to the next thing. If I reach the end and go "fuck me, that was good," then I'll give a vote and usually leave a comment.

Some stories start as the latter, and falter on some key elements and end up just not getting my vote. I don't wanna give a bad rating unless something is just God awful, and I'm so picky about what I read here that that never really happens. That or I get so frustrated by thr story I bail before getting to the end and just want to move on with my life.

 

[feel_the_beast]

Well, that’s to be expected: E/V fans like to view, not interact.

Lol

 

[Bazzle]

In my own stories, which very pretty widely in length, there is no correlation between length and likelihood to vote. Category swamps almost everything else. Most chapters actually get lower votes/view, except the very last and the very first. Someone (I forget who) looked at this more thoroughly and found that ratings go up non-trivially for longer stories and votes go down, bu only slightly. I think this is an exhaustion factor, but unless you REALLY alienated them, they are not going to skip forward to vote you down.

For each additional story in a series, the ratings will rise (and the views will decline and the votes decline). This is a general trend and a better intermediate story will get better ratings than a worse one, generally speaking. The rational for this phenomenon is pretty obvious: only people who liked the earlier parts of the series will keep reading. So later chapters are preselecting a population that likes the story line and like your writing.

Just to give an example of what I mean...the top list for fetish "in all time" is all chapters???

In EV one story by @iwatchus breaks through as a standalone.

Everything else is chaptered. So if you can cleverly write a chaptered story...you will do well!

 

[iwatchus]

In EV one story by @iwatchus breaks through as a standalone.

Alas, this is not true. The Circle Grows is also part of a series. I just didn't know what I was doing and didn't name them properly with ch annotations. I got some complaints about that, but it does have the series icon at the end of the data (for every single story, including mine).

This is exactly why we need separate lists.

 

[Nynah]

Just to give an example of what I mean...the top list for fetish "in all time" is all chapters???

For whatever reason, Literotica seems to have two separate "top" lists for each category. The one you took a screenshot of is the list you encounter when first clicking into the category from the main Literotica page and is the "top" list if all stories were considered, regardless of vote count. If you scroll down and click on "More Popular Fetish Stories", it will take you to the all time top list that has a minimum of 100 votes to make it and it looks very different (not just in formatting):



Your point is still valid as there are many chaptered entries in the top list, but there do look to be at least a couple of standalone works cracking the top ten.

 

[iwatchus]

The second list (clicked from the first page) has a minimum vote total (100 for all-time, 10 for past 12 months). Chapters get higher ratings, but fewer views/votes, so the back one is better that way (and gives the top 250, not just 10). If you look at the E&V list, my The Circle Grows story disappears. It does not have the requisite votes yet. It probably will eventually, when it will get driven down by trolls off the front page of the all-times.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

Personally, I'll only leave a vote on a story if I  really enjoyed it. If I get to the end and go "that was alright," I'll usually just move on to the next thing. If I reach the end and go "fuck me, that was good," then I'll give a vote and usually leave a comment.

Some stories start as the latter, and falter on some key elements and end up just not getting my vote. I don't wanna give a bad rating unless something is just God awful, <snip>

This is quite similar to me. I don't like leaving lower scores that might hurt a story's rating if I think it may be a matter of my personal likes or preferences, so I'll skip in such cases, thought I'll occasionally leave a hopefully helpful comment about some point without voting. However, as far as I remember, I've never favorited without leaving a vote.

Regarding the all-time lists, 100 votes is the published minimum to be included, but it can be less than this in less-frequented categories such as Letters & Transcripts.