Story score percentiles - LW versus the rest

[pink_silk_glove]

That's a much more accurate statement about taste at Literotica than saying "quality doesn't matter."

I've never said that it doesn't matter. I maintain that it matters very little, so little that it cannot be quantified in scores. You've gotten my statements wrong in precisely this way many times before and I have corrected you many times, and on at least one of those occasions you have agreed and apologized to me.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Totally agree. If you write "hot wife" style stories in Loving Wives, which is the type of story the category originally was meant for, you're going to get bombed as sure as the sun rises.

* Except when the story is told from the perspective of the “other man”. Happy-go-lucky fuck stories involving married women do very well in LW if told from that perspective.

 

[SimonDoom]

* Except when the story is told from the perspective of the “other man”. Happy-go-lucky fuck stories involving married women do very well in LW if told from that perspective.

So many nuances to LW!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Thanks for all the replies in the thread! This is just a curiosity. Page 5311 of a descending score sort of all stories, at story 265544 of the search results, is where we slip from 'Hot' to 'Not Hot'. I'll withhold comment on the difference between Gangsta's Paradise and Breed Me, Daddy.... https://search.literotica.com/?query= &page=5311&sort=vote

View attachment 2476516

Ahh, Snoop's audio is there. She's a friend of mine in chat.

 

[Gamblnluck]

So many nuances to LW!

Yes there are. Case in point, yesterday a story was published called "Her Fairytale" It was well written as far as structure goes and descriptive quality. But it left a 'sour' note as expressed in virtually every one of the comments. It only got 3.28 score. Readers felt no man would put up with the abuse the wife heaped upon him. His reaction was unrealistic, even as far as fiction would allow. In other words, even in fiction, your characters have to respond reasonably.
That is especially true in LW.
Other genres tend to get away more with wank fodder.

 

[yowser]

Other genres tend to get away more with wank fodder.

I vote this understatement of the month.

 

[Comshaw]

Stop right there. I've said many many many times. The rest of your encyclopedic article is hereby ignored.

Ignored? Expected. Ain't much I can respond to there.

TA

Comshaw

 

[SimonDoom]

I've never said that it doesn't matter. I maintain that it matters very little, so little that it cannot be quantified in scores. You've gotten my statements wrong in precisely this way many times before and I have corrected you many times, and on at least one of those occasions you have agreed and apologized to me.

This is exactly what you wrote:

No, I don't buy that quality writing helps you more in any category except probably N/N a bit.

I don't agree with this at all. I think my disagreement was accurately stated.

Remember kids: the score (regardless of category) is really only an indicator of how much the readership agrees with your story.

I don't agree with this at all. The problem is the words "really" and "only." You exaggerate and overstate and that's where I disagree with you.

I won't speak for Simon but he is probably willing to give a piece of mediocre calibre writing a 5 if it was fun to read and satisfied his urges, or whatever, because he agrees that for the most part a story here should foremost be more or less titlating.

You ARE speaking for me, and you are dead-bang wrong about how I respond to stories, and if this is what you think then you are not paying careful enough attention to what I actually write in this forum.

The point is, that if your story scores a 4.78, that in no definite way means that you wrote well. It might, but you can't really tell.

This I agree with, but I think so does everybody. I'll bet we all know stories with high scores that we don't think deserve them because in our opinion they lack "quality."

This is a summary of what I believe:

1. Writing "well" in the usual, technical sense significantly improves your chances of a high score, but obviously it's no guarantee.
2. Some readers obviously don't care about the "technical merits" of a story. But enough do that writing well can make a difference.
2. Scores, on average, DO reflect, to some significant extent, the quality of the writing. I disagree with you that it "matters very little." That is contrary to my 20 years' experience reading stories here.

 

[MelissaBaby]

In regards to the red 'H' - If my memory serves me correctly, I've seen posts in AH about ratings where the poster commented that they don't give ratings on stories unless it's a 5. I have no stats to back this theory up, but if enough people felt the same way, that might help explain why the average ratings all-time are at the 'H' level.

Math is not my strong point, so I could be way off.

I think a more important factor in pushing average scores upward is that readers who are enjoying a story are more likely to finish it, and those who finish it are more likely to vote than those who don't.

 

[RejectReality]

I think a more important factor in pushing average scores upward is that readers who are enjoying a story are more likely to finish it, and those who finish it are more likely to vote than those who don't.

This.

It's exactly why really long and later chapters of multi-chapter stories score higher. Finished and voted 5, cut out before the end without voting, and hated it and voted 1 are the dominant voting patterns. People using anything in the middle are rare birds. That's not just here, either. It was painfully obvious when the other sites I post on displayed voting distribution graphs. A two story building on the low end, a skyscraper on the other, and the grand canyon with a few odd rocks sticking up from the canyon floor in between.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

You ARE speaking for me, and you are dead-bang wrong about how I respond to stories, and if this is what you think then you are not paying careful enough attention to what I actually write in this forum.

Bullshit.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

This I agree with, but I think so does everybody. I'll bet we all know stories with high scores that we don't think deserve them because in our opinion they lack "quality."

No, hardly everybody believes this.

And you're talking out both sides of your mouth now, so that's that.

 

[Actingup]

This.

It's exactly why really long and later chapters of multi-chapter stories score higher. Finished and voted 5, cut out before the end without voting, and hated it and voted 1 are the dominant voting patterns. People using anything in the middle are rare birds. That's not just here, either. It was painfully obvious when the other sites I post on displayed voting distribution graphs. A two story building on the low end, a skyscraper on the other, and the grand canyon with a few odd rocks sticking up from the canyon floor in between.

Yes. We're not paying to read these stories, and so unlike a book there's no particular motivation to keep reading if we don't like it. If I think a story isn't worth my time, I don't persist and I don't leave a vote or comment.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Or...
Who cares?????
Write what you write.
Forget the scores.

Cagivagurl

 

[lovecraft68]

Interesting. Thanks.

My take on LW scores vs others is pretty simple.

Scoring on Lit is heavily biased toward the high side. On a 1-5 scale you could expect the median to be around 3, but it's much higher than 3. Lit readers are friendly. Don't complain about your readers.

Scoring in LW is not as biased. I don't think it's because the average reader there is more critical, but because they're friendly to some stories, but very unfriendly to others.

The change in distribution of LW stories might imply that the LW reading population used to be less divided than it is now.

What I think it comes down to is although every category has a main theme (BDSM, Group, Incest etc) they also have sub genres. Example is in Incest, some readers will read any pairing, some strictly mom son or sibs. In these categories people seem to steer clear of what they may not care as much for. If you don't like dad/daughter in taboo, you don't read them.

In LW I think there are two differences that hurt authors there. The first is there are more factions there than most categories. The second, and most damaging is there seems to be a huge group there that show up to read stories they know are probably going to piss them off for whatever reason, get pissed off and bomb away and some accompany the bomb with a crappy comment.

I know we see some of this in NC/IT/GM where someone reads a story there then tells you how sick it is, so LW is not exclusive in this weird behavior, but it is by far the biggest collection of those sorts. Sometimes I think of the readers there as Sado Masochists. The same type that gets drunk and starts looking at their ex wives social media page and thinking about how things were good then someone done someone wrong song (Eddie Rabbit, wow, where did that come from?)

Simply put I think they like to wallow in misery then beat up the author for doing it.

I wonder what that grading curve would look like if anon voting was taken out. I'm sure much higher because I don't think any other category suffers the same level of abuse from the faceless lunatics.

 

[SimonDoom]

I wonder what that grading curve would look like if anon voting was taken out. I'm sure much higher because I don't think any other category suffers the same level of abuse from the faceless lunatics.

Do you mean anonymous voting or unregistered reader voting? They're not the same thing. Right now, ALL voters are anonymous. Not just some, all. Which is a good thing, because the secret ballot is a vital component of a good voting system. If you were required to let the author know your identity when you voted on their story, voting totals would crash, obviously. Voting probably would be kinder, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Voting averages are already high enough.

 

[lovecraft68]

Do you mean anonymous voting or unregistered reader voting? They're not the same thing. Right now, ALL voters are anonymous. Not just some, all. Which is a good thing, because the secret ballot is a vital component of a good voting system. If you were required to let the author know your identity when you voted on their story, voting totals would crash, obviously. Voting probably would be kinder, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Voting averages are already high enough.

Stop playing with semantics. In the context of this site and forum when someone says Anon its understood as in no handle/unregistered. Not anon as in your ID doesn't say Simon Doom.

You know that.

 

[SimonDoom]

Stop playing with semantics. In the context of this site and forum when someone says Anon its understood as in no handle/unregistered. Not anon as in your ID doesn't say Simon Doom.

You know that.

It's not as clear as that because people talk about anonymous commenters, and it's easy to get the concepts confused. I'm a registered member, but I can comment under my name or comment anonymously (I like having that choice). But all of us, registered and unregistered, vote anonymously. And I think it's useful to raise it because when people stop and think about the fact that ALL of us are anonymous voters then it undermines the notion that there's something wrong with being anonymous, which is something many seem to think. Wanting to be anonymous online is a normal desire and it doesn't indicate that there's something bad about your motive, or your lack of fitness as a reader or voter. I think that's true for voting and I think it's true for commenting.

I push back against the "no anonymous voting/commenting" crowd precisely because there's a continued refusal to think things through and look at the facts. We have another thread that shows how absurdly high average scores are and we have people complaining about anonymous voting whose scores average over 4.7. There's a disconnect. I think it's helpful to be precise.

 

[RejectReality]

Lush experimented with announcing all your votes by name for a while. Let's just say it was a short while.

Feuds the likes of which would have made the Hatfields and McCoys go "Damn, don't you think that's a bit much?" started over 4's. Score retaliation. Malicious reporting of posts, chat, etc. Flamewars. PM screeds. Stalking to other sites. Writing stories casting each other as the villains. Much of it between people who had been friendly for years prior to one of them daring to cast a 4 vote.

That's what happens when you remove anonymous voting. 4-bombs replace 1-bombs. SOL had the same inflationary problem, which is why the Math Voodoo™ was applied to the scores there, artificially stretching out all those 9-10 scores, and why any previously available data to track the raw value of scores cast on your work was eradicated from the site.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Some time ago I pushed for the option to disallow anonymous voting, and what I meant was disallowing unregistered voting. Unregistered voting is one of the principal causes of voting manipulation on Lit.
By the way, I don't think anyone ever requested voting to be public as that is obviously a recipe for disaster. If there is a story website that actually attempted such a thing, I am seriously worried about their common sense.

 

[SimonDoom]

Some time ago I pushed for the option to disallow anonymous voting, and what I meant was disallowing unregistered voting. Unregistered voting is one of the principal causes of voting manipulation on Lit.
By the way, I don't think anyone ever requested voting to be public as that is obviously a recipe for disaster. If there is a story website that actually attempted such a thing, I am seriously worried about their common sense.

The Site would never allow the "option" of disallowing unregistered voting because then different authors and stories would be subjected to different voting systems. That's obviously never going to happen.

I question the premise that unregistered voting is a principal cause of voting manipulation on Lit. First, how could anyone know that? What proof is there? Second, since registered readers can vote anonymously, they're just as free to engage in consequences-free manipulation as unregistered readers. Third, it seems likely to me that there are some members/authors who HAVE engaged in vote manipulation without anyone knowing about it. They have more reason to do so than unregistered readers, who have less investment in story contests and rankings.

Isn't it sheer speculation?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

All right, we can do this even if you have a tendency to abandon a discussion and ignore the reasoning and proof (at least when discussing with me) but okay, let's try.

The Site would never allow the "option" of disallowing unregistered voting because then different authors and stories would be subjected to different voting systems. That's obviously never going to happen.

I don't think that Lit cares about any of this, especially not due to the reasons of fairness and rankings. As with every other issue on the website, it's likely they don't want to be bothered about it, or they simply don't want to take anything away from unregistered users.

I question the premise that unregistered voting is a principal cause of voting manipulation on Lit. First, how could anyone know that? What proof is there? Second, since registered readers can vote anonymously, they're just as free to engage in consequences-free manipulation as unregistered readers. Third, it seems likely to me that there are some members/authors who HAVE engaged in vote manipulation without anyone knowing about it. They have more reason to do so than unregistered readers, who have less investment in story contests and rankings.

Isn't it sheer speculation?

That's not what I said. I am sure that many registered users are also involved in voting manipulation. Whether it's people with accounts doing it while logged off, or people who never made an account is completely irrelevant. It's the fact that any person can cast an infinite amount of votes on any particular story by manipulating their IP address that creates all the problems.
As long as unregistered voting is allowed, votes are tied to the IP. There is no other way the website can track votes, except with cookies but those can also be deleted. But if a user has to be logged on to cast a vote then the vote is tied to the account and can't be cast twice no matter what.
There are also reasonable ways to regulate the voting of people who want to have more than one account, ways much more efficient than this pitiful sweeping algorithm Lit uses at the moment.

 

[Gamblnluck]

. Finished and voted 5, cut out before the end without voting, and hated it and voted 1 are the dominant voting patterns. People using anything in the middle are rare birds.

I give far more ratings in the middle range than the ends. But I will agree, I rarely finish a story that does not catch my interest. Sometimes I get invested in stories just to see where the author takes it. I see a train-wreck and want to watch it jump off the rails.

 

[RejectReality]

When anonymous voting was allowed on Lush, authors were allowed to disallow it on their stories. Wouldja believe it? They all had perfect 5 scores on nearly everything they posted! ( And 1/5 the votes of anyone who didn't use the setting ) Then they added the ability to force anyone casting a vote to leave a comment as well. Even more perfect 5s and even fewer votes for those delicate flowers!

Every time someone complained about something "unfair", they "fixed it" and two days later, somebody else was complaining about something else for them to fix. It reached the point where a good quarter to half of the toplist in every category was perfect 5s, and every 4 was a deathblow that caused even more screeching than all the previous screeches they'd "fixed".

And once you eliminate anonymous voting ( especially on a site that's had it for 25 years ) and the vote totals drop off a cliff, it only takes a couple of accounts that can easily be set up to be completely disassociated from each other with a VPN and have the same impact as tossing a dozen anonymous 1s at a story. As the scores inflate, ( which they will ) it takes even less effort, and the value of a "bomb" increases to the point where you no longer need to use a 1. Then no need for a 2. 3... It becomes harder and harder to determine what's a malicious vote, simply empowering the trolls, and labeling anyone ( even more than it already is ) who doesn't cast a 5 every time as a troll.

I'm not speculating. I literally watched this stupidity unfold elsewhere. The more barriers you throw in front of regular people, the less effort they'll put into trying. Trolls on the other hand have a goal, and will do whatever it takes to achieve it, which fortunately for them isn't much once you radically tilt the math in their favor.

 

[SimonDoom]

All right, we can do this even if you have a tendency to abandon a discussion and ignore the reasoning and proof (at least when discussing with me) but okay, let's try.


I don't think that Lit cares about any of this, especially not due to the reasons of fairness and rankings. As with every other issue on the website, it's likely they don't want to be bothered about it, or they simply don't want to take anything away from unregistered users.

As far as "proof" is concerned, you're just speculating when you make inferences about what they care about. It seems unlikely to me that they don't care at all about whether the scoring system is fair. But regardless of what's fair, I would think they probably DO care about what works and what might affect site traffic. I say that in part because they have said as much in previous responses. They're not going to do things that risk a substantial reduction in total votes or comments. And that's rational, from their point of view and from the readers' point of view.

That's not what I said. I am sure that many registered users are also involved in voting manipulation. Whether it's people with accounts doing it while logged off, or people who never made an account is completely irrelevant. It's the fact that any person can cast an infinite amount of votes on any particular story by manipulating their IP address that creates all the problems.
As long as unregistered voting is allowed, votes are tied to the IP. There is no other way the website can track votes, except with cookies but those can also be deleted. But if a user has to be logged on to cast a vote then the vote is tied to the account and can't be cast twice no matter what.
There are also reasonable ways to regulate the voting of people who want to have more than one account, ways much more efficient than this pitiful sweeping algorithm Lit uses at the moment.

How bad a problem is this, really, other than as something that subjectively bothers the relatively small handful of authors who complain about it in this forum? I think we're speculating. I know I don't care much about it, and other authors chime in here saying they don't care about it either. I would guess that among the authors (the majority) who DON'T participate in this forum the overwhelming majority don't care. Scores exist to provide information to readers. It seems reasonable to me that the site could decide that the cost (in terms of traffic, less reliability, increased manipulation, and amount of time to fix the problem) might outweigh the benefit of taking extra steps to cut down on multiple voting. They might have looked at the situation and just decided it's not that big a problem, and if they're paying attention to this forum (which they seem to, based on past experience) they could well decide that not enough authors are bothered by it that it's a problem worth fixing. I don't know what they're thinking, but neither do any of us. But one thing that is very clear is that the site is not going to do anything that reduces the number of voters and commenters, and that's a rational, defensible, evidence-based position, even if there might be other rational, defensible positions.

As someone pointed out in another thread, this is the most popular erotic story website in the world. It has over 10 times the traffic of SOL, a prime competitor. So what they're doing works, and they're in a better position than we are to know what might affect traffic. I don't pretend to know, because I don't, but I don't think any of the rest of us do either.