Rating and Raters

[Hypoxia]

Pray point to three sane writers on this site...

Shall I throw darts?

The madness I cited is like conspiracy-theory mania. Peel back the layers (like a Vidalia onion) of a competent conspiracy and what's in the middle? Nothing. Only distraction. Theorists thus dig for zilch.

Vote-counting authors are the same. Votes only show the moods of a small subset of ill-driven readers. Assessing their fervid votes tells us little of actual audiences.

Back in the day, Western political theorists speculated on Commie power re-alignments by noting absences in politburo photos. But they were paid.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yeah I was wondering if there’s a better rating system because a 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0 carry so much more weight than a 4.0 and 5.0.

But I guess at the end of the day we’re all subject to the same rating system. So there’s a certain fairness in that.

It's easy enough to design a rating system where a single positive vote cancels a single negative vote. Problem is, the resulting score tells you more about how long the story's been around and how many people read it than about how good it is.

 

[Javahead]

Shall I throw darts?

The madness I cited is like conspiracy-theory mania. Peel back the layers (like a Vidalia onion) of a competent conspiracy and what's in the middle? Nothing. Only distraction. Theorists thus dig for zilch.

Vote-counting authors are the same. Votes only show the moods of a small subset of ill-driven readers. Assessing their fervid votes tells us little of actual audiences.

Back in the day, Western political theorists speculated on Commie power re-alignments by noting absences in politburo photos. But they were paid.

At first, I did obsess about votes.

Then I decided to write a story that belonged in “Loving Wives” - and I’m having fun watching the voting patterns and comments. After 10 hours up, it’s floating in the low 2s, with over 5k views, 8 favorites, and a very bimodal voting pattern (the first 4 votes were 1,1,5,4 - that seems to have continued).

Plus, the first anon comment informs me that “Anything from the Author’s Hangout sucks balls.”

It’s kind of fun to poke the monkey cage.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't know if this bit was directed at me, but I'll just say that's not really how I look at it. Obviously, I can't reserve a 5* for the top 5% of stories on the site, since I don't read that many. Of the stories I vote on, I've probably given 25% 5*, 50% 4*, and the remaining 25% is some combination of the rest. My default is to simply not vote on stories to which my reaction is "meh". So, I read a few stories every week and I don't vote at all on most of them.

I still don't think of 4* as downvoting anything.

It definitely was NOT directed at you. I've observed over time that different readers have very different scoring standards, and some obviously have scoring standards that are much tougher than the average.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that. There's no objectively right way to score. Readers respond to stories in wildly different ways, and perhaps the fairest score is one that manifests that difference rather than one that indicates gaming that responds to the specifics of the system.

I don't think voters have any obligation to take into account how others vote, but I admit I have qualms about voting on stories in a way that varies wildly from what's "normal" because of its possible impact on the author. That's just me. I can't really defend it as the "right" way to think about voting, because I don't think there is such a thing, EXCEPT that you shouldn't downvote a story that in your heart you know is good but for tactical or personal reasons you want the story to do poorly. That's the one voting rule that I think is, for me, a rule.

 

[loquere]

Pray point to three sane writers on this site...

I'm fucking sane thankyou very fucking much.

 

[loquere]

It's easy enough to design a rating system where a single positive vote cancels a single negative vote. Problem is, the resulting score tells you more about how long the story's been around and how many people read it than about how good it is.

My ratings rarely budge from the initial number.

 

[RejectReality]

Another one for me is people who reduce the score they give from what they believe the story merits, because they think the current score is higher than it should be.

Not necessarily wishing for the story to do poorly, but an egotistical attempt to make the score reflect the rating they believe it deserves.

"Well, it's a 4.5, but it's rated 4.8, so I'm going to give it a 3."

I can't really defend it as the "right" way to think about voting, because I don't think there is such a thing, EXCEPT that you shouldn't downvote a story that in your heart you know is good but for tactical or personal reasons you want the story to do poorly. That's the one voting rule that I think is, for me, a rule.

 

[KeithD]

Another one for me is people who reduce the score they give from what they believe the story merits, because they think the current score is higher than it should be.

Not necessarily wishing for the story to do poorly, but an egotistical attempt to make the score reflect the rating they believe it deserves.

"Well, it's a 4.5, but it's rated 4.8, so I'm going to give it a 3."

That seems Byzantine to me. How would we know anyone is doing that? Discussion board posters have noted in the past they do it?

 

[NotWise]

That seems Byzantine to me. How would we know anyone is doing that? Discussion board posters have noted in the past they do it?

They could leave a comment to that effect.

 

[Inkhorn]

Plus, the first anon comment informs me that “Anything from the Author’s Hangout sucks balls.”

I have a feeling that I know who that might be...

 

[Inkhorn]

Pray point to three sane writers on this site...

Shhh! You’ll scare them!

 

[MelissaBaby]

That seems Byzantine to me. How would we know anyone is doing that? Discussion board posters have noted in the past they do it?

If there is a dickish thing that can be done, somebody has done it.

 

[RejectReality]

That seems Byzantine to me. How would we know anyone is doing that? Discussion board posters have noted in the past they do it?

Seen comments to that effect, and even posts here on the forum in the far flung past.

 

[Javahead]

Then I decided to write a story that belonged in “Loving Wives” - and I’m having fun watching the voting patterns and comments. After 10 hours up, it’s floating in the low 2s, with over 5k views, 8 favorites, and a very bimodal voting pattern (the first 4 votes were 1,1,5,4 - that seems to have continued).

Plus, the first anon comment informs me that “Anything from the Author’s Hangout sucks balls.”

15 Hours up, 2.2, 7.3k downloads, 11 favorites. And the lead-in story got just enough new “1” votes to drop it from 4.32, where it sat for weeks, to 3.93.

Poke the cage and the monkeys start flinging dung.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

EXCEPT that you shouldn't downvote a story that in your heart you know is good but for tactical or personal reasons you want the story to do poorly. That's the one voting rule that I think is, for me, a rule.

Yeah, that's a hard rule for me too. I judge the story on the story, even if it's a category I don't usually read or wouldn't write in.

I have a feeling that I know who that might be...

Oh the irony, of having to hang around the Author's Hangout enough to know who the authors who post here are, just so you can slag their work.

If there is a dickish thing that can be done, somebody has done it.

Ayup.

 

[MichaelGH]

One thing is that we're all kind of competing with 20 or so years of stories, and a lot of gems can spring up within 20 years. So that score's the only thing we have to advertise our stories with.

 

[Javahead]

Oh the irony, of having to hang around the Author's Hangout enough to know who the authors who post here are, just so you can slag their work.



Ayup.

I just collected a couple of really angry comments on my latest story from a guy who absolutely hates, hates, hates the Loving Wives category with a passion.

Apparently, he hates it enough that he reads - or at least opens - each new story in the category so he can 1-vote it, and post a nasty comment too. I’ll give him this - he’s not anon. But you’d think it would be easier on his system to just avoid looking for them.

 

[TxRad]

I just collected a couple of really angry comments on my latest story from a guy who absolutely hates, hates, hates the Loving Wives category with a passion.

Apparently, he hates it enough that he reads - or at least opens - each new story in the category so he can 1-vote it, and post a nasty comment too. I’ll give him this - he’s not anon. But you’d think it would be easier on his system to just avoid looking for them.

For some people, Loving Wives is like a train wreck or maybe their wives pulled a train so now they are wrecked.

 

[8letters]

The problem is that doesn't correspond to actual numbers. While the figures vary somewhat from category to category, a 4.5 generally is somewhere around the 75 percentile, or maybe a bit less than that. It's good, but it's not outstanding. So if you reserve a "5" for, say, the top 5% of stories, and you give lower grades to stories that don't satisfy that standard, you are grading much more harshly than the way most readers grade. You are free to do that, of course, because the site offers no guidelines for what scores mean, but you might want to be conscious of the fact that by voting in this way you may penalize an author whose story is better than other stories that other readers gave higher grades.

I think you're thinking too hard about voting. Just vote consistently.

I view votes and ratings as kind of a real-world Monte Carlo simulation. You've got a huge number of readers with different backgrounds and tastes voting on each story. One day, you've got a couple of people who just don't find your writing style enjoyable. Down goes your rating. The next day, you've got a couple of people who love the premise of your story. Up goes your rating. No one vote is "correct". The rating is a rough consensus of how enjoyable your story is to read.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think you're thinking too hard about voting. Just vote consistently.

.

Probably true. Good advice, too.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

Do you think that seeing the quantity of each vote given might help? That is, show the rating as is now, but if you click on it you’d see there are 3 "1’s", 1 "3’s", 3 "4’s" and 3 "5’s", for a 3.3 overall rating ? This is something like Amazon’s ratings system, just not tying the ratings to a comment.

 

[NotWise]

Do you think that seeing the quantity of each vote given might help? That is, show the rating as is now, but if you click on it you’d see there are 3 "1’s", 1 "3’s", 3 "4’s" and 3 "5’s", for a 3.3 overall rating ? This is something like Amazon’s ratings system, just not tying the ratings to a comment.

I'd probably like that, maybe in the form of a histogram that pops up when you mouse over the score/votes area. That really wouldn't answer the "what happened?" question when a score drops.

 

[gordo12]

Do you think that seeing the quantity of each vote given might help? That is, show the rating as is now, but if you click on it you’d see there are 3 "1’s", 1 "3’s", 3 "4’s" and 3 "5’s", for a 3.3 overall rating ? This is something like Amazon’s ratings system, just not tying the ratings to a comment.

Personally I like the idea. I pay a lot of attention to the upper scores on Amazon. Not the overall ratings. A low vote can bring the entire total down and that isn't necessarily accurate. If there's a low vote is there a comment with it. If not I discard it.

 

[Javahead]

Personally I like the idea. I pay a lot of attention to the upper scores on Amazon. Not the overall ratings. A low vote can bring the entire total down and that isn't necessarily accurate. If there's a low vote is there a comment with it. If not I discard it.

For the first 10 or so votes it’s fairly easy to see what happened. After that, it gets murkier.

I’ve noticed that any non BTB story in loving LW collects half a dozen 1 votes right away - often, fast enough I don’t think they could have read more than the first few paragraphs before voting. Then, over the next few days the ratings trend slowly upwards.

That doesn’t appear to be the pattern in other categories, but even there it seems as if there are a handful of voters that only give 5 and 1 votes (or maybe only 1). But when a story that’s been hovering in the mid 4s with 25 or 30 votes drops by .1 stars with a single vote it’s pretty obvious you just got 1 bombed.

I rarely give less than a 3 vote - generally, if it’s that bad I either don’t start it or lose patience before reaching the end. And I just don’t read categories that don’t interest me. It seems that some prolific voters disagree, and try to punish writers who dare enjoy writing about topics they personally dislike.

I don’t usually follow the Gay Male or Lesbian categories - for those who post there, do you have similar trolls or is it primarily a LW oddity?

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don’t usually follow the Gay Male or Lesbian categories - for those who post there, do you have similar trolls or is it primarily a LW oddity?

Lesbian is a pretty friendly category. I've been posting there for years, I've had a few stories that were sitting in the category top-ten for a bit, and I can't recall ever being seriously bombed. Even the comments are pretty gentle there - I can only recall receiving one hostile comment from a reader on Lesbian.

The main way to go wrong there is by surprising the readers with prominent male-female content. That will get a low rating, though I wouldn't call that "trolling" so much as "natural reaction to author disrespecting the category".

Heavy male-gaze stories are unlikely to do well and may draw some "this was obviously written by a guy" comments. But nothing remotely approaching the graphic murder-fantasies of LW commenters.