Stupid Human Tricks

Wm_Sexspear

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Mar 24, 2002
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I thought it might be fun to share our most horrible reader feedback experiences. I'm new at writing for fun. My first story was posted 4/6/02. Mostly my writing heretofore has been documentation and business communication. That said, I was very fortunate with my first story, I have many wonderful e-mail from readers, people offering heartfelt superlatives. The story is carrying a high rating after many votes.

I wrote an erotic story, not porn. That attempt at creating something with literary merit earned me this insightful feedback: CRAP… CRAP… CRAP… CRAP… CRAP… CRAP… CRAP… Dude!

A new story was posted this morning. It's garnered a "H" after many votes. Again, erotica. There is brief explicit sex, but I gave the reader a surprise ending. I gave them a chance to think about what might have happened next, instead of telling them. I got mostly warm e-mails, some wanting the story to continue. Some wanting more sex, some more of something else.

Then there was this feedback from a mental midget:

the story didn't suck your attitude did. The story is average and not credible. If its worth anything, it was not a waste of my time to read it. Normally it is. I voted you a one (1) for you remotely thinking that your story should be copyrighted.


So, anyone else have any good ones to share?


Before I close. I saw a post from Laurel bemoaning the fact that some negative voting occurs. I know that those who attempt to write higher quality material risk the wrath of the readership wanting every body part to be massive and f*** to be part of every sentence. I have a suggestion that might automatically avoid both problems.

Programmatically exclude the lowest 2 or 4, or whatever, percent of voting scores before computing every stories' ranking. If a story has mostly 1~3 votes, dropping some 1's won't change a thing. If a story has 500 votes, mostly 5 and 4's, dropping, dropping the lowest 10 or 20 votes won't radically change the ranking, unless that writer had been hit with some spiteful 1's. It might raise the ranking numbers slightly, but it would be equal for all.

I know the How To article I wrote was ranked at 4.87 after 35 votes. The next day with 38 votes, it had dropped to a mid 4. My calculator confirmed that two 1 votes had been tacked on from ignorance or spite because an H flagged "story" in the New section wasn't about sex. It would be nice if the computer could knock out hate votes without it being a chore for a poor site administrator. Larry
 
Shucks, and here I was thinking I earned each and every one of those 1s.

It's impossible to tell "hate" ratings from "I found this story to well and truly suck" ratings without corresponding telepathy. I've given some of the second--not many, but sometimes I was just appalled. And I don't tend to read stories below a certain rating, so it was probably rated a 3 or higher, which means SOMEbody found it worth their time. As I've just said, rating is a highly individual thing. We just have to ignore the cretins.

Besides, then technically we'd have to stop telling our friends to read our story and vote it a (deserved or otherwise) 5. And then where would we be? o)
 
This one actually hurt

Perhaps by sharing the pain I can slowly begin to heal. o) Quint, Supreme Self-Therapist. This was over "I Pushed My Pud Up Her Poop-Chute." Oh, and the reader was "Anonymous."

Hi,

I am not a writer and english is not my first language. However I have read enough erotic/pornographic stories in english and other languages to know that words set moods. So in my opinion all the words you have mentioned can be used in stories to create different moods.

"Manhood" is effective even if your target audience is not old
housewives. I am a man, but I have felt no problems reading it certain stories, just as I have no problems with cock, dick or anything else.

"Arse" is not only used by "Brits" but by Autralians and others as
well.

You don't "do" Kama Sutra. Kama Sutra is a both a guide and a scholarly treatise about sexual enjoyment written in ancient India. It also contains historical and anthropological insight into the lives and customs of ancient India. However most of the online Kama Sutra's you find on the web are only a very small portion of the original that deals with sexual positions. By mentioning "doing" the Kama Sutra, you have shown your ignorance about it.

You think "tits" are offensive and "breasts" are erotic. So when you read about examining "breasts" for lumps, do you get turned on?

Finally your how-to contains the reasons why "you" don't like certain words. Hence it is very very subjective and not helpful to anybody writing erotica. Remember it never helps to generalise things. "Very bland to most people on this site" - how do you know what "most" people on this site think? You mentioned "Again I find myself in the minority", so what right has you got to speak in the name of "most people".

I sure hope nobody asks you to edit any of their stories!

Have a nice day
 
Human tricks

I am amazed at the differences in feedback email generated by different categories.

My most recent story post, in Interracial, was the most surprising. I have read many posts here on BB about the hate emails common to this category. I expected the same.

What happened is just the opposite. Every single email has been positive, complimentary, and fun to read. Over half of the more than fifty so far have been from couples or one partner writing to say the story was enjoyed by a couple.

The vote score has been nothing special but I have never received so many feedback emails in so short a time.

I guess the point is, if you aren't happy with the amount or quality of feedback, try branching out into another category. You might be surprised at what happens.
 
I can relate!

I can relate completely on this voting thing. You sit there, as if you are watching your child acting in a grade school play, on edge of your seat, hoping for those 5s to show up and take you over the edge.

And, you call up your friends, and send out emails to people you hardly even remember, asking them to vote for your baby.
Any 1s and you blame the person for damaging your child's chances at stardom, and secretly wish them a long and lingering death.

It is so strange, too. I wanted my story posted as one long story, but it didn't happen. So, my first chapter stopped rather abruptly. I did get some feedback, asking if that was the end. But, I also got some feedback from people who knew there must be more to come, and said they were anxious to read more.

I haven't been graced with any really good or really bad feedback, in my short writing career. The more involved parts of my story have yet to be posted, so maybe my turn with the CRAP CRAP CRAP dude is coming.

But, it is so strange how we wait for those 5s like the lottery, and if someone is having a bad day, they may go around pushing 1s on everybody's story, to get back at the world.

Being a computer nerd, I was actually thinking how it could be setup to tell a 1 from hate over a 1 from an honest vote. Of course, it isn't possible, but I actually found myself thinking maybe if the person is angry, they would hit the mouse button harder than they would otherwise, and we could use the velocity to check for hate 1s.
Your subconcious mind takes over when it is your kids future involved!

You know what my next step was? After figuring out the solution of the hate 1, I would then send a small electrical charge back through the system to the offending finger.
And, on the screen would be a picture of their mother, shaking her finger at them for being so MEAN!

Now, I am going to get my calculator out and see if I can tell just how many 1s I got. I hadn't thought about that one.
 
LMAO DVS.

come on folks, no funny feedback stories??

DVS, what I was suggesting was simply knocking a percentage of the lowest votes off of every stories' total before computing its rank. One way something like that could be done... maintain 5 fields/buckets, the first bucket is a total number of the 1's cast, the 2nd is the number of 2's, etc.

Add the 5 buckets together and you have the total number of votes casts. Take a small percent of the total, then remove that number of the lowest votes before computing the rank.

I'd also like to see a vote that scores a 4.5. The way the ranking works, anything but a 5 is basically a negative vote... no H for you baby. I've read some fun/clever works that don't merit a 5 because they have way too many grammar errors, typos, or other problems, but maybe they deserve to have a Hey Read Me 'H'.

Here's a thought, change the numerical values of the 5 vote buttons. The lowest/leftmost button scores a 3.0, the next 3.5, then 4.0, 4.5, and finally 5.0. This would make it harder to sabotage someone's score, plus let's us vote that a story is above average without saying it one the absolute-all-time-best. This would have the added benefit of needing almost zero re-programming.

Sorry, I'm an out-of-work Systems Analyst... I can't help myself.
 
just following the voting track...

what is the point in aiming for the challenges if the voting can be so easily tampered with? that's why we have votes, right? to aim for bettering our writing, right?

i have voting on with my stories.

if i get up somebody's nose for whatever reason, they are able to go and make a slime vote against my stories. if somebody falls madly in love with me they can enter 5s all over the show.

where the hell is the point in expecting the votes to be honest expressions of thoughts about our work?

it would be better to have some more realistic way of voting. perhaps having readers only able to vote? not that i'm suggesting it's the authors who are doing the dirty or bootlicking...

excuse me for sounding so direct about this. i originally only had the voting on for 'experience'... just to see how things worked. now i know, i really can't see a positive point for having it there.
 
On a serious level, Wm Shakespeare as a systems analyst should know that if a certain percentage of the 1s were to be ignored to allow for tactical voting - then a certain percentage of 5s should also be ignored to allow for partial voting by the author and friends.

As we are talking about feedback, this is the most interesting email I have recieved. It relates to one of my Roman stories "The Memorial"

Sceal an deas a scriobh tu agus ar Lietrotica a chuir.
Lorgfidh me ar Ainmeacha ar sonas o anois!

Nice story you wrote and put on L,
from now on i will look for names on lamps


The problem I faced was - the writer was far better at composing a message in Latin than I was. I am a mere author and historian who struggles on with a dictionary.

Now can anyone beat that?

jon:devil:
 
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There is good and bad in everything

And, this is no different. You can't vote more than once, can you? Even if someone would want to do you some damage or good, it would be very small, either way.

I think the voting idea is good. And, I think it is very honest, over all. Sure, you will have a few mean and nasty in there, and you will have some overly good votes, too (family and friends?).
I also like the feedback option. Again, you can get crap from some people, but don't we all have a delete key? The anons who write and ask why you think you should be considered a writer are mentally poor and probably just upset that you used a few two syllable words in the story, and they couldn't get off reading it, because it takes both hands to look in the dictionary.

Personally, I like the anonymous ones who say they liked your story. Just a nice little message that wasn't necessary, to trump up your ego. And because it wasn't signed, they weren't asking for anything in return. They just wanted to tell you they liked your story.

Anonymous
 
LOL jon. Anything past amo, amas is Greek to me.

You are absolutely correct about taking some off the top and the bottom. It had occured to me, I just goofed and left it out in my original post.

OK, if you don't have a funny feedback, how about your most surprising.

I got one, very effusive, very extravagant with his praise of an erotic story. It finally hit me, he was writing from India, home of the Kama Sutra. That moment was when it really sunk in just how far our words can travel. I'd been locked into thinking I was writing to Americans, the UK, or maybe Canada. Now that I poked around here a little more, it's neat to think about the reach of the simple word.
 
i just checked...

there are no names on the lamps in this neck of the woods.

oh dear i just figured, that's not good is it?
 
DVS

My concern about the 1 vote is that it carries disproportionate power. Let's say a newer story has a 4.5 rank after 20 votes, it finally got the highly desirable red H beside it.

Along comes Mr. Wonderful, who decides your freely given hard work isn't up to his high standards because you didn't get your sister pregnant, tie her up, spank her, then perform non-consensual anal intercourse. Bang, you get a 1.

Your rank falls to 4.333, your H goes bye-bye. Want your H back? Only if the next 7 votes are a 5 will your story regain it's 4.5 average. Somehow 7 bests to offset one "It's Crap, Dude" strikes me as the 1 votes having disproportional power. That's why I'm liking the idea of a 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0 value being assigned to the 5 voting buttons more and more.

If the lowest vote was a 3, using the scenario above of a 4.5 after 20 votes, then it would only take 4 BEST votes [5.0] to regain the 4.5 rank and its well deserved red H.

*****

I swear to God this is totally true… I just checked my e-mail before re-reading this note. The most amazing feedback just arrived. Only this group of writers could fully appreciate this:

AMAZING! i mean i've read most of the incest stories (thats my thing) and there all pretty good to jerk off to but with yours i got so into the story that i forgot about jerking off i couldn't take my eyes of the page which has not happened since LOTR!!

If anyone thinks I made the above up, e-mail me and I'll forward the feedback to you. God, I love this place!!

Oh, can someone explain LOTR for me? I haven't used chat speak in years. Larry
 
I guess I've been lucky, as my feedback has generally been favourable. I think the nearest I've come to criticism is the following, in respect of my tale A Date for the Prom:
the story was very good, one of the better ones that I have read but your constant misuse of the word tuition was a
real stumbling block and although the metafictional aspect of the story ('oh your story writing skills are much better')
was there and your character was being tutored by an english teacher there were still several dangling phrases and
blatant flaws with several of your sentence constructions. This is especially true when you are conjugating verbs.
Overall I give it a 4.5 but since there are no 4.5's I will have to settle for a 5.
Happy journeys.
Now criticism like that I can live with. Unfortunately it was from 'Anonymous' else I might have asked for more! In my own defence I also have to add that although I am working in higher education at present it is in the computing field and not English.

An explanatory note: In the story's original form, I used the word 'tuition' in its commonest UK sense, meaning 'tutoring'. Where an American might say 'tuition', we would say 'tuition fees'. I have since amended the story as it is supposed to be set in the US.

Alex
My Stories

PS: Larry,

LOTR in your feedback is probably 'Lord of the Rings'.
 
Alex, thanks for LOTR and the feedback story!!

If I wasn't clear up in my original post, I have dozens of wonderful feedback mails. In fact, it is when they are running blantantly positive, that the isolated mean-spirited note seems all the funnier.

I loved the comment on tuition. Where I grew up [Illinois] fanny was a polite word for asre/tush/butt etc. I heard in England it refers to pussy. True?

Having just realized how many counties read our work, now I wonder how many unintended meanings my stuff has in it. ;-)

Nice timing on posting a reader comment wishing they could vote a 4.5!! There must be a God.
 
Wm Shakespeare,

Well you have learnt one English / USA opposite. A word that may interest you bearing in mind your nom-de-plume is the word "gotten" in modern English we say "got" - "gotten" having dropped out of use by the late 17th C.

I believe to some extent American English froze with the revolution - the same happened in Canada their French is archaic.

Of course as Hollywood subjects us to a diet of US English, we can live with and understand Americanisms far easier than vice-verca, when did you last watch a British film?

jon :devil:
 
I always get lots of one sentence feedbacks from anonymouses. Usually very good for the ego, but not good for upgrading my stories. Anyone who has the time...

Sorry, really shouldn't be scrounging for feedback here. This is one of my favourite pieces of feedback:

"I feel pretty confident in saying that there is little chance ANYONE would bother suing over that inane story. I only wish those of us who take pride in being WRITERS on this site could sue your pathetic ass for PRETENDING to be ONE OF US!

Stick to comic books, please!"

The author has the essential vitriol, plus an amazing talent for capitalising random words. And the fact that he/she tagged someone else's e-mail address to this rant allows the necessary anonimity. Pity really, I was planning to forward all my positive feedback to him/her pointing out that he/she was outvoted 40 to 1.

The Earl
 
Earl, good on ya mate! Empty drums make the loudest noises, eh. One of my arrgghh makers are the anon's who point to omissions in the story that they simply missed.

"She should have had a widget!!" the anon declares, often stridently.

Being anon you can't reply to point out that in chapter 1 it clearly said she had a widget. People can be an endless source of anger or amusement, I try to choose the latter because laughing feels so much better.
 
Wm_Sexspear (aka Larry) wrote
I loved the comment on tuition. Where I grew up [Illinois] fanny was a polite word for asre/tush/butt etc. I heard in England it refers to pussy. True?
True indeed. Reminds me, I saw a young lady today nicely filling a teeshirt. Written on the front was P U (Superman 'S') S Y. How I kept a straight face when I caught her eye I will never know!

I would share my vitriol if I had any. Perhaps my work is so bland the trolls cannot be bothered.

Alex
 
Alex, the original, and still preferred, request was for amusing or amazing feedback messages. Have any of those? :)
 
Best I can offer is the following:
Awesome. I had three orgasms just reading it. I want to seduce my nephew like the aunt did in this story but wasnt sure if I could, till I read this story. Thanks.
This was in response to my tale 'Aunt Ellen'. The lady gave an e-mail address which I am not passing on.

One I treasure is from our own jon.hayworth, about my one and only poetry effort on Literotica, 'Survivor Dilemma', written for the Survivor contest here on Literotica
I had to give the poem a 4 for the bare-faced cheek.
Alex
 
Alex,

Rolling on the floor LMAO.

See what happens when you post incest stories in the How To section!!

Thank you, my best laugh of the day!

Larry
 
:p Guess I managed to tick someone off. The 185th vote on Thank You Jeannie Ch 7-8 was obviously a 1, dropping it from a 4.59 to 4.56. Moments later, Ch.,9-10 got it's 747th vote dropping it from 4.70 to 4.69. My guess is the original story got a 1 on it's 1437th, but it just couldn't change the percentage due to the number of votes casts so far.

So, someone feeling threatened out there? Tell ya what, you be angry for both of us. I've got better things to do. Have a nice day. If Laruel is watching this kind of nonsense, I hope you two cross paths.
 
Riddle me this, Batman

You have calculated the 1s and 5s into a near science.
That has also succeeded in causing a near migraine (not really...just added for effect) in my head over my lack of an 'H' for any of my babies.
My stories have non-voters, as we all have. OK, mister systems analyst, how do you calculate this?

out of 3031 votes, only 25 voted.
out of 1994 votes, only 10 voted.
out of 708 votes, only 5 voted, etc.

Can I surmise the non-voters were:
1) too interested in mounting significant other after reading the story to remember to vote.
2) too involved in..well, um, Ewwwww! Sticky mouse!!
3) so upset the voting only goes up to 5 (or maybe only down to 1?)
4) Just plain didn't agree with the story outcome.
5) got half way through and had to pee.
6) can't vote, if you're asleep.
7) just passing through, in search for a good story.
8) Wow, look at all dem words.
9) Gosh! I didn't know THAT'S what BDSM involves.

and the most probable reason they didn't vote was
10) my voting audience is so dense they couldn't seem to master the difficult voting buttons, at the bottom of the story.
 
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DVS, I'm loving it. You're top ten is better than most of Letterman's.

I do have one useful FYI. I read an article by Mickie in the How To section titled Beginner's Guide To Self-Promotion. One suggestion he made was to ask the readers to please vote. I took his suggestion. I had a story hit the New Section at 5:45 AM on 5/8/02. The next day, 5/9, at 6:18AM A Little Blue Dress had garnered 1394 votes.

I'm guessing the higher number you listed first was VIEWS vs. votes? Yes?

Your question I've seen discussed in this forum recently. Many good insights were listed. A view doesn't equal a 'read till the end', some may read a few lines and move on.

I think much of it is because most of the readers aren't writers. Therefore, they don't read the FAQ, and these forums, they're here to get a pocket rocket and take off. They have no idea that the author's work for free and like to see votes so we have some idea of how our efforts are being received.

Asking nicely does get votes, but a note of caution, I suspect some readers may react badly if your story isn't exactly what they wanted, so they may vote spitefully.

Larry
 
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