One bombed

[ronde]

I just wish they would give us all the data rather than a single number.

A score of 3.4 with 100 votes can mean two entirely different things:
Great story: 60 5s and 40 1s.
Crap story: 10 5s, 30 4s, 50 3s, 10 2s.

This is what Amazon and several other on-line buying sites do, but it still won't give an author much usable information relative to intentional low voting.

The difficulty here as I see it is that Laurel has always been strongly supportive of the right to publish what an author wants to write and readers want to read, and it's likely she feels the same way about voting. I think the really low votes on an otherwise higher ranking story do get tossed, usually prior to the announcement of the winners of a contest. I have experienced this several times because I track the number of votes for each of my stories over time. What I've seen is a story with an OK rating suddenly jump up by 0.01 or 0.02 and I'll also see a corresponding decrease in the total number of votes.

As for any other method, how would the site determine if a "1" or "2" vote is the legitimate opinion of the voter or an attempt to knock a story down a few hundredths of a point? Maybe the answer is to only allow votes between "2" and "5"? No, wait, there are votes of "5" obviously cast by followers who would vote a "5" for anything their favorite author wrote. Maybe the site should only allow votes between "2" and "4". Then some authors would complain that the "2" votes were malicious votes. So, the site changes to only allow votes between "3" and "4". That's really no different from voting "like" and "dislike". In the end, the votes would probably be split about 50-50. The fix would be as bad or worse than the perceived problem as far as giving authors some idea of how well their readers like what they write.

 

[metropolinational]

As for any other method, how would the site determine if a "1" or "2" vote is the legitimate opinion of the voter or an attempt to knock a story down a few hundredths of a point?

Yeah, I did not mean to imply that my method would help with detecting malicious voting. I guess implicit in my suggestion is that I don't care about malicious voting. If we have a five number scale, I want to know how many 5s and 4s I got. That's the number of people whose lives were infinitesimally better by my work.

If you really want a solution to THAT problem (not that it would be implemented), it already exists. It's called the Elo System. In Elo, every "player" has a difficulty rating. Getting a 2 from a rater who gives out lots of 1s gets you more rating than getting a 4 from a rater who gives out lots of 5s. There are a million variations, but here you could readily also weigh by genre. In other words, if your BDSM story gets high ratings from Romance readers, that counts for even more, etc.

However, I doubt such a thing would ever be implemented here, since the site owners don't seem that concerned about any of this anyway.

 

[ronde]

Yeah, I did not mean to imply that my method would help with detecting malicious voting. I guess implicit in my suggestion is that I don't care about malicious voting. If we have a five number scale, I want to know how many 5s and 4s I got. That's the number of people whose lives were infinitesimally better by my work.

If you really want a solution to THAT problem (not that it would be implemented), it already exists. It's called the Elo System. In Elo, every "player" has a difficulty rating. Getting a 2 from a rater who gives out lots of 1s gets you more rating than getting a 4 from a rater who gives out lots of 5s. There are a million variations, but here you could readily also weigh by genre. In other words, if your BDSM story gets high ratings from Romance readers, that counts for even more, etc.

However, I doubt such a thing would ever be implemented here, since the site owners don't seem that concerned about any of this anyway.

I don't think it's a lack of concern. I think it's more a lack of resources. Since the vote totals can change quickly, I suspect that's an automatic feature of the software and that votes and user names aren't correlated.

To implement what you state would require a database of every single vote ever cast by every voter in every genre. It would have to be tracked by something other than a user name since it's relatively easy have multiple user names including the infamous "Anonymous". At one time, there was a theory that a group of large group college students were setting up different user names on every computer they could find and then using those computers and user names to "down vote" or "up vote" a particular story or a particular author's works.Then, for every vote cast, some algorithm would have to "correct" the actual vote based on the database data.

Currently, there are 500,000+ stories published on Literotica. If the average number of votes per story is only 100, that's 15 million data entries (user name or other identifier, vote, genre) and a lot of older stories have over 1000 votes. I don't know how anything but a huge, dedicated server with some pretty powerful computing massaging the votes could ever keep up.

If you check out some other erotica sites, what you'll find is that no matter what rating system they use, there are still the same complaints of not enough information and malicious voting on both ends of whatever scale the site uses. Literotica's rating system is definitely not perfect, but there are a lot of more important rating type activities in the world that humans can't seem to get right no matter what the cost. We shouldn't expect a free erotica site to be perfect no matter what the cost.

 

[metropolinational]

@ronde I totally agree. As I said, I think the 1s are valid votes. All I would like is two things. First, the capacity to see the full distribution, not just the average. Heck, even being able to see the median and mean would be helpful. The other is the capacity to see that distribution by reader category: follower, followed, author, anon.

For me, it would make the 1 bombing I get totally irrelevant.

 

[WhenPreNut]

There are primarily two ways that ratings can be useful. One, they can provide feedback to the writer to let them know how well the audience they chose liked their story. If only those who liked it give feedback, the writer gets a falsely inflated impression of their success. Perhaps you've heard the phrase "Don't fix what ain't broke." Well, inaccurate feedback stops you from fixing what is broken, because you don't know that it's broken.

The second use is to inform other readers. Used properly, ratings reflect how well the combination of title, description, and category matches up with what the people clicking on that particular combination were looking for. Thus, the next person who is tempted by the combination can look at the rating and anticipate how likely it is they'll actually like the story. A falsely high rating can trick more people into clicking and being disappointed. I know some writers think views is the ultimate goal, but I disagree.

Now, of course, different people have different opinions. But, the average of honest ratings over time accounts for that. The average of dishonest ratings does not. Ratings will never be an objective measure, but we can strive to make them a useful subjective measure.

Finally, as you don't seem to understand how ratings are inflated, let me give you a simple example. Let's say that you and one other person read a story. They loved it. You hated it. In an honest world, they'd give it a 5, you'd give it a 1, so it would end up with a 3* average. Now, in this world where you abstain from voting below 4*, they give it 5, you give it nothing, and it ends up with a 5* average.

That 1 set of interpretations/ opinions. Perfectly valid.
Not the only ones.
I agree some not all.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

As for any other method, how would the site determine if a "1" or "2" vote is the legitimate opinion of the voter or an attempt to knock a story down a few hundredths of a point? Maybe the answer is to only allow votes between "2" and "5"? No, wait, there are votes of "5" obviously cast by followers who would vote a "5" for anything their favorite author wrote. Maybe the site should only allow votes between "2" and "4". Then some authors would complain that the "2" votes were malicious votes. So, the site changes to only allow votes between "3" and "4". That's really no different from voting "like" and "dislike". In the end, the votes would probably be split about 50-50. The fix would be as bad or worse than the perceived problem as far as giving authors some idea of how well their readers like what they write.

There are any number of potential fixes, but as you note all have some issues. One point worth considering is that fives have a much smaller effect than ones on a story's score or ranking; the 'injustice' of the one is felt much less than that of the other.

 

[WhenPreNut]

bombing is when one of my stories cracks the top spot on the rankings, and then gets destroyed. Fairly obvious to see what's going on.

Yes, that's what I was talking about at the start and some 'got it'.

It's axiomatic that our tastes are different AND that with only a single score too express everything plus no enforceable guidance even if that would be desirable there are going to be different criteria and different benchmarks applied thus naturally different scores.

Therefore a statistical phenomenon applies where a really great story is probably in the 4.8 range.

I fully agree bombing is where a vote is given purely out of 'malice' (If I've named the emotional correctly). Not as a mark of guidance to other readers (which is after all its sole purpose even if authors use it as a source of encouragement or discouragement).


While it's unproven, I think a 5/4 becoming a 4/5 is strong grounds for suspecting the fifth voter did not make a comment on the story but on their ability to influence the result.

It would be interesting if votes were atributed and or adjusted against some dynamic normalisation process. For example if somebody often voted one against stories rated 4.8 the numeric impact of their vote was to leave the 4.8 unchanged until it was demonstrated from the votes cast that the one was deserved and their previous voting pattern.

But most of this 'wishing for a perfect world' stuff would be virtually impossible to commit to code.

We just have to live with the reality that different folks are driven by different motivations and some of those motivations look to me like trying and 'get back at the world somehow'. Given that and the fact that this platform is ultimately a commercial venture for somebody responsibility really rests with those who set the culture and maintain the codebase.

The rest of us, as authors can only really vote with our feet.

3¢

 

[MaudeBlack]

As someone who is sat with her head in her hands watching a 13.5k word story getting savaged with 1-bombs within moments of being published, I whole heartedly agree that something needs to be done.
I accept 1-star votes, even if they are the 'It's just not my cup of tea' type.

But I challenge anyone to read 13.5k words so quickly that they can objectively give it a 1-star review within minutes.

Anyhoo, rant over.

Here's the story. https://www.literotica.com/s/bike-pt-03

I might buy a new bra to cheer myself up.

Xx

 

[lovecraft68]

As someone who is sat with her head in her hands watching a 13.5k word story getting savaged with 1-bombs within moments of being published, I whole heartedly agree that something needs to be done.
I accept 1-star votes, even if they are the 'It's just not my cup of tea' type.

But I challenge anyone to read 13.5k words so quickly that they can objectively give it a 1-star review within minutes.

Anyhoo, rant over.

Here's the story. https://www.literotica.com/s/bike-pt-03

I might buy a new bra to cheer myself up.

Xx

Word to the wise. If you post a link in a thread discussing one bombs you're inviting one or more. The trolls watch these threads and will look up someone's work and bomb them if they don't agree with them, but a link is an even easier bullseye for them.

My latest is 13 lit pages, its over 40k words and had three votes within a half hour of coming out. Looked like two ones and a five meaning someone slapped a five on it without reading it also. But no on complains about those, however, I imagine a sweep would remove all three.

 

[MaudeBlack]

Word to the wise. If you post a link in a thread discussing one bombs you're inviting one or more. The trolls watch these threads and will look up someone's work and bomb them if they don't agree with them, but a link is an even easier bullseye for them.

My latest is 13 lit pages, its over 40k words and had three votes within a half hour of coming out. Looked like two ones and a five meaning someone slapped a five on it without reading it also. But no on complains about those, however, I imagine a sweep would remove all three.

Thank you for pointing that out. My newness is once again my undoing!

There must be some quick readers on here who can get through 40k words in half an hour!

Xx

 

[lovecraft68]

Thank you for pointing that out. My newness is once again my undoing!

There must be some quick readers on here who can get through 40k words in half an hour!

Xx

They read the title and tagline, and that was enough, its a 'cheating whore wife' story. Seeing my name is just a bonus.

That crowd hates me, so I take the bombs, the same way I write those stories, with a smirk.

 

[IWroteThis]

But I challenge anyone to read 13.5k words so quickly that they can objectively give it a 1-star review within minutes.

So, you never click out of stories early, but read every word once you click on it?

I don't understand why this is so hard to understand, but once you read enough to know you don't want to read any more, you can legitimately rate it without finishing it. To be blunt, I'd find a 1* rating more suspicious if they read the entire thing, as they must not have really hated it…

 

[lovecraft68]

So, you never click out of stories early, but read every word once you click on it?

I don't understand why this is so hard to understand, but once you read enough to know you don't want to read any more, you can legitimately rate it without finishing it. To be blunt, I'd find a 1* rating more suspicious if they read the entire thing, as they must not have really hated it…

I see your point, but the issue with "This sucks, bomb it" after reading a few paragraphs is the story can take a turn. It can start off looking like X, then go Y.

I had a story where one of the first comments was very negative based on a character having a small role in the intro but who never shows up again in the 8 page story. The story ended up being a massive success because most people either weren't bothered at all by the character or just read a little further.

By the same token, someone could read through a story and be into it enough to get to the end then they hate the ending so that one can be legit.

The possibilities are endless.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I see your point, but the issue with "This sucks, bomb it" after reading a few paragraphs is the story can take a turn. It can start off looking like X, then go Y ...

That doesn't matter. The reader is rating their actual experience of the story. If you open a novel in a physical bookstore and the first chapter is unreadable, you are not wrong to put it back, even if Chapter 2 is eloquent and immersive and entertaining.

 

[IWroteThis]

I see your point, but the issue with "This sucks, bomb it" after reading a few paragraphs is the story can take a turn. It can start off looking like X, then go Y.

I had a story where one of the first comments was very negative based on a character having a small role in the intro but who never shows up again in the 8 page story. The story ended up being a massive success because most people either weren't bothered at all by the character or just read a little further.

I see your point as well, but…

First, first impressions matter. It's up to the author to pull readers into the story, not the reader to push through a bad opening.

Second, if that character was irrelevant and hurtful to the story, why were they in the story? More importantly, why were they in the intro, where you're trying to convince people to read the story?

By the same token, someone could read through a story and be into it enough to get to the end then they hate the ending so that one can be legit.

I agree. I actually had mentioned that, but it seems to have got dropped in one of the rewrites before I posted it.

The possibilities are endless.

Yep. And some of them lead to honest, but low ratings.

 

[MaudeBlack]

So, you never click out of stories early, but read every word once you click on it?

I don't understand why this is so hard to understand, but once you read enough to know you don't want to read any more, you can legitimately rate it without finishing it. To be blunt, I'd find a 1* rating more suspicious if they read the entire thing, as they must not have really hated it…

Well I've never reviewed a restaurant simply by browsing the menu.
I've chosen to not eat in a restaurant because the menu isn't for me.
But I've never followed this up by leaving a 1-star review because 'It's rubbish how they don't cater for my exact requirements.'

To be blunt, my point was several one stars within minutes of a story being published is the work of trolls not legitimate critics. However, due to the way things are set up, trolls are given the power of legitimate critics and any rational person would see the issue there.

Xx

 

[lovecraft68]

I see your point as well, but…

First, first impressions matter. It's up to the author to pull readers into the story, not the reader to push through a bad opening.

Second, if that character was irrelevant and hurtful to the story, why were they in the story? More importantly, why were they in the intro, where you're trying to convince people to read the story?


I agree. I actually had mentioned that, but it seems to have got dropped in one of the rewrites before I posted it.


Yep. And some of them lead to honest, but low ratings.

The reason for the character is they're a foil to show how the brother feels about his sister because the guy teases him about her frumpy hippy appearance and he's helping him set his room up for a photo shoot so his questions let the reader in on what's coming.

He was meant to be a ball busting jerk in the way a lot of college age guys are with their friends so people not liking him was proof he was portrayed well. So I feel he succeeded in what I needed from him.

As for the first impression and why I'd stick a dipshit into the intro, I gave the technical reasons, the other is I write the story the way I see it and don't worry about it. Hit, miss, of in between, what matters is I told it the way I wanted to.

 

[lovecraft68]

That doesn't matter. The reader is rating their actual experience of the story. If you open a novel in a physical bookstore and the first chapter is unreadable, you are not wrong to put it back, even if Chapter 2 is eloquent and immersive and entertaining.

And they could end up missing out on a good book.

I'm not suggesting slog through three lit pages of something that's pissing you off, but a kneejerk reaction can be misleading.

But this is a moot discussion, people do what they do, and no one is going to change their mind.

 

[IWroteThis]

Well I've never reviewed a restaurant simply by browsing the menu.
I've chosen to not eat in a restaurant because the menu isn't for me.
But I've never followed this up by leaving a 1-star review because 'It's rubbish how they don't cater for my exact requirements.'

To be blunt, my point was several one stars within minutes of a story being published is the work of trolls not legitimate critics. However, due to the way things are set up, trolls are given the power of legitimate critics and any rational person would see the issue there.

Xx

Browsing the menu and not going there is a lot like looking at the new story list and not clicking on a story.

Now, if you actually went to the restaurant and were seated, we get into a grey area. What if the reason you decided not to dine there was the menus were dirty and had dried food on them? What if, while you were reading the menu, they brought out your drinks and the glasses were dirty and had old lipstick on them? What if you went there because it was advertised as authentic _____ cuisine, but the menu only had Americanized versions, and what you saw being brought out to other tables looked like it came from the freezer section of the local Piggly Wiggly?

To me, that is enough to give a bad review without getting past the menu.

Now, with that said, I've never said that all of those votes were legitimate. I simply disagree with the position that a low rating is illegitimate if they didn't read the entire story, and that was the whole point of my reply to you.

 

[IWroteThis]

The reason for the character is they're a foil to show how the brother feels about his sister because the guy teases him about her frumpy hippy appearance and he's helping him set his room up for a photo shoot so his questions let the reader in on what's coming.

He was meant to be a ball busting jerk in the way a lot of college age guys are with their friends so people not liking him was proof he was portrayed well. So I feel he succeeded in what I needed from him.

As for the first impression and why I'd stick a dipshit into the intro, I gave the technical reasons, the other is I write the story the way I see it and don't worry about it. Hit, miss, of in between, what matters is I told it the way I wanted to.

I agree with that last sentence wholeheartedly. I evaluate every comment I get and look for ways to improve my craft, but in the end, it's my story.

However, you need to accept the flip side. What matters to the reader is enjoying what they read. No matter your intentions or the reaction of other readers, you broke that enjoyment early for that reader, and they bailed.

The truth is, ratings are artificially high because most people don't bother to provide feedback before they bail. Unfortunately, this creates false expectations and unsupported assumptions about audience reaction. So, that reader was probably an outlier for commenting, not for their decision to stop reading.

 

[IWroteThis]

And they could end up missing out on a good book.

That is very true, but let me ask you a question. It'll probably come off argumentative, so let me apologize in advance, but it's not intended to be. I'm genuinely curious.

How much of a book do you think a person should read before the odds of it getting good diminish enough to give up? Is it a number of pages, a percentage of the total length, or ???

Personally, I try to get through the intro and into the actual story, but I don't have any fixed target beyond that. Still, sometimes the intro is just too much and I bail in the middle of it. I started a story (on another site) last night, and they constantly mixed first and third person in pretty much every paragraph, if not every sentence. I gave that one up pretty quickly. "I looked at her reflection in the mirror," is fine, unless you're the only one in the room!

 

[WhenPreNut]

Well today's story went from 5/1 to 3/2

The comment

due to the way things are set up, trolls are given the power of legitimate critics and any rational person would see the issue there.

Hits the nail on the head IMHO

Still I enjoyed writing it, and now I'm looking at different platforms. Which I wouldn't be doing if there was a feeling it was recognised as an opportunity for improvement.

 

[lovecraft68]

That is very true, but let me ask you a question. It'll probably come off argumentative, so let me apologize in advance, but it's not intended to be. I'm genuinely curious.

How much of a book do you think a person should read before the odds of it getting good diminish enough to give up? Is it a number of pages, a percentage of the total length, or ???

Personally, I try to get through the intro and into the actual story, but I don't have any fixed target beyond that. Still, sometimes the intro is just too much and I bail in the middle of it. I started a story (on another site) last night, and they constantly mixed first and third person in pretty much every paragraph, if not every sentence. I gave that one up pretty quickly. "I looked at her reflection in the mirror," is fine, unless you're the only one in the room!

I'd give it at least a couple of chapters in most cases sometimes longer if there was a hint that something interesting could be brewing, but I try to give it a fair shake so to speak.

Black House by King and Straub is a sequel to Talisman also by them so I wanted to like it. King starts and this is "No one dares edit anything he puts on a page" era King and its page after page of him introducing the town in every goddamn detail and every person's life story so I just put it down because I could only imagine he was going to write like that the entire book.

Guess I'm saying things that open with massive info dumps tend to put me off.

 

[lovecraft68]

I agree with that last sentence wholeheartedly. I evaluate every comment I get and look for ways to improve my craft, but in the end, it's my story.

However, you need to accept the flip side. What matters to the reader is enjoying what they read. No matter your intentions or the reaction of other readers, you broke that enjoyment early for that reader, and they bailed.

The truth is, ratings are artificially high because most people don't bother to provide feedback before they bail. Unfortunately, this creates false expectations and unsupported assumptions about audience reaction. So, that reader was probably an outlier for commenting, not for their decision to stop reading.

Yeah lack of comments are an issue as in it got a good/bad score but what was the main reason? If you had several people citing the same thing as a yay or nay it can help you in a future story. But even without comments if a story just tanks (outside of LW which is kind of a Bermuda triangle for certain content) you have to figure you did something unpleasant, and if it happens to do really well, you're left thinking, Okay, it turned out pretty good.

Now, the story I mentioned with the annoying guy at the start? I could stop and think, hmmm could this story have done better without him? But when it first went live and that was an early comment I was like, well, people might be missing what I was going for but I'd probably do it again.

FWIW? This is the story. Seems he was the outlier, but I did remember the comment so I suppose it did give me something to consider even if I won't act on it.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Tell me why this wouldn't help (and wouldn't be easy to implement):

Instead of just on rating, set the position of stories in the lists by some algorithm that takes into account average rating score and reader/rater ratio. That means that a bunch of one-bombs would lower the score, but raise the ratio of readers to voters.

There's no absolute fix, but that would seem to dilute the effect of "Suddenly 10 votes for 1 star appear."

It would hurt me, I seem to have sub-average readers per rating, but even I don't think my own ranking is important.