Spurious Voting

[sfor]

It's an old chestnut - and I do "live with it" - but my strories tend to attract 4's and 5's regularly, and indeed the first 3 chapters of my latest story were all around 4.7 and above. However, both of the first chapters, once they had about 15 votes, suddenly received a 1. No feedback or explanation provided. Now chapter 3 after receiving mostly 5's with a few 4's has picked up a 1 overnight.

Now there may be a genuine reason for this, but it is an occurence that seems to happen far too frequently.

Still, as previous authors have said - we just have to learn to deal with it.

However, it's still a bit of a choker !

 

[the_bragis]

Hello sfor, (What is 's' for by the way?)

I guess there are lots of reason for nasty little votes like that. Nasty little people is the main one, but not always.

I received anonymous feedback some time back saying something along the lines of "There's nothing erotic about rape. I gave your story a one."

At the time of submitting it I felt the story was kind of borderline between EC and NC. After receiving that email I realised I should have been more sensitive and mindful towards the kind of reader the EC category attracts. I've moved it since.

Well good luck. 4.7 is an excellent average! I jump for joy at anything over 4 myself.

Alex (fem)

 

[PAUL C]

what can we do?

I am afraid those with child-like mentalities will always get a buz out of posting a 'one' vote. A double one when they see that it has had that effect on you.

Still I can except those morons more readily if the many thousands who do read a story, like it, then move on without registering a vote at all, did so. it doesn't take very long.

If nobody ever mentions 'one' votes again perhaps they will go away and grow up.

(I hope I haven't offended anybody who genuinely detested a story so much that they felt it deserved a 'one' vote. That's your right. And I would gladly give your life to defend it).

 

[reohoko]

yeah, I have over 2000 views on my story but only 28 votes. Is that normal?

Was kinda hoping for more feedback though. Besides, the I like it stuff. Like the, I like it because..... and I didn't like it because stuff.....

Got one very nice feedback so far

I don't know.

 

[PAUL C]

voting ratios

seems pretty good to me.

it is feedback that counts as the voting can be manipulated in so many ways.

from your profile should I conclude you are not male?

 

[Boxlicker101]

So far I have only one story posted but four more pending. It seems to take a long time to get posted and they are all very short. The one that has been posted has had almost 3,000 readers but oly six have voted. One feedback which was very complimentary. I try to email stories to submit.literotica.com and they are considered but so often they say there was just a blank sheet with nothing written on it. What's with that? Anyhow, I am pretty new here.

 

[KillerMuffin]

If you email your stories, well, it takes absolutely forever to get posted.

Unless you're using a Mac, you should try copying and pasting the text into the box or uploading the story into the submission. If you "blank" sent back to you, then Laurel didn't see any text in your submission.

You can edit any submissions you have pending at the moment by clicking the blue pending in the submission view page (it's a link) and altering whatever you wish to alter from the title on down.

You could try to paste or upload and leave a note in the notes field that tells her that if the story is blank, she can find an emailed copy rather than rejecting it. Sometimes that works.

 

[reohoko]

Re: voting ratios

seems pretty good to me.

it is feedback that counts as the voting can be manipulated in so many ways.

from your profile should I conclude you are not male?

me? no, I am not male. If I was I would be a millionaire (being that I have had children and all LOL)




I prefer feedback to votes too, but I do find it incredible that so many votes and so little feedback. I knew my friends I showed it to would only vote, those are stories that they have seen on my site for awhile. But, still, my friends aren't maybe even a small percentage of the views and there are over 17,000 veiws.

It's all good.

 

[fieryjen]

I'm so happy. I'm an inexperienced writer, and my second story (Jenny's Summer Ch.01 in Novels and Novellas) has only been up for about a day... and I received 2 very positive feedbacks so far, and a bunch of 4 and 5 votes. Not bad for someone who doesn't have a clue about sex
I guess I've yet to experience the negativity I've heard so many people talking about...
Umh, I think something isn't right though... my profile said earlier on that I had 6 views and 17 people voting... right... does this happen frequently?

 

[reohoko]

I noticed views dont update as often as votes, no idea why. I was on the phone with my sister, she voted and it appeared right away, but the views didn't change.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Votes update real-time. Views update once a day when the entire site is updated. Dunno why.

 

[Jonathon_Swiftly]

Why would anyone submit a "1" vote?

That's just uncool. I mean, if you don't like something, hey that's cool. Don't read it. What, like we're forcing these people to read our stuff? It's like the voyeurweb, if you've ever checked that out. These girls get out there, and they're hoping for an exhibitionist thrill, and instead some loser feels the need to make a negative comment, or send a negative vote.
How about this: we let these boonards submit their negative votes, but the site admins play a sneaky trick on them, and quit counting "1"s. I mean, seriously, if someone tried to submit a story that was really a "1", it probably wouldn't get approved, now would it?

 

[Jonathon_Swiftly]

And tho this isn't really related...

KM, I just LUV your stuff.
And since you wrote that if I must say so, you'd rather I say so here, well, here it is, lol.
sexy sexy sexy stuff.
okay, I guess I'm done now

 

[KillerMuffin]

*blush* Well thank you! I'm an EvilMuffin. I get all of this wonderful mail from people and I'm terrified to respond to it. It's really not good of me.

 

[James MacGregor]

It's an old chestnut - and I do "live with it" - but my strories tend to attract 4's and 5's regularly, and indeed the first 3 chapters of my latest story were all around 4.7 and above. However, both of the first chapters, once they had about 15 votes, suddenly received a 1. No feedback or explanation provided. Now chapter 3 after receiving mostly 5's with a few 4's has picked up a 1 overnight.

Now there may be a genuine reason for this, but it is an occurence that seems to happen far too frequently.

Still, as previous authors have said - we just have to learn to deal with it.

However, it's still a bit of a choker !

I would have to agree with you on this point. I've a few stories posted, some better than others I admit. I do tend to gauge them more by the feedback, positive or negative. But, when your tale is suddenly buried under a number of "one" votes it hurts its chances of being read. I'm not a professional writer by any means but, if the tale sucks, I would like to know why, so I don't make the same mistakes in future tales. I'm happy if I can bring a smile and perhaps a squirm or two with my writing. I guess I just needed to vent a bit and this seemed like the place to do it.

 

[Jonathon_Swiftly]

I hear ya...

I imagine you must've been getting a ton of feedback, what with your being so prolific and, well, y'know, a lady with a sexy voice ta boot, lol.
I know what you mean, tho, about being a bit trepidatious when it comes to replying to the email you get. I was at first, too, tho I have no doubt I've not gotten nearly the same volume that you were getting.
And then there's the question of What's scarier: people telling you they think you're an awful author, or people telling you you're great and then wanting to know what city you live in? LOL

 

[henlar]

Re: Why would anyone submit a "1" vote?

That's just uncool. I mean, if you don't like something, hey that's cool. Don't read it. What, like we're forcing these people to read our stuff? It's like the voyeurweb, if you've ever checked that out. These girls get out there, and they're hoping for an exhibitionist thrill, and instead some loser feels the need to make a negative comment, or send a negative vote.
How about this: we let these boonards submit their negative votes, but the site admins play a sneaky trick on them, and quit counting "1"s. I mean, seriously, if someone tried to submit a story that was really a "1", it probably wouldn't get approved, now would it?

I'm new here and have experienced some pretty wierd voting, but I think the people running this sitre already try to do something about it. at one point some votes was removed and the score on my story went up. It started out at 4.85 but has steadily gone down and is now at 4.64. I have had over 30 letters nad only one saying he didn't like it and hadgiven it 2. That was when it was still at 4.85. it has 43000 downloads over a 14days period. Somebody apparently like it despite the voting.

Kind regards

Henrik

 

[Jonathon_Swiftly]

well, henlar, 43,000 doesn't suck, so looks like you got the last word, huh?

 

[henlar]

well, henlar, 43,000 doesn't suck, so looks like you got the last word, huh?

As it is my first post here, I don't really know how many downloads to expect. When I look at the top download list, 45000 (today's number) doesn't seem like that much, but I'm quite satisfied, thank you

 

[tonytony3]

You may enjoy learning this. A while ago I had, not on purpose, posted the same story twice on Literotica. One was called "Celebration, A Wife's Temptation", the other, "A Wife's Temptation." The only difference betwen the stories is the title.

Celebration has a voting score of 4.64, 70 votes, 16,000 hits, a Wife's Temptation is 4.52, 130, 23,500.

Any statistation will tell you that's way more than a significant difference between voting scores. Is it all in the title? Or do votes not mean much?

As graders, the voters aren't too consistant, are they?

Tony

 

[hiddenself]

Any statistation will tell you that's way more than a significant difference between voting scores.

Did I hear my name called?
This is an excellent (natural?) experiment. But you haven't really run this by a true statistician, have you? Beware what you ask for.

Although we don't know the variability of your scores, let's assume that approximately half of your votes are 5s and half are 4s (that gives an average of 4.5, which your stories have). Then, if voting is consistent, you'd still have a 11% probability of seeing a .12 difference between the two average scores (or even a larger one)! Scientifically, that's not rare enough to argue that the two stories get voted on differently (this "p-value," as it's called, has to be less than 5% for that).

But chances are that you got some 3s and 2s (and maybe even 1s) as votes. Then, the variability is larger, and the corresponding p-value shots up to 28% (or higher).

As graders, the voters aren't too consistant, are they?

Actually, that's amazingly consistent. Of course, there might be some small systematic difference (due to the different title maybe or other factors) and if you had a million votes any small difference could indeed show up "statistically signficant." That doesn't mean it's "meaningful."

Sorry to burst your bubble.

Voters 1
Suspicious/complaining authors 0

 

[mangrove jack]

spirious voting

there`s lies,dammed lies and statistics
enjoy your writing
vote early and vote often

Mangrove jack

 

[henlar]

[
As graders, the voters aren't too consistant, are they?

Tony [/B]

Would it be the same people woting for both stories? People's taste differes and one group of people might generally have a lower average than another group.

I'm not that keen on the voting, but once it is there it becomes important, because the readers let the early votes make a choice and follow the voting. It's the stories on the top of the lists that generate the most downloads. Personally i prefer sites with no voting.

Kind regards

Henrik

 

[tonytony3]

Hey, Hidden Self

When you characterized the posting of the same story with
different titles as a “natural experiment” I figured you
knew what you were talking about. I hadn’t done statistical
analysis for a while, and you proved my instincts were way
off. As an intertainment I ran a simulation on a universe of
votes whose average score would have been 4.56, the weighed
average of the two scores I cited. More than 30% of the time
a selection of 100 votes from that population scored less
than 4.52, the lower score, and more than 20% of the time
the score was greater than the 4.64 score.

Nice call, thanks.



Tony

 

[CrownJoolz]

Re: Why would anyone submit a "1" vote?

I mean, seriously, if someone tried to submit a story that was really a "1", it probably wouldn't get approved, now would it?

I don't know about that. I've read a couple of stories where I've thought "This has to be a joke. Nobody writes this badly!" I don't vote on a story if I think it deserves less than a 3. I think that the approval process is more to weed out stories which don't conform to Literotica's rules rather than those which are poorly written.

As for spurious voting... all I can say is that yesterday my latest story had a 4.90 and was #1 on the EC toplist. Today it has a 4.72 and is somewhere around 30. The email I've received has been overwhelmingly positive, so I have to believe that this phenomenon has less to do with the quality of my writing than it does with the subject matter or with other authors voting it down to elevate their own positions. There's nothing I can do about it, since I did leave it open to voting, so I just shrug my shoulders and read the positive e-mails, happy that people are enjoying it.

Joolz