One Complaint

[RejectReality]

Oh, that happens. There's a reason I say in the closing notes of nearly every story I post to only vote once, and not downvote others. It's also on the front page of my website, and frequently reiterated elsewhere.

Never underestimate the willingness of fans to "help you out" with underhanded tactics. Making sure they know you don't want it happening seems to nip the problem in the bud, though. It's enthusiasm gone too far, rather than maliciousness, in most cases.

If more people called out that behavior by their fans as unwanted, it would likely reduce the shenanigans going on significantly.

I'm operating under the assumption that the reverse isn't true--some rabid fan logging in to give your story 5* over and over.

 

[ElectricBlue]

See things your way Blue. I look at the evidence, comments, emails. You don't have to trust me for it to be true. I need to log out of lit. I need a day away.

I'm not arguing - I'm just saying there's a predictable pattern in the first week or so of most stories, more so for contest stories. And I too am looking at the evidence of my own story file and comments, and in my case trolling is down in the noise - even when I'm noisy in AH.

Our radars are just calibrated differently, I think - I seem to fly beneath the radar compared to others. Clearly, we have a different set of empirical evidence, is all.

 

[oggbashan]

4.8x as a rating?

I struggle to get 4.5x and a Red H, even on my stories that have won a contest.

 

[KindofHere]

.................

 

[jaF0]

Threads like this make me wish they'd eliminate votes and ratings altogether. Look at all the electrons and pixels getting all fussed up over such silliness.

 

[oggbashan]

It's not about the rating. It's the intent, the rating was my illustration of what was going on.

It doesn't matter. I'm going to attempt to do something I haven't done in a long while. I'm going to log out of Lit for a week, not check the forum, the comments, the scores, and whatever else is on this site.

One week to disconnect from this turbulence, starting right after I submit this post.

A week's break is probably sensible.

You are obsessing about something that doesn't really affect the quality of your stories. Literotica is flawed, but it is far better than the competition. Trolls exist throughout the internet and we just have to learn to live with them, just as we do with assholes in real life.

 

[beachbum1958]

A week's break is probably sensible.

You are obsessing about something that doesn't really affect the quality of your stories. Literotica is flawed, but it is far better than the competition. Trolls exist throughout the internet and we just have to learn to live with them, just as we do with assholes in real life.

What he said; in the grand scheme of things, the behaviour of 'trolls' on this site is as a small puff of methane in a crowded elevator; it's distressing and unpleasant, but over time the stink dissipates and the story remains. Taking stuff down, or leaving the site in response to trolling is only pandering to the trolls' retarded sense of triumph, of achievement garnered, don't let them have that.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

4.8x as a rating?

I struggle to get 4.5x and a Red H, even on my stories that have won a contest.

Yeah, but you're in Britain and all UK measurement units are bigger, yes? Examples:

• People are weighed in stones, 14 of our pounds.
  
• £1 = $1.33 US.
  
• You're one of the last to stick to those extra-big miles and mph instead of the smaller kilometers and kph.

So, simple logic would suggest that those are Royal Lit Points instead of the skinny Metric ones the rest of us get. And your red H is probably a crimson K once it gets off the ferry.

Besides, all of your stuff is Dickensian in its depth. The common folk just don't appreciate good literature these days.

 

[GrandTeton]

May I suggest an alternative way of looking at those 1 votes?

For someone to get so upset with your story means you touched them on some emotional level. Your writing created that response which to me is a win, isn't that what we all want our writing to do?

Yes, there are always trolls who will just target a story or author but you have to ask yourself why they would keep coming back.
Is it personal? Do you truly know these people or they, you? or have you just hit a sensitive chord with them?

At the end of the day in a year or two's time the good will outweigh the bad and what you can see clearly as trolling in the first few weeks of a story won't even be a drop in the bucket of votes you'll end up accruing and the score will even out to its true rating which can't possibly be a 5 because let's face it we can't please all of the people all of the time. There are worse things than being hated. You could be seen as merely mediocre neither inspiring or creating feelings for the work one way or the other.

Celebrate the trolls because you made them react and that in itself is a talent

I guess if we irritated someone and they trolled out a one, it would be a measure of some impact, a good thing in its way, as you say. What's happened to KindofHere and many others is a concerted effort to drive down the scores for most of the stories that might rank ahead of the trolls' favourite - the evidence has been cited and the effect definitely exists, in I/T and at least one other category, continues past the first couple of months of the story, and is seldom affected by the sweeps. It's that kind of mindlessness that's most objectionable and that the site doesn't protect against, and maybe it can't. They've never said. Taking your stories out is one reaction to the site's inactivity, trolls be damned, and ignoring the gaming is another, depending on your druthers, I suppose. Probably only affects a few of the authors who often touch that metric that naturally results in a high score, anyway.

 

[RocketLauncher]

I'm pretty caustic and glib and have noted trolling on my stories. Prolly deserve it being a right opinionated cunt at times.
I now submit stories under a different name. Works for me.

 

[LupusDei]

Out of idle curiosity (my favourite kind), a question on other authors' scoring habits.

Just to show a pattern that not yet mentioned, I'm equally likely to give 4 or not vote at all if the story wasn't anything special for me. I only give 5 if I really like what I had just read. I don't vote if the story looks technically sound, but proves to be not for me.

I consider giving a low score, usually a 3, if the story had category and theme I would normally like, but in whatever way is made unenjoyable. I can't recall giving a 1, but there was a 2 last week, for a story I should like very much, by the synopsis of it, but it was just bad, on several accounts (extremely simplistic, careless, full of grammatical and logical errors, etc).

On some other site the lowest rating was spelled out as: "What? You are calling THAT a story?" I just haven't come across anything triggering that reaction in me here, yet probably. At least some of the bomb voters may actually use similar definition, only based on much more subjective criteria than authors would like and expect.

However, as mentioned above, triggering extreme dislike in certain parts of population can be considered success.

As to trolling and multi-voting, I have some experience with that in online gaming context, and should say, while it is definitely possible to limit such possibility, it comes at a certain price and trade offs. Paranoid security measures will decrease user base. Especially if user base can be considered sensitive, and user base here almost definitely should be.

 

[jaF0]

Prolly

I rate your post '0' based on the use of dipshit speak.

 

[Handley_Page]

A week's break is probably sensible.

You are obsessing about something that doesn't really affect the quality of your stories. Literotica is flawed, but it is far better than the competition. Trolls exist throughout the internet and we just have to learn to live with them, just as we do with assholes in real life.

I quite agree; it's not how the reader sees your work.
It's more about how much better you are now !

 

[RocketLauncher]

I rate your post '0' based on the use of dipshit speak.

Lol, thanks much appreciated. Glad I ruffled your feathers
I'll give your post a '0' for using an outdated colloquialism. Dipshit? Really? I suppose one must pity a person who's insults stagnated in the second grade.

FYI
Prolly originated in the 1920's
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/prolly

 

[LexxRuthless]

I was reading on this thread again after getting some much needed sleep, and I see multiple comments about 'sweeps.'
So, I'm going to just throw out the noob questions...
How do sweeps work? Do all stories get swept automatically? How would I request a sweep? Why would I want to request a sweep?


Now that I've got that out of my system, I have to defend the voting system. Sure, there are flaws and people can game the system. However, anyone who cares enough to log in over and over to downvote your story certainly has the right to do so.
Your initial argument against these so-called 'trolls' really boils down to this: You have re-posted a story that had a very high rating. You have made it available for voting, but really, only if people are willing to give it five stars. Anything less is unacceptable in your mind. You have made yourself a target and you're mad that people are taking shots at you.
Don't get me wrong, I'm with you on this to a point. When I get a lot of positive feedback on a story and a really strong initial score, I can't help myself. I feel good about it. Then when someone is obviously engaged in jackassery, once again I can't help it. It annoys me.
That said, I try to keep in mind that what I initially set out to do here was just share some of my little fantasies and hope that people appreciated the effort and maybe even enjoyed them. When I get bent out of shape because my scores are slipping and I get some rude comments, I just need to let it go and get back to writing.

 

[SamScribble]

Is this way out of the norm?

I read very few of the stories here. But if I come across something that shows some craft or art or both, I'll give it five stars. Otherwise, I'll just move along.

 

[SimonDoom]

KindofHere,

With all respect, I'm kind of baffled that you, having been part of this community for a while and knowing how it goes on this site, give this even a moment's thought. Your average story score is over 4.8. In incest! That's amazing. You have almost a thousand followers with only 9 stories. Your stories get lots of favorites and positive comments. Why would you care for even a millisecond that trolls knock .02 off your story score? So they do. So what?

One of the good things about Literotica is that its readership is so large that it probably more nearly mimics the universe of readers "out there" in the real world than sites with smaller readership pools. And that means, of course, assholes. I'm sure Stephen King gets hate mail. Bet he doesn't care. The world is full of assholes, and some of them are Literotica readers. And there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. It's not something to worry about. Ignore the assholes and pay attention to the good people.

Focus on the positive: there's tons of love in the reader feedback you are getting.

 

[SimonDoom]

I was reading on this thread again after getting some much needed sleep, and I see multiple comments about 'sweeps.'
So, I'm going to just throw out the noob questions...
How do sweeps work? Do all stories get swept automatically? How would I request a sweep? Why would I want to request a sweep?

.

Sweeps are a device by which the owner/administrator of this site eliminates both high and low votes that appear to be "improper" -- multiple votes by the same person or person intended to dock or favor a story. The owner/administrator does not divulge exactly how they work, for good reason, because if they were explained they could be worked around more effectively. They tend to happen, but do not just happen, during contests. My experience is that when they happen all my stories get swept. Usually the score will then go up.

You can request a sweep by sending a message to Laurel. Do so if you think you've received a number of 1-votes that appear to be completely out of whack with the score for your story. You don't have to request a sweep. During contests, they happen to all the contestants regardless whether they ask for them or not.

I don't mean to be callous or dismissive of people's feelings, but one piece of advice I have about dealing with reader jackassery, as you put it, is not to care too much about scores. Enjoy your high scores, but don't get wedded to them. The site is what it is. Focus on writing stories and reaching readers who like them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You can request a sweep by sending a message to Laurel. Do so if you think you've received a number of 1-votes that appear to be completely out of whack with the score for your story. You don't have to request a sweep. During contests, they happen to all the contestants regardless whether they ask for them or not.

Not just contestants. From what I can see, the whole story file gets swept, not just contest entries. I've only entered two contests and the recent Geek Anthology in four years, but I've seen my scores move around a little during contest sweeps. So you can just wait for the next sweep to clean rubbish up, it'll happen regardless.

 

[SimonDoom]

Not just contestants. From what I can see, the whole story file gets swept, not just contest entries. I've only entered two contests and the recent Geek Anthology in four years, but I've seen my scores move around a little during contest sweeps. So you can just wait for the next sweep to clean rubbish up, it'll happen regardless.

You're right, and I understood that to be true, but my post didn't make that clear.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm sure Stephen King gets hate mail. Bet he doesn't care.

One of his most successful stories is about a novelist who meets an obsessive reader with Strong Opinions about the novels. I assume he was using some of his in-tray to fuel that one.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

One of his most successful stories is about a novelist who meets an obsessive reader with Strong Opinions about the novels. I assume he was using some of his in-tray to fuel that one.

Of course, King could use a different way of measuring audience approval. Crayoned letters from semiliterate critics hardly matter when your royalty cheque arrives.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Out of idle curiosity (my favourite kind), a question on other authors' scoring habits.

For myself, I don't remember ever having scored anything a '2' or a '3' and only in a couple of extreme examples involving no plot, pathetic spelling and grammar, etc have I ever given a '1'. Generally, I just don't vote at all unless I can confidently give a '5', feeling the worst fate for poor writing is to simply be ignored.

Is this way out of the norm?

Literotica ratings suffer from the Uber effect where anything less than a 5 may be considered a hostile act, regardless of what the official guidelines say for each star rating. If I don't like a story enough to give it at least a 4, I probably won't finish it and won't give it a rating at all. Maybe if it's really short, so I get to the end before running out of patience.

I tend to save my 1-stars for stories that are actively unpleasant: racist, misogynistic, trans- or homophobic, etc. etc.

 

[SimonDoom]

One of his most successful stories is about a novelist who meets an obsessive reader with Strong Opinions about the novels. I assume he was using some of his in-tray to fuel that one.

Exactly. He turned it into something positive.

 

[GrandTeton]

Of course, King could use a different way of measuring audience approval. Crayoned letters from semiliterate critics hardly matter when your royalty cheque arrives.

I guess that's the basis for the complaints about trolls, isn't it? King gets oodles of money. Lit authors get votes translated into scores, occasionally favourites and even more rarely comments. Plenty have requested feedback on their stories because that's our "pay". People trolling, especially the mindless ones who haven't even read the story, like the crew who try to keep scores at the top end of I/T down to let their favourite show well, are stealing from us. One acceptable response is to say, okay, everybody gets a little graft, but I'm not sure that's the right response.

Okay, I'm beating a dead horse here, the site administrators aren't going to change and I promise I won't bother you all about it again.