Score sabotage

[Woody110]

I’m pretty sure this subject comes up on a regular basis but please bear with this newbie and let me come to you all for some insight.

What’s with the score sabotage? It’s clear from a regular look at the behaviour of my scores that there’s some strangeness going on.

Please don’t respond with a weary “you’re not special, kid” vibe - I’m not suggesting I am. I’m posting this because I know it’s something everyone experiences. Also, I don’t write for the scores, or worry that mine are too low. I’m just venting. I’m sure in time this sort of thing won’t bother me, but right now I’m new enough to be unpleasantly surprised by it.

I guess I wonder how you rationalise this sort of thing. Perhaps you don’t - maybe you genuinely don’t give a hoot. Either way, please talk to me about your take on it all.

Thanks! Woody

 

[lovecraft68]

I looked at your page, but that's not going to be as updated as yours.

All your stories not only have H's but pretty high ratings. But again your current page may have lower, and it won't show up to others until later.

I see you're writing in Gay male and that category has its trolls, two types, the ones who go down the list bombing all those 'queers' in the category

Then you get the type that reads them, gets off, then gets mad that they did and bomb you for making them feel gay and stuff.

Incest and Non con get a lot of those.

If there are suspicious bombs the next time the site runs a sweep you will see some of them fall off and your score rise.

 

[KeithD]

Yep, as one who has posted GM stories here under a couple of accounts for fourteen years and who makes money off of it in the marketplace, I don't see that your stories are suffering the level of sabotage that most do in that category--certainly that mine do, where the first vote on most of my GM stories is a "2" within ten minutes of the story being posted here. One phenomenon that seems to bear out over the years, though, is that a voting complaint on the discussion board invites increased trolling of the stories. It shows that downvoting gets to you, which was the purpose of the downvoting to begin with. This is a GM-tolerant site, not a GM-encouraging site. You can do better on exclusive GM story sites.

 

[NotWise]

What’s with the score sabotage? It’s clear from a regular look at the behaviour of my scores that there’s some strangeness going on.

What have you seen that you consider to be sabotage?

 

[GroverLang]

I have to agree with Lovecraft. All your stories have ratings many other writers would be very pleased with and, likewise, I can’t see what you are complaining about. I don’t know about his other comments because Gay Male and Incest aren’t my thing so I also haven’t read your stories. But I can see his logic why trolls vote down Gay Male stories.

Keith D is correct in saying the fastest way to get 1-bombed regularly is to come on this forum complaining about it. If you want to contribute to his forum keep complaints about voting to yourself. Or comment under another name.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I’m pretty sure this subject comes up on a regular basis but please bear with this newbie and let me come to you all for some insight.

What’s with the score sabotage? It’s clear from a regular look at the behaviour of my scores that there’s some strangeness going on.

It's part of the territory. There are trolls and fucktards who think it's fun to attack stories, especially in their "I hate this category but I still read it" mode.

The site has, as a consequence, put in place a system whereby spurious scores, both high and low, get scrubbed - which is why your stats can sometimes move around in a nonsensical way. Once you've been around a while and learn what sweeps do (and with a little bit of thought, figure out how they work) you get used to it. Nobody can logically explain the behaviour, and none of the perpetrators come here and explain why they do it. It's one of life's little mysteries.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

My worst rated story was one where the opening had a person watching a male penal slave being spit roasted by two guys. Only reference in the whole story and I had people tell me that I should have posted in in gay male instead of non con.

People can be amazingly strange sometimes. Write your stories. Its not like they are going to demand a refund.

 

[ChloeTzang]

How do I rationalize the downvoting?

Lol. This is a erotica site, and that’s how they get their kicks. Pure and simple. We provide a public service. If they weren’t here downvoting our superbly crafted erotica, they’d be out of their basements, their pallid skin burning under the unfamiliar sun, looking for old ladies to push in front of at the checkout, leering at the counter staff at Mac Donald’s and writing incoherent comments about Meghan Markles disgraceful behavior. Okay, mAybe not the last, but you get the idea. They’d societies losers, the sort of people whose glass is half empty, who criticize everything and do nothing. They’re .... gasp.... energy vampires whose vapid presence sucks life and enjoyment away and replaces it with negativity.

So screw them. I write them into my stories every now and then. Don’t i, Xander? Lol.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My worst rated story was one where the opening had a person watching a male penal slave being spit roasted by two guys. Only reference in the whole story and I had people tell me that I should have posted in in gay male instead of non con.

People can be amazingly strange sometimes. Write your stories. Its not like they are going to demand a refund.

You played a trump card, with even a smidgeon of a mention of gay male.

It's astonishing how many people think they're oh so sexually sophisticated with their kinks and all, oh look at me, aren't I cool, who go into a melt-down with the slightest suggestion of man on man.

You've encountered a classic example of the Category Police. Clowns, the lot of them, who tremble stepping over a marshmallow.

 

[GuessImJamie]

...Comment under another name.

Have one alt per catagory, don't allow anything to be posted in a different catagory, this keeps the incest trolls and the loving wives trolls and the I'm not gay and neither is the guy who just sucked my dick trolls from breeding and creating a new race of super trolls that can rip a hole in the time space continuum.

 

[lovecraft68]

You played a trump card, with even a smidgeon of a mention of gay male.

It's astonishing how many people think they're oh so sexually sophisticated with their kinks and all, oh look at me, aren't I cool, who go into a melt-down with the slightest suggestion of man on man.

You've encountered a classic example of the Category Police. Clowns, the lot of them, who tremble stepping over a marshmallow.

I hate non con with a passion, so avoid it. These days the majority of BDSM is non con because A-people have no idea what they're writing B-they know what they're writing, but for whatever reason don't want to be in non con even though that's the readership for it. So I dropped out of reading anything over there.

I don't do that because I think I'm cool or sophisticated, I've never been either of those things in my life. But I am policing...but just myself, feel free to feel free, but don't feel free to touch me as a friend of mine once put it. But part of that mantra is...getting that other people enjoy what you don't.

I think its fine to not like something, and because lit has categories I think a reader has a reasonable expectation not to find incest in the group sex story they want to read.

I also understand that in this example the out of place scene was the opening and see why someone would back click thinking this is the meat of the story(oh bad pun)

But I don't see the reason to troll it, just move in. I hate non con, and have found it dumped in the middle of a story in another section and it has killed a story for me and I'l stop,,,,but again I won't bomb the author or leave a nasty remark. This isn't a personal insult and my issues with certain things aren't that persons, so what I police is me. I don't like it, I drop off and forget about it a minute later.

But now more than ever people do think they can police everything. We live in a time of hyper sensitive snowflakes who literally spend their day looking for things to be outraged about, and that mentality doesn't stay with politics or race issues etc...it extends to every facet of their life because rage and lynch mob mentality are now their way of life

And this crowd does not have the mentality of live and let live, like prior times did. No, if these people are 'offended' then you should be to, and if you're not, you're one of 'them' and the hate turns to you.

So there is more of those here than ever and they will bomb over perceived slights and comment and want to ruin the story because no one should like what they don't damn it...

Then...you have loving wives where that is the 90% of the readership and they're all spewing hate, but read them anyway and author's post there anyway knowing what they'll get because unless you write burn the bitch there is at least one faction that will haze you...too bad we couldn't get all the outrage rounded up in one place.

They did it on the forums, its called the general board.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I hate non con with a passion, so avoid it. These days the majority of BDSM is non con because A-people have no idea what they're writing B-they know what they're writing, but for whatever reason don't want to be in non con even though that's the readership for it. So I dropped out of reading anything over there.

These days BDSM on Lit is practically dead - what you say might explain it. But it being dead means fewer people post there which in turn results in more inexperienced writers/practicioners posting there...

6k views for a story I posted in BDSM a few months ago, vs 30k for a similar length one in Fetish a month later. The Fetish crowd seemed to be able to cope with queerness, too. May try them again.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

My worst rated story was one where the opening had a person watching a male penal slave being spit roasted by two guys. Only reference in the whole story and I had people tell me that I should have posted in in gay male instead of non con.

People can be amazingly strange sometimes. Write your stories. Its not like they are going to demand a refund.

I wrote a story about a son raping his mom. I posted in in incest figuring the title MOM THE UNWILLING SLUT would indicate that it was a noncon story, and since Incest is squikier to people than noncon, it was the safer category.

I had several comments that I posted the story in the wrong category. It should have been noncon. IF I posted it in nocon I would be told to post in incest.

Post where you think the story fits and ignore the trolls/haters.

 

[Voboy]

I don’t write for the scores, or worry that mine are too low.

And yet, ironically, that's precisely the opposite what your post implies.

If you truly didn't worry about your scores, you wouldn't be asking for ways to rationalize your reaction to them. No?

Some of my low-scoring stories do cause me puzzlement, as I don't post things I think aren't good; I feel surprised they're not higher-scored. But those are offset by a few stories I've posted that are rated higher than I think they should be. If I felt a need to rationalize the one, I'd surely feel the need to rationalize the other.

So? I rationalize neither. I write what I'd like to read, and that really is my only expectation. I'm flattered that my work gets read at all, much less that it meets with anyone's approval. So I'd advise a change of mindset: become as self-actualized as you think you already are.

Good luck.

 

[lovecraft68]

I wrote a story about a son raping his mom. I posted in in incest figuring the title MOM THE UNWILLING SLUT would indicate that it was a noncon story, and since Incest is squikier to people than noncon, it was the safer category.

I had several comments that I posted the story in the wrong category. It should have been noncon. IF I posted it in nocon I would be told to post in incest.

Post where you think the story fits and ignore the trolls/haters.

I'll explain this to you as someone who both writes and reads in that category.

Incest readers are well aware that in real life incest is abuse and rape and is abhorrent, and 99% of incest readers would never condone it.

What's written here is 18+(which takes away a lot of the abuse aspect of it, even if its just abuse of control by a parent or older sibling) and its almost always fun fluffy fantasy stuff, hot sex between family members with no non con or abuse. That's what we like.

Don't get me wrong there are some darker story lines out there, I've written a few, and they are less popular, but generally not abused as long as you avoid outright NC or even non sexual violence between family members.

So if someone does put straight up non con in there, you just dealt them a reminder of what real life taboo situations are, and they are going to lash out at you for pissing in their cheerios.

Do I think that's right? No, as I said in my previous post, just back click, and be done with it, maybe avoid that author moving forward, but no reason to troll.

I'll go a little further...there is a little underlying hostility between non con readers/writers and I/T readers writers. Non con readers who get told their sick by trolls are always quick to say "well incest is worse" I/T side-and I used to point this out all the time back before I decided it was a waste of time arguing with blocks of wood-is that as I said above Incest here does not represent the crime of incest in real life.

Meanwhile rape here is just like rape in real life, in fact its more brutal and exaggerated, so they are getting off on an act of brutality and causing pain. To be clear I'm talking straight up rape not dub con or weird 360 where the victim starts to love it.

And I hope no one is naive enough to tell me its not here, because its all over the place here, and has spread into the BDSM category as well as a shit load of it in loving wives BTB stories(and that I admit is the one crowd I think very little of, because over there its not a kink its raw hatred of women and there is nothing remotely sexual or erotic about it)

But I don't say it to kink shame, whatever floats your boat and hopefully just in your head is all good. But...own your shit, and don't try to denigrate anyone else is my message.

.

 

[SimonDoom]

I wrote a story about a son raping his mom. I posted in in incest figuring the title MOM THE UNWILLING SLUT would indicate that it was a noncon story, and since Incest is squikier to people than noncon, it was the safer category.

I had several comments that I posted the story in the wrong category. It should have been noncon. IF I posted it in nocon I would be told to post in incest.

Post where you think the story fits and ignore the trolls/haters.

You posted it in the right place.

If you have the option of publishing a story in incest, then by all means publish it in incest. Why? Because you will get so many more readers. A lot more. Sure, the score might suffer. But you'll get more readers and therefore more readers who LIKE your story than in any other category, regardless of the score. Too often I think the focus here is on avoiding the trolls. I think it should be the opposite: the focus should be on maximizing the number of readers who will LIKE your story. Most of those readers will never tell you they like your story, but they're there. And you are more likely to find them if you publish in the most popular categories (assuming they fit, of course).

 

[ElectricBlue]

Is it possible to see what the most popular categories are in terms of recent views or submissions? I see the total number of stories are listed on the index, but that's not relevant for what's popular in recent months/years.

The current category loading remains fairly representative, I think - of the last five years, anyway, which is how long I've been here.

You can get a rough idea by looking at each category front page and comparing the age of the stories listed. That gives you an idea of the volume going through that category which can be extrapolated to the rest. Use I&T as the fastest moving, highest volume category as your reference point (where new stories roll off the front page in a day or two), and compare other category turns to its churn. Do some simple maths and you'll get an idea of monthly turnover in all categories.

We have some folk who do that kind of data mining regularly - they might show up with the answer based on actual story counts.

 

[NotWise]

Is it possible to see what the most popular categories are in terms of recent views or submissions? I see the total number of stories are listed on the index, but that's not relevant for what's popular in recent months/years.

It's hard to tell which categories get the most views. Someone had a method and posted it here in the last few years.

I monitored the number of daily posts to each category for about six months in 2017. The order of categories by frequency of posts was generally consistent with their order by total posts. The major exceptions were Romance, which seems to be losing popularity, and Trans/Cross, which is gaining popularity.

You can get a quick idea just by looking at how old the posts are in each hub. If the oldest posts are weeks old, then the category doesn't get much traffic. If the oldest posts are from yesterday, then it's a high-traffic category. In I/T, the oldest post was from today.

You can also see the number views on each story in the hub. That's highly variable, but you might get a quick idea. For simplicity, only look at one-shot stories, because views on multi-chapter stories typically drop as the chapter number goes up.

I did a quick comparison. The largest category in terms of stories is EC, but new stories sometimes had very few views (one had 18) and the most-viewed had around 2.5K. Compare to I/T (which gets almost as many stories as EC) where low views might be 2.5K, and high views are 25K.

 

[SimonDoom]

Is it possible to see what the most popular categories are in terms of recent views or submissions? I see the total number of stories are listed on the index, but that's not relevant for what's popular in recent months/years.

Yes, it's possible.

You can review and compare your own stories. I've published 31 stories, in multiple categories. My incest stories receive on average 3 times as many views as my other stories. They don't receive higher scores, but they do get more comments and more favorites.

Incest is by far the most viewed category of stories.

Loving Wives is second -- well behind Incest but well above any other category.

In the next tier are anal, first time, group sex, mature, nonconsent, lesbian, exhibitionism, and gay male.

The other categories generally are below these.

Illustrated is a wild card -- there aren't that many illustrated stories, but adding illustrations to your story, whatever the category, and publishing it in that category is probably the single best way to maximize views.

8 Letters did a good analysis of category views in a few threads about a year and a half ago. One thread is here: https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1488161&highlight=stats

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Trolls be trolls and there are a lot of them hanging out here at Lit.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

I hate non con with a passion, so avoid it. These days the majority of BDSM is non con because A-people have no idea what they're writing B-they know what they're writing, but for whatever reason don't want to be in non con even though that's the readership for it. So I dropped out of reading anything over there."
:

I have friends in the lifestyle and I get really aggravated when BDSM and Noncon get transposed. Do I 1 bonb? No, I may PM the write and point out that BDSM requires consent.

I wish there was another category for what I am currently writing Since it is near future alt history, I could do SF&F but that would greatly limit views.


"I think its fine to not like something, and because lit has categories I think a reader has a reasonable expectation not to find incest in the group sex story they want to read.

I actually have had pretty good luck with the incest category in the penal slavery universe But I do an explanation before hand and part was non-con due to no incest an the rating was much higher despite a lot fewer reads

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

Is it possible to see what the most popular categories are in terms of recent views or submissions? I see the total number of stories are listed on the index, but that's not relevant for what's popular in recent months/years.

Incest by far is the most popular.

I have a 2 chapter incest story posted last July with over 73K/40K views.

I have an Erotic Couplings story poted about the same time with 6.3K views and a HOT rating.

Incest is by far the most viewed category followed by hot wives.

 

[Javahead]

Incest by far is the most popular.

I have a 2 chapter incest story posted last July with over 73K/40K views.

I have an Erotic Couplings story poted about the same time with 6.3K views and a HOT rating.

Incest is by far the most viewed category followed by hot wives.

Just don’t expect high scores in Loving Wives unless the cheater suffers retribution. A lot of retribution. Otherwise, expect to be 1-bombed.

 

[lovecraft68]

Incest by far is the most popular.

I have a 2 chapter incest story posted last July with over 73K/40K views.

I have an Erotic Couplings story poted about the same time with 6.3K views and a HOT rating.

Incest is by far the most viewed category followed by hot wives.

Back when I first started here, I didn't come to the boards, just posted stories so had no idea what was what

My first story was BDSM and I don't recall exact numbers, but it had an H(barely) and maybe a half dozen decent comments.

My second was in fetish. It was a foot fetish story that did have some femdom aspects, but playful, and Fetish readers are pretty open to everything.

But again nothing to write home about numbers wise, even less than the first story

My third was incest. It went live in the morning and I didn't check the numbers until I got home from work at 5ish...when I saw the numbers I seriously thought I was seeing them wrong, over a hundred votes, couple dozen comments few thousand views...I was like what?

 

[NotWise]

My third was incest. It went live in the morning and I didn't check the numbers until I got home from work at 5ish...when I saw the numbers I seriously thought I was seeing them wrong, over a hundred votes, couple dozen comments few thousand views...I was like what?

My second story went to I/T. It wasn't even incest; it was a sister-in-law story. It was about half a Lit page, and the editing was mangy.

But somehow, on the morning it posted it was the first story on the I/T hub, and on the New list. I checked it when I got up about six hours after posting, and it had thousands of views. I refreshed the page, and it had 2000 more views. It was getting hundreds of views/minute. That died down pretty fast, but it's still one of my most-voted stories, and one of my lowest-scoring.

I thought I'd avoid incest when I started out, but then my next eight stories went to I/T.